Since patch, game is much harder.

[ense7en]

Yeah that game wasn't going well.
Was an extremely slow start due to bad growth tiles initially, and i lost my warrior and scout to barbs (warrior you see was rush bought).

I shouldn't have bothered trying to get Pyramids but i like Emperor specifically because you can get wonders.

Maybe it's just me, but pre-hotfix i just don't remember the AI expanding right onto you like this, and now if they are remotely nearby they seem to love doing this every chance they get.
They might as well just DoW, because they intend to right away anyway.

 

[Smokeybear]

Maybe it's just me, but pre-hotfix i just don't remember the AI expanding right onto you like this, and now if they are remotely nearby they seem to love doing this every chance they get.

Yeah, with their new hyper-aggressiveness, you just don't have any time to do anything but prepare to fight the inevitable rush(es) from the AI's incredibly rapidly encroaching city spam. You couldn't match their tactics if you tried, as they have no problems making 3 or 4 settlers and also a big invasion army before you can even get a second city up, so it's always frustrating anymore to know you really have no early game strategy other than making as many units as possible, as fast as possible, to try to hold them off and just try to survive. Early game options have pretty much evaporated, sadly. Unless you drop back to prince, anyway.

The only exception is if you get a lucky starting spot with either good defensive geography, or no close neighbors. Even then, you'll be shocked at how fast you do end up with close neighbors. Leave a couple crap tiles with no resources unclaimed between you and that nearby CS? Boom! AI settler. Didn't bother putting anything on that single snow island with just 1 fish resource off your coast? Boom! AI settler. It's actually pretty damn ridiculous what the AI will spam-settle now, to be honest.

 

[Matthew.]

Why not trying Liberty? You can have three expansions by turn 50 as well. As much as I like Tradition, I find Liberty to be better when starting next to an aggressive neighbor like that.

 

[Smokeybear]

Why not trying Liberty? You can have three expansions by turn 50 as well. As much as I like Tradition, I find Liberty to be better when starting next to an aggressive neighbor like that.

And end up with very few workers, few improvements, no infrastructure, a tiny small-pop capital, and if you had to build a settler too, not much military. Fast expansionistic Liberty starts often come with a real price against the health and future growth of your young civ. Even more so since the last patch. It may be "Bam! Now I've got 3 cities fast!", but in reality it's more like "Ok, now I have to try to work, expand and defend them, with little means in place yet to do so", because you put all your efforts and very limited resources into rush-settling those cities. Now, quite often, you will have just given the nearby warmongers that many more easy targets to take away from you. And an excellent reason to do so- "you are settling cities too fast", and "you are encroaching on our territory". Guaranteed DoWs. Lastly, unless you get lucky with one or more culture goody huts right off, I find going for the free settler in Liberty to be a painfully slow process, usually. Those first three social policies come mighty slow, without lucky huts or any points in Tradition. As often as not, by the time you finally get your settlers ready to go, the AI has already beat you to the good spots nearby. Cheatin' bastidges.

 

[Matthew.]

*shrug*

They are going to DoW either way with cities that close.

The trade-off seems to be forced to train archers out of one city with starting resources for the bonus of a free culture building, aqueduct, and growth bonus in your four first cities. None of which is used in your phantom expansions since you can't expand, because Alexander surrounded your empire with cities, so may as well write off those bonuses.

Liberty gives you a free expansion to train additional archers from, connect additional luxuries (more archers), and the opportunity to set-up your empire while simultaneously preparing a defense. Beginning may be a bit slower, but when you are sitting on 6+ cities by T100 and pop. starts to boom, it will swing the other way quickly.

At the very least, I can guarantee it will set you up better against Alexander than a single city building Pyramids.

 

[Smokeybear]

At the very least, I can guarantee it will set you up better against Alexander than a single city building Pyramids.

LOL! That's for sure. Unfortunately, it also pretty much scotches all your victory conditions other than domination, as well. Or domination/science, anyway. For someone who really likes cultural games, it's a real pain in the backside.

 

[Aristos]

Early game options have pretty much evaporated, sadly. Unless you drop back to prince, anyway.

I completely disagree with that assessment. I am in the middle of a 221 Emperor all Standard game with Egypt (random leader), and I went the GL-> NC way with my capital only, surrounded by Napoleon, Pachacuti and Hammurabi, without having lost focus on my "early game strategy"... of course, Napoleon very much exploited the fact that I was going GL->NC (as he should have) by trying to grab as much land as he could as close to my capital as possible... followed by 3 wars of conquest that I managed to stop while growing my capital and slowly expanding south (opposite Napoleon). The 4th war, also declared by Napoleon, costed him his entire empire. Now I am fighting a tough end game with two runaways, Denmark and Germany, but slowly catching up the lost time (in tech) because of the Napoleonic wars... the best game of Civ5 I have played since release.

