Share Your First BNW Experiences Here
- Thread starter Lorf Yimzo
- Start date
Margim
Footy's back.
Me too!
Population, science and culture. I had 5 cities by turn 230 (epic), with libs, unis the GL and NC around 10 pop each (capital was 15 and second city 17) and I had around 150 beakers! On the plus side I was quite capable of starting a religious based economy by making my religion the only one on the continent (desert folklore city)
Still With the Parthenon and 4 GWs stolen (
) and amphitheaters I was generating the astronomical number of 30 culture and 8 tourism!I find it more easy on the happiness factor to be honest. Only when I had three puppets I had fallen to -1 and I started to build happiness buildings.
To be honest thus far my first impressions are not good. I seem to think that the ideas are good but not implemented right. Heres to hopping, its me and not getting the mechanics right.
under_score
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2013
- Messages
- 1
Playing as Morocco, Prince, standard map size, small continents. I had Persia and Norway on my starting continent. I went Tradition opening, built 4 cities and stopped expanding. By 1500AD, I had not fought a single war, even though Harald's capital was 6 tiles from my closest city. Twice I saw him amassing an army at the boarder, and I would set up trade routes to 2 of his cities, plus keep some extra luxury resources traded to him for gold, and both times he moved away once I got the caravans rolling.
Persia, however, was taking up the bulk of our continent and was besting me in every way. Although I had established a religion before them, they had converted all my cities but my capital. The city-states were all allied with them, there score was almost twice mine.
I focused everything on earning gold, and was richer than I knew what to do with by 1000AD. Poor plan on my part, I hadn't really pursued anything else, and since I wasn't trying to field an army, it a bad strategy.
So I'm impressed so far, and looking forward to getting off work so I can play some more.
Persia, however, was taking up the bulk of our continent and was besting me in every way. Although I had established a religion before them, they had converted all my cities but my capital. The city-states were all allied with them, there score was almost twice mine.
I focused everything on earning gold, and was richer than I knew what to do with by 1000AD. Poor plan on my part, I hadn't really pursued anything else, and since I wasn't trying to field an army, it a bad strategy.
So I'm impressed so far, and looking forward to getting off work so I can play some more.
PhilBowles
Deity
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2011
- Messages
- 5,333
Okay, so my second playthrough (Indonesia, Emperor, random map type and size which turned out to be Huge Continents) is nearly complete, and I can add a more detailed opinion on BNWs changes while I wait for Darius to finish his spaceship.
Trade Routes
Overall, this is the most coherent and best-handled of the new systems. It plays into many areas of gameplay, can drive your economy in much of the game without being essential for most of it (and so allowing non-trade focused strategies to work, although much less effectively), seems to be generally well-handled by the AI, and puts a high premium on city placement.
There are however (as with many features of BNW) apparent balance problems. It still beggars belief (and I raised it when it was first revealed) that no one seems to have thought being able to get 11 food trade routes early in the game would break the system, and even 4 food from caravans is valuable. Conversely, no one seems to have considered that food is worth a lot more than production, making production trade routes all but useless. In practice I actually have found gold trade valuable enough that food trade isnt all-dominating as Id feared, but it still needs to be looked at.
- Some disappointments are:
- that domestic trade is not at all reliant on city placement, as you dont gain the 25% bonus from rivers and resources arent counted. I think a good fix would be to give food trade a lower base, with a boost for each non-shared food resource (food resources, in previews, affected international trade bonuses, but dont in the final game for some reason). Production would get a bonus for each strategic resource in the same way (gold, as now, would get bonuses for every resource of any type).
- Poor scaling through the game makes trade routes less and less important, and resources less important relative to being on rivers (arguably the reverse of reality), since its a fixed 0.5 bonus however much income the trade route generates (and the reasons for the substantial differences in trade income between destinations are poorly-documented). Caravans also become irrelevant for anything that can be traded coastally as time goes on, and its rare for inland sites to be desirable enough to trade with them preferentially.
You also have no control over trade coming from other civs, such that your turn-by-turn income can fluctuate in a way its hard to plan for. While the current way of setting trade routes (i.e. without any need for explicit diplomatic agreements) works, it would be nice to also have the option to offer/request trade routes as trade goods (e.g. I give you X, you set up a trade route to Jakarta for 30 turns). This also makes East India Company less of a hit-or-miss investment.
Much has been made of the need to protect trade routes, however with changes to the AI that promote early-game passivity, I havent been under very much pressure to do this. It did mean that when I finally did go to war, with the Netherlands, I lost every one of my trade routes in short order, however, and I still got bankrolled by Arabias trade into my cities. More emphasis on the importance of this would also help caravans (which are more easily protected, and almost completely safe away from the frontlines in the late game barring rebel uprisings, as barbarian camps are gone) remain relevant into the late game you trade off lower income over greater defensibility of your trade routes.
Culture and tourism
While I still havent made a lot of use of this system (and to some extent am feeling the effects of neglecting tourism, although the effects of sharing ideologies with tourism-heavier civs make it easy enough to get away with this), my opinion that this is a system with great potential but heavily flawed implementation still stands.
I really like the Great Writer/Artist/Musician system in principle, although I feel the Musician is a little weak (the tourism effect, used aggressively, can be valuable, but only in quantity and requires open borders to use, when the opposing-ideology civs youll most want to affect are likely to be unfriendly. In contrast the Great Writers culture boost, as well as being valuable defensively, gives you a huge boost towards a direct product social policies). Probably the Artist too will prove to be somewhat weaker than the Writer in the long run, due to the great advantage of the culture boost effect and the reliance of Great Artworks on Wonders.
I dislike the generation system, however. With all other Great People, you have much more direct control over GP production rates buildings, number of cities spawning them, rates of faith production for Prophets, and of warfare for Generals and Admirals. Building a single National Wonder with up to two specialists gives you very little control and makes the system very passive, not something that will vary much with your strategy. Since each of the three GP types has its own GP counter (Writers dont share the Artist counter, for instance), there are no trade-offs beyond the need for specialists as there are with other GPs, so theres no strategic variety you will never have games where its worthwhile to neglect Musicians to boost Writer production, say. You go for all three buildings as soon as you have the food to support them, and get spamming. This makes for a very boring experience.
The Great Work swapping has attracted, I think, well-deserved criticism. I dont think it would be too crippling to, say, France to make swapping a diplomatic trade (and you wouldnt design a system around a single civs UA anyway if necessary, just change the UA). You can trade with anyone, even if youre at war, and it seems you cant lose Great Works or indeed loot them. I lost Makassar temporarily, however my tourism output was unchanged (although, as my GW and GM system, Makassar certainly had Great Works in it apparently they were reassigned to empty buildings in other cities). Its a bizarre and rather clumsy system, and anything that can be added as a diplomatic option in the somewhat limited diplomatic trade system typical of Civ games should be a tradeable option. It also removes any incentive for looting other civs artifacts (and the attendant diplomatic penalties) as long as you have access to antiquity sites of your own, since you can just dig in your own sites and swap for what you need.
This leads to archaeology, which is nice in concept but rather limited. Landmarks rely on having antiquity sites near your cities, and Ive rarely if ever seen more than one per city, so mostly youll be hunting for artifacts which have rather limited game uses and, as with artworks, few non-Wonder slots to house them. Also, with the peaceful early games that comments here and my experience suggest are now typical, there just tends not to be very much variety in or access to dig sites in or around ones own territory.
