Yogscast Civ V games

[Vladimir Lemon]

I am a massive Yogscast fan particularly Sips and recently I have discovered their whole Civ Series and I must admit they are horrific possibly the worst I have seen. Many of them have very basic knowledge I.e. Just rush Great Library no matter what etc with very basic understanding of their Civ. It frustrates me but I digress it is hysterical the way they play and their banter is good.

What do you think?

 

[sendos]

I've been watching their series and here is my evaluation of the players involved:

Lewis - he knows most of the features of the game and is obviously the best one in yogscast at civ 5. He understands the crucial elements of the game. However, he acts newbish at times such as sending a land melee unit to attack an embarked enemy.

Duncan - he is reasonably good at the game but he ignores tourism which killed him in the previous game! He still ignores it! Sips is going to rip him to shreds if they both choose a different ideology. Currently, he knows how to play as the Dutch using the Sea Beggars.

Sips - all round, he is pretty solid, except military warfare. He still has little experience in warfare. Good use of tourism though.

Rythian - he does whine a bit, but he's relatively ok. He knows how to go tall and is doing well as Venice. However, he needs more military experience as Duncan has blockaded his capitol.

Sjin - he knows how to use religion rather well. He is pretty ordinary as Shoshone and pretty ordinary in warfare. In previous game, he did reasonably well as Spain. Needs more work on tourism rather than waste GA's on golden ages.

Pyrionflax (visitor in current series) - haven't heard much from him, but my evaluation is just he doesn't know anything about science penalty and he "balls upped" his attack on Lewis. He will eventually stall later in game.

 

[Vladimir Lemon]

Duncan - he is reasonably good at the game but he ignores tourism which killed him in the previous game! He still ignores it! Sips is going to rip him to shreds if they both choose a different ideology. Currently, he knows how to play as the Dutch using the Sea Beggars.

IMO Duncan is playing Season 3 right he did blockade Rythian's trade, got gold to stop it and now is taking city states which is effecting Rythian because of it. Good Job mighty Duncan.

 

[Fangren]

I'm also a Yogscast fan, and I love their series although I'm not really good at the game myself so I can't really judge how well I think they're doing.

Also, if anyone is interested/doesn't already know, they'll be doing a Civ V livestream on wednesday, the 18th starting at around 2 pm EST on their twitch channel. Apparently there's going to be many more members of the yogscast playing than just the ones in their regular series.

 

[Fraulzar]

I've been watching the series and they aren't very good at Civ, no doubt. It would be even better if they understood the ins and outs of the game, but they are entertaining nonetheless.

Pity there's no Simon though, as his good-natured clownery makes yogscast imo.

 

[sendos]

IMO Duncan is playing Season 3 right he did blockade Rythian's trade, got gold to stop it and now is taking city states which is effecting Rythian because of it. Good Job mighty Duncan.

Just wait until modern era and you'll see what I mean. His happiness will plummet rapidly if Sips and Duncan choose different ideologies. Sips is likely to choose freedom. Duncan is likely to choose autocracy or order. So I think Pyrion's tourism might alleviate some of his unhappiness assuming that Pyrion chooses autocracy (which is also likely). Also, have a look back at the vids. For the first time, somebody shows the tourism page! Thank you Sips! Now we know he's on his way to a cultural victory...at least cultural victory over Duncan.

I also would like to see a massive 8-10 player MP game. Add Hatfilms if any of them are fans of strategy games.

As for me, my civ game crashes if I try to play MP with more than 5 players (especially if their ping is high). So that's one reason why I am intrigued by their series, just to see how moderate sized games play out.

 

[Nick Carpathia]

Are you kidding me Sips is absolutely terrible at this game. Tiny cities, no management, unimproved river tiles, an unimproved river marshes. I have no idea why Duncan hasn't conquered Sips already. Or last game, again, tiny cities, not using Polders on the dozen floodplain and marsh tiles in his vicinity.

Pyrion is stagnating a bit in the midgame, but overall it looks like his management is fairly solid. He has a ton of really good land. The problem is he really needs more growth, and raw land isn't that valuable in Civ5. His science is weak right now, but Liberty Wide science is always weak in the midgame. Can he catch up in the lategame? Dunno, he's top dog and Lewis used that opportunity to align the world against him.

