MonorailCat
Chieftain
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2010
- Messages
- 74
Did someone else notice that lots of the AIs build only 3 to 4 Cities and then stops to expand even though there is lots of room left? Maybe because they pursue particular victory condititions?
Can't believe someone played germany as their first roll with so many new civ features!
Did someone else notice that lots of the AIs build only 3 to 4 Cities and then stops to expand even though there is lots of room left?
Did someone else notice that lots of the AIs build only 3 to 4 Cities and then stops to expand even though there is lots of room left? Maybe because they pursue particular victory condititions?
Small Continents, King, Standard, Poland
Right next to Morocco, my trade routes with them are freaking AMAZING, no other way to describe it. +11, +12, +13 gold between my capital and their 3 cities I have routes with. Tying science and religion into the trade routes makes for some interesting decisions in regards to how you set them up. Do I really want to give +3 extra science to Brazil (because of my tech lead) just for an extra +1 GPT? (As an example).
The changes to gold (not being able to sell to AI) and the tech tree (all the new building additions, wonders, etc) make the early game a lot more interesting because of the decisions to be made.
The cultural UI, uh, makes my head hurt trying to decipher it. I am sure it will come with time, but it's completely different and there is A LOT of information on those screens, and I haven't even gotten to the part of the game where tourism, archaeology and great works really start to matter.
I used a Great Artist to create a work called "Naked Lady Looking in a Mirror" (or something like that) and put it in my palace. If you click on the great work in your city screen it replays the little video from when the work was created. Nice touch there.
In G&K you basically always had a second or third copy of one resource close by your capital, so you would have luxuries to trade. In this game I didn't have any second copies until I founded my third city, but instead had 1 each of Gems, Citrus, Truffles, Ivory, Marble, Incense. Anyone else seen anything like this or was this completely random?
The AI seems way to peaceful. Thought the new Arabian UA was religion spreading through trade routes, Venice can do that...
Also the music selection so far isn't too varied - I was looking forward to snatches of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" from Great Musician Hank Williams, but so far I've only seen European classical composers, despite figures like Elvis Presley, John Lennon and Jerry Lee Lewis being generic "Great Artists" in the past.
PhilBowles, thanks for your writeup. You're right, Duel map is probably the worst one to play on but I look forward to seeing your play on a normal, standard map.
That's tonight's task... Again as Indonesia to give them a fair run.
By the way, I was going to try a "My first game" thread with visuals, but the game crashed when I tried to take a screenshot. No idea if this was just an unfortunate random event or whether it's a new bug with BNW, since I didn't try again.
Got up this morning and had about 20 minutes before I had to go to work. So, I updated Steam, installed BNW and rolled a new game.
Standard, Continents, Normal size, Prince (Yeah, I suck at CIV ), Shoshone. I did turn off Time Limit victory, though. Hate losing by points at 2050.
Got very lucky with my start position. My settler was already standing on a marsh, right by the origin of a river. Put my capital right there, managed to get 1 Marble, 1 Wine and 1 Wheat inside my borders.
Sent my Pathfinder out exploring, found two ruins (I went Culture, then Population) and met Egypt. Found a couple city states, ran into a Babylonian unit, and then found a Barbarian camp to the southwest. And this is where the game surprised me. Normally after two or three rounds fighting barbarians, the unit will get enough XP to level up. The Pathfinder didn't, and I had to retreat to heal.
By this point, I had built a monument & a worker (went Trad instead of Lib), but I had to pull him back into the city because a barbarian unit came down from the north. Started building a second Pathfinder, and that's where I had to leave for work. This was turn 40.
Oh, and my adviser said I could build a caravansary, but I was kinda tied up building the Pathfinder at that point. Now I can't wait to get home and keep playing!
One other thing I noticed is that no one has started a pantheon yet. Normally, I'd see somebody had started one by now. This might be the first Civ 5 game where I get first dibs on a religion!
Edit: Oh yeah, I've only got 200 gold. Taking that away from rivers really does put a crimp on starting!
