Civilization V- Might actually be good now. Stay tuned.

[rk47]

First game Japan, blew up the world with rifles and cannons. Got bored and restarted.

Second game Arabia, making gold and bribing city states, discovered how broken it is to get immense culture boosts with little effort. So peaceful and prosperous that I'm thinking it's a broken feature. I'm kinda disappointed with how easy it is to designate one city as trade posts spam and crank out gold multiplying buildings like no tomorrow. Compared to the hassle of warmongering and managing puppets + unhappy faces....Gee whiz, it's good to be peaceful.

[Njal]

Won my third attempt on King as England with a scientific victory.

The AI is still pretty brainless especially diplomatically. After I had annihilated Catherine's army and taken 4 cities she still wouldn't go to peace with me. Occasionally the combat AI would be reasonably ok but strategically it is brainless and I'm not sure it knows how to do a naval invasion.

It seems that social policies make a huge difference to being able to maintain a large empire. I like getting Stonehenge for the +8 culture boost it really helps expand quickly. Also you can do a lot of golden age time if you build Chitchen Itza for the +50% culture boost. I spent most of the last 50 turns of my game in a golden age, the cash was rolling in although if golden age was off I was losing up to 100 g per turn.

[Lantyssa]

Has anyone else found the civs less hostile?  I've yet to have war declared on me across three games, from Chieftain to Prince level.

It's amazing how a single-city empire is viable.  I'm doing Egypt for the Wonder bonus, and by the time I hit 1900 and the Renisaince I have all but three wonders, and a 4-5 hex radius from culture.  My city is an unassailable 39 defense with three super scout-crossbow units guarding it that I don't even need since no one goes to war with me.

[Tebonas]

They wage war all of the time if you settle in their perceived area of influence or if you befriend the wrong minor Civs. But maybe I was just unlucky.

[Big Gulp]

Man, money is absolutely king in this game.  I've pretty much been ignoring culture, expanding like mad, and focusing on happiness and money.  As long as you've got money coming in you're at a massive tech advantage if you just keep the research pacts constantly going.  I think I'm going to go the peaceful route until the industrial era when I'll finally let Bismarck unleash his panzers on the world.

[Typhon]

Nth game (I also am a dirty restarter), random standard map, Babylon, Prince.

The map places me in the top of a fat, upside down U.  Aztecs to the western peninsula.  Germans to the east/south, beyond them Japan, England, someone else (who loses early).  China and Rome are on another continent.

I expand like a rabbit once I get something that gives me  happyness (cannot recall what it is that I build, some wonder).  I also have access to a broad mix of luxury items (sheer luck).

[Note: To also chime in an answer Lantyssa's question]  Some civ's are uber-aggressive.  Germany in the game I'm talking about, for example.  Early and regularly I start seeing, "Germany conquers X, Germany conquers Japan, Germany conquers England".

The Aztecs get annoyed at my rapid expansion.  I get tired of their whining and I stomp them.  Now it's just me and Bizmark in the late mid 1800s.

I move ALL of my forces to the small land bridge leading to Germany.  Germany declares war.  I upgrade my two trebuchets to cannon, convert a general into a citadel, and place one cannon in the citadel.  Germany seems pretty happy to throw all their landsrecht (sp?) away against my cannons, to their credit they almost succeed twice.  This starts to disappointed me - annoying that they are throwing away all their forces.

... DOH!  That crafty Bismark has split his forces and, escorted by frigates, a force of knights, swordsman and trebuchets hits my unprotected southern flank.  Two of my cities fall in short order.  I frantically switch my build order to the newly available musketmen and try to hold out for reinforcements by shifting my sole knight (in that area) around to hit and run.  His opposition in the east has disappeared, so I press my advantage there and begin finally take the extremely-tough-nut-to-crack Edinboro.

I hold out until the musketmen begin to come off the line - he is too cautious in the south.  I take another city in the east.  I hold his advancement in the west.

My economy collapses under the weight of musketmen and lack of economic research and building.  My economy now becomes conquest.  I'm at -76 gold per turn.  My unhappiness is at 35.  I play around with switching my cities over to producing wealth, but that is much too small of an impact.