Though Pyrion really did screw up his war, he seems to always lack melee units. He basically wasted his window of opportunity, where he had a ton of CKNs and Lewis had a smattering of Compbows. Maybe he should have finished off Sjin first, grabbed the excellent Shoshone capital (amusingly, actual China), and only then finish off tundra-locked Lewis. But he got greedy, thought Sjin was crippled, and ended up being 2v1ed when he could have finished the two off piecemeal.

Duncan is surprisingly okay at combat, he's had alot of experience. Unlike Rythian, who sent his galleasses off into the fog piecemeal and got butchered.

 

[sendos]

I do admit that Sips has been rather lucky in avoiding most wars, but at least he has a plan. He's going for a cultural victory as France. I do not know whether he knows this or not, but eventually he'll ruin Duncan's game with ideological pressure. I actually see some improvement from Sips in contrast to his previous games as Venice and Netherlands, especially Venice, where barbarians pillaged all his improvements and he didn't do anything for about 100 turns. This is in contrast to Duncan, who has a lot of potential but is ignoring a key element in the game and it will do him over, unless he chooses the same ideology as Sips.

Lewis has been very unfortunate with a tundra start, but he has actually caught up rather well. However, to add to my criticisms, he settled a third city right in the midst of tundra just for a luxury resource. It might keep the barbs away but it's costing him science and happiness.

If they do continue the game (unlike the previous series where they just stopped and declared Lewis the victor on score about halfway into the game according to number of turns), it will be between Duncan (science), Lewis (science), Sips (cultural) and Rythian (diplomatic). Sjin, to me, seems somewhat crippled in this game, along with Pyrion, who is still expanding even though he's got the lead in the score. I could be wrong; either of these players could catch up late in game, but I see Sjin's general influence as weak and Pyrion's strong military influence decaying by tech as he has to focus on defensive manouevres until Lewis and Sjin make a mistake. Also, I hope Sjin knows how to win a science victory and use airports too.

I also have to add a general criticism, but I don't blame them too much: in multiplayer, spawned barbarians move straight away in BNW, but in SP, this is not the case. The implications are that a barbarian could appear 2 tiles next to your worker (assuming that there is a flat unmarshed tile in between) and take it before you could act. Furthermore, they complain a lot about barbs but they don't think ahead: you take out a barb encampment, another one is going to appear nearby unless you have the wild territory revealed by patrolling units.

 

[Camikaze]

Moderator Action: Moved to Stories & LPs.

 

[Nick Carpathia]

So as soon as Duncan realises he just goes and kills Sips. This is not much of a strategy.

Lewis has some terrible city management as well, there was a point where he had an unemployed citizen in his capital, but an unworked quarry.

I noticed that Pyrion plays with his tile yields on, this basically tells me that he cares about improving his cities. I wish we got more shots from his perspective, I genuinely don't care about Sip's garbage city management.

 

[Pliped]

Im a series behind so I dont know what they are like atm but from what I've seen:

They all make pretty basic mistakes throughout the game due to not understanding game mechanics or just being a bit lazy and unattentative. It is clear that Lewis is the only one who plays the game on a regular basis as he actually knows what the different wonders etc do.

If they went up against a reasonable AI then they would be really exposed, atm most of them are reasonably incompetent enough to make it balanced.

The major mistake I've seen so far (I imagine this no longer counts for the latest series?) is that most of them dont build anything like enough military units resulting in barbarians still causing them issues far later than they should be.

But hey I dont watch the yogscast for the brilliant tactical schemes, I watch it for the banter and to have a laugh, if they are still providing that then what more can I ask for?

 

[sendos]

Well, Rythian is on his way to a diplomatic victory as I predicted, Sips has gained influence over Duncan and will gain influence over Sjin and Pyrion soon, Lewis has stalled Sips' CV by winning the world's fair. At least Duncan is trying to stall Rythian's diplomatic victory, but at the same time he is also reducing the number of votes needed to win.

It also appears that Duncan is not the only one ignoring tourism. So is Sjin and Pyrion. Why is it that warmonger players like Pyrion and Duncan ignore tourism? They'll never go autocracy unless they have control over their ideological pressure. They'd be shooting themselves in the foot if they don't follow that advice.

In a way, the yogscast civ 5 is becoming a combination of how to play and how not to play civ 5. Then again, this is my view, and I usually play to win whilst having fun in the process.