Der_Zorn_gottes
King
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2003
- Messages
- 774
I´d say challenge.
Win Rate Data - Please post your games' results here!
- Thread starter Wodhann
- Start date
Delekhan
Prince
Civilization: Japan (my favorite)
Difficulty: Emperor, at my rank. But Emperor is quite a bit TOUGHER in CBP than it used to be.
Victory Type: Domination (85% of my games end up being domination)
Played on Emperor. Was TOUGHER than usual because of a CRAPPY starting location and very little access to the ocean (as Japan)
Outcome: MORAL DEFEAT. I was able to exploit city trading to make 2 outrageous deals that cleared major obstacles for me. It felt like cheating but I was desperate to break out into the ocean.
Map Type: Communitas. The land % in Communitas is currently way, way too high at ~60%. It should be just under 40% to create reasonably balanced Continents-type maps (this is the way it used to be before May of this year, not sure why it was changed).
Incidentally, one of my neighbors was Indonesia. I traded Luxuries and some other stuff I didn't need, together with a promise to declare war on someone I hated anyway and to vote for some pointless WC resolution, along with a crappy outpost city for one of theirs. I not only gain a nice city location, but I also gained all the unique resources sprinkled around their city. To me I felt I got the bargain of the century.
Rome was very powerful in my game. It took some fancy footwork to keep them at bay while I worked towards my strategy's key milestones. I had every spy available wreaking havoc in their cities, that really helps. I level up my spies elsewhere as diplomats and then send them against one troublesome civ. Every 3 or 4 turns a spy mission triggers. Pretty devastating over time. When they declared war on me, a CS positioned between me and them which was my ally was able to keep 2/3rds of their army tied up due to the fact that I used ships to block naval access. Roman units kept getting slaughtered as they tried to attack the coastal CS by land, giving me loads of time to take bites out of their army and improvements, raising my war score.
Difficulty: Emperor, at my rank. But Emperor is quite a bit TOUGHER in CBP than it used to be.
Victory Type: Domination (85% of my games end up being domination)
Played on Emperor. Was TOUGHER than usual because of a CRAPPY starting location and very little access to the ocean (as Japan)
Outcome: MORAL DEFEAT. I was able to exploit city trading to make 2 outrageous deals that cleared major obstacles for me. It felt like cheating but I was desperate to break out into the ocean.
Map Type: Communitas. The land % in Communitas is currently way, way too high at ~60%. It should be just under 40% to create reasonably balanced Continents-type maps (this is the way it used to be before May of this year, not sure why it was changed).
Incidentally, one of my neighbors was Indonesia. I traded Luxuries and some other stuff I didn't need, together with a promise to declare war on someone I hated anyway and to vote for some pointless WC resolution, along with a crappy outpost city for one of theirs. I not only gain a nice city location, but I also gained all the unique resources sprinkled around their city. To me I felt I got the bargain of the century.
Rome was very powerful in my game. It took some fancy footwork to keep them at bay while I worked towards my strategy's key milestones. I had every spy available wreaking havoc in their cities, that really helps. I level up my spies elsewhere as diplomats and then send them against one troublesome civ. Every 3 or 4 turns a spy mission triggers. Pretty devastating over time. When they declared war on me, a CS positioned between me and them which was my ally was able to keep 2/3rds of their army tied up due to the fact that I used ships to block naval access. Roman units kept getting slaughtered as they tried to attack the coastal CS by land, giving me loads of time to take bites out of their army and improvements, raising my war score.
Delekhan
Prince
One thing I've noticed - 'Walk in the Park' seems to be the go-to difficulty for most users, but I think it might be a little misleading. If something is challenging, and then, when you've crested the 'challenge hill,' it becomes easier, the entire game wasn't a walk in the park.
One would not say, "Yes, climbing Mt. Everest was a walk in the park. Getting up it was insanely hard, but once we started down it was super easy."
G
By the way G, I know exactly what you mean by the "challenge hill" metaphor for Civ, it's totally apt and probably the #1 issue with the game (makes lategame a bit tedious once you've reached your key goals).
But having climbed mountains myself (not Everest), I can tell you the descent from the summit is no walk in the park. Summitting is exhausting, and lack of oxygen makes it tough to know where you're going. It's all too easy to get cocky on the way down and suffer a major injury (pride cometh before the fall!)
Indeed! That's why (sorry, OT) I'm really looking forward to Paradox's Stellaris project. Their concept of 'end-game cataclysms based on player extremes' is really cool.
G
Lord Oden
WarLord
Civilization - Morocco, ver 11/20, Communitas, large, epic
Victory Type - CTD @ turn 238, trending possible defeat, falling behind, Egypt leading
Relative Rank - King player on King rank
Outcome - Challange/CTD...Trending Defeat
Additional Info - Decent starting location with food and size 6 lake, but 2 suger resources under marsh so worthless for a while. UU was to far down the tree to come into play. Loved the Kasbah, could have helped save my game. UA seemed to be a wash. Other Civs would benefit equally from my trades. Allied CS were the best to trade with for some odd reason. Sweden as large and equal neighbor rushed me with a dozen Carolean who could heal 20hp every turn. Had to rush knights to stop from being over run. Lost two border cities in the open, fell back to mountain defensive line where I could pick them off one by one, but could not advance. Building navy for counter, Egypt having free reign, no one bothering them, building like crazy. CTD while processing Spain's turn.
