Civilization 5 Announced

[Gold Ergo Sum]

That is the way I played my first few games Luddite, because all my instincts told me that is how you played Civ. I maybe had 7 cities between 10-20 pop. Ultimately I just find the core mechanics of this game to be uninteresting. The lack of slavery. The lack of civic changes. The lack of differentiation in tile yields. But mainly, the lack of effect that new techs and Wonders have in the game. I just feel there aren't many interesting decisions to be made, and there is very little sense of anticipation for "I cannot wait until I get THAT tech or THAT Wonder."

There are a world of interesting games to play (hell, I am thinking I HAVE to buy Rock Band 3 after reading about it), and Civ V just isn't worth it to me in its current form.

Maybe I should hook up with Sulla or Speaker or something to play LoL, because playing by myself against the computer, I cannot find the appeal of that either so far. I feel like I must be missing something.

[luddite]

Yeah I know what you mean. Most of the bonuses are things like "15% bonus to production" and "25% boost in gold". It's just hard to get excited about anything like that. The 100% bonuses in Civ4 are much more fun. Not to mention all the techs that basically do nothing, which you have to research just get past them to some other tech you want.

10-20 pop is still small though. I tried playing a game where I rushed to biology for hospitals (which work like the granary in Civ 4, saves half the food after you grow) as soon as possible. Then I went on for medical labs (saves another half of the food). Growth was still slow, but not as torturously slow as it usually is, and I was able to actually build most of the buildings. You have to spend a fortune buying land, though.

[uberfish]

Has anyone here tried playing a game where they just aim to make a few really large cities? It's nowhere near as powerful as the small city spam approach, but I think it's more fun.

Yeah that's still how I prefer it, a few good cities and some small ones just to pick up resources or define territory. It's probably a faster win in real time, if not in-game turn count!

To be honest I've gotten back into FFH since we started organizing that new PBEM though. AI tactics are even worse than civ5, but it's so fun playing with the variety of units/spells/etc available

[Cyneheard]

Yeah that's still how I prefer it, a few good cities and some small ones just to pick up resources or define territory. It's probably a faster win in real time, if not in-game turn count!

To be honest I've gotten back into FFH since we started organizing that new PBEM though. AI tactics are even worse than civ5, but it's so fun playing with the variety of units/spells/etc available

But no one expects a full-game mod to have a superb AI. (Rhye's AI is probably fairly solid (never played), but beyond historical victories and the stability stats (which I hope the AI gets some flexibility on), it's not that different mechanically from Civ. FFH's units are nothing like Civ IV's)

[sunrise089]

FFH AI is terrible, BUT early DOWs on Deity can certainly still smash the player, as can late-game large scale wars if the AI has their stack in a spot I don't expect it.

Sullla's SG shows that the same thing is probably not true in Civ5.

[Brian Shanahan]

Civ V had a zero-day patch as well, so I'm not sure what you are saying here...?

Oops my bad, didn't realise that (gave up at the demo stage), but considering all the problems it must have been a real dogs dinner of a one.

[Txurce]

Has anyone here tried playing a game where they just aim to make a few really large cities? It's nowhere near as powerful as the small city spam approach, but I think it's more fun.

That's how I always play Civ 5, and always have a good time. I play Emperor on continents, and set goals before I start - not just victory conditions, but approximate number of cities. If I go for a relatively large number, I always annex either immediately or soon after takeover. This makes the game more of a battle.

Recently I played India, settled on a space victory, and three cities. That wound up being four when I realized I forgot to build a port. I had the western edge of a continent shared with America, Greece and Rome. The game was terrific because of the... diplomacy.

First, the world's CS banded together against the rampaging Alexander. That lasted for the entire game. As Greece fought Rome, there was a lot of CS ally-bribing - in other words, the AI was definitely focused on this. I broke my neighbor Washington early on, and survived war by Alexander.

Then came the most interesting twist. Greece wore down under the pressure of Rome, America and the CS. Rome became dominant and eventually attacked me. I used cavalry to beat him locally, but had yet to reach railroads around 1850. But when I took an American city from Rome, I sold it to Washington rather than hold it (and go over my self-imposed limit). He paid through the nose. He lost it, of course, and I then took three nearby Roman (American) cities and sold them to England, the other continent's superpower, who had almost 10K g. The money I got for all three changed my game, allowing me to buy my way into a CS-induced renaissance.

Having tried this strategy in another game since, it seems that only wealthy expansionist countries like America and England can be counted on to buy "land." Others have no interest, although I think others may have bought their own cities back. This indicates that there's no exploit involved - these powers are intent on growth, and can afford it.

Rome building artillery ended my cavalry war against him, and I settled in for the sprint to the space race. Then came the final reveal for someone who had only played conquest until then: the AI didn't try to stop me from winning, even though Rome built Apollo twenty years after me. Since then I've noticed that the AI bands against a human player going for conquest much more than one who is not. (And with the new patch, they attack when you're low on units or busy on the other side of the map. Then they attack on multiple fronts, and b sea if need be.)

[Speaker]

Maybe I should hook up with Sulla or Speaker or something to play LoL, because playing by myself against the computer, I cannot find the appeal of that either so far. I feel like I must be missing something.

League of Legends is very much not a single player game. Practice Games with AI bots are purely to test your character and experiment with builds. The bots do not work together, nor do they respond to your actions. Just jump in and play some "Normal Games" solo, or hook up with any of the many people from here who are playing together.

[sunrise089]

League of Legends is very much not a single player game. Practice Games with AI bots are purely to test your character and experiment with builds. The bots do not work together, nor do they respond to your actions. Just jump in and play some "Normal Games" solo, or hook up with any of the many people from here who are playing together.

Speaker is very much correct. A five player team is really the way to go. Even having a single teammate on Teamspeak is good, but a full team, all with voicechat, is a very different game than playing random MP matches, much less offline versus bots. Several aspects of good gameplay only work with a team backing you up.
____

While on the subject - I highly recommend all RB guys pick up an inexpensive mic or headset. For literally less than $15 you can make your Civ or LoL experience MUCH better for yourself and your teamate. LoL is a pretty fast game, and people don't always have time to type out questions and answers.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

How does Teamspeak work? Is that built into LoL?

I ran some games with an old console running mate of mine, and we just used Gmail talk while we played the game.

I had a much better time hanging with him last night, even though I am legitimately awful. I was much better with Garen than with Annie.