Culture victory now seems to rely more than ever on Wonder-spamming, since the big culture generator is the hotel, and only France and Polynesia get to choose cultural improvements (the tooltip suggests that only these and Landmarks give a tourism bonus to the Hotel, so GP improvements and Brazilwood camps are out, and landmarks cant be planned for in advance. Culture-producing Natural Wonders are also in short supply). Religion will also be very important the tourism for faith buildings Reformation belief will likely be fundamental, and Religious Art as well.
World Congress
I like the World Congress both in concept and implementation however it is more badly let-down than any other game system (and yes, I include 1UPT warfare) by AI limitations. The AI could handle the old diplo victory conditions fairly well, aside from being lethargic about actually building the UN, but seems at rather a loss with the new one, beyond its old trick of grabbing city-states. It appears to use diplomats more than spies, but Ive never been approached for vote-trading and based on AI votes reported it seems unlikely that they trade votes with each other. This approach means it may not actually be possible for an AI to win a diplomatic victory (without several favourable delegate-generating resolutions), since under the new system a civ can have every CS as an ally and not have enough delegates to win.
As for non-victory resolutions, AI proposals seem somewhat stereotyped (World Fair early, usually an early attempt at a trade embargo). I havent been in a position to propose resolutions in this game, so cant comment on how this influences AI responses. I have seen some pleasing signs that the AI will vote in its interests. Ffor instance, I tried to block a proposal to ban cloves sadly unsuccessfully since I approached the wrong civs, Persia not being the power it once was diplomatically. I bribed Arabia, but tried to get Darius onside simply by trading cloves with him, so that hed be hit by an embargo. He obligingly voted Nay to the ban.
Mostly however the AI seems unable to relate Congress decisions to gameplay. For example, Babylon (host and city-state hoarder) tried to push through Autocracy (uniquely of the civs in this game, Nebby is an autocrat), but when it failed he didnt do anything to change his position although he would probably have benefitted from switching to Freedom once that became the World Ideology. Theres no World Religion, however if there were I suspect AIs would still object to you spreading it to them!
The new Diplomat option for spies is indispensible, so much so that I find it increasingly hard to justify using a spy in a CS, which will never have more than one delegate each. I suspect this may be a new balance issue. In any event, this change has been made without changes to the numbers of spies or opportunities for leveling them up (tech stealing is still the only way), and its important to have a high-level spy as a diplomat as it appears to affect the number of delegates theyre forced to commit if you obtain their vote. Another great addition that might require a little more thought.
The 30-turn gap between resolutions in the Congress also seems rather extreme. I see the need for a delay (you have to think hard about pushing for Scholars in Residence when you wont be able to reverse it for a while after you become tech leader), but 30 turns is excessive, and possibly done to avoid running out of resolutions.
Ideology
I havent played with many of the new options, or looked at the spoilers to learn what they are, plus so far Ive gone Freedom in both games. Mainly Ive seen the effect of ideology through its diplomatic impact, which is enormous. In short order after adopting Freedom (although possibly hastened by general distrust after a defensive pact forced me to declare war on a friend, and in Babylons case by my breaking an agreement to go to war), every non-Freedom civ was against me, former friends Babylon and Assyria among them.
This can have very pleasing effects theres now a large Freedom alliance, and following a revolution that overthrew his ordered government, Shaka has gradually been adopted back into the international community despite formerly being soundly hated by everyone except the Order-loving Egyptians and Assyrians.
It is, however, too extreme I anticipate that it will result in rather predictable match-ups and diplomatic endgames, and it seems that very little can be done to mitigate this diplomatically, however many accumulated positives you happen to have with a civ that adopts a different ideology. You basically out-tourism them into having a revolution, or thats it. Taking player actions out of diplomatic results so drastically will, I suspect, lead to an increasingly frustrating play experience it feels a lot like the last Total War games artificial Realm Divide mechanic. There isnt even an Adopt my ideology trade request option (yes, I keep on about that, but I think a lot of these should be included in the diplomacy screen).
Gameplay
In summary of the above, BNW as a set of new game mechanics is great in concept but somewhat mediocre and at times frustrating in execution. If this was all the game changed, I wouldnt have been playing it at every opportunity for the past two days.
The changes made by BNW are enormous far more wide-ranging in their gameplay effects than those in G&K, which was itself widely felt to be a whole different game from vanilla. Its possible this is the source of some of the numerous apparent balance issues: this expansion was released to much the same schedule as the previous one, when it may have needed longer to investigate how it all worked (although, as with food trade routes, Convert the Heathen is visibly overpowered even on a cursory examination).
Early game
Despite the expansions billing, this is likely to be where youll feel the effects the most. Changes to the tech tree, additions of several units, and both explicit rebalancing (lighthouse) and new mechanics that favour certain buildings at an earlier stage (such as amphitheaters and workshops) mean there are very few poor options to choose between, and much will be strategy-dependent. A library may now be quite a late grab, and I find myself prioritizing settlers much earlier. City location is more critical rivers and coasts are good, but in the early game a city with varied resources nearby may bring in more cash (you can always change your favoured trade city or cities later), so even thats not a binary decision.
Critical techs are now pleasingly spread around the tech tree, but the addition of quite a lot of new effects but no significant new techs means that some techs are more overburdened than others I think a few more techs to spread out some of these upgrades would have been a good move.
Obvious changes to barbarian frequency, behaviour and unit types add some nice pressure at this game stage as well, and this is the time when youll need to invest in defending trade routes. AI civs persecute barbs more aggressively, so no more leaving destroy the camp CS quests for most of the game now someone else would get there first. One disappointment on the subject of CS quests: why is there still a build a road quest? Roads still havent been adjusted to do anything useful when connected to other civs or to city states.
Of the existing game systems, the truly major beneficiary from BNW is religion. I cant say the Piety tree is overpowered now (except, of course, for Convert the Heathen), since I havent tried the others, but I certainly havent felt the lack for not going Tradition or Liberty (except in happiness, which admittedly is important). And certainly no other policy tree has a single policy that can affect your game as much as Reformation. I dont think they needed to remove the Rationalism restriction to make this attractive. Religion, with the right beliefs, can be a substantial source of tourism and possibly essential for playing a cultural victory; more generally it can overcome reductions in gold and happiness characteristic of BNW (and even mild unhappiness is now important, so those happiness beliefs take on a new significance), and if spread widely enough later in the game can have important effects on diplomacy.
Exploration is stronger than I realized, not least because the Lighthouse and Harbor are now fundamentally important buildings, and you may well want more coastal cities than in the past, while Aesthetics has so far had an apparently only moderate effect on my tourism, but there are still issues that need attention (the Great Admiral policy in Exploration, and indeed Great Admirals in general).
Past the early game, only AI changes (and the more aggressive barbarians) really make a difference to the way the game plays unless you suffer the effects of unhappiness which now produces production and gold deficits, and reduced military performance, for every point of unhappiness. This is a very good change previously unhappiness could be ignored if it was above -10, since its only meaningful effect was to depress growth and if you werent keeping your happiness up, you didnt want extra population growth anyway.