Victory Type - CTD @ turn 238, trending possible defeat, falling behind, Egypt leading
Relative Rank - King player on King rank
Outcome - Challange/CTD...Trending Defeat
Additional Info - Decent starting location with food and size 6 lake, but 2 suger resources under marsh so worthless for a while. UU was to far down the tree to come into play. Loved the Kasbah, could have helped save my game. UA seemed to be a wash. Other Civs would benefit equally from my trades. Allied CS were the best to trade with for some odd reason. Sweden as large and equal neighbor rushed me with a dozen Carolean who could heal 20hp every turn. Had to rush knights to stop from being over run. Lost two border cities in the open, fell back to mountain defensive line where I could pick them off one by one, but could not advance. Building navy for counter, Egypt having free reign, no one bothering them, building like crazy. CTD while processing Spain's turn.
Wodhann
South American Norse God
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2014
- Messages
- 1,507
Since the game ended with a CTD, I can't really count your game since there was no real conclusion to it.
Rather than criticize other people's games, why don't you post your own win stats?
pandasnail
Prince
- Joined
- Nov 18, 2015
- Messages
- 543
Since I made an account here, and played quite a bit this week, I'll be helpful and do some of these.
All these games are Marathon speed 12/24 Large Shuffle map, city distance put back to three and resources revealed. No xcoms and gdrs or time victory, but that didn't come into play unless it changed the AI strategy. On marathon, I should do more civs, prob, but my weak computer doesn't love huge maps.
India, the version that already been reduced some:
Science Victory
King difficulty. Prob my level, esp at the time.
Challenge. I mean once I got the tech lead and then Jesuit Education going it was over. But Germany and Morocco did not make getting there easy. But Nagas and a conveniently placed bay kept me alive. Also at one point Washington came with maybe twenty corvettes and five frigates, but I was able to pay him to go away before he did meaningful damage other than reviving Morocco.
Siam
Loss
King difficulty.
Shuffle did us wrong, putting seven civs on a three civ continent. I foolishly hurried building settlers to get as much land as I could. Egypt (and the Ottomans) disapproved and made it known with war chariots. Oops. At the end, I only had my capital and an island city, Egypt having my other three. I didn't continue from there. Was kinda a shame too, befriending Tibet and Israel had gotten me the first religion.
Venice
Technically a culture win, but the kind that comes from domination.
King. Below my level for my favorite civ at least.
Walk in the Park
After the Siam game, I had to go back to my beloved warmongerer. Rushed Statue of Zeus, built my archer army, built The Great Pyramid, dismantled Spain, and so on from there. Not much to say, typical warmonger snowball game: one civ with archers, one with com bows, one with trebs, etc. Poland posed the only real challenge, but luckily I got them before Hussars. Beautiful beautiful Madagascar came equipped with four caravels to Poland's zero.
Germany
Crashed (this was the version that crashed for everyone)
Prince, below level.
I've never won or lost by diplo and I wanted to make it happen. Was well on my way when the game crashed, Forbidden Palace, One World One Religion etc. The one main thing I'm bad with is defending my cities early, but I didn't have to worry about that on Prince. I quite liked the Hanse and the UA, really nice getting to keep CS allies without needing gold.
Celts
Didn't Finish
King, prob below level at this point.
Building a religion with the Pictish was really fun, and I got lost in myself, and had five capitals in the Classical Era. Which I absolutely could not support on happiness, gold, or even border defense. Couldn't even build cities in the gaps, my happiness was so low. The entire Medieval and Ren eras were spent fixing all this, with A LOT of help from Gandhi. "In your time of need" help and using his Forbidden Palace votes to reject a sanction on me. Early Industrial, I had it all mostly fixed, and was in second behind Ethiopia. Second in the Industrial Era on King is close enough to a win for me, so I stopped there. Especially after I saw JFD put out an exploration update. I, of course, understand if it isn't compiled into stats tho. Finally, the Celtic version of God King is really strong and fun, and the UB specialist made mastery even better. The new mastery, with assured nonspreading, and that pantheon, I really should have won easily, with some patience.
(played a game with a bunch of mods, but will briefly put that I tried out the new religion buildings and quite liked them. Also the JFD Mercenary mod is great for anyone wanting to add some challenge to their difficulty level. He made them cheaper for the AI, so you can't ever know a civ is beaten down)
Korea (with JFD exploration, but that's not a radical gamechanging mod imo)
Emperor, above my level I thought.
Science Win
The Most Dominant win I've ever had, King and Prince included, with one catch. Y'all are smarter than me, I'll leave it to you to decide on 'Moral Defeat'
So the catch is this: I forward settled Siam for Sri Pada. I forward settled Siam again for luxuries and iron. I half forward settled Siam again to connect my other two cities to Seoul. Then I built the Great Library. I did not build an army. My initial warrior got killed by barbarians and JFD exploration attrition. I literally had zero military power score. Rami kept moving his spearmen around the outskirts of Pyongyang and Chongju, but he didn't make a move until he had his Nauries. By then, I had H'wachas. And that was that. By the end, I was twenty techs up on anyone else. Helped as well that I got a start that even this version of Sacred Path was powerful.
