Special abilities

[12agnar0k]

Although it's true the wording is ambiguous, I believe the intent is that it's the encampment that joins you, not the unit you destroyed. Giving you a free city.

No, the barbs do not have barbarian cities anymore, so it can't be a city that joins germany for the barbs dont settle cities, so its the unit that has a % chance of joining.

Indian special ability looks strange. It might make problems for a very large Indian empire & over expansion early on could be a big problem.

Yes well thats the idea of the Indian civ, its makes obtaining larger cities easier but you can't have so many cities, this means that Indian cities will be massive and powerful, but they wont spread out like the other civ's, it will make playing them truely different to playing other civ's, and I think you would be better off with a more peaceful game here with your economic advantages of having very high pop cities, although warmongering can still be achieved with razing cities after a point.

I was actually thinking England's ability may be quite powerful. With the 1 unit per tile rule it may be very hard to protect convoys. If Civ 5 keeps some of the civ iv promotions and bonuses (e.g. circumnavigation) and England gets them it may be one of the few powers that can successfully launch sea based invasions. Guess we'll have to wait and see...

Yes England will truely "rule the waves", you won't want to get into a confrontation with a powerful and quick English navy, obviously the English Civ will build more navy than other civ's as thier increased movement points give them a nice advantage. Whether that be in "strategic retreats" or racing towards the enemy.

 

[AriochIV]

No, the barbs do not have barbarian cities anymore, so it can't be a city that joins germany for the barbs dont settle cities, so its the unit that has a % chance of joining.

It's an encampment, not a city. The implication is that it turns into a city at that point, but from the way it's worded it's hard to be certain.

It doesn't make any more sense that it's the unit that joins, because the unit has just been destroyed.

 

[SevenSpirits]

Gosh, it sure is a good thing that it's the relative strengths of the civilizations that matter and not the relative strengths of just one aspect of the civilizations...

 

[Celevin]

Gosh, it sure is a good thing that it's the relative strengths of the civilizations that matter and not the relative strengths of just one aspect of the civilizations...

That's quite a bit of snark there.

The Germans have 2 UU, so in two ages they'll be better off militarily, and their Barbarian bonus. Compare that to other civs that have bonuses that last the entire game, or unique buildings that will constantly be useful and probably never obsoleted. Of course this is all speculation, but it's good to speculate and voice opinions.

 

[YoHo]

If it's the encampment that joins, then that means, that as Germany you would need to think long and hard about risking attacking barbarians, because you may not be in a position where another city in that location is a good idea. Having it be the unit makes more sense.
Defeating an enemy unit doesn't mean slaughtering all members of the unit and burning the body. It means they are defeated, they've run up the white flag and disbanded. In this case, they switch to your side and remain a unit.


In either case, I don't know that any of this looks unbalanced. It all looks very different for each civ...which is a good thing.

Playing different civs shouldn't just mean changing the City names and the leaderhead.

 

[duckstab]

My initial concerns around the unique abilities were also around balance issues. The thing I liked about the traits was that by having two of them there's a certain inherent balancing present. If I play as WvO on a standard size map there's almost certainly going to be at least one other CRE leader and one other FIN leader, so my advantages aren't likely to be completely overpowering. (Unless of course I select my opponents by hand.)

After seeing this list, however, I'm a bit more optimistic. None of them, with the possible exception of England's, strikes me as being overpowered, and even that one might not be such a big deal if naval units move faster in Civ V anyway. A 4-move trireme in Civ 4 would have been crazy, but if triremes in Civ V move 4 and England's move 6, that might not be too awful.

I do like the idea that they're strengthening the "flavor" of each civ so you're less likely to be able to win with a single generic strategy. And I expect balancing issues will be there in any case and end up being fine-tuned in expansions or patches.

 

[12agnar0k]

It's an encampment, not a city. The implication is that it turns into a city at that point, but from the way it's worded it's hard to be certain.

It doesn't make any more sense that it's the unit that joins, because the unit has just been destroyed.