I loose my first cannon in a surprise counter-offensive in the east, along with a musket man.  I retake Bucharest in the west and musketmen are now pouring into the area.  I offer peace, but only if he will return my taken city.  He is too proud.

I see that my "economic strategy" will work if I continue to take a city every other turn, but only after a few disband due to non-payment.

Banks begin to be completed, I lose a fair number of my forces in my eastern-continent march to the south and I have for the first time in 30ish turns a positive cash flow.  Unhappiness is at 37.

He surprises me again with cannon strategically placed.  I lose four musketmen.  The placement of the cannon means I cannot get to them in one move.  The surrounding cites means that a protracted push to the cannon will result in a loss of many musketmen riflemen.  I'm forced to take out a city from the north which is partially protected by mountains.  I lose more riflemen in the process.

Not surprisingly, every so often he requests peace.  I always demand the next city in the list of cities that I'll take.  Each time he tells me to get stuffed.  Then I take the city.

Finally, sadly, Bizmark is no more.

[Sky]

Why can't I see what Ghandi's attitude is toward me? I've been buying up land next to him (why run anything but a gold empire?) and he's warned me several times. I keep buying up land every few turns, but I see no way of telling if he's annoyed with me yet. I do miss the Civ4 mouse-over that gave the attitude with all the modifiers listed. Unless I missing where it is in Civ 5.

And yeah, the movement thing is what I was talking about with stacking units. It's dumb that I can't move a warrior and settler as a stack, or have a warrior stacked with my workers on the frontier. It's just too much of the core game to leave something like that out. I rarely give "go-to" orders unless it's a long trek deep in my own territory. Adding the whole 'pardon me' 'no, excuse me' shuffle, losing movement time due to what are apparently exceedingly tiny roads, it's just obnoxious. I've got three or four units just sitting in the hills because apparently no single hill is large enough to contain them.

Given the new 1-military-per-tile stack hate, taking over barbarians is now a shuffle, too. Send a calvary unit...ooops, they're barb spearmen. Send the calvary back to their hill on the side of the road so they're not in the way of any travelling units on the road, send out the pokey archery unit to go piddle down the spearmen from range.

Maybe uberstacks were a problem in Civ. At least they didn't make the core gameplay of shuffling units around the map a giant hassle.

[Demonix]

Maybe uberstacks were a problem in Civ. At least they didn't make the core gameplay of shuffling units around the map a giant hassle.

I think they were trying to make combat more tactical with these limitations but honestly, if you have enough bonuses, your horses can probably take the barbarians;  you get a prediction if you mouse over them.

I've got one game going as russia/standard map/continents/warlord  and I went a bit hyper-expansion due to my civ 4 experience.  There are 5 city states on my continent and there was one other civ.  We were getting along fine until he went after a city state and moved the bulk of his troops against them...my military was more advanced so I moved them up and took out his capital aftera bout 3 turns or archers/swordsmen/knights attacking.

Turns out that was his only city...one other AI on my continent and he only had one city?  I was dissapointed.  There are only two of us left now in the 1800s and we still havent met each other.  The game has gotten kind of dull and has been really easy;  I dont want to restart, but I'm not sure I will have much choice.

[Comstar]

The AI is still pretty brainless especially diplomatically. After I had annihilated Catherine's army and taken 4 cities she still wouldn't go to peace with me. Occasionally the combat AI would be reasonably ok but strategically it is brainless and I'm not sure it knows how to do a naval invasion.

If you are annihilating the AI and it's obvious to both sides what's going to happen to their last city, the AI does what any human would do if it couldn't ragequit.


That said, it's hard to tell diplomatically what the AI wants if they don't approach you first. If they call you up, they tend to tell you want they want (Your culture is pathetic, your army is pathetic, stop building in lands I consider mine, stop helping that city state). The only really bad part about is when you want something from them and they won't provide a clue on what their problem is.

Turns out that was his only city...one other AI on my continent and he only had one city?  I was dissapointed.  There are only two of us left now in the 1800s and we still havent met each other.  The game has gotten kind of dull and has been really easy;  I dont want to restart, but I'm not sure I will have much choice.

