Civilization V Solo Reports

[MJW (ya that one)]

MJW,

I actually find your comments more useful than the pretty pictures, just didnt have anything to add.

Any comments on the actual faith or spy system yet?

1. Spy system is just a bonus to the human player. The primary use of the spy is to steal tech. By the time you take a tech lead the game is already over. You can spy without too much risk by doing it to someone half-way across the world and you don't have to go out of your way to do it. Spys can give you a small LOS so you don't have to blindly walk in when you are attacking. The spies can pick up information known as "intrigue" which is just a free diplo boost. You don't need to invest in the spy system at all; you are just given spies when you enter a new age.

2. Religon. After getting some faith, by building a building for example, you will get a "parthenon" you choose a belief off a list. A belief just gives you a bonus of some kind. A "parthenon" is not a reilgon yet but just a belief. A fundemental rule is that 2 religons can not have the same belief. There are a fixed number of religons but you are not screwed if you get locked out--you can take someone's elses religon if you have not founded one. If you do this you get a diplo boost with that AI.

After a while, you will be given a great prophet which you can found a religon. You choose 2 more belief's off a different list. You can use a third great prophet to enhance your religon to get 2 more belief's of a even different list. There are very strong happy belief's for example. You can of course spread your religon using prophets and missonarys.


3. Anyway I think this a decent EXP pack. They are a lot of good tweaks, for example there is no longer a bunch of CS pop-ups when you delcare war on someone--its all in one pop-up. However, if you did not like Civ5 this will not change anything. The 100hp makes a big difference, now units can get in to take out your city without getting pancaked. The problem is that EMP and below is still a joke. Religon is a big boost to you despite having to go a little out of your way to get it. AI does not expand enough so the strong happy belief's do not help it. There are also more luxs on the map which do not help the AI ether. Spies can help you against a run-away AI while spies really can not hurt you because if you have a tech-lead the game is over. All of this more than helps to overcome the better 100hp system.

I'll repeat-- level 7 and level 8 are still very silly. Level 6 is already beyond diety (from civ4:bts) due to the level 2 difficulty bug.