The fact that they removed cities in favour of encampments for barbs is sufficient reason to believe they wont allow civ's to capture barb cities for they do not exist , an encampment is not a city so theirs no reason to think that by moving troops into one it would become one.

Atleast from my understanding of the implication of the wording it is about the units,
"Upon defeating a Barbarian unit inside an encampment, there is a 50% chance you earn 25 gold and they join your side."
Note : It does not say "upon destroying barbarian unit inside an encampment" but upon defeating. This implies that the bararian soldiers have dropped to thier knees and are awaiting the final blow of the axe, but because the Germans are fluent in "bararistic tribal speech" half of the time anyway, they hear the pleas of these heathen nobodies to spare thier lifes in return for thier service, all other civ's not understanding what seems like incoherent jibberish just chop off thier heads and be done with it, but the German Civ recruits these soldiers half of the time.

Atleast this is the obvious interpretation to me.

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

I'm liking the Special Abilities...Arabia in particular sounds like it could be beastly in the late game, grab all the worlds oil and then watch everyone grovel at your feet.

Between the various Special Abilities and the combination of UU/UB's its certainly looking like I will actually be playing as wide variety of different civilizations this time around as they're all very unique.

 

[CHEESE!]

Re. Germany and Iroquois-

Look on the bright side. India's UP sounds like it could even be negative.

EDIT: And you never know. Mohawk or War Elephant or Panzer could be a WTH.... BOOOOOOOOOOM HAHAHAHA! win button.

 

[Crazy George]

I look forward to the prospect of playing each of the civilizations, custom tailoring my strategy to maximize their inherent strengths. It will be a great disappointment if the AI is not capable of doing the same.

With that said, I find it hard to believe that a mere movement bonus will be able to compensate for +20% Wonders or +25% for any building I've bothered to build in my capital. But I wouldn't be surprised (especially at the harder levels) if India's happiness bonus didn't prove to be the strongest of all.

 

[SevenSpirits]

That's quite a bit of snark there.

The Germans have 2 UU, so in two ages they'll be better off militarily, and their Barbarian bonus. Compare that to other civs that have bonuses that last the entire game, or unique buildings that will constantly be useful and probably never obsoleted. Of course this is all speculation, but it's good to speculate and voice opinions.

Sorry if you found it impolite. I was extremely surprised there's a two-page thread complaining about a balance non-issue with no one pointing that out yet.

As for the argument that Germany's advantages are only in certain ages... I agree we need to assign more weight to comparable benefits when some persist and others don't. That's intuitively important. But don't mistake that for persistent abilities being fundamentally better! Civ is a game of exponential growth, so any advantage gained automatically turns into a greater advantage later. For example, if your civ has the ability that on the very first turn of the game you get an extra settler and two extra workers, it would be WAY good. This despite the fact that - starting on turn two - it effectively doesn't have an ability any more.

In any case, maybe Germany IS underpowered. But we don't know yet because a) we cannot judge the strength of its ability without experience or context and b) we don't even know what its UUs do or how powerful they are.

 

[Tregon]

Mmm... Long time lurker and Civ friend deciding to chip in.

While I agree that some abilities can give you a good start, having some kind of "expiration date" is bad.

Let's look at France. +1 culture per city until steam. Nice benefit, really. But how soon will you hit steam age? Rather soon, specially if you try to get little techgap between yourself and opponents.

Meanwhile, Romans, Egyptians, England and America start and end with siginificant bonuses.

25% bonus to buildings in capitol? Hell yeah me like! Capitol being often one of the biggest and most advanced cities means you are essentially boosting city growth from establishing second city! Their only con is that their UU most likely end up obsolete fast.

It matters a lot in the start, when production is low, and it matters a lot in the end when buildings cost much more.

American ability? 25% cheaper land from day one to last day. Additional visibility range bonus.

Exponential growth is true for both expiring abilities and permanent abilities. England(if there is water) and America have ability to expand much faster in the beginning, thus their gains grow with time. And they can keep expanding faster to the last turn.

France expands initially it's culture fast, then loses all benefits when they figure out how to use fire and water to move stuff.