I celebrate the new agressiveness of the AI. Still a lot to improve, but at least it provides a challenge now depending on initial conditions... nothing wrong in going down the diff levels and start climbing again. At least there are options in that direction. If the game is too easy, then it has to be abandoned as soon as a player hits the upper bound of diff level...

 

[Browd]

it is still... Boogabalooo, though.

^ ???

Gonna have to help me here.

 

[The Pilgrim]

And end up with very few workers, few improvements, no infrastructure, a tiny small-pop capital, and if you had to build a settler too, not much military. Fast expansionistic Liberty starts often come with a real price against the health and future growth of your young civ. Even more so since the last patch. It may be "Bam! Now I've got 3 cities fast!", but in reality it's more like "Ok, now I have to try to work, expand and defend them, with little means in place yet to do so", because you put all your efforts and very limited resources into rush-settling those cities. Now, quite often, you will have just given the nearby warmongers that many more easy targets to take away from you. And an excellent reason to do so- "you are settling cities too fast", and "you are encroaching on our territory". Guaranteed DoWs. Lastly, unless you get lucky with one or more culture goody huts right off, I find going for the free settler in Liberty to be a painfully slow process, usually. Those first three social policies come mighty slow, without lucky huts or any points in Tradition. As often as not, by the time you finally get your settlers ready to go, the AI has already beat you to the good spots nearby. Cheatin' bastidges.

Geez, how could we all play vanilla for almost 2 years with these puny pathetic empires?

None of which is used in your phantom expansions since you can't expand, because Alexander surrounded your empire with cities, so may as well write off those bonuses.

There is plenty of room to expand, north, east and north-east. Tradition vs. Liberty is the least of ense7en's problems. Build order is... well... suboptimal.

If you don't mind, I'll join to 'right in my face' rant...

Spoiler :

 

[Matthew.]

There is plenty of room to expand, north, east and north-east. Tradition vs. Liberty is the least of ense7en's problems. Build order is... well... suboptimal.

Oh certainly. My original comment though was in those situations, I find Liberty to be better. Tradition could still work, just my opinion. He could have dropped a city near Corinth is, up against the mountains. Access to copper, natural wonder, observatory, and spices. Follow up settlers could net ivory with additional copper/spices and observatories. Is that Fuji I see or just regular mountain?

Look at the mini-map and consider the difficulty. Blocking Alexander in would give you complete control over that entire area. Game would have been over in the first 60 turns--just coasting from that point to the finish line.

I'd even argue that is a great map for a CV Liberty start. Look at all those city-states... maritime, mercantile, and a culture. Puppet Greece when convenient, abuse representation and throw an extra city or two in there, you'd be swimming in science, culture, and happiness.

You still have that original save ense7en?

Edit: Nvm, that was Smoky saying he preferred CV's. If any victory was up for grabs, definitely go Liberty. You could have a crap ton of luxuries to sell to other civs within the first 100 turns.

 

[ense7en]

*shrug*
At the very least, I can guarantee it will set you up better against Alexander than a single city building Pyramids.

Build order is... well... suboptimal.

Many things would have set me up better than Pyramids...i wasn't trying for a normal start.
Was going for a different style of start as i'm kinda tired of having to always beeline science, so i was going to try for a production heavy empire (Pyramids for the GE point + faster workers) where i focused on building cities up with tons of production to benefit from the reduced production costs for buildings in cities if the capital has them.

You still have that original save ense7en?

Sorry, seems the autosave disappeared, along with a lot of them.


I just finished a fun game on prince with Siam.
I've really gotten tired of playing the same old way every game, and at higher difficulties, you don't have a lot of choice, which i find rather boring.

In my Siam prince game, unlike with Emperor/Immortal, i obviously didn't have to worry so much about science. Instead i got to grow massive cities and spam wonders and have fun with different policies.

Went Tradition + some Patronage + Commerce (eventually all of it) + Order all the way down the middle.

Spoiler :

Was an easy t250 domination victory (yes, could have finished much sooner).
But it was actually fun as i wasn't playing conventionally at all.

 

[Jakexbox10]

I've only started a few games of G&K yet but Rome does seem to be super aggressive. In one game he started alone on a small continent surrounded by city state islands, and he went crazy conquering them, becoming a massive runaway empire. I've rarely seen an AI try to go after city states so aggressively (only Khan) and NEVER seen one do it so successfully.

So far I'm really enjoying G&K

Aztecs are also city state hunters (Of coarse when im playing as Austria)