Civilization 5 Announced

[Kylearan]

I'm having fun, so I guess I would. But I'm approaching it as less of a hardcore strategy game and more of a world-building simulation. I don't care that there are game-balance issues that allow the AI civs to be overwhelmed by unrealistic build strategies, because I'm not going to be using those strategies.

I'd like to second this. I share a lot of Sulla's and others' concerns about balance problems and glaring game mechanic inconsistencies, but I'm having fun nonetheless. ICS seems to be a game-mechanic-breaking strategy - so what? I simply won't do ICS then. It's always fascinating to see how these strategies emerge in the community, but that doesn't mean you are forced to use them in your games. (This might become a problem for competitive play like RB Epics, but then we managed to avoid obvious game-breaking strategies in Civ 3 and 4 as well.)

I also think the game offers a lot of possible variants to try out. Yes, the game is too easy on Emperor and below, and beatable on Immortal and Deity, both levels of difficulty I do not enjoy because of the ridiculous boni the AIs receive ("blanket of doom" ). Well, no problem - I've always loved to make games harder by playing variants, and I think there could be a lot of fun variants that make Emperor level hard to win. (Diablo, where RB's roots lie, was easy too. Playing it Iron Man-style is not.)

I really hope for some good patches that will fix game mechanics and enhance the AI, but I won't hold my breath for it. I have a lot of fun with the game nonetheless.

[T-hawk]

Well, no problem - I've always loved to make games harder by playing variants

So are the Civ 5 AIs bad enough at military that you can beat them with no military at all?

[darrelljs]

So are the Civ 5 AIs bad enough at military that you can beat them with no military at all?

People have done this with Bismarck already...no building your own units.

Darrell

[MJW (ya that one)]

The ICS is game-breaking against the AI. It slows you down but that does not matter. The only way to expoilt the slowdown would be to take out cities but the AI can not do it but Diety and maybe inmortal if you get an awful start.

[Txurce]

I’ve played two games, am also having a good time while excited by the game’s potential, and wish the designers had done a much better job balancing it. I also think some complaints are actually a credit to the game’s flexibility. One that has just cropped up is the small-city ICS strategy. I don’t see this as an exploit, but simply a way to have an efficient large empire. At the same time there’s no doubt that a small empire can win every sort of victory except probably conquest. Why cast this as a goof by the small-is-good design team? I see it as being able to tackle a victory condition via more paths than I could in earlier Civ versions.

I just played a game with China like Sulla, on King/standard/continents, but 10 civs instead of 8. My next game will be on Emperor. I have no interest in playing the “special rules” Immortal/Deity game until I have a much better handle on King/Emperor. However, I added the extra civs to create more early conflict and therefore more difficulty.

My plan had been to go for an early rush, then expand ICS-style as a test for a conquest win. This called for scout-warrior-warrior builds. However I found myself on an island with Siam and two CS. I quickly took Siam as my second city, eventually made deals with the CS (one maritime), and built a third city so as to have a port. Stonehenge made sense under the circumstances, and then paper makers. With three luxuries among my three cities, happiness and gold steadily accumulated.

I then discovered another island linked by shallow water. I beelined for the necessary tech, sailed over, and found four CS. I declared war on one in an isthmus, only to learn that city walls plus only one adjoining tile made it invulnerable. I made shameful peace with it (note: Sulla), attacked its enemy for my fourth city, and then allied with the rest of the island. (By the way, later in the game I remained at war with a CS after making peace with England – it seems to happen occasionally. I like the variety.)

By the time I could enter deep water I learned that America was also just shallow water away on an island on its own. In fact, the game had a rare continents geography: seven islands. They contained China and Siam (x), America, the four CS, Japan and Egypt (x), England and India (almost x), France, and Rome and Greece. the rest of the CS were scattered about on or near these islands.

This meant an early conquest win was out the window. I’m a good Diplomacy player, and I always go after the top dog, trying to keep hit them first. They were still using spears and archers, so my new chokonus quickly wiped them out. (Note to Sulla: I never promoted a chokonu to a rifleman after having promoted Companion Cavalry to 3-move knights! If they have repeating rifles, that should also be fixed.)

As an observation, I have yet to see a critical value to siege weapons before artillery. Chokonus do just as good a job, and so do 3- or 4-man sword or knight armies. I’m tempted to build siege weapons, but I always wind up preferring another unit.

