Post #1 (I've won and played other games, but am only starting to post now, sorry...)
CIVILIZATION: Japan
VICTORY TYPE: Science, turn 401 on Standard
RELATIVE RANK: Compatible (Immortal)
OUTCOME: Victory, and a Challenge - partially because I was dicking around, and partially due to my start location
ADDITIONAL INFO: I hope nobody minds if I make a rather lengthy post on this, because throughout this game and other games I have been making notes and doing some math in my head, and I've noticed a few things in general that are worth comment.
The Game Itself
Just for context. I was playing Japan on Small Continents. I was put on a truly Japanese continent - I had it all to myself with 3 City-States. Sadly, there were very few Ocean resources, and to my great dismay, there were ZERO Horses and ZERO Iron to be found here. Finally, I was ocean-locked, meaning that my continent was utterly surrounded by ocean tiles and I could not get out to meet any other civilization or City-State until I had the requisite tech to cross Ocean tiles (and, to be honest, I'm not even sure which tech that is in CBP).
Consequently, I kept to myself during the game, focused on buildings with the Tradition tree, and was ultimately aiming for a Culture victory in the long run. I got a religion through use of Oral Tradition on Plantations, which was buffed by the religious belief that gives extra Faith + Culture when a GP is used up, and picked Zealotry on the side (important detail for later). The former religious belief made my Culture and Faith growth astronomically stupidly high, and I was definitely in the lead for those two slots beyond question. I probably could have won much quicker if I had aimed to fight and take out certain key cities, but I didn't care and was just having fun.
Anyways, I want to mention the following main MAJOR points that impacted the game, because I've noticed some of these trends in other games as well. I feel that they are important because they are either key balance issues within the game itself, balance issues in a human VS AI context, or internal issues that affect the flow of the game (you'll understand what I mean when I get there).
POINT #1 - THE SCIENCE VICTORY ITSELF: Because nobody was near me at the beginning, I was structurally strong and didn't need to bother with military, saving me tons of resources. However, reality is that my trade was limited, and this slowed me down - I was definitely NOT in the lead for science.
However, I did manage to catch up, especially and particularly through the exchange of technologies. I was hand-in-hand with Russia building the first Spaceship item. So how did I win the Science Victory if I was behind? Both Russia and Egypt had all the techs necessary to build all the modules, and I didn't. Simply: I asked them to exchange technologies and offered lots of stuff to get the technologies (mainly puppeted cities that I didn't want), they gave me the techs, and I outproduced them. The idiots.
CONCLUDING COMMENT: The AI definitely doesn't realize the danger in sharing technologies where a Science Victory is concerned, as I know that there is no chance in hell I would share the same technologies had I had the technology lead. Furthermore, what the AI is willing to accept in exchange for a technology strikes me as rather paltry. A tech lead in this game can be AWESOME - and thus so should the payment for getting a new tech from someone else. After this experience, I feel that while Tech Trading might be appropriate in a PvsP game, it only disadvantages the AI in a HvsC game, and thus only allowing Research Agreements seems like a better way to go for the CBP unless this is fixed somehow.
POINT #2 - WHY I DIDN'T GET A CULTURE VICTORY: Actually, I find that most of my games end up in Cultural/Diplomatic victories. In this case, however, it was one and only one thing that made a Cultural Victory so difficult, given that I wasn't in contact with many people early enough to rack up some early Tourism points.
Ideology.
The two Civs with whom I didn't share an Ideology were simply impossible to win over. Firstly, because of the ideological penalty for Tourism, and then because they wouldn't take my Embassy or talk to me in general, making other options (like Open Borders) impossible as well. This slows the process, but doesn't stop it, and that's fine and cool. Throw on something like Cold War though, and any hope of a Culture Victory is GG. As I said, I was being lazy this game - but I do realize that the only way to meaningfully get a Culture Victory in this situation would have been to directly attack these two Civs and wipe them off the map completely. So maybe nothing is wrong here: it just intrigued me at how difficult the task was when I wasn't actually trying to kill someone in the process.
