Who else thinks BNW is surprisingly good?

[PhilBowles]

I am not so sure about that; the AI has been using the resolutions very effectively against me, or trying to in some cases. When they failed to enforce something that would have crippled me, it was because of my active intervention to prevent it from happening. Every single time the AI tried a "real-politik" offensive against me, it was consistent with their obvious VC strategy, the environment, the political situation and the potential danger I was posing for the proponent of the resolution.

I am quite surprised about that; I expected far less, to be honest, with so many new, complex and interacting systems.

I'll grant (and have often argued it in favour of Civ V's AI diplomacy in the past) that the more complex demands on an AI in the Civ V system would be likely to lead to worse results, and the one we have does reasonably well.

The AI is self-interested enough that you can take certain in-game actions to get the results you want - if an embargo is planned on one of your luxuries, you can prompt the AI to vote your way by selling them that particular luxury. You can get their help adopting your world religion by spreading it to them.

And the AI in my games has consistently tried to embargo civs it's at war with. This may actually be suboptimal - you usually want the civs you're at war with to be able to trade so you can plunder their caravans and cargo ships. It's the ones you aren't at war with but who pose an economic threat (such as by buying your CSes) you'll want to shut down.

My issue is more with the way the AI fails to take account of resolutions in its actual game conduct. If there's a world religion, it will still object to you spreading it to them. If there's a world ideology, they'll stubbornly stick with their different one however much unrest that causes. It's fully capable of proposing a World Fair etc. and then failing to put any significant effort into completing the project.

And finally there's the Choose a Host issue. With World Leader votes, voting for themselves is unfortunate but doesn't have much effect on subsequent gameplay (beyond the fact that there is subsequent gameplay because no one's won). But choosing a host is different - if you're the host, it's because you have the most votes to begin with, and then you get two more. Other than trying to steal your city-states, the AI doesn't know how to deal with this - however it should have the ability to get behind a civ that they think is likely to support their interests, based on past relationships and/or ideology. When I'm the host, I stay the host.

That's not always the case for the AI, since individual AIs aren't as good as a human at retaining targeted control of multiple CSes, but the AI inability to work together puts the human at an advantage.

 

[The_Picard327]

I played pretty much from 12 to 10 today...and now I'm still up reading the forums. Tons of fun, highly engaging...I wish I could stay up and finish my first game. Just one more World Congress...

 

[PhilBowles]

Civ IV didn't have anything like most of the things in BNW...

Trade routes in particular, only a few days in, already make me think "Hang on, why didn't Civ always do it this way?"

Yes, civ IV. Were every country was a name slapped on generic building block pieces and half the unique units didn't exist or weren't important (Oromo warrior [that's a group, not even specifically a warrior clan], Quechua [that's a language and a group of people, not a military unit], redcoats [ they weren't really better than their contemporaries], ballista elephant..., phalanx [formation, not a unit], Pretorian [those were a tiny tiny group of palace elites], dog warriors, I can keep going for 6 more units,

You mean India doesn't really have a monopoly on "Fast Workers"?

Next you'll be telling me that Divine Right isn't really a technology, and that Confucians weren't the first to develop a code of laws.

 

[Aristos]

Trade routes in particular, only a few days in, already make me think "Hang on, why didn't Civ always do it this way?"

To be fair, Call to Power did it this way (perhaps not as detailed, but the routes were real, existed in the map, and could be plundered... even the routes that in the franchise remain "magically invisible", the ones resulting from the diplo negotiation table).

 

[PhilBowles]

BNW makes it feel like I'm actually building a Civilization rather simply playing a game. I always have a narrative in my head. Additionally, the new mechanics have made it so that you can't do totally unreal, cheesey, cheating mechanic starts like the old "4 City Tradition Opener." It was ingenious, but I don't feel like it was in the spirit of the game.

Now we have to have a little bit of everything as well to win, as in it feels like we don't only have to care about one particular stat.

Civ V:BNW feels very natural to me, and I love it for that. I think it did more for this game than G&K did.

One of the things that most impresses me:

You don't have to go all-science to win.

A simple statement with profound implications to anyone familiar with any previous Civ game, and earlier versions of Civ V. Yes, you always need a lot of beakers, but things like the Combustion path in the late game are now viable because they don't lock you out of your victory condition. Culture victory needs a science rush to the right Wonders, but only up to Radio (Eiffel Tower and Broadway being the last important tourism/GW wonders), which is almost at the start of the modern era 'branches'. Autocracy can take several paths, and diplo victory only cares about which era you're in, not the identity of techs. You can even afford to ignore Rationalism in some cases.

The fact that the endgame has almost completely done away with stereotyped "you must follow these techs to meet this win condition" is probably BNW's biggest but most understated achievement, since it's truly unique across five iterations of the game. Whatever victory condition you go for, it feels very much as though you're playing the game differently from the others - it's not just "play the same way, but get a few different late game techs".

 

[Aaron90495]

One of the things that most impresses me:

You don't have to go all-science to win.

A simple statement with profound implications to anyone familiar with any previous Civ game, and earlier versions of Civ V. Yes, you always need a lot of beakers, but things like the Combustion path in the late game are now viable because they don't lock you out of your victory condition. Culture victory needs a science rush to the right Wonders, but only up to Radio (Eiffel Tower and Broadway being the last important tourism/GW wonders), which is almost at the start of the modern era 'branches'. Autocracy can take several paths, and diplo victory only cares about which era you're in, not the identity of techs. You can even afford to ignore Rationalism in some cases.