The science penalty for expansion appears not to be substantial, and certainly doesnt stop the AI from city-spamming more aggressively than ever; wide empires seem to be favoured by the increased importance of culture relative to science, both because of the loss of the cultural penalty for expansion and the way the tourism system favours playing wide outside the Wonderspamming production city (Great Work slots being tied to the number of buildings, more access to landmarks in a wider empire).
Late game of course the effects of ideology kick in, and the World Congress (something of a minor curiosity with the few resolutions available in the Renaissance) becomes relevant, which again will change the way you play, although less substantially than the early game. Indeed, if you pick an already-influential ideology you probably dont need to worry much about influence unless you actively want to steal nearby cities.
Trade Routes
Overall, this is the most coherent and best-handled of the new systems. It plays into many areas of gameplay, can drive your economy in much of the game without being essential for most of it (and so allowing non-trade focused strategies to work, although much less effectively), seems to be generally well-handled by the AI, and puts a high premium on city placement.
There are however (as with many features of BNW) apparent balance problems. It still beggars belief (and I raised it when it was first revealed) that no one seems to have thought being able to get 11 food trade routes early in the game would break the system, and even 4 food from caravans is valuable. Conversely, no one seems to have considered that food is worth a lot more than production, making production trade routes all but useless. In practice I actually have found gold trade valuable enough that food trade isnt all-dominating as Id feared, but it still needs to be looked at.
- Some disappointments are:
- that domestic trade is not at all reliant on city placement, as you dont gain the 25% bonus from rivers and resources arent counted. I think a good fix would be to give food trade a lower base, with a boost for each non-shared food resource (food resources, in previews, affected international trade bonuses, but dont in the final game for some reason). Production would get a bonus for each strategic resource in the same way (gold, as now, would get bonuses for every resource of any type).
- Poor scaling through the game makes trade routes less and less important, and resources less important relative to being on rivers (arguably the reverse of reality), since its a fixed 0.5 bonus however much income the trade route generates (and the reasons for the substantial differences in trade income between destinations are poorly-documented). Caravans also become irrelevant for anything that can be traded coastally as time goes on, and its rare for inland sites to be desirable enough to trade with them preferentially.
You also have no control over trade coming from other civs, such that your turn-by-turn income can fluctuate in a way its hard to plan for. While the current way of setting trade routes (i.e. without any need for explicit diplomatic agreements) works, it would be nice to also have the option to offer/request trade routes as trade goods (e.g. I give you X, you set up a trade route to Jakarta for 30 turns). This also makes East India Company less of a hit-or-miss investment.
Much has been made of the need to protect trade routes, however with changes to the AI that promote early-game passivity, I havent been under very much pressure to do this. It did mean that when I finally did go to war, with the Netherlands, I lost every one of my trade routes in short order, however, and I still got bankrolled by Arabias trade into my cities. More emphasis on the importance of this would also help caravans (which are more easily protected, and almost completely safe away from the frontlines in the late game barring rebel uprisings, as barbarian camps are gone) remain relevant into the late game you trade off lower income over greater defensibility of your trade routes.
Culture and tourism
While I still havent made a lot of use of this system (and to some extent am feeling the effects of neglecting tourism, although the effects of sharing ideologies with tourism-heavier civs make it easy enough to get away with this), my opinion that this is a system with great potential but heavily flawed implementation still stands.
I really like the Great Writer/Artist/Musician system in principle, although I feel the Musician is a little weak (the tourism effect, used aggressively, can be valuable, but only in quantity and requires open borders to use, when the opposing-ideology civs youll most want to affect are likely to be unfriendly. In contrast the Great Writers culture boost, as well as being valuable defensively, gives you a huge boost towards a direct product social policies). Probably the Artist too will prove to be somewhat weaker than the Writer in the long run, due to the great advantage of the culture boost effect and the reliance of Great Artworks on Wonders.
I dislike the generation system, however. With all other Great People, you have much more direct control over GP production rates buildings, number of cities spawning them, rates of faith production for Prophets, and of warfare for Generals and Admirals. Building a single National Wonder with up to two specialists gives you very little control and makes the system very passive, not something that will vary much with your strategy. Since each of the three GP types has its own GP counter (Writers dont share the Artist counter, for instance), there are no trade-offs beyond the need for specialists as there are with other GPs, so theres no strategic variety you will never have games where its worthwhile to neglect Musicians to boost Writer production, say. You go for all three buildings as soon as you have the food to support them, and get spamming. This makes for a very boring experience.
The Great Work swapping has attracted, I think, well-deserved criticism. I dont think it would be too crippling to, say, France to make swapping a diplomatic trade (and you wouldnt design a system around a single civs UA anyway if necessary, just change the UA). You can trade with anyone, even if youre at war, and it seems you cant lose Great Works or indeed loot them. I lost Makassar temporarily, however my tourism output was unchanged (although, as my GW and GM system, Makassar certainly had Great Works in it apparently they were reassigned to empty buildings in other cities). Its a bizarre and rather clumsy system, and anything that can be added as a diplomatic option in the somewhat limited diplomatic trade system typical of Civ games should be a tradeable option. It also removes any incentive for looting other civs artifacts (and the attendant diplomatic penalties) as long as you have access to antiquity sites of your own, since you can just dig in your own sites and swap for what you need.
This leads to archaeology, which is nice in concept but rather limited. Landmarks rely on having antiquity sites near your cities, and Ive rarely if ever seen more than one per city, so mostly youll be hunting for artifacts which have rather limited game uses and, as with artworks, few non-Wonder slots to house them. Also, with the peaceful early games that comments here and my experience suggest are now typical, there just tends not to be very much variety in or access to dig sites in or around ones own territory.
Culture victory now seems to rely more than ever on Wonder-spamming, since the big culture generator is the hotel, and only France and Polynesia get to choose cultural improvements (the tooltip suggests that only these and Landmarks give a tourism bonus to the Hotel, so GP improvements and Brazilwood camps are out, and landmarks cant be planned for in advance. Culture-producing Natural Wonders are also in short supply). Religion will also be very important the tourism for faith buildings Reformation belief will likely be fundamental, and Religious Art as well.
World Congress
I like the World Congress both in concept and implementation however it is more badly let-down than any other game system (and yes, I include 1UPT warfare) by AI limitations. The AI could handle the old diplo victory conditions fairly well, aside from being lethargic about actually building the UN, but seems at rather a loss with the new one, beyond its old trick of grabbing city-states. It appears to use diplomats more than spies, but Ive never been approached for vote-trading and based on AI votes reported it seems unlikely that they trade votes with each other. This approach means it may not actually be possible for an AI to win a diplomatic victory (without several favourable delegate-generating resolutions), since under the new system a civ can have every CS as an ally and not have enough delegates to win.
As for non-victory resolutions, AI proposals seem somewhat stereotyped (World Fair early, usually an early attempt at a trade embargo). I havent been in a position to propose resolutions in this game, so cant comment on how this influences AI responses. I have seen some pleasing signs that the AI will vote in its interests. Ffor instance, I tried to block a proposal to ban cloves sadly unsuccessfully since I approached the wrong civs, Persia not being the power it once was diplomatically. I bribed Arabia, but tried to get Darius onside simply by trading cloves with him, so that hed be hit by an embargo. He obligingly voted Nay to the ban.
