The "i dont believe this" factor

[duckduckswan]

Is this an honest to goodness rant or bait to be attacked? At what point is the video game supposed to give up a sense of balance for historical correctness? You've got to think of it as a see-saw, what you change on one side is going to radically affect something else.

This was right before they went broke from maintenance, all their units went on strike, and they got overrun by barbs.

bahahahaha

 

[King Flevance]

Sorry for the incorrect information regarding the trade window. That's what I always saw posted on these forums and was under the impression thats why they went to the red-line thing and all that stuff.

Makes me want to double check alot more now. Although I usually don't run into situations I can't find a semi-reasonable trade.(Me taking the blunt end every time) And other times, the computer is just being its regular dumb self.

On the Maintenance topic:

Im playing in the marathon mode. I usually get around the maintenance problem on other levels by having quite a few workers, and when i invaded other peoples land, i would apply the mass cottage stunt in the recently acquired lands. However, on marathon it takes forever to improve a tile, and thats why it is impossible to hold a big empire together.

I play marathon pretty much exclusively. The only exception is multiplayer but even then I would prefer marathon. But I have had some pretty large empires in vanilla. Markets with a couple merchant specialist will save your butt or science specialists with a lowered sci slider. Depends on the city and the game really.
However, I settle oalmost every city I own usually. Because at war I tend to raze. For 2 reasons really.
1) I don't like trying to get an economy up and going in a city that is in the middle of a warzone.
2) I don't like having to guard a city and halt my march towards the enemies good core cities.

I have burned down holy cities, wonder cities, name it pretty much and I have probably razed one. Sometimes I wince when I do but it all boils down to the fact that it isn't that I didn't gain the city, its that my opponent no longer has it. And usually when I keep an enemy city, (Meaning it is really great and/or lines up with my future resettlement program.) the population hates me so much that it is pretty much a + and a - at the same time. Whipping a courthouse and/or theatre are both crucial.

And I pity the fool that isn't using slavery and keeping enemy cities.

Also on marathon, I run workers in stacks of 3. As every improvement except for desert roads are divisible by 3. This gets jobs done much faster.I tend to have a stack of 3 workers for every 2-3 cities that are not fully developed.


EDIT: Also I believe inflation has now been 'corrected' in marathon play with the new BTS patch. (I think it reduced.)

 

[darkedone02]

If you want civilization to improve in a realistic way, then I suggest that Firaxis Games start hiring more people, and we start helping out and make this game more realistic then a defaulted slide.

 

[BENdage]

There are some facts I cant simply overlook and try to have fun with civ 4. Most of you think that civ4 was an improvement, and maybe im just overreacting to the following points:

• "your %whatever% was eaten by a barbaric lion" What exactly is a "barbaric" Lion? Massai infants had to defeat a lion by the age of 11, and yet a whole group of settlers is killed by beasts? Right...
• You cant capture tech while taking over cities. Paper went from the far east into europe because turk raiders captured a chinese-cultured city in which there was people able to manufacture paper. Jet fighters started popping out of the US and URSS soon after WW II because of the captured german cientists. And technology cant change hands by the power of force.
• You are on you own minding your bussiness. Someone declares war on you. You capture all of his cities, and BANG you are bankrupted. In the early game (meaning anything before the 1800's in real world timing) you cant control more than something like 15 cities because you cant afford them. The romans had hundreds of cities, some more than 5.000 miles apart, and they lasted for one thousand years. But you simply have to accept that it cant be accomplished in the game. Specially if you are playing on marathon mode
• you want to buy a tech from someone. You give him 5.000 gold and he accepts it, then you load the game and give him 4.000 gold and he rejects it. Then you load, and offer 4.001, 4.002 and so on .

I really had more complaints before the BTS expansion, mainly because of spionage, but it was fixed. I am eagerly waiting for civ5 because the above bugs are really frustrating and preventing me from enjoying the game. I still play civ II, and when that old radio button diplomatic table opens up i dont mid. i just remember that it was made more than a decade ago so i just dont even pay attention to the problems. However i cant do that when playing a game whose age can be measured in months.