The more fun part of the story is that those Civs I DID Influence rather quickly were - of course - the other Civs that had picked Order, whom I duly followed. And for the rest of the game, all 6 of us who had Order - including one Civ who had originally hated me all game long - had a standing permanent alliance, and just picked on the other two guys. It was quite hilarious.
CONCLUDING COMMENT: As others have mentioned, Ideology really does change the playing field of the game.
POINT #3 - HIGH TECH VS SCIENCE VICTORY: I managed to bring out a couple Death Robots mostly for fun while all my Spaceship modules were being constructed. What I realized, though, is that there's little to no room at all for the high-end units like Death Robots, XCOMs, and Stealth units to actually do anything before the game ends from the Spaceship launch. It's kind of lame, really, and the victory occurs in a rather abrupt fashion. In fact, the very point that I could nab techs from the AIs and then build the SS parts when they had the techs first sort of points to me that there's a slight problem, anyways, but that's beside the point here...
SUGGESTION: I'm thinking that the Space Race would be a tad more interesting if the Modules had a cost, say...5 to 10 times of their current cost. -OR- or -AND-, you need to get to Future Tech...say, 3? Before the Spaceship can actually launch. Future Techs can't be traded, so an AI that is actually ahead in tech would not be able to be exploited as I had done. A Future Tech of 3 would also offer a clear time-line whereby one has the opportunity to stop the Spaceship launch - namely, with cool, high-tech units. I think that this would add a less abrupt and more strategic element to the Science Victory, which I found a rather disappointing way to win.
CONCLUDING COMMENT: I think a slight change to the Science Victory objectives or process would make it more rewarding, in more ways than one.
POINT #4 - SPHERE OF INFLUENCE VS DECOLONIZATION: I want to say right here and right now that the new system for Open Doors/Decolonization/Sphere Of Influence is AWESOME! And more to the point: The AI uses this VERY well!
One of my opponents in this game was the Netherlands. He wasn't dominant in Diplomatic votes, but had enough of a lead to get his way more often than not. It seems like William's favorite move was to demand Spheres of Influence on City-States, one after another. He'd succeed, and his votes kept growing and growing...finally, this was starting to get annoying, so I started a war declaration spree on his City-States (SEE POINT #5 FOR AN IMPORTANT TANGENT TO THIS ONE). No sooner did I wipe one out, than he got influence over a new one. His Influence spree finally ended when somebody proposed Order as the World Ideology, it passed, and then all of us had a zillion votes to trash William (SEE POINT #6 FOR ANOTHER TANGENT).
Anyways, at some point, somebody proposed a Decolonization on William. It passed, and William was Decolonized...BUT, it didn't cancel the Spheres of Influence. I wasn't surprised at that, but after thinking about it - I really think it OUGHT to cancel the Spheres of Influence as well as other City-State Alliances: it's the punishment for putting too many eggs in one basket. Not that William wouldn't have been able to stop such a disaster from happening, but it allows the third proposal to potentially do some other kind of harm, which is what the Council is supposed to be aiming for if dealing with a Diplomatic Victory contender.
CONCLUDING COMMENT: The new CS system from the Council is super cool - and I'd only add that Decolonization should nullify Spheres of Influence. Speaking of which - what happens if someone has a Sphere of Influence over a CS that has Open Doors?
POINT #5 - PLEDGES OF PROTECTION ON CITY-STATES: When I was legitimately saving the world from William by eliminating the City-States over whom he had a Sphere of Influence, I'd get the occasional complaint from some of my allies about how upset they were with me, because they were "protecting" these City-States. Eh?
Most of the time, said "protectors" never have any military anywhere near the CS in question, never help them, and only complain if something goes wrong. I don't know what anyone else thinks, but this system needs to be revised somehow: I am not aware of any punishment that gets incurred if you make the pledge and then fail to protect the City-State, but as a reward for making this "pledge," completing missions gives more Influence points. I dunno - this just seems like a really dumb system somehow.