Germany may, or may not, receive extra cities from barbarians (or units). Let's assume cities. Good for initial expansion? Only if city is in good spot. And you are lucky in the cointoss. Perfect location but you were unlucky, no city. Crap location and "bad" luck and you are stuck with city which either dies or needs lots of work to keep viable.

While I agree that this system produces much more variation in playing styles, it also means that there is very little room to use alternative tactics.

It becomes game of Starcraft, where you have exact building order which must be performed perfectly or else you blew your game.

I don't want to play games like that...

 

[Schuesseled]

@ whoever said german ability effictively ends in middle ages.

Why do you assume that germany's ability will end in the middle ages, nothing we've seen so far would lead me to believe that the "take all the territory" mantra of previous civs still exists in this one.

ICC is gone (well in theory, well its probably an option, harsh penalties like sp and great person cost)

3 tile radius, and a non-linear expansion of culture both mean that cities no longer have a must place exactly 3 tiles away policy. Its more of a place where you want system and let your cities find thier own city radius's.

All units move faster and there are less roads, there is no real need to cosy up to a rivals borders, you can leave a little neutral ground.

On these reasons i think its possible that there will be some non-visible territory even in the late game, which means barbs might be a constant threat (not entirely sure wether that would be a good thing.)

 

[Shurdus]

I look forward to the prospect of playing each of the civilizations, custom tailoring my strategy to maximize their inherent strengths. It will be a great disappointment if the AI is not capable of doing the same.

With that said, I find it hard to believe that a mere movement bonus will be able to compensate for +20% Wonders or +25% for any building I've bothered to build in my capital. But I wouldn't be surprised (especially at the harder levels) if India's happiness bonus didn't prove to be the strongest of all.

Oooh double negative. We love those because there is no chance for misunderstandings there.

Care to rephrase that?

 

[AlpsStranger]

Does anyone else really, really want to abuse that Aztec power?

 

[Matjillam]

I do

Golden age by war and social policies! It sounds pretty awesome when at war

Does anyone else really, really want to abuse that Aztec power?

 

[Shurdus]

Can you now use culture to trigger a GA?

 

[Matjillam]

Can you now use culture to trigger a GA?

I think I remember it being mentioned somewhere....

 

[12agnar0k]

Mmm... Long time lurker and Civ friend deciding to chip in.

While I agree that some abilities can give you a good start, having some kind of "expiration date" is bad.

Let's look at France. +1 culture per city until steam. Nice benefit, really. But how soon will you hit steam age? Rather soon, specially if you try to get little techgap between yourself and opponents.

Welcome,

And I dont think France's ability is bad necessarily, someone stated that all wonders only give +1 culture now, not sure if this is confirmed, but lets assume it is, then this ability will give you for nearly half the game culture bonus as if you had an extra wonder in each city, this is not a bad ability, as to why they cut it off early, probably because its a little too good, with this you will be getting SP faster than anyone else and will be racing towards a cultural victory. I believe when this "early boost" ends you aren't suddenly without nothing as you have a powerful musketeer unit to help you out in the renissance, and a foreign unit for infantry I expect to help you out in the modern era.

So I wouldnt count them out because they have a time limit on thier culture boost.

Similarily, Germany who has a mainly early bonus ability, which Is actually about the units, it makes no sense to be about cities, so assume for a moment we know for a fact it is units, this will give Germany access to more units early on than other civs have, by recruiting them from defeated barbarians. And then in the mid game their ability will noteably stagnate as territory is taken up and barbarians assumeably dissapear, probably all by the medieval/renissance era, which is when they get thier first UU, a pikeman, and then again they will have no real "bonus" till the modern late game stage with thier Panzer, which will probably lead to a late game dominance with tank superiority.

Its not all about the abilities you see, some may well indeed be better than others, but if you percieve one civ's Unique Ability as "too good" then they may very well suffer with "non-extraordinary UU's"

 

[Calouste]

Can you now use culture to trigger a GA?

There's a Social Policy you can purchase with culture (Reformation in the Piety tree) that gives an immediate Golden Age. I don't know about directly triggering it with culture, although you do directly trigger Golden Ages with accumulated happiness.