Whoa.

[MadMage86]

Playing a Standard Continents game as Brazil; doing great - top of the leaderboard, got my religion out the door first (found two religious city-states early)only thing I seem to be dragging on is technology... I started on a medium sized island with Hiawatha and got down 4 decent cities and a tradition opener and one Civ I haven't met is dominating the tech race.

But the AI is behaving way smarter. Hiawatha didn't bother trying to play expansion; he was friendly right off the bat, even asking for a DoF after I asked him not to settle near me... and all of a sudden he's got a fully upgraded religion and despite mine being augmented with Religious Texts he's spreading it across my cities like wildfire.

I'm seeing other Civs chomping down wonders I can't even build yet; I'm dominating the demographics board and somehow I feel like the AI is wrecking me. This is crazy. I've never seen the AI be so intelligent about pursuing their victory, or even a religion.

On a side note, the game is causing my rig (and my buddies') to work a lot harder than it did in G&K. My laptop is actually throttling down and shutting of the sound card to fight overheating.

 

[Buccaneer]

What difficulty level and what victories are they trying for? If you are dominating the demographics, how successful can they be doing? Will they choose the right Ideologies/Tenets to make Religions and Wonders viable? I ask because many games have been won at higher levels in G&K where religion and wonders did not play a factor (for humans, and it didn't seem to help the AI much in winning at times).

 

[krozman]

The biggest difference with religion in BNW is that even after establishing dominance, you have to work at it to make your religion viable until you can make it the world religion via the Congress. It's a ton of work if three other religions are GP spamming their own cities and you're trying to keep them converted.

I found the Great Mosque to be almost completely useless now that the other wonder that gives 3 missionaries. Free Mosque is nothing next to 6 early game conversions. In fact, on any game where i'm focused on religion I intentionally avoid teching Acoustics just so avoid missionaries being more expensive.

That's why i'm not liking Brazil atm. He wants Acoustics more than i'm willing to give it to him.

 

[Asderfut]

I think that demographics are way worse of indicators of the dynamics of the game. I stayed small (5 cities) as Brazil in an earlier game and had more gold and science than any civ in the game except Ethiopia, who had stayed small too (3 cities). That entire time, the Inca had been dominating on the demographics charts. Unfortunately, my computer overheated and I had to quit.

 

[Buccaneer]

Yeah, I remember an OCC game I played where I was easily dead last in demographics and almost won the darn thing. I guess that's one of my few complaints about Civ5 - you can be so very weak (demographically) and yet steal a victory.

 

[Xichael]

My laptop is actually throttling down and shutting of the sound card to fight overheating.

Same here, my laptop and adapter are burning with the intensity of a thousand suns. I haven't had a forced shutdown yet but I can barely play for more than a half hour without needing to shut down for a bit (using a laptop pad so none of the vents are being blocked and playing on lowest settings for nearly everything). Definitely noticing the increased drawing of resources.