Built the Borobudur,
I think it's just chance. Difficulty level doesn't play a role in map generation.I think it may partly be an artefact of difficulty level - I often found singleton resources in my starting city in G&K (though more rarely than duplicates). On my start with BNW, however, I had two whales next to one another.
Yes, but you have to pay maintenance on the roads. It's hard to afford that maintenance cost until it's complete without the caravans.
On the topic of trade routes.
I am seriously reluctant to trade with other major civs because if I am ahead in tech, then they gain a pretty nice bump in their science research. I'd rather keep the trade to the city states, which generate the same amount of income.
Spread your trade between civs. The bump for any one trade route is small - seems to be calculated as 1 bpt per tech you have that the other side doesn't. Besides, I'm usually behind in the early game when this bonus is meaningful.
I got chills when I met Enrico. His body language reminds me of the Emperor. I felt lucky to get out of there without getting a lethal dose of Force Lightning.
Yes, they're really gone to town on the new city-state leader screen...
I quite like the way he's always gesturing at the city as if to say "Hey, look, I've got the coolest background".
Trading is absolutely essential to money making. I had 4 coastal cities on Pangaea and no real ocean access. Cost me some money. I found I had less money in early and late game with less tile gold. It also hurt my culture game as it was hard to reach civs for trading route bonuses to tourism. With sea routes being so powerful I found treasure fleets really useful, which might strengthen Exploration.
Exploration still looks fairly weak to me, and it was a tree I completed. However, you will need a full complement of naval buildings in most coastal cities (I heard mutterings that the Harbor felt nerfed before G&K hit, but it's probably the most efficient single way of obtaining domestic gold left in the game), and while Exploration doesn't give you a lot to manage happiness this boost is useful.
Oh and for those hoping for a happiness nerf, both zoo and stadium have lost happiness. Add in potential ideological unhappiness and late game might actually be happy challenged on higher levels.
I actually found myself a lot more limited for happiness than I'm used to and struggling to find enough happiness buildings - however I was playing a larger empire than usual, and without either the Tradition or Liberty happy policies (which make a big difference), so it's difficult to compare directly.
Also, war weariness makes avoiding even low unhappiness critically important (units lose fighting effectiveness with every point of negative happiness now). An embargo on my whales (which succeeded because, being unused to the system, the delegates I assigned to block the motion voted yea instead in true Baldrick fashion) actually hurt.
For World Congress, if you play on a low level and are smart you can dominate it all game.
Or on a high level on a Duel map...
2 - Not my experience at all so far.
Again I can't comment because duel maps tend to be easier, however I did notice a couple of things. Pike-spam is gone (and Ironclad spam is in - oh joy. Never saw a single Great Galleas though); with the rebalanced Iron Working route the AI seems to favour that with its better promotion structure now, which should help them late game.
The AI now makes extensive use of Great People - Venice had two Holy Sites and a Manufactory in its borders, and seemed to use GEs to wonderspam (that's how they got Eiffel, at least). The lack of academies and preponderance of prophets may show that they still aren't ideal at prioritising GPs, however.
3 - Again, not at all my experience so far. In fact, they seem to be playing more aggressive in my games.
Enrico was passive for a lot of the game, but that may partly be that AI (not building settlers seems to mean they're less inclined to covet your lands immediately), and partly the way Duel games go generally.
EDIT: I didn't address Jon's finding that gold was more abundant, as I found something similar in the late game. But in my case that wasn't trade route related - in my permawar with Venice, I had only 11 gpt from the sole international trade route I could use (with Ragusa - ironically given Venice's real-world history, the only one of the four CSes on the map Enrico didn't puppet). It was due to the Mausoleum of Helicarnassus; a game with six independent GP counters (one each for Artists, Writers and Musicians; one for Engineers, Scientists and Merchants; one for Prophets; one for Generals and one for Admirals), in which I had large late-game faith, and with several new ways to accelerate GP production makes the Mausoleum HUGE. And the 4gpt I was getting from its stone and marble bonus is significant with the reduced domestic gold income from other sources.