Does anyone else feels like that?

1. The lion unit doesn't really represent 3 lions. Each wild animal unit represents wild animals in general, and lots of them. They dont necessarily kill and eat all the settlers, but disperse them so they are no longer organized into a unit, or too scared to continue etc.... Just use a bit of imagination

2. I dont think you should get techs from capturing cities, just demand them as part of the peace treaty/capitulation. Besides, the US and the Brits were developing Jet fighters before the end of the second world war. The British de haviland Vampire saw action in mid '45 and the soviets were developing it too, just a little behind the western allies.

3. Empires are expensive things to run until they're properly developed in real life too. Hence why the britsh empire had New Zealand and Australia operate under their own governments as soon as they could, it is pricey. As someone else mentioned, think of the US in Iraq.

4. This shouldnt really ruin the game for you. Just use "What do you want for this and go a little under. If 3 or 4 gold means that much to you, you're probably taking it a bit to seriously...

 

[HUSch]

Play the game with little black boxes instead of units and then there is no problem for you. The names of units give you a name nothing more. Its good for speaking and thinking about the game, but without it, the game-mechanics is the same. Only the attributes of the boxes are important.

 

[HangingChadDad]

ACK!!!! *pounds fist on keyboard*

THE SETUP:
I had a frustrating experience playing on Warlord (ya i'm not too good even tho i've been "playing at" civ for over 15 yrs..haha) as "Mongols" in a game which was going along fine. .all civs were pretty settled and about 5 were in serious contention and pretty even with less than 200 pts spread among all 5 scores. It was about 1960. I also had very good relations with the other civs even tho I was being gently ganged up on by 3 civs on another continent who were working very closely together.

THE NUB:
I was building Three Gorges Dame and had 8 moves left to complete at about 85 hammers/turn. The next move BAM and the Persians had built it.. I was pretty stunned since i had GREAT production/research. ..and the tech to build it had only been discovered (by me) about 10 moves earlier.. and I traded it off about 5 moves after that. I had traded to get other techs needed and to try to "spread it out" so the game could be finished early.

THE "CHEAT":
Anyways.. after doing a bit of backups and saves, I did some exploring by using "World" mode Cntrl-W cheating to "grant myself" a spy in the building city so I could go back and see what happened.

2 moves before they finished it they had a city with about 50 hammers /turn destined to complete in 12 moves. The next move looked routine (btw they had about 250 gold and were earning about 3/turn.. I had about 2500 gold and was earning about 250/turn).

The next turn they had built it!!!!!!!! PLEASE someone tell me how this was possible under ANY stretch of the imagination???? Just fyi .. after they built it, they still had most of their gold and were losing about 1g/turn.

GENERAL WHINING:
I had been beat out of an earlier wonder The Pentagon in almost the same way.. but at that time I just shrugged my shoulders and carried on..I figured I had just made some strategy error. This time I HAD to investigate it.. I was just too suspicious.

I couldn't believe I was beat in this way.... (well I say "beat" .. I probably will still win, but this is rediculous IMO).

SOME BACKGROUND:
I had moved from 4th to 1st in the ranks over the last 50 yrs or so, but I was under pressure from the SPACE RACE (which I had also discovered and foolishly traded off probably too early) but I wasn't toooooo concerned due to my great production/research.. I knew a LOT of STUFF had to be done before the deal is done and I had planned to forgo all but The Space Elevator which I felt barring nuclear invasion would be MINE MINE MINE I TELL YOU!!! ..

I normally win every game but am frustrated by my inability to finish quickly. This is what I was "working on" during this game.. trying to "cooperate more" to gain quicker gains and still win. Instead my normal win is grinding it out without a lot of cooperation with other civs and finishing after 2000 sometime.. sometime even only a time win.

GENERAL MUSINGS:
I know/always have known the AI "cheats" but this is just too much.. I don't mind all that about they always know where ur units are, what u r building in every city, and they built cheaper/faster than you by varying degrees.. those don't bother me. This seems to have gone too far tho.. anyone have any ideas for "legitimate" things that may have happened instead of a blatant AI cheat? Did I overlook something? If it is a cheat, how does the AI decide when/where to do this...

