f13.net forums - Civilization V- Might actually be good now. Stay tuned.

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June 20, 2025, 06:39:23 AM

we're back, baby

I just hope they* use OpenMP and either use /largeaddressaware of a 64bit compiler (since I assume they don't use gcc). Maybe its just me but if you add a couple of Mods this game will spike one core at 100% after the Industrial Era (causing the game to hang noticeably) while the rest of my computer is bopping along quite happily, undaunted by the minimal RAM/CPU usage.

*they in this instance means Firaxus, but the entire game industry really.

Speaking of mods, Civ 5 now has Steam Workshop support.

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[MODDING]

- Steam Workshop enabled.
- DLL swapping is now possible in-game.
- Updated mod browser to utilize Steam Workshop.
- Font Icons are now moddable.
- Unit art is now fully moddable.
- Mods are now activated the moment you click "Next" on the mods browser rather than when you click "Single Player."

Looked pretty underwhelming. Hopefully the folks who carried on Kael's legacy get active with this (the Master of Mana folks or whomever).

Played the expansion for about 30 minutes last night (about to dive into it again). So far, the religion stuff is pretty cool. You found a pantheon at first (choosing from a list of types that all have different bonuses for your civ), and then later found an actual religion. Excited to see new resources too- so far have noticed salt and truffles. Didn't get far enough to really check diplomacy out, but you can establish an embassy with other civs by speaking to their leaders (no units or buildings to buy). Anyone else play yet?

I've got this ready to go when I get home, but I won't have a chance to play for another 5-6 hours. I plan on putting in 2-3 hours this evening, so I'll report back tonight.

Couple really nice changes -

- Can't pop GPs for Golden Ages anymore, except for Artists (who can no longer culture bomb)
- Building the fort thing that the Great General makes does a culture bomb
- embarked units can stack with navy units for protection Heart

Played for about an hour so far. The new faith/religion mechanic is neat. I've been exploring it just to see how it works. I'm enjoying Byzantium quite a bit. Their early game special boat + great lighthouse wonder has gave me utter control over the seas in the early game.

I haven't really seen much combat yet. The Barbarians seemed a little smarter, particularly with waiting until two of them were around to get the flanking bonus before attacking me, but that is a pretty small sample size. Therefore I can't really comment too much on the combat AI so far.

In generally it feels good so far, not drastically different from the base game, but a solid across the board improvement for sure.

You all don't have the dedication to Civs that you should.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/18/tech/gaming-gadgets/civilization-ii-ten-years/index.html

Played about 5 hours today as Carthage, located down in India with Spain in Mesopotamia and Songhai in China.

I used my unique ships to invade a city-state. Four boats and two spearmen and a Great General sacked a 5 pop city.

Barbarians. Are everywhere. I had to keep my navy on patrol, because pirate ships would constantly cut my trade routes (but not plunder my work boats). They were easy to kill, but a camp seemed to spawn a ship every ten turns. Actually started farming them because they gave my ships xp and I gained +7 culture and, later with a policy, gold for each one I sunk.

Religion. So far I like it. I got my Faith up to 200 and got a Great Prophet who I burnt (heh) for a religion. I chose God of the Sea (+1 Sea Prod.) and got to choose my symbol and even could customize my religions name. It seems like Faith builds up then you spend it to add bonuses to your religion, etc. I had Songhai ask for open borders so they could come to the 'holy city of their God' and worship! Don't forget to buy souvenirs!

Spain kept extorting a city-state I swore to protect, then Isabella told me "As if you're going to stop me." This shall not stand! I built my unique elephants and met her in Persia. The elephants are as strong as swordsmen and have a 15% fear bonus. But her spearmen exacted a heavy heavy toll. The combat seems longer, with units able to absorb more damage than before. My elephants couldn't even wipe out a catapult in one turn. But the combat felt pretty good and we were in terrible country for offense. So far the AI seems OK, but they did have enormous defensive advantages so we'll see.

Lastly, they moved Trading Posts (+1 gold per hex) wayyy up the research tree to Guilds. It also seems harder to have a lot of cities, happiness seems more capped, but then again I was going Honor so that might be it.

Tomorrow night will see a 'left hook' out of the Arabian peninsula by my armies in an attempt to break the stalemate in Persia and sack Madrid, which sits between the Tigris and Euphrates like Gondor ruled by Numenoreans.

Downloading expansion now…

Hopefully, I did not piss my hard earned money away on a failed resurrection attempt…

Played about 4 more hours tonight.