Venice
Another 'culture win.' I had 11 of 12 capitals, and didn't feel like fighting Impis for the last when I was 20 turns from the culture win.
Emperor, right level for Venice at the least
Mild Challenge.
Still not much to describe. China was kind enough to plant six cities without an army, and unlike Rami, I know what to do about that. Helps Venice so much that you guys have taught the AI how and where to settle, especially forward settles. Got the Statue of Zeus and The Great Pyramid again. Hero Worship. Greece and Persia fought each other instead of me. (Greece had attacked Manila with a small force first, but then moved to the weaker target, credit to them) Set up the Mayans and Brazil as trade vassals. And snowball from there. Used a tradition-authority meld for what looks like the last time. I did have to reject multiple alone on an island maps to get to a nice Pangaea map. I shouldn't make it sound too easy tho. Brazil used the Great Wall to good effect and the Shoshone their encampments. But the number of units Venice can send into the fight overwhelmed both eventually.
Ok obvi I won't keep playing quite this much, just had a lot of time this last bit. But I'll keep updating this thread as I do. Let me know if there's any other kind of detail you want included!
All these games are Marathon speed 12/24 Large Shuffle map, city distance put back to three and resources revealed. No xcoms and gdrs or time victory, but that didn't come into play unless it changed the AI strategy. On marathon, I should do more civs, prob, but my weak computer doesn't love huge maps.
India, the version that already been reduced some:
Science Victory
King difficulty. Prob my level, esp at the time.
Challenge. I mean once I got the tech lead and then Jesuit Education going it was over. But Germany and Morocco did not make getting there easy. But Nagas and a conveniently placed bay kept me alive. Also at one point Washington came with maybe twenty corvettes and five frigates, but I was able to pay him to go away before he did meaningful damage other than reviving Morocco.
Siam
Loss
King difficulty.
Shuffle did us wrong, putting seven civs on a three civ continent. I foolishly hurried building settlers to get as much land as I could. Egypt (and the Ottomans) disapproved and made it known with war chariots. Oops. At the end, I only had my capital and an island city, Egypt having my other three. I didn't continue from there. Was kinda a shame too, befriending Tibet and Israel had gotten me the first religion.
Venice
Technically a culture win, but the kind that comes from domination.
King. Below my level for my favorite civ at least.
Walk in the Park
After the Siam game, I had to go back to my beloved warmongerer. Rushed Statue of Zeus, built my archer army, built The Great Pyramid, dismantled Spain, and so on from there. Not much to say, typical warmonger snowball game: one civ with archers, one with com bows, one with trebs, etc. Poland posed the only real challenge, but luckily I got them before Hussars. Beautiful beautiful Madagascar came equipped with four caravels to Poland's zero.
Germany
Crashed (this was the version that crashed for everyone)
Prince, below level.
I've never won or lost by diplo and I wanted to make it happen. Was well on my way when the game crashed, Forbidden Palace, One World One Religion etc. The one main thing I'm bad with is defending my cities early, but I didn't have to worry about that on Prince. I quite liked the Hanse and the UA, really nice getting to keep CS allies without needing gold.
Celts
Didn't Finish
King, prob below level at this point.
Building a religion with the Pictish was really fun, and I got lost in myself, and had five capitals in the Classical Era. Which I absolutely could not support on happiness, gold, or even border defense. Couldn't even build cities in the gaps, my happiness was so low. The entire Medieval and Ren eras were spent fixing all this, with A LOT of help from Gandhi. "In your time of need" help and using his Forbidden Palace votes to reject a sanction on me. Early Industrial, I had it all mostly fixed, and was in second behind Ethiopia. Second in the Industrial Era on King is close enough to a win for me, so I stopped there. Especially after I saw JFD put out an exploration update. I, of course, understand if it isn't compiled into stats tho. Finally, the Celtic version of God King is really strong and fun, and the UB specialist made mastery even better. The new mastery, with assured nonspreading, and that pantheon, I really should have won easily, with some patience.
(played a game with a bunch of mods, but will briefly put that I tried out the new religion buildings and quite liked them. Also the JFD Mercenary mod is great for anyone wanting to add some challenge to their difficulty level. He made them cheaper for the AI, so you can't ever know a civ is beaten down)
Korea (with JFD exploration, but that's not a radical gamechanging mod imo)
Emperor, above my level I thought.
Science Win
The Most Dominant win I've ever had, King and Prince included, with one catch. Y'all are smarter than me, I'll leave it to you to decide on 'Moral Defeat'
So the catch is this: I forward settled Siam for Sri Pada. I forward settled Siam again for luxuries and iron. I half forward settled Siam again to connect my other two cities to Seoul. Then I built the Great Library. I did not build an army. My initial warrior got killed by barbarians and JFD exploration attrition. I literally had zero military power score. Rami kept moving his spearmen around the outskirts of Pyongyang and Chongju, but he didn't make a move until he had his Nauries. By then, I had H'wachas. And that was that. By the end, I was twenty techs up on anyone else. Helped as well that I got a start that even this version of Sacred Path was powerful.