 

[King Flevance]

2 moves before they finished it they had a city with about 50 hammers /turn destined to complete in 12 moves. The next move looked routine (btw they had about 250 gold and were earning about 3/turn.. I had about 2500 gold and was earning about 250/turn).

The next turn they had built it!!!!!!!! PLEASE someone tell me how this was possible under ANY stretch of the imagination???? Just fyi .. after they built it, they still had most of their gold and were losing about 1g/turn.

Slavery probably. Check out their civics.

 

[JujuLautre]

Slavery probably. Check out their civics.

Or more simply a great engineer ?

 

[King Flevance]

bleh that seems like a waste to me. But then again, it is the AI.

With that few turns left whipping it would probably cost about 4-5 population. Well, on marathon dunno on other speeds.

 

[JujuLautre]

2 moves before they finished it they had a city with about 50 hammers /turn destined to complete in 12 moves.

This makes 600 hammers. Even at marathon and lots of multipliers, with the wonder penalty it seems to me it will require a huge amount of pop, more than 4 or 5 actually

 

[Arlborn]

Really, I just don't agree in anything you said. And somethings you said sounded too much like CivIII. Nah.

 

[G Julius Caesar]

Hi people, im about to make some tough comments, so just to get some things out of the way:


1) Ive been playing civilization games since 1998, and i am perfectly familiarized with all the concepts of the game (Meaning i can win a deity game with no cheating)
2) I understand that there is no way to have a AI so good that would be enough to play with a human. Hence there is the Rubberband principle, which involves some "cheating" by the computer

...........................................

Does anyone else feels like that?

Your list of "Bugs" has been addressed above.

What I would like to draw attention to, and I've seen this used in other topics, is your thinking the computer cheats. The AI/computer does not cheat (or "cheat") - it is not capable of doing this.

You have to remember this is a computer programme, just a bunch of fancy commands basically. It does not have the power to deviate from these rules to its own advantage.

It is given advantages at certain levels, but this is the designer's way of making it more difficult for the players.

Computers do not cheat. Because of this, the game is just a simulation limited by the commands it has to follow.

It is not real life so to apply things that may have happened in real life to the simulation may lead to a game that is too long-winded, full of munitiae and then just plain boring. Specifically here I mean your criticism of lions as barbarians. OK, so one particular group of people sent their 11yr olds out to fight lions. How are you going to simulate that in the game?

Like someone else said, use your imagination for this game concept. To me, the animals as barbarians at that early point in the game works, because I imagine that leaving the relative safety of the settlement in those early days would have meant facing dangers like groups of wild animals. It does't really mean a family of four vs 3 lions.

 

[rabidveggie]

About capturing cities to capture techs, they could make it so that eiher they discover a tech if the take your top science city, since that's where you would find the blueprints on a paticular technology. You wouldn't find out how to make a rocket from a one pop border city in the arctic, you'd find it in a core city where all the specialists would be located.

 

[biratets]

Civilization is just a funny game, which has very little to do with realism. Just accept that and you'll be fine.

(Lions followed my warriors for 200 years. Then they decided to launch an assault against the aforementioned, organized military unit. They were victorius of course, probably because of the superior tactical and strategic skills, which obviously are common among animals. )

 

[Veritass]

Slavery probably. Check out their civics.

The three likely scenarios:

• Pop-rushed. Easy to check in save whether the population of that city went down. As stated above, it should have gone down noticeably.
• Great Engineer rushed. A little harder, but should be able to tell whether they already had a Great Engineer, or perhaps had a GP farm that was ready to pop a GP.
• Cash rushed. Much harder to check, but perhaps they had a Great Merchant en route and got an influx, or maybe as part of their turn they had a tech fire sale and used the money to cash-rush the wonder.

Maybe they had spies on you and knew that you are getting close. That, by the way, would not be cheating.