The Good and the Bad of Gods & Kings

[bonafide11]

Now that I've had a little time to play, I thought I'd share my opinions on what the impressive features are and what the disappointing ones are. I'd love to hear your opinions too.

The Good:
- Religion: Extremely fun aspect that will add some uniqueness to every game. For Civ V fans, Gods and Kings is worth getting for the fun religion part of the game alone. I find it to be extremely enjoyable and I wish they put half the time into some of the other features that they did into religion.

- City-States: Quests can be fun, the additional CS's are a good idea, and they can sometimes behave more rational (not staying angry over wars with their allies is a nice touch).

- Expanded Classical Age and tech tree: Game doesn't fly through the Classical Age which is nice, and the more techs slow the game down

- Improved combat: 100hp makes the combat much more fun. I don't get why they ever went with 10hp instead of 100 in the first place. Units serve a more distinct purpose now too. Also, the units can continually be upgraded so range units don't go obsolete.


The Bad:
- Espionage... Seriously, Firaxis spent the last few months hyping a feature that essentially does nothing but lets you place a spy in a city to maybe steal a tech now and then? Extremely disappointing feature. I can't imagine this is how Firaxis wanted to make it, I hope they just ran out of time to include more to it and will update it in patches.

- Naval game still largely irrelevant: I hope I'm reading too much into my game experience so far, but the AI still neglects its navy and Firaxis's claim of the AI launching large surprise naval assaults seems completely unfulfilled. Looks like I'm going to be stuck playing pangaea maps still.

- AI still sucks: The AI still does completely irrational things. It settles its cities in horrible locations. It struggles with warfare. Its workers leave much of their land unimproved.

- Diplomacy: While improved diplomacy was supposed to be a major feature, I have not noticed it in my game experience. Seems generally the same to me.

So what features have you enjoyed and what have you found disappointing?

 

[fuzzatron717]

Well I agree with positives but the naval game has very much increased I am playing austria and carthage comes across the waters with 6 quinquerimes using most of them as escorts for units 2 were attacking my triremes which were only 3 mainly cause I thought they would not even built any units and I kinda underestimated the quinquereme when they came at me it was naval war I lost, but I won the land war due to a lot of jungles, forts, and legions from almaty. Diplomacey is ok it has only improved in the area of easier to become friends with nations that have previouly declared war on you maybe a little to easy but its ok spreading religion is the easiest way to change the minds of enemys to friends. Otherwise I agree with the rest of your points.

 

[stannis]

Well I agree with positives but the naval game has very much increased I am playing austria and carthage comes across the waters with 6 quinquerimes using most of them as escorts for units 2 were attacking my triremes which were only 3 mainly cause I thought they would not even built any units and I kinda underestimated the quinquereme when they came at me it was naval war I lost, but I the land war due to a lot of jungles, forts, and legions from almaty.

My kingdom for some punctuation! Or even just an extra full stop somewhere in the middle!

 

[bonafide11]

Well I agree with positives but the naval game has very much increased I am playing austria and carthage comes across the waters with 6 quinquerimes using most of them as escorts for units 2 were attacking my triremes which were only 3 mainly cause I thought they would not even built any units and I kinda underestimated the quinquereme when they came at me it was naval war I lost, but I the land war due to a lot of jungles, forts, and legions from almaty. Diplomacey is ok it has only improved in the area of easier to become friends with nations that have previouly declared war on you maybe a little to easy but its ok spreading religion is the easiest way to change the minds of enemys to friends. Otherwise I agree with the rest of your points.

Maybe I'm wrong about the navy, and I hope I am. I'm basing my opinions on the limited time I've gotten to play so far, so hopefully the AI will prove me wrong in future games.

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I think the AI is better now, but it's still not good. It makes some good tactical and strategic decisions, but some bad ones too. I think the diplomacy is quite a bit better. Otherwise I agree.

A plus that I would is how units upgrades has been improved. The Archer line, the multiple naval lines, the pikemen into lancers. It's good.

 

[Philosophe]

I bet we will see some good mods re: espionage and religion. Can't wait.

 

[Aaron90495]

Maybe I'm wrong about the navy, and I hope I am. I'm basing my opinions on the limited time I've gotten to play so far, so hopefully the AI will prove me wrong in future games.

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

I can confirm you're wrong about the navy. In just my last game alone (King, Quick, playing as Byzantium), the AI launched 4 or 5 naval assaults that were quite well-coordinated. 2 or 3 of the assaults had accompanying land units, as well.