Few more thoughts:

Religion - I had a LOT of faith built up after a while so I just kept buying mercenaries with it. At that point I just kept converting more and more cities. Eventually the entire continent bar once major city was converted so I started sending them on overseas missions :). Overall, I like the religion stuff, it doesn't seem to add an absolute ton but I found it worthwhile. One of the things that was really interesting to me was that even though I wasn't playing a military focused strategy, I was able to put a bit of pressure on with missionaries, and it gave me something a bit more active to do while playing what was a more passive playstyle. So, that is good.

I'm not quite sure I understand how spies work. Eventually I just (seemingly to me) randomly got one, and I could send him around to spy, or put him in my own city to defensive spy. I sent him off to Mongolia, and he did some spying, but was found and killed before anything could come of it. Then eventually I got another one, but it was really unclear to me exactly how I was getting them or why.

Got into a prolonged war with the Mayans over a border city I built. The AI definitely seemed improved. They were smart enough to sweep in right after I built it with a reasonable formation and took it from me quickly before I had really set up any kind of defense. I mustered my units and thanks to my early special boat unit (the name of which I forget) I was able to take it back pretty quickly and force a retreat. We then went back and forth over a few hundred years without much actually happening. Overall it felt more satisfying than the combat I remember, but I haven't played in a while.

What killed the game for me is the pacing problem and AI gaming the whole war system.
I don't get the feeling that I can cooperate with my closest neighbours cause he'll accuse me of encroaching on his territory and such. Especially when I'm near the top and they all went 'let's gang up on him' out of spite. Years of peace meant nothing to these guys. They want to win, but they really can't. They're in no position to win and chose to kill themselves.

Have they fixed this shit yet? And the over-reliance on gold to hurry things along - pretty depressing when you consider high city growth or picking a good city for research/industrial centers used to matter a lot in previous Civs. This time around - a lot of the squares just lack the attractive bonuses and most of the time revolves around 'does it have that unique resource I want?'

They fixed it to some extent, mostly by making gold slightly harder to come by (trading posts moved up a lot in the tech tree, Medieval now iirc, and only give +1 gold initially) and by adding faith as an alternative currency (which can be especially useful earlier in the game I'd say).
But resources haven't been completely reworked or anything (once you're far enough in the tech tree there's virtually no difference with how it was at launch) and simply the fact you can buy pretty much anything at any time with gold still makes it the most useful thing to have by far.

As far as the AI goes, it feels better somehow, but I can't put my finger on why Ohhhhh, I see.

, but that cooperation with close neighbours is nigh impossible to keep up if you're even slightly expansive was just as true for III and IV imo.
There are some more diplomatic options now with religion and spies, so it's a tad deeper.

It's mostly more of the same though, so if you're convinced Beyond the Sword was the pinnacle of the series, this expansion won't win you over.

Quote from: rk47 on June 24, 2012, 11:49:23 PM

I don't get the feeling that I can cooperate with my closest neighbours cause he'll accuse me of encroaching on his territory and such.

This is still somewhat of an issue, although I've had some success with giving my neighbors free luxury resources. But is undoubtedly a little wonky still. I've had civilizations go from asking a declaration of friendship to denouncing me on consecutive turns (and vice versa).

How long does this thing take to launch for everyone? It is well over 2 minutes for me, and my machine isn't THAT old (i7-920, 12GB RAM). The whole thing is just so suboptimized it is just depressing. Does it even use multiple cores?

Quote from: WayAbvPar on June 25, 2012, 02:31:24 PM

A while. I haven't timed it, but it is quite long. I will say that the late game stuff doesn't chug quite as bad as it used to for me at least.

Review of God & Kings
(for TL;DR go to the bottom)

I've been playing Civ since Civ II so I've been a fan of this series for a long time. When Civ V released, it had quite a legacy to live up to. Sadly, it didn't. The vanilla release was a buggy clusterfuck of a game. It was actually desirable NOT to build buildings, as their cost ate up gold...which was used for everything. Subsequent patches have altered the game considerably and mostly for the better.

Now we have the first expansion, Gods & Kings (notice the dagger in the middle? I guess that's the assassin part of the xpac hiding in plain sight) and it's good, but not great. GNK adds religion and spying to Civ V and improves the AI and diplomacy, etc. Now I'd like to talk about creating your own Invisible Sky Wizard.