The fact that the endgame has almost completely done away with stereotyped "you must follow these techs to meet this win condition" is probably BNW's biggest but most understated achievement, since it's truly unique across five iterations of the game. Whatever victory condition you go for, it feels very much as though you're playing the game differently from the others - it's not just "play the same way, but get a few different late game techs".

Couldn't have said it better myself. I find myself frequently ignoring tried-and-true strategies like the Education beeline, and more often than not they're actually viable. As always, it's the little things that aren't getting credit, as the nerfing of science in general is absolutely huge.

 

[Zilkin]

Definitely agree. Been playing Civ since the first and I'd even go as far as to say that BNW is probably the best expansion of them all.

 

[Babri]

Civ V devoted whole expansions to themes Civ IV had as add-ons, so be fair. And if it hadn't been for Civ IV and the way it introduced the concepts, it's unlikely Firaxis would have thought to make the UN, and maybe even religion, a major game theme.

Having said that, I wouldn't say city-flipping is handled better - I miss tile-flipping. And although in concept Civ V's World Congress resolutions are better-designed and more varied, the AI seems to be quite some way behind Civ IV's in understanding how to use them.

I've preferred Civ V to Civ IV for some time, but I played Civ IV just before BNW hit for comparison. In some ways that highlighted a lot of the ways in which BNW changes feel "Civ IVish", particularly the more exploration-based early game and more varied viable tech paths and early building choices (and, less positively, the more passive and seemingly less individualistic AIs). However, Civ IV feels more polished and 'finished' than BNW - patches may change it, but while Civ V is now in essence a more complex game than Civ IV, AI weaknesses that seem more pronounced than in G&K, balance issues, and new concepts that seem great but underdeveloped make it feel less complete than G&K:

- Ideology's great, but I'm coming to dislike the predictability it gives end-game diplomacy and the fact that the end-game is rarely balanced - you have one culturally dominant civ that prompts everyone else to adopt its ideology, and only a couple of civs bucking the trend. I haven't yet seen a near-equal pairing of ideologies, Cold War-style, neither of which is obviously dominant. I'm starting to pine for a post-ideology Information Age that tones down the effects. It makes all prior and other forms of diplomacy almost irrelevant, up to and including dropping nukes on people's favourite city-states.

- The fact that on large maps with default settings you're going to run out of named artworks etc. says it all about how well thought-through tourism was. It's got novelty value for the theme bonuses, artifacts and watching the culture battle between civs unfold, but it turns out to be very limited and there's more interest to be had in the varied ways of preventing Wonderspammers from foisting their ideologies onto you than with actually playing the tourism game, which is very linear and lacking in diversity.

I think you misunderstood my post. The post I quoted was only trying to bash ciV & was trying to say that it just copied ideas from the previous iteration. While my point was that it certainly did but the implementation was much better.

Now that degrading to cIV or devaluing it's impact? No.

Every successive iteration is expected to be better so ciV was in a sense supposed to be better as devs knew why some systems they added in cIV didn't work as intended. So credit for religion goes to cIV for adding it to the franchise, while the credit for implementing it correctly clearly goes to ciV.

Regarding the tile flip, I hated that mechanic. Whenever you conquered a city of an empire, you would need at least 2-3 great artists late game to flip some tiles to you, otherwise the whole city would be surrounded by enemy tiles. ciV approach of tile & city flip is much better IMO.

At the end I would say that cIV ciV are different games & great on their own right, and one of the best games of all time.

Sent from my HTC One V using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

[alpha wolf 64]

i like all the new changes, but not fond that all the AIs do nothing but build wonders now. I got so bored my first game that I gave up and started a new game hoping that there would be more wars. but nope, turn after turn of wonders having been built. I even increased the number of civs hoping for conflict, but no go.

 

[Thuellai]

One of the things that most impresses me:

You don't have to go all-science to win.

A simple statement with profound implications to anyone familiar with any previous Civ game, and earlier versions of Civ V. Yes, you always need a lot of beakers, but things like the Combustion path in the late game are now viable because they don't lock you out of your victory condition. Culture victory needs a science rush to the right Wonders, but only up to Radio (Eiffel Tower and Broadway being the last important tourism/GW wonders), which is almost at the start of the modern era 'branches'. Autocracy can take several paths, and diplo victory only cares about which era you're in, not the identity of techs. You can even afford to ignore Rationalism in some cases.

The fact that the endgame has almost completely done away with stereotyped "you must follow these techs to meet this win condition" is probably BNW's biggest but most understated achievement, since it's truly unique across five iterations of the game. Whatever victory condition you go for, it feels very much as though you're playing the game differently from the others - it's not just "play the same way, but get a few different late game techs".

As a corollary, one thing I really like is that because of this it's easy to mix victory conditions. When I'm running a tourist culture, I'll often pick up some military techs and do a little early, light warring - never a full war of conquest, but enough to pluck a jewel or two from the other guy. By doing so I occasionally get great works from the cities conceded to me, and I reduce the other guy's culture gen.

And when you hit that one guy who just outpaces your tourism completely, a war of extermination is a valid option - you only have to be Influential with civs that are still ALIVE.