Venice
Another 'culture win.' I had 11 of 12 capitals, and didn't feel like fighting Impis for the last when I was 20 turns from the culture win.
Emperor, right level for Venice at the least
Mild Challenge.
Still not much to describe. China was kind enough to plant six cities without an army, and unlike Rami, I know what to do about that. Helps Venice so much that you guys have taught the AI how and where to settle, especially forward settles. Got the Statue of Zeus and The Great Pyramid again. Hero Worship. Greece and Persia fought each other instead of me. (Greece had attacked Manila with a small force first, but then moved to the weaker target, credit to them) Set up the Mayans and Brazil as trade vassals. And snowball from there. Used a tradition-authority meld for what looks like the last time. I did have to reject multiple alone on an island maps to get to a nice Pangaea map. I shouldn't make it sound too easy tho. Brazil used the Great Wall to good effect and the Shoshone their encampments. But the number of units Venice can send into the fight overwhelmed both eventually.
Ok obvi I won't keep playing quite this much, just had a lot of time this last bit. But I'll keep updating this thread as I do. Let me know if there's any other kind of detail you want included!
Der_Zorn_gottes
King
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2003
- Messages
- 774
Civ: Inka
Map: Highlands
Level: Competetive (Immortal)
Outcome: Loss
Difficulty: Challenge
Allthough I picked a very very favourable map/civ combination and restarted a couple times until I found a suitable place, I managaed to screw this one up royally.
It started very well, got one with nature pantheon which resulted in a strong religion (Stupas and Synagoges), aiming for a cultural win. I expanded quickly, seized Constantinople early, and was making over 200 Tourism in the mediveal age.
Then Global peace accords were passed. So all I really had to do is put the game on auto pilot and run home a easy victory.
What I did however was to take 4 more cities from Theodora, and a CS too (they had Great Barrier Reef, and I had one with nature...)
From there on, I had a three-digit warmonger penalty with everyone. Everyone would declare war on me regularly, and while I could easy defend myself, and the poweful AIs were on the other side of the map, I wasn`t going anywhere anymore in this game.
I could never trade with anyone anymor (got embargoed), won`t get open borders with anyone anymore, can`t even get archeologists outside my area.
Way to screw up a sure victory.
Map: Highlands
Level: Competetive (Immortal)
Outcome: Loss
Difficulty: Challenge
Allthough I picked a very very favourable map/civ combination and restarted a couple times until I found a suitable place, I managaed to screw this one up royally.
It started very well, got one with nature pantheon which resulted in a strong religion (Stupas and Synagoges), aiming for a cultural win. I expanded quickly, seized Constantinople early, and was making over 200 Tourism in the mediveal age.
Then Global peace accords were passed. So all I really had to do is put the game on auto pilot and run home a easy victory.
What I did however was to take 4 more cities from Theodora, and a CS too (they had Great Barrier Reef, and I had one with nature...)
From there on, I had a three-digit warmonger penalty with everyone. Everyone would declare war on me regularly, and while I could easy defend myself, and the poweful AIs were on the other side of the map, I wasn`t going anywhere anymore in this game.
I could never trade with anyone anymor (got embargoed), won`t get open borders with anyone anymore, can`t even get archeologists outside my area.
Way to screw up a sure victory.
Civilization - Zulu
Victory Type - Domination
Relative Rank - Easier: Played on Emperor, am an Immortal player (can win on Deity but prefer to play on Immortal; I consider Emperor easy)
Defeat: Lost ~turn 68 to a rexxing Japan. I was playing Pangaea but was at the far bottom east; after fully scouting available territory I was stuck behind a mountain chain with Japan and 3 city states (unable to contact any further Civ's).
Additional Info - Perhaps just a bad start, but after Japan swiped any worthwhile territory so I was forced to make a desperate attempt to rush their closest city. Before I DOW'd, his army was at least 6 units (but they were all out of position). I attacked, and he responded by popping 3 archers in 3 subsequent turns to counter my forces. Before the additional forces, he only had the spearman guard in the city to defend. Ironically enough, he just walked that spearman guard away after I DOW'd to make room for the archer horde.
Other notes - was significantly hammer starved. Started on flood plains with incense and spices with only two forests and one plain. Maybe it was just inexperience with the new tech tree/policies, but I wasn't able to find anything that would sufficiently aid my hammer deficiency. After taking the few techs that revealed resources, I didn't feel like any further techs were providing me advantages to exploit in the immediate future.
Also, City States were randomly getting upset with me. Not sure why, but 2 of the 3 were angry with me (before DOW). Do City States get mad at you as other civs gain influence? I did not trespass or steal workers.
