Civilization 5 Announced

[VoiceOfUnreason]

How does Teamspeak work? Is that built into LoL?

Not built in - a remote server supports a number of channels. You install and run a local client to connect to a remote server, select the channel, etc.

One of the veterans (Mookie?) has had a server running 24/7 since.... probably since TeamSpeak2 was released (my understanding - I've only just joined the fun).

[sunrise089]

Correct, Mookie from the RaY clan days of Civ has been nice enough to provide a TS server. We use Teamspeak2, not the newer 3 release. The program is free and totally ad/spyware free. There are sometimes a few hoops to jump through to make sure volume levels are correct and there is no echo, but the program "just works" on the receiving end - install the few-meg file, open it, add the TS server address, and you're online.

[Bam-Bam]

After playing two games, I'm not sure this one has the legs. It could be me--my stamina for games, and for the tedious aspects of the games is limited.

Last game was an OCC on Emperor, as Egypt aiming for a cultural. I never built one road (or railroad), only built a handful of units, and won ~turn 443. That could have been way earlier, but I pulled a few stupid moves, the worst of which was losing a great artist to a barb . I was trying to culture bomb to get two more resources, and took one step too far.

The other game was a boring tech win--it was clear I had achieved a dominant position, but I had to go through another 100 turns to win it out.

I may give a few more games a shot, but like Sullla said, the lack of balance between the economics and the production makes this game drag. As for ICS, and the lack of balance that allows for it to work--meh. I won't do ICS--just doesn't appeal to me.

[MJW (ya that one)]

This is an example of a crushed inmortal game in case anyone wants it. This is an example of how to make diplomacy to your favor. No one declared on me after I got a decent miltary. I made the AIs declare war on each other and walked in after they sent their troops. The save is just before the war against the second to last AI; you will reverse rop rape them. They will fail to magically teleport into their terrority (instead getting stuck in an ally city state) and die a horrible death. I am making polices every 5-6 turns due to puppets. Because polices stop getting much more expensive as time goes on Free Speech means a player gets 25% faster so it is not useless. I had a large army of GDR on turn 270. Proudction does not seem slow because I am not looking at the puppets and I can just rush-buy anything I want in my core. I went on to crush the ottomans and beline to theo. and get 100+ happyness. I used deluxe edition but the BABS are not on this map so you can just use the work around. The map is covered in orange ala Aeson.

[MJW (ya that one)]

I beat Diety. The BABS failed to spawn again so you can just use the work around. I knew I would win as soon as I stopped the Mongal's attack. After that I killed the AI's one by one and no-one declared war on me. (The reason why a lot of AI's declared on the players in that game is because their City to Army ratio was too high). All the Al's save Rome on the other side but I knew that the AI can not attack you if you are on the other side of it. Because the AI does not build Apollo in a decent time I could just tech and win.

A big problem is that the only way to lose is to have the AI declare war on you before you can overcome the extra settler the AI gets and get a decent number of units on the field. The AI just can not handle the game but the human still needs time to get back from the extra inital units given to the AI. Just like GAL CIV and Sirian saying "snuffed in the cradle" before you can do anything. MP is not playable--just see Mr. Game theory's perfect civ strat guide on CivPlayer fourms. To be fair to Civ5 the AI dies as soon as you can touch it and Civ4 was the only game in the series were touching it was hard after the first 50 turns or so.

[luddite]

So I decided to see just how ridiculous ICS could get, by using a mod that removed the minimum distance requirement between cities. This was the result:
http://i53.tinypic.com/20h37fr.jpg
A solid blob of cities, with almost zero regular tiles worked, yet still productive enough to launch a spaceship before turn 230.

[Sullla]

I saw that thread at CivFanatics, and it definitely highlights how serious the problems are in Civ5, when a "honeycomb hive" of cities can work 0 tiles each and still launch the spaceship before 1600AD. The patches are doing exactly what patches are supposed to do: make minor tweaks in game settings and remove bugs. They aren't addressing the vast gameplay issues that cripple Civ5's depth and replayability.

I just don't see much of a future for this game. It's boring and it doesn't present interesting decisions.

[Rowain]

Well it is by now common knowledge that the Maritme citystates are broken.

Would be interesting to see what close package you could get with Civ4(with the same no minimum distance mod) and how powerfull such an empire would be.


As an additional thought : I don't get it why the existence of an broken mechanic makes the game as a whole boring an uninteresting. Is it not the main reason of existence for Realms beyond to avoid those obvious choices? Is it no longer the spirit of RB to go against the 'best course'? I remember that for Civ3 we needed a huge lists of thing we should not do to have an interesting game and still we played Civ3 with enthusiasm and for a long time. Why does this not hold true for Civ5?

PS: Civ4 has since the invention of Espionage also a complete broken mechanic.

[plako]

Would be interesting to see what close package you could get with Civ4(with the same no minimum distance mod) and how powerfull such an empire would be.

This kind of mod wouldn't change much pre-corporation eras. Maintenance costs effectively make excessive planting of cities unprofitable. Low difficulty level would allow more tightly backed cities. Corporations might bring in a possibility to plant every tile profitably. Someone (not me) could calculate this. e.g. one could assume State property, deity difficulty and low cost civics and planting of the 50th and 100th city and compare the costs to potential benefits of the corporation. City spamming would work best in the unhospitable areas like tundra and ice when the small cities wouldn't steal tiles from highly developed other cities.

[luddite]

It would of course hinge on the food corporations (which many think were a mistake for civ IV, anyway). Without food corporations, cities packed in right next to each other like that wouldn't grow at all in civ 4, and a size 1 city is just a drag on your economy.

With corporations... it's a little more complicated. Civ jewelers would add a fixed gold amount per city, and the food corporations would allow you to run multiple merchants/scientists per city. So you could probably keep up a decent economy that way, but still the extra cost per city (and the massive inflation cost) would make it pretty weak. You definitely wouldn't have enough hammers to build much. Making it worse is that, for corporations you want free market, but for city spam you want state property, so you have to make a choice there.

In any case, corporations come so late in civ 4 that it's just an academic question. Prior to corporations, there's not much point in packing cities tighter than 3 tiles away (unless you just really need one more city to squeeze out a national wonder). In civ V, you can pack in cities almost right from the start, thanks to the free maritime food and the horribly imbalanced happiness mechanic. I almost feel like I wouldn't even be at a disadvantage from never working a regular tile, and just running pure citizens right from the beginning.

also, about Rowain's question: the problem I see is that it's not an either-or mechanic. It's basically just this: the more cities you have in civ V, the stronger your empire becomes. Period. So yeah, you can forbid people from settling more than like 5 cities, and that will make the game more challenging- but whatever limit you set, you'll want to go up to that limit as fast as possible. There's no strategic choice there, it's just boring.