If you started with 8 civs and there's only 2 of you left, the other one obviously killed everyone else and owns the other continent....

[Jobu]

On my second game, trying out a peaceful cultural victory (stopped at 4 cities, but even that seems too much). This forced me to buddy up to the big military guys in the early game so I would be left alone. Problem is that same military guy (Germany) keeps asking me to go to war with him against everyone else. Finally I cave and decide, well... why not. Might as well keep him happy. He wants to eradicate Japan, which has only two cities left, both of which are tiny outposts right on my border as their main capital was abolished turns and turns ago. So, I do my allied duty and roll down and destroy Japan AS WE AGREED UPON. Then suddenly I get a message from Germany telling me I'm a bloodthirsty brute for beating up on the little guys!! Him and half the world are now hostile towards me. WTF?! Stupid stupid stupid! I had to reload to like 50 turns back.

Has anyone noticed the Angkor Wat wonder seems broken? The description says reduces the CULTURE cost of new territory tiles by 75%. When I built it, I noticed neither the gold cost of buying tiles, or the total culture cost of a new policy changed. It's a bugged, useless building unless it helped in a way I didn't notice...?

[Typhon]

I think what Angor Wat does is reduce the (hidden from you) culture cost of the organic expansion your cities do naturally overtime.  So your cities expand faster without costing you money.

Edit: do instead of due

[Tarami]

Culture cost of tiles is the amount of culture a city needs to produce to unlock a new tile for allocation. It's the cerise hex in the city UI.

[Sky]

We should start a game testing service, ffs.

[ffc]

I remember reading somewhere that diplomatic relations with other civs has to be gleaned from body language / attitude on the civ leader screens.  Generally other leaders look aloof but when I first met Alexander he was literally smiling at me and actually had more diplomatic options available.

I like this vague system but then again I have only played Civ I so what do I know.

[Jobu]

I remember reading somewhere that diplomatic relations with other civs has to be gleaned from body language / attitude on the civ leader screens.  Generally other leaders look aloof but when I first met Alexander he was literally smiling at me and actually had more diplomatic options available.

I like this vague system but then again I have only played Civ I so what do I know.

Yes, this is exactly what happened to me in the situation I described above. Bismarck was suddenly scowling, arms folded, and he was standing on the right side of the screen instead of his usual genial, smiling self on the left side of the screen. That, and the tone of their conversation was different. Instead of "Hey buddy" it was "Who let the trash in?"

[Bunk]

Has anyone else found the civs less hostile?  I've yet to have war declared on me across three games, from Chieftain to Prince level.

It's amazing how a single-city empire is viable.  I'm doing Egypt for the Wonder bonus, and by the time I hit 1900 and the Renisaince I have all but three wonders, and a 4-5 hex radius from culture.  My city is an unassailable 39 defense with three super scout-crossbow units guarding it that I don't even need since no one goes to war with me.

Napoleon was a complete warmonger in my game. Has attacked me twice, despite us not even bordering each other, and now I'm making him pay for it.

[Malakili]

I remember reading somewhere that diplomatic relations with other civs has to be gleaned from body language / attitude on the civ leader screens.  Generally other leaders look aloof but when I first met Alexander he was literally smiling at me and actually had more diplomatic options available.

I like this vague system but then again I have only played Civ I so what do I know.

Yes, this is exactly what happened to me in the situation I described above. Bismarck was suddenly scowling, arms folded, and he was standing on the right side of the screen instead of his usual genial, smiling self on the left side of the screen. That, and the tone of their conversation was different. Instead of "Hey buddy" it was "Who let the trash in?"

Oh man, I can't believe I didn't realize this in my first game, I actually really like that.  I'll have to stop paying attention to the animation instead of just reading the dialog options.

[Soulflame]

I was doing fine with my one city civ, until I signed some Open Borders agreements.  Then suddenly I'm at war with almost everyone.  I fended off one guy, took 3 or 4 cities (left them as puppets, naturally) and he still wants all of my resources and gold for peace.      It's more comedic because he's having to embark units to attack me.