Victory Type - Domination
Relative Rank - Easier: Played on Emperor, am an Immortal player (can win on Deity but prefer to play on Immortal; I consider Emperor easy)
Defeat: Lost ~turn 68 to a rexxing Japan. I was playing Pangaea but was at the far bottom east; after fully scouting available territory I was stuck behind a mountain chain with Japan and 3 city states (unable to contact any further Civ's).
Additional Info - Perhaps just a bad start, but after Japan swiped any worthwhile territory so I was forced to make a desperate attempt to rush their closest city. Before I DOW'd, his army was at least 6 units (but they were all out of position). I attacked, and he responded by popping 3 archers in 3 subsequent turns to counter my forces. Before the additional forces, he only had the spearman guard in the city to defend. Ironically enough, he just walked that spearman guard away after I DOW'd to make room for the archer horde.
Other notes - was significantly hammer starved. Started on flood plains with incense and spices with only two forests and one plain. Maybe it was just inexperience with the new tech tree/policies, but I wasn't able to find anything that would sufficiently aid my hammer deficiency. After taking the few techs that revealed resources, I didn't feel like any further techs were providing me advantages to exploit in the immediate future.
Also, City States were randomly getting upset with me. Not sure why, but 2 of the 3 were angry with me (before DOW). Do City States get mad at you as other civs gain influence? I did not trespass or steal workers.
You lose influence (half the value of the quest) if you fail a CS quest or someone else does it first.
G
2nd attempt
Civilization - England (random)
Victory Type - Yea.. didn't get that far
Relative Rank - Easier: Played on Emperor, am an Immortal player (can win on Deity but prefer to play on Immortal; I consider Emperor easy)
Defeat: Lost ~turn 124. Continents map this time; I started on a Peninsula with only Poland North (there were only two passages through the mountains to Poland). I was able to find 2 CS before being landlocked behind Poland's territory. Eventually I found Egypt and a 3rd CS via Sea route with a Trireme, but could not explore further due to no Open Borders available by the time game was over.
Everything was going very well in the early game - DOW'd Poland to steal his settler, grabbed another worker from my CS neighbor. Was able to wipe out Poland's units using the passages in the mountains to my advantage. Got 4 cities very quickly and was able to hold unhappiness to a reasonable degree (~3 through the end of game after settling third city). Actually got a religion and 2 world wonders. Had an ok army, Poland was in a bad place losing a settler and their army. Had 2 cities hooked up to my capital and was working on the third when it happened - Barbarian Horde attacked the CS (which was a few tiles East of where I was currently roading to my 3rd city). Except they decided instead of attacking the CS they would attack my worker and military escort. At least 4 horsemen, 2 pikeman and 4 composite bowman. All of my cities switched to producing spearmen, swordsman, horseman and horse archers (best at my tech level) but I mostly ended up with triage efforts in my cities. Then Poland attacked while essentially all my units were healing - I was able to beat off all the pikemen and horsemen (or, should say the horseman killed themselves ramming into my cities), and that's when I learned about stunted city range. I had mathematics but you still can't shoot into a forest two tiles away? FeltBadMan. Also by about this time I had 4 cities all with Libraries, all pretty well grown and all grabbed up pretty early but I was still way behind in tech - one comp reached Renaissance pre-turn 120 which felt a bit early (maybe not - I opened up a normal Emperor game to compare at turn 124 and it was still all medieval).
Additional Info - Poland's settler was able to move through my Spearman unit's tile during peace - is this intended? That's what started the first war - he moved onto my Spearman to try and settle North of me (I was holding the bottleneck in the mountains) so since I couldn't stop him I moved into plains then moved back to steal the settler (had I not done so, he would've out expanded me and the result would've been much like the prior game with Japan).
Also I found that if you move onto a CS worker to steal it and declare war when doing so it won't steal the worker. You have to declare war then move onto the worker (just a small bug). Also, I'm running on 2560 x 1600 and was a UI issue where text overlaps the window (culture per turn in cities specifically)
Overall this second game felt really disappointing because of the random nature of the Barbarian Horde and the overwhelming force it immediately and unexpectedly presented.
Is there some key early game tactic I'm missing out on?
Civilization - England (random)
Victory Type - Yea.. didn't get that far
Relative Rank - Easier: Played on Emperor, am an Immortal player (can win on Deity but prefer to play on Immortal; I consider Emperor easy)
Defeat: Lost ~turn 124. Continents map this time; I started on a Peninsula with only Poland North (there were only two passages through the mountains to Poland). I was able to find 2 CS before being landlocked behind Poland's territory. Eventually I found Egypt and a 3rd CS via Sea route with a Trireme, but could not explore further due to no Open Borders available by the time game was over.