Are you playing on Prince (or lower)? I noticed the difference between Prince and King is now ENORMOUS. I absolutely trampled the AI on Prince but barely squeaked out a victory on King (and only thanks to dropping 4 nukes on India and 2 on Korea).

 

[bonafide11]

I can confirm you're wrong about the navy. In just my last game alone (King, Quick, playing as Byzantium), the AI launched 4 or 5 naval assaults that were quite well-coordinated. 2 or 3 of the assaults had accompanying land units, as well.

Are you playing on Prince (or lower)? I noticed the difference between Prince and King is now ENORMOUS. I absolutely trampled the AI on Prince but barely squeaked out a victory on King (and only thanks to dropping 4 nukes on India and 2 on Korea).

Nope, I'm also playing on King. I conquered my own continent pretty easily and none of the other civs built a navy, but in their defense a couple of them were landlocked. By the time I met the civs on the other continent (playing a continents map), I already had a significant lead in score due to conquering my continent. Maybe the reason I haven't seen an attack is because of my score lead, but according to my advisers my military strength is about the same as some of the other civs. One of the leaders is Attila so I wouldn't expect him to be passive though.

 

[Glassmage]

I say Diplomacy is greatly improved. You can be best friends forever like I was with Monty. OMG right? Relationships can also change, and you know which AI's backstab you via espionage then you know who is your true friends. And hanging out with people that like you give you vote for diplomatic victory.

 

[ahawk]

I agree with everything in the OP except for diplomacy and AI.

The AI is, after a number of games in G&K already, noticeably better. I attacked the Iroquis in the 1700's AD as Ethiopia, sending my rifle UU against largely crossbows and muskets, and still took a number of casualties as I got rained on by ranged attacks and city garrison attacks. In the old days, the AI would have spread the damage around such that I could constantly heal with promotions and lose no units. Now, AI ranged units concentrate their fire more (which, coupled with the heal promotion being only for 50 hp, makes combat a lot harder). Does the AI still do stupid things? Oh, of course. But the AI is, for sure, a bit improved.

Diplomacy is a little more usable, too. I wouldn't say that it's greatly enhanced, but now I can at least get a DoF that leads to a defensive pact, or at least something. DoF used to be worthless... now, I can get a DP started off it on occasion. And if you include CS's in diplo, then there's a fair amount more to do with them (more quests to gain influence, rig elections, etc).

 

[BobDole]

I agree with all of the positives, although not all the negatives. I can't fully comment on the AI (on my 2nd full game, Epic speed), but it seems a lot better. I agree with Espionage though: it's not very fleshed out. There's just not that many options. Generally, your spies are just chilling out in a city, and every once in awhile, they'll kill a spy (or screw up and let your tech get stolen), rig an election in a city state, or steal a tech. There's not much to do in terms of managing your spies. There really should've been more actions to take against other civs. Right now, the only thing you can order them to do is attempt a city state coup. Otherwise, you're just counting down the number of turns until they perform their action.

 

[Kabloosh]

Russia launched a surprise Naval offensive against me. Unfortunately for her it was straight into my Navy which caused her to move her units to another side of the coast. She used 2 Ironclads and like 4-5 Frigates. I only had 5 Frigates and 2 Privateers but 2 of my frigates had +1 range and another got the +1 range during the quick war. I ojnly lost 1 privateer. The increased life really makes it easy to save units.

 

[Liegence]

AI composed a coordinated Naval/Land assault on my city last night and very nearly conquered; they would have if i had but one more exposed coastal tile.

I would say diplomacy, AI and Navy are all definitely improved, but maybe not to your expectation.

As for epionage, it's ok. I really miss being able to spy on what tech a civ is currently researching and i hope they add that somehow. Intrigue is a nice feature.

 

[Gali]

Agree with espionage, its lacking but still much better than 14's was.

I find diplomacy to be a good deal better. They removed a number of the irrational minuses and added enough positives that I found I cold get a decent number of friends except when I went extreme warmonger.

City-States are vastly improves, now requiring you to not just spend gold and the new diversity makes them more useful. Far fewer 6 militaristics games where just one for free military and lux is enough.

AI is better and war is somewhat challenging. Buffs to city defense mean just rushing in will kill you fast. In my last game I attakced Athens with 2 legions 2 pikes and 2 ballistas. ALex had 3 hoplites. He kept those playing defense and blocking my siege from getting into range easily so my melee had to kill the hoplites and that took a good deal of effort. By the time I took care of them one legion was dead and the other was redlined, and my pikes were shot up as well. That only happened in vanilla if I got bored and just rushed in but here I took my time. So the ai is still bad but conquering them does take some thought and is definitely harder. And Im on Prince.