SUGGESTION: How feasible is it to really link protection of a City-State to having military units physically nearby, and then losing influence if one refuses to protect/does not protect the City-State? The issue here is really that you can make pledges willy-nilly, and that they don't mean anything. When you make these with other Civs and break them - you get punished!
CONCLUDING COMMENT: Basically this whole issue is brought up because William was taking over all the City-States, William is hated by everybody, yet the people who hate William are going to "protect" his City-States for some reason and just let him get Spheres of Influence over all of them. This makes no sense, and I shouldn't be getting flack for putting an end to William's diplomatic dominating spree.
POINT #6 - WHO PROPOSES? Throughout the game, I had a lesser amount of votes than most others, but for the most part, I along with everyone else had almost exactly the same amount. But, I almost never got to propose anything at all. How does the proposal rotation work? It seems, in my opinion, to be overly biased to those with the highest votes. Maybe that's the point, but I don't really like this seems if that's how it is - the bias already goes to those with the highest votes because they have the highest votes, being able to kill or pass bills.
SUGGESTION: Just a thought, that everyone gets a proportional amount of proposals according to their amount of votes. That is to say, if someone has 14 votes and I have 7, then the person with 14 votes will get the opportunity to propose something twice as often as I get the opportunity - but I always have the opportunity in rotation. Does this make sense?
CONCLUDING COMMENT: If the host is getting a vote every time (which seems to be the case), this is pretty dang strong, but I don't know why smaller Civs would be ignored completely from proposing something just because they have less votes. Less often makes sense, though.
POINT #7 - STATIC FAITH GENERATION: While the generation of Faith will of course gradually increase more and more as the game goes on, it seems clear to me that Faith is by far the most static resource in the game, especially in comparison with Gold or Production.
I think this is important on three different levels.
#1 - Missionary Costs: Missionary costs increase with time, but I find myself asking - why? If you think about it, the truly scaling cost for a Missionary is the amount of population in the city you intend to convert. As the game goes on, Population in cities in higher, thus you will need more Missionaries - and that is your scaling cost. To need more Missionaries to convert a city in the first place AND to increase the Faith cost for the unit is like a double-penalty, and makes conversion at later stages of the game impossible. Remember, Faith generation is mostly static, so it's not as though we're getting the same amount of Missionaries on those higher costs - no, we're really getting less. This system doesn't make sense.
#2 - Great Person Costs: In this case, it's VERY good that the cost increases with each purchase. I think they're generally fine, but the Great Prophet in particular makes for an oddball. Unless you have the Piety tree finished, using Great Prophets for their Improvement isn't that Great (*cough*), and otherwise they are like a Super Missionary that does a good job, but won't be able to complete it because the Missionaries cost too much as backup. This whole topic I'm less sure about, but something's wonky about it.
#3 - Zealotry: As I mentioned to Gazebo in another thread, the early-game units purchased with Zealotry are so radically cheap on Faith that you can practically purchase entire armies with Faith and never need your Production or Gold to be a part of the contribution. On the other hand, later-game units are so insanely expensive on Faith that you can barely buy any at all: often they are more expensive than Great People, who you more than likely will want more than a single war unit. The thought here is that since Faith is mostly linear, we'd also be looking for a mostly-linear cost to the ground units involved (which, apparently, also includes air units, for some reason): more expensive on Faith for the earlier units, and less expensive on Faith for the later units.
POINT #8 - EARLY GAME VS LATE GAME PRODUCTION: This is my main major point that I want to bring forward, as I've started to notice a trend in the later part of the game as it is with most games like Civ, and it tends to be disadvantageous for the AI, and dull for the Human player. Allow me to explain.
A. First off, one of the notes I took from reading the CBP changes is that there is an aim to curb the production costs of units/buildings so that they stay at about the same amount of turns to construct throughout the game. I definitely see the curb, but I still don't think the curb is steep enough. Whereas early in the game it can take quite a while to build a single unit, late game even my Giant Death Robots take at most four turns to build.