Japan is a bit more serious, he's up to rifleman, and I just started researching Rifling.  This turns out to be a big problem, because rifles murder horses, and pretty much all of my good troops that are still alive are horses.   

[Sky]

I hate open borders and almost never use them, in Civ or FFH. I took a deal with Ghandi where he threw that in (he always wants it). A couple turns later, he's marching a settler and calvary through my territory to build in a strip of land between his buddy city state and my northern border. Fuck off, hippy. I scrambled to buy up enough land and crank up the "don't build near me" rhetoric to make him turn around just as he got to the target area.

[Xuri]

It annoys me that there don't seem to be any indicator of the path a unit will take when you tell them to "Go To" a specific location or "build roads from here to there". And if you select those units later on while they're in the middle of moving/building their roads, then you have no way of telling WHERE they are going.

And what's up with the whole double-end turn clicking required when units are auto-moving? You click the button, then your units auto-move and you have to click the button AGAIN. When I click End Turn I want the turn to bloody well END. Gah.

And why is there so little feedback when you try to use a ranged unit to attack another unit/city, but you're actually "out of range" or have too few moving points to reach there? You end up right clicking on the target unit/city to attack, but nothing happens, so you right click AGAIN, and nothing happens once more. Repeat until realization of unit not being able to fire that far sets in.

Too many of these small annoyances for my liking. In fact, the more I play this game, the less I like it. *boots up Civilization 4 instead*

[Soulflame]

You can right click to see the path they'll take (and to see their movement range.)

I got into the habit of clicking Open Borders in Civ IV because it'd create trade routes, which would benefit me economically.  Of course, that doesn't exist in Civ V.

In fact, the only benefit to Open Borders is if you want to position your units next to another civ's city before declaring war, as war decs do not boot all of your units outside of his territory.

[Xuri]

Hm. I always right-click (and hold) when moving units. Never seen a path yet. Maybe the path gets disabled at the lower video settings? Hrm.

[Muffled]

When you click end turn the first time it's auto-moving all your units with move orders set, and doesn't actually roll over the turn in case something happens with them that makes you go "oh shit!" or in case they have moves left over for you to use.  

As for range, there are manual commands to bring up the ranged attack radius on units, 'b' is the default key if I'm not mistaken.  It will make a little red ring of hexes around them to show their range, taking into account obstructions like hills.  It should be on the commands tab on the left, over the mini-map over the unit portrait because this isn't Starcraft, in any case.

[Ingmar]

It annoys me that there don't seem to be any indicator of the path a unit will take when you tell them to "Go To" a specific location or "build roads from here to there". And if you select those units later on while they're in the middle of moving/building their roads, then you have no way of telling WHERE they are going.

And what's up with the whole double-end turn clicking required when units are auto-moving? You click the button, then your units auto-move and you have to click the button AGAIN. When I click End Turn I want the turn to bloody well END. Gah.

And why is there so little feedback when you try to use a ranged unit to attack another unit/city, but you're actually "out of range" or have too few moving points to reach there? You end up right clicking on the target unit/city to attack, but nothing happens, so you right click AGAIN, and nothing happens once more. Repeat until realization of unit not being able to fire that far sets in.

Too many of these small annoyances for my liking. In fact, the more I play this game, the less I like it. *boots up Civilization 4 instead*

Instead of just right clicking with a ranged unit, select it and click the 'ranged attack' button on the left edge of the screen, that will give you an overlay showing what they can attack.

As Muffled said the reason the turn doesn't end when you're automoving because one of the units you were moving ended up still having movement points left when it got where it was going, or something else happened during the move that the game wants to draw your attention to. Feature, not bug. And a nice feature at that, imo.

[rk47]

Well fuck. Research pacing is totally off from the production speed. There's always a case whereby you can't even build a new unit from scratch before a new tech makes it slightly obsolete. When discoveries takes shorter time than production, I seriously wonder what the design team is smoking when they made it this way.
Maybe they're too busy worshiping gold and using it to upgrade obsolete units. Sigh.

And I cannot use gold to accelerate unit production which is halfway completed? What. The . Fuck? I can summon units out of thin air with magic gold but I cannot purchase half the materials and manpower to complete a half completed batallion? 