What did I keep? The capital plus the four cities that had luxuries I lacked. The rest were razed. (Waiting out razing unhappiness seems more right than not to me.) But those five were annexed consecutively asap. I didn’t even bother building happiness structures. Despite nine growing cities, my happiness stayed between 15 and 25.

I tend to avoid exploits, or even strats that seem unrealistic. I don’t save SP’s, because it feels wrong to me. I beeline, but don’t slingshot. And in this game, amazingly enough, I was able to wind up with about 20 cities by the end, limiting no growth, building everything – universities, armories, etc. In other words, the way I think Civ should be played. My control of key luxuries made the difference. I kept annexing, and after a while I built a few happiness buildings in lean times. The Forbidden Palace made a huge difference. Planned Economy came at the very end, and while I didn’t need it at the finish line, marveled at its effect. My use of SP’s was also very much mix-and-match based on my likely needs: one in Order, one in Rationalism, three in Patronage, two in Tradition.

I went about my ocean conquests by building a starting fleet of four frigates. With promotions, these were the key to all my future conquests. England had tons of longbowmen, but only one ship of the line, and that midway through the war. She proved tough because there was almost no room for me to land. I had to bleed her dry first with constant bombardment after feints to left and right. After a long war she gave me half her cities. I took the second half in a second war.

A sidebar on diplomacy. That in the end the AI attacks makes sense to me – so far, all I’ve done is try to win by attacking the AI. But in the process I benefited from good relations with Greece and particularly Japan: good luxury exchanges (usually not sales) and joint tech researching. If I’d wanted an ally, I would have done that as well - it seemed pointless given the water. I can’t see what more I’d want from an AI. Japan only soured on me when I broke an open borders treaty because I didn’t want to wait to attack England again. By the way, peace treaties are 10 turns, but anything else (open borders, gpt, etc) is 30 turns. If you break it as I did, the AI will no longer offer terms beyond simple peace.

This is why I think the seemingly over-generous AI habit of surrendering cities early is actually smart. In my games they do this not right away. When they do, they’ve lost not cities but units. In other words, they can read the handwriting on the wall, and try for a deal that allows them to survive, early enough for you to go for it. This gives them 30 turns to regroup. If you break the deal, you will pay for it in all further negotiations with all the other AI civs (trade, peace treaties, etc). Are there times when you would have settled for less? Sure. But the AI usually has good reason to think you shouldn’t.

By the time I took Paris and Rome - Athens didn’t count because Rome took it earlier - I was using destroyers and cavalry. Then came Japan, who had the densest island defended by a couple of frigates, tons of riflemen and artillery. I had mech infantry. It was a matter of taking coastal Tokyo and then inland Kyoto. Tokyo traded hands four times, because he literally overwhelmed my conquering MI. Again I had to resort to patient shelling by my destroyers to thin his units before finally landing four MI and finishing off the game in 1915.

Question to Sulla: I wonder how you would have done vs Napoleon without chokonus? Question to all: does the AI seem to neglect mounted units?

How I won – early rush (for one city!), CS cultivation, chokonu war, frigates, tech advantage – isn’t nearly as interesting as that I did it not with an extreme strat, but with a steadily increasing number of annexed cities that all grew and all but the latecomers built 6+ buildings, without having any sort of happiness problem. It felt like I was playing a game that’s not nearly as flawed as I know it is.

[luddite]

The ICS is game-breaking against the AI. It slows you down but that does not matter. The only way to expoilt the slowdown would be to take out cities but the AI can not do it but Diety and maybe inmortal if you get an awful start.

true. Doing ICS does take a little while to get off the ground. But like you say it doesn't matter against the AI. I feel like the two strategies that work well are either rushing the AI with strong early units, or setting yourself up to win in the late game. I've never had much success trying to conquer with stuff like cavalry and cannons, because they go obsolete too fast.

[Serdoa]

No offense meant Txurce but what you write I have now read one time to often. So I want to comment on two points of your posting:

1. "ICS complaints being actually a credit to the games flexibility."

So having a mechanic which does completely offset one of the game main mechanics (happiness stunting your growth) is in your book only a sign how flexible the game is? For me that is a sign that the designers of this game did not have a clue what they are doing.

