Some thoughts on my first Civ 5 playthrough

[Mighty Spearman]

I just finished my first playthrough and here are some thoughts.
Rome, Warlord, Standard, Continents, Epic

-Warlord is far too easy for someone who's played Civ since Civ1 almost 20 years ago. I picked it because I wanted to get used to some features, but I was disappointed in the complete lack of challenge.

-Epic is a lot slower than it was in Civ4, almost too slow. I know building times in general take longer, but I felt like the came crawled at points. (In the midst of my second playthrough, I feel much better on standard speed).

-Rome in general plays like Rome always has. A lot of early game advantage. Legions are nice units, and they can build roads (there's even an achievement for doing so, "All Roads Lead to Rome"). The ballista comes in the following era and also packs a punch. Neither are gamebreaking (like Prats in Civ4) but both will make for some easy going conquest.

-Glory of Rome is actually great considering the build time issue. Build it in Rome then get 25% everywhere else. Cheap coliseums for the win.

-Maybe it's just me, but the global happiness thing didn't cause me any issues being negative until that -10 where you get the -33% to military effectiveness. Ouch.

-Domination is too easy. You just have to be the last one to HOLD your capital. I bumped off the two civs that started near me, Japan had conquered its continent, and that left just one more civ to beat. I literally embarked my army from Paris to Tokyo. Sued for Japanese peace and beat up the last civ (Sumerians or something, there's a lot of civs here that I can't remember yet).

-On that note, not sure if the bug fix from yesterday changed this, but it's overpowered to be able to bring your army to the enemy capital with open borders, position all of them, DoW, and conquer in one turn.

I'm trying an Egyptian wonder hoarding game now on Noble. Hoping for more of a challenge. We'll see.

 

[Mac2411]

I just finished my first playthrough and here are some thoughts.
Rome, Warlord, Standard, Continents, Epic

-Warlord is far too easy for someone who's played Civ since Civ1 almost 20 years ago. I picked it because I wanted to get used to some features, but I was disappointed in the complete lack of challenge.

-Epic is a lot slower than it was in Civ4, almost too slow. I know building times in general take longer, but I felt like the came crawled at points. (In the midst of my second playthrough, I feel much better on standard speed).

-Rome in general plays like Rome always has. A lot of early game advantage. Legions are nice units, and they can build roads (there's even an achievement for doing so, "All Roads Lead to Rome"). The ballista comes in the following era and also packs a punch. Neither are gamebreaking (like Prats in Civ4) but both will make for some easy going conquest.

-Glory of Rome is actually great considering the build time issue. Build it in Rome then get 25% everywhere else. Cheap coliseums for the win.

-Maybe it's just me, but the global happiness thing didn't cause me any issues being negative until that -10 where you get the -33% to military effectiveness. Ouch.

-Domination is too easy. You just have to be the last one to HOLD your capital. I bumped off the two civs that started near me, Japan had conquered its continent, and that left just one more civ to beat. I literally embarked my army from Paris to Tokyo. Sued for Japanese peace and beat up the last civ (Sumerians or something, there's a lot of civs here that I can't remember yet).

-On that note, not sure if the bug fix from yesterday changed this, but it's overpowered to be able to bring your army to the enemy capital with open borders, position all of them, DoW, and conquer in one turn.

I'm trying an Egyptian wonder hoarding game now on Noble. Hoping for more of a challenge. We'll see.

There was a bug fix already?

 

[Syiss_]

I just finished my first playthrough and here are some thoughts.
Rome, Warlord, Standard, Continents, Epic

-Warlord is far too easy for someone who's played Civ since Civ1 almost 20 years ago. I picked it because I wanted to get used to some features, but I was disappointed in the complete lack of challenge.

Agreed. I was never amazing at Civ IV and very rusty when I started my first game of Civ V on Prince level and I absolutely decimated the game. Won domination at like 1300AD with Iroquois without even taking advantage of the UA or UU.

-Epic is a lot slower than it was in Civ4, almost too slow. I know building times in general take longer, but I felt like the came crawled at points. (In the midst of my second playthrough, I feel much better on standard speed).

This seems to be the consensus so far. I'm not sure how I feel about it either. I haven't tried quick yet, but I can't imagine playing on epic or marathon speed.

-Rome in general plays like Rome always has. A lot of early game advantage. Legions are nice units, and they can build roads (there's even an achievement for doing so, "All Roads Lead to Rome"). The ballista comes in the following era and also packs a punch. Neither are gamebreaking (like Prats in Civ4) but both will make for some easy going conquest.

I'm still up in the air about these units. The legion isn't that amazing and has one of the shorter life times in the game (longswords really aren't that far away). However, because of how economic it is to make swords and upgrade them to longswords as opposed to building them from scratch, legions do make a good early conquest force that can be upgraded later. The ballista is very powerful but I find that, at least on King and lower, siege really isn't a necessary part of your invasion force like it was in Civ IV.

-Glory of Rome is actually great considering the build time issue. Build it in Rome then get 25% everywhere else. Cheap coliseums for the win.

-Maybe it's just me, but the global happiness thing didn't cause me any issues being negative until that -10 where you get the -33% to military effectiveness. Ouch.

For conquest victories it really isn't much of a problem. So far, once I've gone on the march, I've basically been able to ignore happiness and just steam roll everyone with the same army. Your science and gold income aren't negatively affected by unhappiness, so you can keep teching along and upgrade your army mid conquest, and rush buy a few units if needed to replace any losses.

-Domination is too easy. You just have to be the last one to HOLD your capital. I bumped off the two civs that started near me, Japan had conquered its continent, and that left just one more civ to beat. I literally embarked my army from Paris to Tokyo. Sued for Japanese peace and beat up the last civ (Sumerians or something, there's a lot of civs here that I can't remember yet).

Agreed, I've got 4 conquest victories before 1500 AD, but have failed miserably at all attempts for a culture win. Because city spam is discouraged, you usually dont have fight past more than 1 city (if any) to get to someones capital, and from there you can just sue for peace and move on to the next guy.

-On that note, not sure if the bug fix from yesterday changed this, but it's overpowered to be able to bring your army to the enemy capital with open borders, position all of them, DoW, and conquer in one turn.

I didn't test it, but thats what the patch notes indicated. It was very cheesy.

I'm trying an Egyptian wonder hoarding game now on Noble. Hoping for more of a challenge. We'll see.

Good luck!

 

[HamTard]

There was a bug fix already?

Ya there was a small patch. It fixed the AI giving away all it's cities if it's losing a war and negotiating for peace, and it fixed being able to surround an enemy capital with open borders then declare war and not get bounced out of the borders.

 

[Egnarts]

-Epic is a lot slower than it was in Civ4, almost too slow. I know building times in general take longer, but I felt like the came crawled at points. (In the midst of my second playthrough, I feel much better on standard speed).

I play civ4 on marathon, so i jumped right in and started my first game on marathon
I quit about 5 hours in when i realized I wasn't getting anywhere at that speed.

The rest of my games has been on normal speed, and to be honest, that feels just right to me.