[Bunk]

Yea, I really don't get that one. Am I missing something, or is there really no way to "complete" something with gold?

[Muffled]

There isn't, purchasing is all or nothing. 

[Ingmar]

Yeah the no rushing on something that is in progress is seriously weird.

[Lantyssa]

Well fuck. Research pacing is totally off from the production speed.

It is.  Production seems exceptionally low in comparison to other incomes.  Longer tech games don't help, as all the other variables are multiplied as well.

[Mazakiel]

I noticed last night that puppet states will build structures that require strategic resources, preventing you from making use of them.  And since you can't do anything about their build choices, I had to annex the city and change production just to get my uranium back. 

[Ingmar]

Yeah I don't find a lot of value in the puppet states thing. The game really incentivizes razing captured cities unless they're really good ones because of that, mostly because of factories wanting coal.

[MrHat]

We should make a coherent list of all the little things we're annoyed about and then spend some time creating an "F13 Conveinence Mod".

1. Stack Creation for Combat + Non-Combat Unit - "Escort"

2. Puppet states are not allowed to use strategic resources.  Maybe give a negative happiness for this option.  Makes sense - city can't use coal, city is upset.

3. Rush to finish production of units and buildings currently in production.  Pretty much a % left = % spent calculation.

[Lightstalker]

I was off dealing with Napoleon's 25 cities and 100 spearmen (before he got truly dangerous) when Egypt, America, China and the Iroquois all decided the world wasn't big enough for... me, really.

Earlier I had gotten into a bad place conquering my way into massive unhappiness (thank you expansionist neighbor Askia).  I resolved that by gifting the cities to the other civilizations, making sure to alternate between civs that were at war.    Anyway, they kept each other busy on my eastern flank while I paved the earth on the west - Siam, England, and France alle tote.  Yay for being first to artillery.  When my army was a world away, and after I'd razed my 30th city, the justice league struck from the east overrunning 3 cities before I could blunt the push - all were razed.  For a few turns I was worried about it, then I realized they were razing puppet cities and actually improving my overall happiness.  Iroquois riflemen all over the place at the start, but with my army still 15 turns away I'm stable and stalling for the counter.  Really, could have razed one more and I'd be even happier.  Japan and Greece are still ambivalent to me (or probably more angry at the justice league), Suleiman killed by the Iroquois earlier.  Artillery range = 3 is a huge difference, but maybe it will go slower in the more developed west.

I've done a lot of things poorly (I haven't played civ in a long time), but have a pretty effortlessly commanding lead.  The huge map is a real pain pre-rail and finally undertanding how to spot for the artillery really changed the way I was approaching combat.  Getting pipped repeatedly a hundred turns into a wonder is a pain, especially without production roll-over or rushing without a Great Engineer.  I'm +100 gold per turn, or thereabouts, all my cash going to keep city states harassing my enemies rear flanks so I can sweep in from the front (I did the patronage policy).

1st game: Huge Marathon Pangea Prince - Ze Germans  ~900 turns into it, 35 hours played.  I just wanted to win with Panzers, I'm 1.5 techs away from that in the early 1800s.

Running DX11, a few multimon issues usually when loading the leader diplomacy screens (whole OS UI unresponsive).  Game has been slowish from time to time, but plays for 8-10 hours in one go.  There is clear work left to do, but this looks like a solid base for many years of mods and gaming. production rate << new research.  It'll take me 60 turns to build a new rifleman, but only 27 turns to research Steam. It'll take me 20 turns to get from the former site of Paris back to my own lands and then another 25 just to reach the other end of the map, much less drive my enemies before me along the way.  By the time my unit is deployed it is obsolete - but you have to be in friendly territory to upgrade.

[dusematic]

We need to organize a multiplayer game stat.  There are enough people here.  I nominate Saturday.

[Merusk]

Anyone else noticed the starting spot matters a fuckton more than it used to?  I mean, it was always important but on the last 2 Prince games I started I was way behind the power curve because I had been surrounded by 1) Jungle on Grasslands then 2) Forest on Grasslands.  Fucking production drought and no way of clearing it forever.   Even moving a turn or two away didn't resolve the jungle start's problem.