Everything was going very well in the early game - DOW'd Poland to steal his settler, grabbed another worker from my CS neighbor. Was able to wipe out Poland's units using the passages in the mountains to my advantage. Got 4 cities very quickly and was able to hold unhappiness to a reasonable degree (~3 through the end of game after settling third city). Actually got a religion and 2 world wonders. Had an ok army, Poland was in a bad place losing a settler and their army. Had 2 cities hooked up to my capital and was working on the third when it happened - Barbarian Horde attacked the CS (which was a few tiles East of where I was currently roading to my 3rd city). Except they decided instead of attacking the CS they would attack my worker and military escort. At least 4 horsemen, 2 pikeman and 4 composite bowman. All of my cities switched to producing spearmen, swordsman, horseman and horse archers (best at my tech level) but I mostly ended up with triage efforts in my cities. Then Poland attacked while essentially all my units were healing - I was able to beat off all the pikemen and horsemen (or, should say the horseman killed themselves ramming into my cities), and that's when I learned about stunted city range. I had mathematics but you still can't shoot into a forest two tiles away? FeltBadMan. Also by about this time I had 4 cities all with Libraries, all pretty well grown and all grabbed up pretty early but I was still way behind in tech - one comp reached Renaissance pre-turn 120 which felt a bit early (maybe not - I opened up a normal Emperor game to compare at turn 124 and it was still all medieval).
Additional Info - Poland's settler was able to move through my Spearman unit's tile during peace - is this intended? That's what started the first war - he moved onto my Spearman to try and settle North of me (I was holding the bottleneck in the mountains) so since I couldn't stop him I moved into plains then moved back to steal the settler (had I not done so, he would've out expanded me and the result would've been much like the prior game with Japan).
Also I found that if you move onto a CS worker to steal it and declare war when doing so it won't steal the worker. You have to declare war then move onto the worker (just a small bug). Also, I'm running on 2560 x 1600 and was a UI issue where text overlaps the window (culture per turn in cities specifically)
Overall this second game felt really disappointing because of the random nature of the Barbarian Horde and the overwhelming force it immediately and unexpectedly presented.
Is there some key early game tactic I'm missing out on?
No More Civilian Traffic Jams eliminates the 'block civilians' tactic, as civ units can move under foreign military units (and civs can stack as much as needed in one tile, but only one can 'act' in a tile that way).
The Barbarian Horde event is nasty, yep, and the AI takes notice if you're getting battered by barbs. Settling really close to a CS means you gotta keep a token force nearby to protect it.
The CBP is a good 2 difficulty levels higher than normal civ by virtue of the AI simply playing better. They actually have lower bonuses at each difficulty level, except for deity (which is higher), and settler/warlord (which are about the same as vanilla).
If you need early game strategies, I'd open up a new thread, as there are users around that love to help.
G
PurpleMentat
Videographer
Civilization - Maya
Victory Type - Cultural
Relative Rank - Compatible: Immortal player playing on Immortal
Outcome - Choose one: Challenge: Game was fair and challenging.
A particular religious combination let me kind of dominate from mid-game onwards. Ceremonial Burial, Sainthood, and To the Glory of God combined with Splendor, University of Sankore, and Arsenal of Democracy to give huge bonuses for every Great Person I expended. Early game was slow, as I stocked up great people until I could get more bang for my bulb. Didn't found religion until I had Splendor, Enhanced ASAP, and tried to save most GP's until I had the University. Mastery made me want to work all the specialists, Pagodas provided general boost + big culture + art slot.
Feels like a very strong combination, if you can survive long enough to put it together. Also, not very suited to Culture victory, as you need Piety. Should support Science and Domination just fine, going Tradition to Piety to Imperialism or Rationalism. Internal trade routes were key to feeding my civ, as only the capital could support itself. Once I had Arsenal of Democracy, all of the City States were my allies whenever they wasn't a coup or great diplomat employed. It would have been possible for the AI to band together and Decolonize me, which would have really sucked to recover from.
Not certain if this is overpowered or if I need to move up to Diety.
Victory Type - Cultural
Relative Rank - Compatible: Immortal player playing on Immortal
Outcome - Choose one: Challenge: Game was fair and challenging.
A particular religious combination let me kind of dominate from mid-game onwards. Ceremonial Burial, Sainthood, and To the Glory of God combined with Splendor, University of Sankore, and Arsenal of Democracy to give huge bonuses for every Great Person I expended. Early game was slow, as I stocked up great people until I could get more bang for my bulb. Didn't found religion until I had Splendor, Enhanced ASAP, and tried to save most GP's until I had the University. Mastery made me want to work all the specialists, Pagodas provided general boost + big culture + art slot.
Feels like a very strong combination, if you can survive long enough to put it together. Also, not very suited to Culture victory, as you need Piety. Should support Science and Domination just fine, going Tradition to Piety to Imperialism or Rationalism. Internal trade routes were key to feeding my civ, as only the capital could support itself. Once I had Arsenal of Democracy, all of the City States were my allies whenever they wasn't a coup or great diplomat employed. It would have been possible for the AI to band together and Decolonize me, which would have really sucked to recover from.
Not certain if this is overpowered or if I need to move up to Diety.
Der_Zorn_gottes
King
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2003
- Messages
- 774
Civ: Inca
Victory type: Cultural
Realtive rank: Compatible (Immortal)
Outcome: Win (Challenge)
Inka (old version without recent buff) on highlands. I played my preferred gamestyle using sacred sites and city spawn for a lot of early tourism (unfortunately, a AI grabbed Stupas, which I didn`t pick when I founded, because I was sure AI never choses them - I was wrong). Game went smoothly, but I was astonished how many votes Austria got - played well, but was still far away from winning when I did. Won around turn 800 (Marathon speed), fastest peaceful victory I ever had.