Mostly however the AI seems unable to relate Congress decisions to gameplay. For example, Babylon (host and city-state hoarder) tried to push through Autocracy (uniquely of the civs in this game, Nebby is an autocrat), but when it failed he didnt do anything to change his position although he would probably have benefitted from switching to Freedom once that became the World Ideology. Theres no World Religion, however if there were I suspect AIs would still object to you spreading it to them!
The new Diplomat option for spies is indispensible, so much so that I find it increasingly hard to justify using a spy in a CS, which will never have more than one delegate each. I suspect this may be a new balance issue. In any event, this change has been made without changes to the numbers of spies or opportunities for leveling them up (tech stealing is still the only way), and its important to have a high-level spy as a diplomat as it appears to affect the number of delegates theyre forced to commit if you obtain their vote. Another great addition that might require a little more thought.
The 30-turn gap between resolutions in the Congress also seems rather extreme. I see the need for a delay (you have to think hard about pushing for Scholars in Residence when you wont be able to reverse it for a while after you become tech leader), but 30 turns is excessive, and possibly done to avoid running out of resolutions.
Ideology
I havent played with many of the new options, or looked at the spoilers to learn what they are, plus so far Ive gone Freedom in both games. Mainly Ive seen the effect of ideology through its diplomatic impact, which is enormous. In short order after adopting Freedom (although possibly hastened by general distrust after a defensive pact forced me to declare war on a friend, and in Babylons case by my breaking an agreement to go to war), every non-Freedom civ was against me, former friends Babylon and Assyria among them.
This can have very pleasing effects theres now a large Freedom alliance, and following a revolution that overthrew his ordered government, Shaka has gradually been adopted back into the international community despite formerly being soundly hated by everyone except the Order-loving Egyptians and Assyrians.
It is, however, too extreme I anticipate that it will result in rather predictable match-ups and diplomatic endgames, and it seems that very little can be done to mitigate this diplomatically, however many accumulated positives you happen to have with a civ that adopts a different ideology. You basically out-tourism them into having a revolution, or thats it. Taking player actions out of diplomatic results so drastically will, I suspect, lead to an increasingly frustrating play experience it feels a lot like the last Total War games artificial Realm Divide mechanic. There isnt even an Adopt my ideology trade request option (yes, I keep on about that, but I think a lot of these should be included in the diplomacy screen).
Gameplay
In summary of the above, BNW as a set of new game mechanics is great in concept but somewhat mediocre and at times frustrating in execution. If this was all the game changed, I wouldnt have been playing it at every opportunity for the past two days.
The changes made by BNW are enormous far more wide-ranging in their gameplay effects than those in G&K, which was itself widely felt to be a whole different game from vanilla. Its possible this is the source of some of the numerous apparent balance issues: this expansion was released to much the same schedule as the previous one, when it may have needed longer to investigate how it all worked (although, as with food trade routes, Convert the Heathen is visibly overpowered even on a cursory examination).
Early game
Despite the expansions billing, this is likely to be where youll feel the effects the most. Changes to the tech tree, additions of several units, and both explicit rebalancing (lighthouse) and new mechanics that favour certain buildings at an earlier stage (such as amphitheaters and workshops) mean there are very few poor options to choose between, and much will be strategy-dependent. A library may now be quite a late grab, and I find myself prioritizing settlers much earlier. City location is more critical rivers and coasts are good, but in the early game a city with varied resources nearby may bring in more cash (you can always change your favoured trade city or cities later), so even thats not a binary decision.
Critical techs are now pleasingly spread around the tech tree, but the addition of quite a lot of new effects but no significant new techs means that some techs are more overburdened than others I think a few more techs to spread out some of these upgrades would have been a good move.
Obvious changes to barbarian frequency, behaviour and unit types add some nice pressure at this game stage as well, and this is the time when youll need to invest in defending trade routes. AI civs persecute barbs more aggressively, so no more leaving destroy the camp CS quests for most of the game now someone else would get there first. One disappointment on the subject of CS quests: why is there still a build a road quest? Roads still havent been adjusted to do anything useful when connected to other civs or to city states.
Of the existing game systems, the truly major beneficiary from BNW is religion. I cant say the Piety tree is overpowered now (except, of course, for Convert the Heathen), since I havent tried the others, but I certainly havent felt the lack for not going Tradition or Liberty (except in happiness, which admittedly is important). And certainly no other policy tree has a single policy that can affect your game as much as Reformation. I dont think they needed to remove the Rationalism restriction to make this attractive. Religion, with the right beliefs, can be a substantial source of tourism and possibly essential for playing a cultural victory; more generally it can overcome reductions in gold and happiness characteristic of BNW (and even mild unhappiness is now important, so those happiness beliefs take on a new significance), and if spread widely enough later in the game can have important effects on diplomacy.
Exploration is stronger than I realized, not least because the Lighthouse and Harbor are now fundamentally important buildings, and you may well want more coastal cities than in the past, while Aesthetics has so far had an apparently only moderate effect on my tourism, but there are still issues that need attention (the Great Admiral policy in Exploration, and indeed Great Admirals in general).
Past the early game, only AI changes (and the more aggressive barbarians) really make a difference to the way the game plays unless you suffer the effects of unhappiness which now produces production and gold deficits, and reduced military performance, for every point of unhappiness. This is a very good change previously unhappiness could be ignored if it was above -10, since its only meaningful effect was to depress growth and if you werent keeping your happiness up, you didnt want extra population growth anyway.
The science penalty for expansion appears not to be substantial, and certainly doesnt stop the AI from city-spamming more aggressively than ever; wide empires seem to be favoured by the increased importance of culture relative to science, both because of the loss of the cultural penalty for expansion and the way the tourism system favours playing wide outside the Wonderspamming production city (Great Work slots being tied to the number of buildings, more access to landmarks in a wider empire).
Late game of course the effects of ideology kick in, and the World Congress (something of a minor curiosity with the few resolutions available in the Renaissance) becomes relevant, which again will change the way you play, although less substantially than the early game. Indeed, if you pick an already-influential ideology you probably dont need to worry much about influence unless you actively want to steal nearby cities.
the world congress is neat. i liked the choices of what to enact. i made enemies by suggesting a World Religion be my own (voted down) and made friends when I voted for someone else to host. I like that it gives me a tally on who will be angry/happy with the proposal. im curious how this works: if you and another Civ are the last to meet each other who is given the initial WC bonus delegates? When I met the last unmet one (Austria) they got the credit for meeting everyone first (meaning i was also their last one to meet). and it was during my turn, iirc.
i also like that certain Wonders are now only possible with opening a specific Policy tree. I saw in my 2 games so far that a couple of the wonders are mine for the taking since no one else took that tree. or i only have civ to compete for it. i could get Pyramids cuz every other civ except 1 took Liberty and I had a spy to tell me they werent building it. i could get pyramids after t100 in an Immortal game. that's pretty rare, imo.
i also like that certain Wonders are now only possible with opening a specific Policy tree. I saw in my 2 games so far that a couple of the wonders are mine for the taking since no one else took that tree. or i only have civ to compete for it. i could get Pyramids cuz every other civ except 1 took Liberty and I had a spy to tell me they werent building it. i could get pyramids after t100 in an Immortal game. that's pretty rare, imo.
drfish
Chieftain
- Joined
- May 23, 2005
- Messages
- 68
Finished my first game last night. Played as Indonesia, Archipelago, Standard, King. Started slow, didn't think it would go well because I was lagging behind badly for the first 100 turns or so. Siam was a 3 city beast with Poland and Greece up there as well. Siam had about 8 wonders to my 0 so they had to go, rushed them with gatling guns, privateers and frigates and managed to get all three cities very quickly. That sure helped my score. 