2. "Remaining at war with a CS after making peace with his empire-ally seems to happen occasionally and is nice for the variety."

Don't get me wrong on that, but I think Firaxis can really be happen that half their customers is looking at bugs in the game and selling them as features.

Both those points basically are about an obviously broken part of the game and still it is tried to put it like it is great and a feature. I'm not really understanding why somebody would argue that way but I see it happen a lot at civfanatics as well.

[uberfish]

It shouldn't be too difficult to balance the game properly now that thousands of good players have gotten their hands on it, even if Firaxis doesn't change much I am sure several of us here would be fully qualified to mod it.

[Txurce]

No offense meant Txurce but what you write I have now read one time to often. So I want to comment on two points of your posting:

1. "ICS complaints being actually a credit to the games flexibility."

So having a mechanic which does completely offset one of the game main mechanics (happiness stunting your growth) is in your book only a sign how flexible the game is? For me that is a sign that the designers of this game did not have a clue what they are doing.

2. "Remaining at war with a CS after making peace with his empire-ally seems to happen occasionally and is nice for the variety."

Don't get me wrong on that, but I think Firaxis can really be happen that half their customers is looking at bugs in the game and selling them as features.

Both those points basically are about an obviously broken part of the game and still it is tried to put it like it is great and a feature. I'm not really understanding why somebody would argue that way but I see it happen a lot at civfanatics as well.

Serdoa, I've always said that the game needs a lot of balancing, and that this or that aspect is broken. Two quick examples, one large and one small: cultural victories where one city has a bunch of puppets contributing culture at no cost, and a chokonu being upgraded to a repeating rifleman. However, I look at the game from a positive filter, and so sometimes interpret things differently than others who don't.

You're probably right that the designers didn't foresee the ICS strat. But does it completely get around their intent to have growth stunt happiness? Not so much when it comes to population - just with number of cities. Is some version of the ICS strat a good thing, rather than an exploit? Quite possibly, since it allows for flexibility in achieving your goals. Again, I could win every type of victory condition except probably conquest with a small empire thanks to the new rules which make it easier to do so... but I could also do it with a large empire by careful working of an ICS strat. There is something to work with here, in my opinion, rather than to just dismiss.

If the designers had written in the manual that CS usually make peace when their big ally does, but occasionally don't, would you consider it broken? I wouldn't - it would strike me as the sort of thing that happened occasionally in history. It's also obviously not something to be exploited, since you don't need this wrinkle to attack a CS, and making peace with one is easy. So did they mean for it to be the way it is? I would guess that if a mistake was made, it would have been on a Yes/No level - that variable results had to be coded that way purposely. Maybe someone who can read code could say for sure. But in this case, it never even occurred to me that I was giving them the benefit of the doubt.

[Sullla]

Txurce, I'm glad you're enjoying your games of Civ5. But I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. You've pointed out that it's possible to have 20 large, "normal" cities in the game that you played, and I'm sure that that's true. What you're missing is that it takes until 1900AD (about 400 turns) to pull that off, and it requires the building of many expensive (in shields and maintenance) city improvements. By spamming small cities all over the map, I can have the same total population and close to the same research/gold/production... and I can do it 150 turns earlier. By the time that I reach your 1900AD date, I'll have 60 cities and I'll be ridiculously far out in front of you in every possible metric.

This is what people are missing with those "big cities vs small cities" comparisons. Given equal population, the big cities will come out on top. But that's a flawed comparison, because the two will never have equal population, due to the way that maritime food and city growth works in Civ5, and the mass of small cities will always come out far, far ahead. And yes, I do regard this as broken game design. Now that people like Luddite and myself have the trick down, it's extremely easy to avoid any problems with happiness. I can expand endlessly, with zero tradeoff. The terrain doesn't matter either, since everything comes from that center tile. It's boring.

Kylearan, of course no one has to play the game this way, but I'm at the point where I regard the "standard" Civilization gameplay of normal cities as severely suboptimal. It's basically a variant, and as Sirian once said long ago, if you have to play a variant just to enjoy a game, you're probably better off heading off to something else. Of course, no offense intended to those who are having fun and enjoying Civ5.

Txurce, all unique units keep their special abilities when upgraded. All units do, actually. The Cho-ko-nu is no different. It's hardly worse than American minutemen upgraded to rifles that can move over all terrain without penalty, and so on.