Victory type: Cultural
Realtive rank: Compatible (Immortal)
Outcome: Win (Challenge)
Inka (old version without recent buff) on highlands. I played my preferred gamestyle using sacred sites and city spawn for a lot of early tourism (unfortunately, a AI grabbed Stupas, which I didn`t pick when I founded, because I was sure AI never choses them - I was wrong). Game went smoothly, but I was astonished how many votes Austria got - played well, but was still far away from winning when I did. Won around turn 800 (Marathon speed), fastest peaceful victory I ever had.
Huge, Pangaea, Emperor, Standard Speed, Strategic Balance, Random Personalities, Cultural Diversity mod.
Civilization - Greece
Victory Type - Diplomacy
Relative Rank - Compatible (haven't lost on emperor, but haven't won on immortal either).
Outcome - Win, Challenge
Started next to to Russia, China, and Carthage. They all declared war on me at some points and managed to take one city from Russia and two from Carthage. After a long and pretty tough war with Carthage, things settled down and I focused hard on science. Got one world, one religion along with both Roman Forum and Summer Palace so I controlled the WC from the start, enacting spheres of influence, getting world religion and world ideologi. Was a little scared of Songhai who conquered half of the map, but I managed to stay on somewhat good terms with Askia as well as being on the other side of the continent.
In conclusion, a pretty easy game after Carthage was put into place
Civilization - Greece
Victory Type - Diplomacy
Relative Rank - Compatible (haven't lost on emperor, but haven't won on immortal either).
Outcome - Win, Challenge
Started next to to Russia, China, and Carthage. They all declared war on me at some points and managed to take one city from Russia and two from Carthage. After a long and pretty tough war with Carthage, things settled down and I focused hard on science. Got one world, one religion along with both Roman Forum and Summer Palace so I controlled the WC from the start, enacting spheres of influence, getting world religion and world ideologi. Was a little scared of Songhai who conquered half of the map, but I managed to stay on somewhat good terms with Askia as well as being on the other side of the continent.
In conclusion, a pretty easy game after Carthage was put into place
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
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
Astronomy. It's hidden from view due to the number of things it unlocks. I had to look through each tech in the Civilopedia to find it.
Embarking over Ocean should really have preference and be one of the first things visible.
Ahhhhh, thank you, Kolaris! I appreciate this.
I was actually thinking that perhaps we should re-write all the tech descriptions in point form, so the text itself displays very clearly what you get from it.
pandasnail
Prince
- Joined
- Nov 18, 2015
- Messages
- 543
Marathon speed 16/32 Huge Shuffle map, city distance put back to three and resources revealed. No xcoms and gdrs or time victory. Tried Huge map again, and my computer could handle it now somehow, tho I didn't truly get to mass railroads, which I think ups the taxing some? Don't know how you guys have managed to make this game better in basically every way! Also, RAs and no tech trading.
England 11/26 Beta
Overwhelming embarrassing loss
Emperor. I'm having some success with this level, but for sure not this game. Call it above my level, don't want to punish UK in the stats for my failure lol.
I actually thought I had build a competent defense for my border cities with Dromons and Composites. Then Nebbie's Bowman showed up and wrecked me, I was completely unprepared for the Indirect Fire promotion that early. Didn't have any horse, which I imagine is the way to fight them. Was quite an intelligent attack by the AI, they almost always made sure to put their three Bowman across the hills and forests that my cities couldn't fire over. And then send some horsemen in when the city went red, or to help against my spears and swords. Didn't get a religion and at the least the early deficit and long term gains that Purple Mental outlined elsewhere for the current Progress tree doesn't fit my play style. Was gonna be a sit&watch game I think, until Nebbie had his say.
Iroquois 11/28 Beta
Culture Win (the legitimate kind)
Emperor
Very Easy
Ah, an early production civ. Much better (for me). I love the Longhouse so much, I thought it was a bug maybe. But two versions later it's still the same, so I guess not. Let tradition take care of growth, and worked as many specialists as I could. The combo of the Tradition engineer and the Longhouse engineer and the Longhoused forest tiles I did work let me build wonders as I wished. Got The Pyramids, Oracle, St. Basil (miss you already), and Alhambra early and basically all the Ren culture wonders, Leaning, Sistine, Uff, and Louvre. In retrospect, Pyramids was a mistake, Museum of Heliosomebody was a better choice for the Great People Bonus. Plus the Mastery religious belief from Sacred Path. Actually wasn't an overwhelming forest start, at least for Shuffle, but good enough. Used to try out different beliefs, but now I like to use Mastery almost no matter what. But I play specialist heavy already. And quite a bit of luck too: My 'starting monopoly' was cocoa, which is more culture. I started next to Venice. (I hope Funak doesn't read this thread) As a Venice defender, it pains to me admit, AI Venice are in a lot of trouble if they start next to the human. I saw their Merchant approaching, and moved my Mohawk Warriors towards Sri Lanka, immediately got a free city and a free Mt Fuji with it after the puppeting.