Without Siam to fight for the city states Greece started to run away with them but my economy was really starting to kick into high gear at that point so I spent ungodly amounts of money on them (no Patronage all game!) to hold on to my precious luxuries. It wasn't sustainable though so Greece was next to die, more frigates and privateers joined by great war infantry and artillery at that point. It didn't last long and Alexander was toast and the city states were basically all mine. By that point I was using the world congress to repeal the bans on my nutmeg and pepper and cursing India and their autocracy ideology for causing disodents to my freedom. I stuck with it though, fought back to gain more happiness and culture, and just as I was getting a handle on things I battleshipped Delhi into dust for good measure. No more ideology problem. From there it was UN or bust with rapid science, culture, and tourism growth the whole way. With 45 delegates and $10k+ in the bank nothing could stop me.
In summary, diplo victory against Greece and Siam with no Patronage polices - might be time to bump up the difficulty (yeah, yeah, diplo is the easiest but I had EVERY victory condition in the bag at that point)...
My take on things? It was awesome. Much better than my first game of vanilla or G&K. My turns took a long time in all the eras just because there was so much to think about and decide on. Diplomacy finally felt right, I had friends (Monty of all people) and enemies (mostly Alex) and nothing in that arena happened that I didn't think made sense given the circumstances. Archaeology was fun, though I need to understand the theming bonuses better and do some swapping. Trading routes worked well and I like all the options even though I just went all gold this time. Really it was a beautiful thing and I can't wait for my next game.
Without Siam to fight for the city states Greece started to run away with them but my economy was really starting to kick into high gear at that point so I spent ungodly amounts of money on them (no Patronage all game!) to hold on to my precious luxuries. It wasn't sustainable though so Greece was next to die, more frigates and privateers joined by great war infantry and artillery at that point. It didn't last long and Alexander was toast and the city states were basically all mine. By that point I was using the world congress to repeal the bans on my nutmeg and pepper and cursing India and their autocracy ideology for causing disodents to my freedom. I stuck with it though, fought back to gain more happiness and culture, and just as I was getting a handle on things I battleshipped Delhi into dust for good measure. No more ideology problem. From there it was UN or bust with rapid science, culture, and tourism growth the whole way. With 45 delegates and $10k+ in the bank nothing could stop me.In summary, diplo victory against Greece and Siam with no Patronage polices - might be time to bump up the difficulty (yeah, yeah, diplo is the easiest but I had EVERY victory condition in the bag at that point)...
My take on things? It was awesome. Much better than my first game of vanilla or G&K. My turns took a long time in all the eras just because there was so much to think about and decide on. Diplomacy finally felt right, I had friends (Monty of all people) and enemies (mostly Alex) and nothing in that arena happened that I didn't think made sense given the circumstances. Archaeology was fun, though I need to understand the theming bonuses better and do some swapping. Trading routes worked well and I like all the options even though I just went all gold this time. Really it was a beautiful thing and I can't wait for my next game.
B
blkbltchemie
Guest
I've only played the demo (waiting until/hoping for a Fall or Winter Steam sale). For everyone's info, you get Morocco on small (with 5 of the new civs), quick, and with start in the Medieval and end in the Industrial era (~150 turns).
My biggest impression was that the learning curve for this expansion is much steeper than going from vanilla to G&K. I dropped the difficulty down to Warlord (G&K Prince/King). From trade routes to great works to SP locked wonders, I was always falling being the other civs. Didn't really get to experience the World Congress although diplomats and vote trading seem pretty cool. I must say though that I do enjoy the challenge of learning the new mechanics and am excited to see how they affect the victory conditions.
Part of my trouble though may have been the Medieval start. Perhaps starting from scratch (aka Ancient) is a bit easier since you have more control. One thing that really surprised me was the AI aggressiveness towards building wonders; I was obliterated in the wonder races (again playing on Warlord). But like I said, this may have been a result of the Medieval start with about 6 wonders available at the beginning. The other thing I noticed was that I didn't get to see the combat AI for civs (no war against me this time), but the barbarians seemed quite a bit more coordinated and aggressive.
Anyway, looking forward to the full version in a few months!
My biggest impression was that the learning curve for this expansion is much steeper than going from vanilla to G&K. I dropped the difficulty down to Warlord (G&K Prince/King). From trade routes to great works to SP locked wonders, I was always falling being the other civs. Didn't really get to experience the World Congress although diplomats and vote trading seem pretty cool. I must say though that I do enjoy the challenge of learning the new mechanics and am excited to see how they affect the victory conditions.
Part of my trouble though may have been the Medieval start. Perhaps starting from scratch (aka Ancient) is a bit easier since you have more control. One thing that really surprised me was the AI aggressiveness towards building wonders; I was obliterated in the wonder races (again playing on Warlord). But like I said, this may have been a result of the Medieval start with about 6 wonders available at the beginning. The other thing I noticed was that I didn't get to see the combat AI for civs (no war against me this time), but the barbarians seemed quite a bit more coordinated and aggressive.
Anyway, looking forward to the full version in a few months!
ImperialChaos
President
Finally finished my game. I got a cultural victory as France. I didn't know how the culture victory worked so by the time I got into the Modern era I won. I don't even know how I did (I guess all of those artifacts and mini-games with the Louvre and Wonders really contributed to it.) So to me my first game felt unfinished. I gotta start up a new one so I can really see the full additions to the expansions.
Some notes:
Barbs are crazy numerous
Cultural victory is nice
Diplomacy, World Congress, etc. was cool too.
The game was really boring. For some reason no one wanted to go to war with one another (was it only me that experienced laid back AI?) They were all really peaceful so I just sent my Archeologists around the world. All in all the expansion seems pretty fulfilling from what Civ V was lacking. I'm gonna play as more civs to really get into it. Probably turn time and culture off as they are the two "inevitable/can't stop or wait" victories.
Some notes:
Barbs are crazy numerous
Cultural victory is nice
Diplomacy, World Congress, etc. was cool too.
The game was really boring. For some reason no one wanted to go to war with one another (was it only me that experienced laid back AI?) They were all really peaceful so I just sent my Archeologists around the world. All in all the expansion seems pretty fulfilling from what Civ V was lacking. I'm gonna play as more civs to really get into it. Probably turn time and culture off as they are the two "inevitable/can't stop or wait" victories.
UGM 133 Trident
Chieftain
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2013
- Messages
- 2
My first game was with Morocco on Prince difficulty (large continents map, all victory types available except time). I started off the game in a nice flood plain area and fairly quickly felt the pain from not getting 
off those river tiles (it definitely slows play down until you can get caravans up and running). As it turned out, I was alone on my continent, so I worked mostly on keeping barbarians out along with some modest expansion, and the lack of enemies meant I could focus mostly on science and culture (though I did lock up the last religion). Once I did start meeting other civs, I was a bit ahead on science and continued to be ahead throughout. I was the first World Congress host, but Arabia snatched up the Congress by making lots of city-state friends, then proceeded to pass his own religion as the world religion by merit of basically being allied with every city state.