Religion comes to the game as a design it yourself project. Faith, a new, fourth resource (like gold, culture) has been added. Earn enough Faith and you can found your very own religion! As historically, you want to create a faith that will improve your peoples lives. The selections are varied and many, you can definately find one to boost your empire. Which is what religion does in Civ V; it enhances your empire with bonuses to almost any facet. Carthage, in my game, took God of the Seas, which granted +1 Production in sea hexes. You can even expend Great Prophets to add more bonuses to your religion.
Now that you've established your religion above worshiping that hot stuff that burns your hand, it's time to use it! What good is a religion if you can't shove it down someone's throat? To enable that, you'll need Missionaries. You spend Faith and send them out to other cities to browbeat and annoy even more folks to your faith. Progress! But wait! Other civs might demand you stop spreading the truth. If you refuse you take a negative diplomacy hit. If they are trying to spread their own heresy, you'll take a second diplomacy hit! Turns out folks get riled when their religions compete. Huh.
Other stuff you can buy with Faith can be done if you chose your religion wisely. For instance, in my second game as the Celts, I started in flood plains with lots of incense. I created Christianity and chose God of the Festival. So I get bonus faith and culture in tended wine and incense hexes. I then chose to be able to build Cathedrals and Monasteries. Going for a culture win, these buildings provide faith and culture bonuses. Over the course of the game, these bonuses should really add up and push me faster to my culture win. Suck it atheists!
Disclaimer: Spreading your religion in an empire that told you to stop pisses them dead off. Ethiopia has crossed the world to stomp a mudhole in my empire's ass. Good luck! I'm behind 7 proxies AND I have a religious trait called Defender of the Faith that gives me a +20% combat bonus when fighting near a city that follows my religion!

Spying comes to us with no units on the map, just a spy window where you select your spy and give him his orders. In order to spy on another civ, you need an embassy in their capital (just a diplomatic agreement does it). You gain your first spy when you reach the Renaissance Age and get another every age after that. Spies can rig elections in city-states and steal technology. Throwing gold at a city-state won't necessarily flip a CS from its current ally; you need a spy to rig some ballot boxes, and throw away those pesky hanging chads. If you are pursuing a CS strat, spies can be quite handy. I haven't gotten too deep into spying yet, so I may be missing some features.
Say, are you tired of sailing down the coast in your galley when another civ shows up in a metal ship and flings magic iron balls at you? What you need, my friend, is to double down on your research, implement crash courses in navig...na fuck that, STEAL that shit. A spy can go to an enemy city with 'potential' (higher is better) and try to steal research. Enemy spies and buildings, such as constabularies, can stop or even kill your spy. THEN you have an awkward conversation with the offended civ and could cause a diplomacy hit. Strangely enough, if they are apologizing for their spying, if you respond angrily, they take a diplomancy hit against YOU! How dare you get mad just because we were spying? However, if your neighbor is Genghis Khan, you tend to let that shit slide.

AI
The AI is improved. Even at sea. In Civ V, the civs were afraid to get their toes wet. in GNK, their fleets move with a purpose. Since infantry embarked can now take a couple of hits before sinking, they can get aggressive. I haven't been sea zerged yet; my Carthiginan fleets kept the seas clean of trash. The AI on land is reasonable, but not great on Normal. I've seen Ghengis Khan send out a full zerg of trebuchets and swordsmen while America sent one lone doughboy to take my empire. Fucking democrat presidents.

Diplomacy
Civ IV still has the best diplomacy to me, but V does improve on it. You can now see what is pissing off other civs and what they like. I had to write them down for future dealings though. Poor Carthage spent the entire game known as a 'warmonger' while the Celts have been friendly with the Mongols for centuries (namely due to me caving like a little girl to all their demands). As a result, the Great Khan's armies pass thru my lands on their way to distant battles. I do keep my opium dens open 24/7 to service them though!
Except for that little misunderstanding with Ethiopia, my empire has known peace for almost 2,000 years. Fucking heretics gonna get shot.

City States
I've never liked CS. I feel they get in the way but GNK has made them fun and desirable to court. CS can be influenced by gold and by quests. The quests, though, now grant a lot of influence, 20-40, usually and some quests are easy to complete. You can build a wonder, build a road to them, kill a barbarian camp, or bully another CS for lots of influence. And the rewards are worth the trouble with bonuses to food, culture and even special happiness resources that only CS's have. Mercantile and Religious CS have been added seamlessly and are effective. You can even liberate a CS from another civ and, if you chose, re-establish them as a CS with a big boost to influence.

Stability
The game has frozen on me after about 2-3hrs of play on occasion. Game launches slowly. Turns in late game can take a couple of seconds, but improved from vanilla. Also, my animations stopped, not sure what happened. Otherwise it runs fine for me.

TL;DR
So to sum up, if you were on the fence about Civ V, GNK won't change your mind. But if, like me, you're a fan of the series, you'll find some fun additions with GNK.

I'll try and write something more detailed later, but one thing that has changed is diplomacy and how the AI treats you.

- negative modifiers for going to war fade over time no longer will you be known for all history as a war-monger. It's possible to even end up forming alliances with nations you fought with.