I actually did build a competent defense this time, so Mongolia and Polynesia teamed up on Morocco instead of me. And when Mongolia finished this war depleted, I got his capital and four Kasbah cities from him AND got paid to by England, Genghis was hated so much. Later I got some Moai cities too, so that's even more culture. And 32 city states (minus ones Genghis or Enrico claimed) equals a lot of those 'you have impressed Byblos with your culture' quests to win. So basically I had a perfect start. The only real drawback was, even after the conquered lands, I didn't have a single coal or oil. But the game was functionally over by then. Oh, and my capital didn't have a Stone Works resource, so I just couldn't use that part of the tradition tree. Oh well, I wanted all my trade routes on tourism anyway, esp after getting the Aesthetics policy.
Weirdest thing, I'd never seen this before, maybe its common for people who play peacefully often: Well before war broke out, Genghis was building roads IN MY TERRITORY. I didn't want the empty space near Venice, it had no forest or vital resource, and Kami didn't want the inland parts. So Mongolia claimed it eventually, and tried to link it to Kara through me. I have so many questions lol. Is there a way to stop him besides a DoW? Could I kick his worker off the tile if I wanted to build an improvement of my own? Who pays the maintenance? If, during war, he reached those particular roads, would he get the movement bonus? If I did DoW, would I get those workers for free, or would they transport away like soldiers do? I'd guess, no, no, me, no, they'd transport, but I didn't test.
(Anyone who read this can see why I'm confused about proper difficulty level for me)
England 11/26 Beta
Overwhelming embarrassing loss
Emperor. I'm having some success with this level, but for sure not this game. Call it above my level, don't want to punish UK in the stats for my failure lol.
I actually thought I had build a competent defense for my border cities with Dromons and Composites. Then Nebbie's Bowman showed up and wrecked me, I was completely unprepared for the Indirect Fire promotion that early. Didn't have any horse, which I imagine is the way to fight them. Was quite an intelligent attack by the AI, they almost always made sure to put their three Bowman across the hills and forests that my cities couldn't fire over. And then send some horsemen in when the city went red, or to help against my spears and swords. Didn't get a religion and at the least the early deficit and long term gains that Purple Mental outlined elsewhere for the current Progress tree doesn't fit my play style. Was gonna be a sit&watch game I think, until Nebbie had his say.
Iroquois 11/28 Beta
Culture Win (the legitimate kind)
Emperor
Very Easy
Ah, an early production civ. Much better (for me). I love the Longhouse so much, I thought it was a bug maybe. But two versions later it's still the same, so I guess not. Let tradition take care of growth, and worked as many specialists as I could. The combo of the Tradition engineer and the Longhouse engineer and the Longhoused forest tiles I did work let me build wonders as I wished. Got The Pyramids, Oracle, St. Basil (miss you already), and Alhambra early and basically all the Ren culture wonders, Leaning, Sistine, Uff, and Louvre. In retrospect, Pyramids was a mistake, Museum of Heliosomebody was a better choice for the Great People Bonus. Plus the Mastery religious belief from Sacred Path. Actually wasn't an overwhelming forest start, at least for Shuffle, but good enough. Used to try out different beliefs, but now I like to use Mastery almost no matter what. But I play specialist heavy already. And quite a bit of luck too: My 'starting monopoly' was cocoa, which is more culture. I started next to Venice. (I hope Funak doesn't read this thread) As a Venice defender, it pains to me admit, AI Venice are in a lot of trouble if they start next to the human. I saw their Merchant approaching, and moved my Mohawk Warriors towards Sri Lanka, immediately got a free city and a free Mt Fuji with it after the puppeting.
I actually did build a competent defense this time, so Mongolia and Polynesia teamed up on Morocco instead of me. And when Mongolia finished this war depleted, I got his capital and four Kasbah cities from him AND got paid to by England, Genghis was hated so much. Later I got some Moai cities too, so that's even more culture. And 32 city states (minus ones Genghis or Enrico claimed) equals a lot of those 'you have impressed Byblos with your culture' quests to win. So basically I had a perfect start. The only real drawback was, even after the conquered lands, I didn't have a single coal or oil. But the game was functionally over by then. Oh, and my capital didn't have a Stone Works resource, so I just couldn't use that part of the tradition tree. Oh well, I wanted all my trade routes on tourism anyway, esp after getting the Aesthetics policy.
Weirdest thing, I'd never seen this before, maybe its common for people who play peacefully often: Well before war broke out, Genghis was building roads IN MY TERRITORY. I didn't want the empty space near Venice, it had no forest or vital resource, and Kami didn't want the inland parts. So Mongolia claimed it eventually, and tried to link it to Kara through me. I have so many questions lol. Is there a way to stop him besides a DoW? Could I kick his worker off the tile if I wanted to build an improvement of my own? Who pays the maintenance? If, during war, he reached those particular roads, would he get the movement bonus? If I did DoW, would I get those workers for free, or would they transport away like soldiers do? I'd guess, no, no, me, no, they'd transport, but I didn't test.
(Anyone who read this can see why I'm confused about proper difficulty level for me)