Most of the game was spent on new buildings with a bit of a culture focus. Eventually, I started getting annoyed with how Arabia was stealing my thunder in the United Nations, and, worried that they'd start hitting me with bad resolutions, I launched a naval attack and basically knocked them out of the game. Meanwhile, on other parts of the globe, several civs ganged up on Mongolia (wiping them out). This left 8 remaining players. As of last night when I went to bed, I'm 5-10 turns away from a cultural victory.
So far I think that BNW adds quite a bit at all phases of the game, and because the different parts evolve over the course of a game, you don't see them falling off to the side. More specific comments:
1. I'm still disappointed they pulled the from my river tiles and coasts. In fairness, players would end up having far too much gold all the time otherwise. The problem is that now you more or less won't have gold until you start getting caravans out there.
2. Ideology is fun. The only downside is that I kept saying "wait, I'm going for a cultural victory, so shouldn't I be filling out policies instead....right....new culture victory...." which happened about 5 times. More seriously, it does put more weight into the late-game policy decisions, because you can really be flexible about what things you do and don't want.
3. The changes to the tech tree work pretty well. The way that some wonders are tied to social policies is kind of annoying at times, but it adds to the flavor so it's still fine. I really get the sense that one of the things they were trying to do with BNW was to emphasize specialization, and I think they did pretty well at that.
off those river tiles (it definitely slows play down until you can get caravans up and running). As it turned out, I was alone on my continent, so I worked mostly on keeping barbarians out along with some modest expansion, and the lack of enemies meant I could focus mostly on science and culture (though I did lock up the last religion). Once I did start meeting other civs, I was a bit ahead on science and continued to be ahead throughout. I was the first World Congress host, but Arabia snatched up the Congress by making lots of city-state friends, then proceeded to pass his own religion as the world religion by merit of basically being allied with every city state.Most of the game was spent on new buildings with a bit of a culture focus. Eventually, I started getting annoyed with how Arabia was stealing my thunder in the United Nations, and, worried that they'd start hitting me with bad resolutions, I launched a naval attack and basically knocked them out of the game. Meanwhile, on other parts of the globe, several civs ganged up on Mongolia (wiping them out). This left 8 remaining players. As of last night when I went to bed, I'm 5-10 turns away from a cultural victory.
So far I think that BNW adds quite a bit at all phases of the game, and because the different parts evolve over the course of a game, you don't see them falling off to the side. More specific comments:
1. I'm still disappointed they pulled the
from my river tiles and coasts. In fairness, players would end up having far too much gold all the time otherwise. The problem is that now you more or less won't have gold until you start getting caravans out there.2. Ideology is fun. The only downside is that I kept saying "wait, I'm going for a cultural victory, so shouldn't I be filling out policies instead....right....new culture victory...." which happened about 5 times. More seriously, it does put more weight into the late-game policy decisions, because you can really be flexible about what things you do and don't want.
3. The changes to the tech tree work pretty well. The way that some wonders are tied to social policies is kind of annoying at times, but it adds to the flavor so it's still fine. I really get the sense that one of the things they were trying to do with BNW was to emphasize specialization, and I think they did pretty well at that.
Ok has anybody noticed the scaling in warmongering? It appears that leaders have scripted levels on how much they care about your warmongering. It appears that Darious is tolerant (yet I have the negative), Morocco was seeing me as a menace (I gobled them up so they must have been right) while Monty and the Zulus seem to look the other way.
Overall the game is slower but the dependency on trade routes is a flawed. I mean you don't need a great start, just a good start with gold producing luxes. I am producing a ton of gold now without ever having used a single trade route.
Overall the game is slower but the dependency on trade routes is a flawed. I mean you don't need a great start, just a good start with gold producing luxes. I am producing a ton of gold now without ever having used a single trade route.
Conquered half of Ethiopia and its capital. Conquered Moscow and razed a bunch of cities.
Isabella did not give one . No negative modifiers. Kept on trading thank god or else I would have gone bankrupt.
Apparently you only stop trading only if you are at war. Diplo relations don't matter. You can even time to cash out the enemies trade routes by pillaging the route the turn you DOW. Simply place some units in your city that has the connection and when the caravan is near the trade route or inside the city, DOW and pillage it the same turn.
Apparently Asurme...The Assyrian guy found my warmongering threatening and denounced me.
EDIT: Did anybody find difficult to damage cities now? I had three catapults hitting a fortified Marocan city and I was only removing small fractions. For some reason I didn't get the info about the effects but thats another matter I guess.
PhilBowles
Deity
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2011
- Messages
- 5,333
I found Nebuchadnezzar disliked my "warmongering" for a war against the Netherlands alone.
One thing I have noticed - I spied successfully on Nebby at least four times, and I never got a negative modifier. Are spies much harder to identify, or do the AIs not care as much about spying?
KevinLancaster
Prince
I'm a noob at Civ 5 even though I've played it sporadically since release, but here's my take on BNW:
1st Game:
Civ: Shoshone
AIs: The other 8 new BNW civs
Map: Pangaea (Because I know the AI has problems with naval)
Map Size: Small (I have an old CPU and like crowded maps)
Difficulty: Warlord (I hadn't played Civ 5 in a while)
Speed: Quick (Didn't want game to take too long)
Start Era: Classical (Didn't want to wait too long to test the new mechanics)
Additional Info: I believe I might have changed the city-states number, resources amount, and sea level as well. No barbarians was automatically on because of the small map size.
Notes: Quit at 1835 AD, just entering into Industrial Era because my game was lagging horribly and I was annoyed by the AI spamming missionaries everywhere. Also I was being consistently outdone by Portugal which had a better starting location.
2nd Game:
Civ: America
AIs: Went with a modern powers mix, so the other five civs were China, Russia, India, Brazil, and France (kind of a crappy representation of BNW TBH)
Map: Pangaea
Map Size: Tiny
Difficulty: Warlord
Speed: Quick
Start Era: Industrial Era (So that I could avoid the missionary madness of the last game and jump straight into the new mechanics while my computer could handle it)
Additional Info: I believe I might have changed the city-states number, resources amount, and sea level as well. No barbarians was automatically on because of the small map size.
Notes: Played to the end, got a space victory. Much more engaging than the first game, though there wasn't much warring going on. Started with Russia to the west, China to the south, India to my south-east, France on the far west of the continent and Brazil in between France and Russia. I allied with Russia and China at the beginning. I ended up going Freedom ('cause, you know, America) and China went for it as well, but Russia went order which was annoying since it had been my close ally previously and an industrial powerhouse. Brazil went Order as well, and France and India went Autocracy. France was an annoying prick the entire game, attacking city-states and Brazil near the end. It was fun using the World Congress to piss Napoleon off, though I wanted to fight a war with him but never got to because I wasn't building much military until the end (I'm not much of a warmonger) to protect my spaceship's rear end. World went absolutely bonkers at the end, for some reason everyone hated China and I was afraid I was going to be next which is why I built a massive military. It ended up not being used in any meaningful way because although I wanted to save China I didn't want to fight a two-front war against my formerly close friend Catherine and nuclear Nazi Gandhi (Gandhi actually threatened me with the classic line at one point, it was hilarious). I also didn't want to march across the continent to get to France, and the other civs were building spaceship parts as well so if I didn't one of them would've won. Brazil seemed to be going for a cultural victory; throughout the game I didn't get the new culture system and I still don't fully understand it at this point. Main effect I found of it was that now the social policies seem kind of weak compared to the ideologies. Ended the game feeling depressed because the world was destroying itself after 200 years of peace so I ran my butt off of that planet.