The above in itself is not a problem in most circumstances. However, I believe it is in Civ 5 in particular - specifically because we can only have one unit per tile. Early in the game, that one-per-tile limit normalizes combat in a way that you have to play strategically to get the best out of your few units and try to lose as few as possible in the process. Ultimately, the AI will suffer more losses than you will, but it makes up for that from all its natural bonuses, so you get a sense of an even playing field. Late game, however, the massive wall of units created from faster unit production only makes disadvantages for the AI.
Firstly, there is nothing that 10 human-controlled Battleships/Missile Cruisers can't handle against the AI. I have NEVER seen an AI do anything like this. My point is that the fact that I can even afford to build such a force to decimate everything the AI has is itself a problem. Whereas in the early game, the play is controlled strategic losses, in this case, the size of the AI force is actually irrelevant. The amount of cover I can provide with either Battleships or Artillery in virtue of the fact that I can build these units so quickly and easily far outweighs the immediate value of any other unit to get the job done: I only really need melee to capture a city. It's different when we're talking about 5 units on a field: a melee unit that gets in striking range of my ranged unit really HURTS!
Secondly, throwing two walls of units against each other is in fact quite boring. Late-game - all good colonization spots have been taken, there's no tiles to improve, no tiles to expand to. There's nothing to do but build stuff and send it somewhere. To then take 10 minutes moving all this stuff is actually quite unexciting and not all that fun to look forward to.
Thirdly - and I think most importantly - the ability of the player to build/produce units extraordinarily quickly in the late game causes in my experience a situation where the AI cannot usually prevail offensively. Early on, you just *can't* have your units everywhere at the same time, unless you have awesome choke points. If there's a major problem, you either need to WAIT to produce a unit (which may take too long, hence you need to be ready), or you need to spend that 20 turns of Gold accumulation on a single unit to help defend your Empire against an incoming army. Late game - due to short production times and increased Gold income - I can easily have a totally undefended Empire and ward off AI offensives anyways, because my troops magically appear whenever I need them.
CONCLUDING COMMENT: The production curve for units as the game continues on into the late game needs to be even steeper, and I think it'll solve all of the above problems. This comment also pertains in a certain way to buildings: whereas in the Early/Mid-Game you can sometimes have all your buildings finished, and sometimes not, often you need to choose what to do. I've never felt the need to make choices in the late game - this element just seems to be missing completely from that stage.
B. Being simply a corollary of point A., I take note that the Gold costs of units in the late game do not match the ratio of Gold costs for units in the early game. I do think that this is a problem: whereas early-game units can be around 5 times the cost in Gold as the Production cost, some late-game units are scarcely 1.5 times the cost, and this in Empires that generally produce far more Gold per turn in ratio to production in the late game than the early game. Result: Even more units running around, even more easy buildings completed.
CONCLUDING COMMENT: I think it's important to keep the ratios more static throughout the game.
C. I notice that very often, the Upgrade Costs of units are in fact more than the purchase of the upgraded unit itself. In some cases, the Upgrade Cost doesn't even make sense with regard to stage (example: Volley Gun to Gatling Gun is +5 attack, Gatling Gun to Machine Gun is +10 attack, but the former costs almost twice as much as the latter).
CONCLUDING COMMENT: My understanding is that Upgrade costs, Faith costs, Gold costs, and Production costs are all done with an algorithm. I think it's worth revising the algorithm, but I'll be even more honest than that: scrap the algorithm entirely. Treat each unit on its own merits. Give me a list of every unit's current Gold, Production, Faith costs, and the total Science needed to get to the tech where you can produce it - I'll prepare an excel sheet that weighs everything out and give personalized costs to every unit so that there's a normalized cost/reward for every choice and we don't some of these weird scenarios popping up.
AAAAANNNNNDDDDD.... That's it. I told you it was long.

But yeah, this is what's coming out of playing these games for me. I realize that I'll probably need to re-post much of this elsewhere, likely in pieces, and deal with them one at a time. What I've tried to do here though is provide a context in which much of these thoughts came forth, so that we realize that they're not isolated thoughts, but are things that really impact the flow of the game. And my inspiration was now, so I wanted to be full and complete - and here it is.
If you dared to read, my sincere thanks. Have a blessed day.
-Gidoza