- long term power blocks can now form which seem pretty stable. (assuming you don't have a maniac like Napolean involved). In my current game the world has been divided into two camps from turn 100 onwards. There's me, Siam, Carthage, America and Byzantium on one side as the peace faction, and Persian + Iroquis as the war faction on the other. Austria is trying to play both sides and is going to get smashed by someone at some point because of it. Those alliances lasted the entire rest of the game and were incredibly strong, even thigh in the first 50 turns or so I made war on America and Siam made war on Byzantium.

The story of how the great Mayan armies crossed the Atlantic to save the American nation from the fascist Persian armies will go down in history!

The AI no longer seems to always be destined to go to war with you, and its actions seem to make a lot more sense. Makes a bigd difference to me because I enjoy the aspect of the game where I'm playing against other nations, not just random war obsessed AIs.

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I enjoy the aspect of the game where I'm playing against other nations, not just random war obsessed AIs.

Same here.

Quote from: Maledict on June 25, 2012, 11:09:09 PM

Austria is trying to play both sides and is going to get smashed by someone at some point because of it.

Wow, sounds like they really modelled the nations to their real life counterparts now. awesome, for real

Somewhat excited about this DLC. I guess I'll buy it when I'm done with Warlock Master of the Arance.

So, those of you who hated Civ V (vanilla) take this with a grain of salt, since I liked it already, but with G&K this is now my favorite iteration of Civ for sure. The little balance changes are pretty much all awesome, religion is a neat system, espionage is actually useful but not annoying to manage, etc.

I would love it save for the City States. I hate everything about that whole aspect of the game.

You can turn them off. Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly?

But, really, they tightened up that system in G&K too - harder to just buy your way to victory with them (although a gold-focused strategy still can to an extent), AI seems to emphasize them more (at least some nations), there are more (and more interesting) little quests for influence, etc. If you hated them I'm not sure the changes will make you like them though.

I usually turn them way down...to like 6 or 8 on a huge map instead of 24 (WTF). My complaint is I spend way too much time dealing with their bullshit every turn. Turning them off works too, but that then gimps the crap out of a couple of the civs who have unique powers relating to them (not to mention an entire social policy tree). I wish they were more like Natural Wonders- neat to discover, give a small bonus, and then mostly forgotten.

What are you actually doing every turn with them? I run with the normal amount and there's nothing *to* do with them every turn?

He means the "These people are mean, destroy them." "Here's a present, Heart

" "Hey, if you build this we'll totally love you" spam.

It does get obnoxious at times.

The game feels a good bit harder now, and I'm not 100% sure why yet. On settings where I used to completely roll the AI I'm actually running into a challenge. They've figured out how to make the AI use a navy decently is part of it, I think. Archipelago maps used to basically be autowins and now the AI actually sends vaguely coordinated fleets after me, and prince difficulty (the 'no cheating for either side' level which again used to be an always-win) I am actually losing the tech race somehow to Germany (and was losing nearly every wonder to Polynesia and Persia before I took their capitals...) I almost restarted my random game when I saw it was an archipelago map but I'm glad I didn't, this has been educational.

I am too old to be staying up to 3/4 am playing Civ, and yet here I am doing it anyway.

I have noticed that just playing nice and building culture/science on Prince puts me in the top 3 or 4 civs, but almost never at the top. You almost have to fight a war or inhibit the growth of the other pacifist types instead of cruising to a science victory.

So have all these God-King-Whatever changes to AI and diplomacy and such also been patched into the non-expansion game?

Good question. I don't know. Yeah, even on Prince, the AI loves to put a civ far away and it takes off. And put a wall of city-states between you. I was proudly building a kick-ass rail system when America put men on the moon. Retire... Tantrum

I'm not sure what changed recently, but Multiplayer has been shit recently. Keeps taking for ever to do turns and players keep getting dropped.

Someone who knows wtf tell me if I should buy any of the DLC before playing this.

I'm not going to have the 140 playthroughs to see every combination that some of you guys somehow manage.

Quote from: eldaec on October 09, 2012, 02:45:36 PM

Someone who knows wtf tell me if I should buy any of the DLC before playing this.

I'm not going to have the 140 playthroughs to see every combination that some of you guys somehow manage.

1) Buy a Civ DLC if you really want to play as that Civ, but not otherwise.
2) The Explorer's Map Pack has two really good map scripts: Continents Plus and Pangea Plus which are in my opinion far superior to the defaults that come with the base game. It also comes with some other maps, but those two are worth it in my opinion. This DLC is 4.99.
3) The expansion is pretty good, but at 30 bucks you are better off waiting for a sale unless you really like the game.

The expansion massively, massively improves the base game. I liked it as is, a lot of other f13ers did not, but I think the praise of G&K is near-universal, here and elsewhere. As such I would definitely recommend you get it.