3rd Game:
Civ: England
AIs: Went with a modified modern powers mix, so the other seven civs were China, Russia, India, Brazil, Germany, America, and Japan
Map: Pangaea Plus (Trying it out for the first time, tired of the regular Pangaea always looking like a distorted Australia to me)
Map Size: Small (Thought there might not be enough space on Tiny for 8 civs, ended up being a bit spread out for my liking)
Difficulty: Prince
Speed: Standard (Thought it would draw out the game more)
Start Era: Modern Era (I didn't want 200 years of peace before the wars started again)
Additional Info: I definitely changed the city-states number to 10, but don't remember the resource amount and sea level settings and don't feel like looking them up. I also had complete kills on because I always felt it funny to have a civ with no cities left still around to talk to. Turned off no barbarians because even though they couldn't put up much of a might (initially) it was still interesting having them around and we still have piracy and rebel groups in the modern day so meh.
Notes: Played to the end, got a diplomatic victory. Started off wanting to disable space victory so that I wouldn't be able run away from the battles but when I did all the civs went Autocracy. Started on the most south-western part of the continent, with India to my east, China to my north, Russia north of China, America and Japan sharing the north-eastern part of the continent, Brazil south of them, and Germany south of Brazil. Ideologies were selected at the start of the game. America, Brazil, Russia, and I went Freedom, China and Germany went Order, and Japan went Autocracy. This I felt was a rather realistic situation. To my delight the AIs started to plot against each other immediately and though watching the replay again the action didn't really start until the middle of the game. Germany gobbled up Brazil and then America, and started a war with Japan (in which it seemed Japan nuked the captured Washington). Russia attacked China, and later India joined it. I minded my own business, had barely any military this time (thankfully Gandhi was a real bro here and could have held off any threat which came my way). Again, it was fun denouncing Germany (and later China), voting against its proposals and issuing embargoes. Actually used spies as diplomats for the first time ever, it was fun informing the other civs about invasions. Near the end there seemed to be some internal conflict within the factions too though nothing ever came of it. Won the game by trading with city-states, building wonders for them, getting the occasional great person, and bribing them, as well as having that social policy which made your spies count as delegates. Was able to vote myself world leader even though I never hosted the World Congress (I got an achievement for that!) because I handed it over to Gandhi early in the game rather than letting it fall into the hands of Bismarck. The victory felt a bit cheaty. At the end I caught China spying on me and dropped two nukes on Beijing on the very last turn (though I had to reload once or twice because Russian forces were around it and I killed them by accident).
4th Game (ongoing):
Civ: Songhai
AIs: Went with an African theme, wanted to play a Scramble for Africa scenario with no Scramble: Egypt, Zulu, Morocco, Carthage, Ethiopia
Map: Great Plains (WHY IS THERE NO AFRICA PRESET?)
Map Size: Tiny
Difficulty: Prince
Speed: Standard
Start Era: Ancient Era (Wanted to go for a later era but most of the civs involved have a medieval or earlier UU/UB so just went with Ancient to maximize their potential)
Additional Info: I believe I left the city-state number normal but only 4 spawned. I might have changed the resource amount. Probably left complete kills on from the last game, and barbarians were turned on.
Notes: Fun game so far, but again there's the problem with no significant wars starting until mid-game despite threats being thrown around. The only major territorial change resulting from conflict earlier on was the Zulu taking a city-state. It was a bit a struggle starting off (at least for me since I am not a very good player) and I was on the lower end of the scoreboard for the first half of the game. I expanded later than the others and was on crappy terrain. When things finally started getting developed I caught up to the top three civs, Morocco, Egypt, and Ethiopia. I managed to overtake Morocco in score but just couldn't beat the other two. Eventually Shaka gave me an offer I couldn't refuse and we teamed up to cut Egypt down to size. Even afterwards though Ethiopia was still ahead of me mainly because they had MASSIVE cities. I don't know how large their military is so I've been wary about declaring war. Shaka warned me that they were plotting to sneak attack Gao so I made a Defensive Pact with every other civ (except Egypt, which I had just curb-stomped, of course) to put a stop to it. So far the main thing I've learned from this session is that Zulu is a pretty cool guy. Eh gives advice and doesn't afraid of anything.
Trade routes don't feel like anything special, though they can rake in massive cash.
Still need to figure out how to use the new cultural system properly.
My summary so far: Game is fun, much more engaging in later eras than Vanilla (I didn't play much G&K).
1st Game:
Civ: Shoshone
AIs: The other 8 new BNW civs
Map: Pangaea (Because I know the AI has problems with naval)
Map Size: Small (I have an old CPU and like crowded maps)
Difficulty: Warlord (I hadn't played Civ 5 in a while)
Speed: Quick (Didn't want game to take too long)
Start Era: Classical (Didn't want to wait too long to test the new mechanics)
Additional Info: I believe I might have changed the city-states number, resources amount, and sea level as well. No barbarians was automatically on because of the small map size.
Notes: Quit at 1835 AD, just entering into Industrial Era because my game was lagging horribly and I was annoyed by the AI spamming missionaries everywhere. Also I was being consistently outdone by Portugal which had a better starting location.
2nd Game:
Civ: America
AIs: Went with a modern powers mix, so the other five civs were China, Russia, India, Brazil, and France (kind of a crappy representation of BNW TBH)
Map: Pangaea
Map Size: Tiny
Difficulty: Warlord
Speed: Quick
Start Era: Industrial Era (So that I could avoid the missionary madness of the last game and jump straight into the new mechanics while my computer could handle it)
Additional Info: I believe I might have changed the city-states number, resources amount, and sea level as well. No barbarians was automatically on because of the small map size.
Notes: Played to the end, got a space victory. Much more engaging than the first game, though there wasn't much warring going on. Started with Russia to the west, China to the south, India to my south-east, France on the far west of the continent and Brazil in between France and Russia. I allied with Russia and China at the beginning. I ended up going Freedom ('cause, you know, America) and China went for it as well, but Russia went order which was annoying since it had been my close ally previously and an industrial powerhouse. Brazil went Order as well, and France and India went Autocracy. France was an annoying prick the entire game, attacking city-states and Brazil near the end. It was fun using the World Congress to piss Napoleon off, though I wanted to fight a war with him but never got to because I wasn't building much military until the end (I'm not much of a warmonger) to protect my spaceship's rear end. World went absolutely bonkers at the end, for some reason everyone hated China and I was afraid I was going to be next which is why I built a massive military. It ended up not being used in any meaningful way because although I wanted to save China I didn't want to fight a two-front war against my formerly close friend Catherine and nuclear Nazi Gandhi (Gandhi actually threatened me with the classic line at one point, it was hilarious). I also didn't want to march across the continent to get to France, and the other civs were building spaceship parts as well so if I didn't one of them would've won. Brazil seemed to be going for a cultural victory; throughout the game I didn't get the new culture system and I still don't fully understand it at this point. Main effect I found of it was that now the social policies seem kind of weak compared to the ideologies. Ended the game feeling depressed because the world was destroying itself after 200 years of peace so I ran my butt off of that planet.
3rd Game:
Civ: England
AIs: Went with a modified modern powers mix, so the other seven civs were China, Russia, India, Brazil, Germany, America, and Japan
Map: Pangaea Plus (Trying it out for the first time, tired of the regular Pangaea always looking like a distorted Australia to me)
Map Size: Small (Thought there might not be enough space on Tiny for 8 civs, ended up being a bit spread out for my liking)
Difficulty: Prince
Speed: Standard (Thought it would draw out the game more)
Start Era: Modern Era (I didn't want 200 years of peace before the wars started again)
Additional Info: I definitely changed the city-states number to 10, but don't remember the resource amount and sea level settings and don't feel like looking them up. I also had complete kills on because I always felt it funny to have a civ with no cities left still around to talk to. Turned off no barbarians because even though they couldn't put up much of a might (initially) it was still interesting having them around and we still have piracy and rebel groups in the modern day so meh.
Notes: Played to the end, got a diplomatic victory. Started off wanting to disable space victory so that I wouldn't be able run away from the battles but when I did all the civs went Autocracy. Started on the most south-western part of the continent, with India to my east, China to my north, Russia north of China, America and Japan sharing the north-eastern part of the continent, Brazil south of them, and Germany south of Brazil. Ideologies were selected at the start of the game. America, Brazil, Russia, and I went Freedom, China and Germany went Order, and Japan went Autocracy. This I felt was a rather realistic situation. To my delight the AIs started to plot against each other immediately and though watching the replay again the action didn't really start until the middle of the game. Germany gobbled up Brazil and then America, and started a war with Japan (in which it seemed Japan nuked the captured Washington). Russia attacked China, and later India joined it. I minded my own business, had barely any military this time (thankfully Gandhi was a real bro here and could have held off any threat which came my way). Again, it was fun denouncing Germany (and later China), voting against its proposals and issuing embargoes. Actually used spies as diplomats for the first time ever, it was fun informing the other civs about invasions. Near the end there seemed to be some internal conflict within the factions too though nothing ever came of it. Won the game by trading with city-states, building wonders for them, getting the occasional great person, and bribing them, as well as having that social policy which made your spies count as delegates. Was able to vote myself world leader even though I never hosted the World Congress (I got an achievement for that!) because I handed it over to Gandhi early in the game rather than letting it fall into the hands of Bismarck. The victory felt a bit cheaty. At the end I caught China spying on me and dropped two nukes on Beijing on the very last turn (though I had to reload once or twice because Russian forces were around it and I killed them by accident).
4th Game (ongoing):
Civ: Songhai
AIs: Went with an African theme, wanted to play a Scramble for Africa scenario with no Scramble: Egypt, Zulu, Morocco, Carthage, Ethiopia
Map: Great Plains (WHY IS THERE NO AFRICA PRESET?)
Map Size: Tiny
Difficulty: Prince
Speed: Standard
Start Era: Ancient Era (Wanted to go for a later era but most of the civs involved have a medieval or earlier UU/UB so just went with Ancient to maximize their potential)
Additional Info: I believe I left the city-state number normal but only 4 spawned. I might have changed the resource amount. Probably left complete kills on from the last game, and barbarians were turned on.
Notes: Fun game so far, but again there's the problem with no significant wars starting until mid-game despite threats being thrown around. The only major territorial change resulting from conflict earlier on was the Zulu taking a city-state. It was a bit a struggle starting off (at least for me since I am not a very good player) and I was on the lower end of the scoreboard for the first half of the game. I expanded later than the others and was on crappy terrain. When things finally started getting developed I caught up to the top three civs, Morocco, Egypt, and Ethiopia. I managed to overtake Morocco in score but just couldn't beat the other two. Eventually Shaka gave me an offer I couldn't refuse and we teamed up to cut Egypt down to size. Even afterwards though Ethiopia was still ahead of me mainly because they had MASSIVE cities. I don't know how large their military is so I've been wary about declaring war. Shaka warned me that they were plotting to sneak attack Gao so I made a Defensive Pact with every other civ (except Egypt, which I had just curb-stomped, of course) to put a stop to it. So far the main thing I've learned from this session is that Zulu is a pretty cool guy. Eh gives advice and doesn't afraid of anything.
Trade routes don't feel like anything special, though they can rake in massive cash.
Still need to figure out how to use the new cultural system properly.
My summary so far: Game is fun, much more engaging in later eras than Vanilla (I didn't play much G&K).
Infested-Jerk
Chieftain
Figures I got an isolated spawn as The Shoshone.
Also figures I was two policies into Honor before I realized I had no neighbors to conquer.
Also figures I was two policies into Honor before I realized I had no neighbors to conquer.
Txurce
Deity
Really? I was playing the Shoshone earlier and I saw not one but two Morocco Settlers that got stolen by Barbs
I saw a captured Assyrian barb in my current game.
Txurce
Deity
I think you can place a Diplomat in one of their cities, and then trade or bribe for their votes for the leadership, just like you can for every other resolution.
Just started my first game this morning and have to say I love it. I am playing as Brazil on my usual level, King. The game seems a lot faster response wise, which aids the experience. The trade route system seems very useful. I sent my first one to one of my low food cities and it greatly improved it. I am hoping the production trade choice works out just as essential when I obtain a workshop, but have read PhilBowles post and he feels food is the only way. This would be a shame if true and maybe it will get balanced in the near future. I am loving the Tourism mechanic (even though I am mildly bewildered by it). I find myself looking forward to the later game for the first time, with Tourism and great works/Archaeologists to look forward to. This, I believe, was the intention of the developers and it has worked with me! I think I have made an error starting on my usual level of King as I am well behind on points as numerous concepts are fairly baffling to me still. William has 2 Tourism points already, and I need to look into this as I am currently on zero and can't see me getting any very soon as my plan is to fill a slot in the Great Library with a writer's great work ( I haven't even begun to generate a Great Writer yet as the required buildings are not in my reach currently). I may have to re-start on a lower level. Anyway, all in all it seems a very good, refreshing game (though complex). I no doubt will soon be inundating the forums for help from the pros!
). I find myself looking forward to the later game for the first time, with Tourism and great works/Archaeologists to look forward to. This, I believe, was the intention of the developers and it has worked with me! I think I have made an error starting on my usual level of King as I am well behind on points as numerous concepts are fairly baffling to me still. William has 2 Tourism points already, and I need to look into this as I am currently on zero and can't see me getting any very soon as my plan is to fill a slot in the Great Library with a writer's great work ( I haven't even begun to generate a Great Writer yet as the required buildings are not in my reach currently). I may have to re-start on a lower level. Anyway, all in all it seems a very good, refreshing game (though complex). I no doubt will soon be inundating the forums for help from the pros!Just started my first game this morning and have to say I love it. I am playing as Brazil on my usual level, King. The game seems a lot faster response wise, which aids the experience. The trade route system seems very useful. I sent my first one to one of my low food cities and it greatly improved it. I am hoping the production trade choice works out just as essential when I obtain a workshop, but have read PhilBowles post and he feels food is the only way. This would be a shame if true and maybe it will get balanced in the near future. I am loving the Tourism mechanic (even though I am mildly bewildered by it
It's not the mechanics. The game is just harder in general.
