Civilization 5 Announced

[Krill]

You must've missed Sooooo's question on the prior page there.

It's a non sequitur because sooooo wasn't asking for a personal reply of what method you prefer, but how it works as a mechanic. Which hinges on the word improvement: a bringing into a more valuable or desirable condition, as of land or real property; betterment. I doubt that there is any way to prove conclusively which is better in isolation. We do know that at the moment the AI sucks at using 1upt though. So you can't obectively claim that 1upt is an improvement over stacks in this game, at this moment in time.

Ask me again when the AI isn't sooooo terrible. It just doesn't come into play, other than I can maneuver my units into all the good spots. By the time they get suspiscious and ask me what I'm up to, its too late. Monty had 3X my power but his units were scouting all over the map, while mine were concentrated around his cities. I took all three of them () in 4 turns.

I'm hate to say I'm mostly with Sulla right now . I want to love the game, I really do. I even think most of the mechanics are pretty good in concept, but so poorly balanced its laughable. The bad AI is then multiplicative with these problems, and what you get is a game that needs a patch that might never come if we don't do it ourselves.

Darrell

Ditto...5 years in development, and this is what they come up with? And guys, these are balance problems that the beta testers should have seen coming, so I wouldn;t lay this purely at Firaxis' door, unless Trip really was boneheaded.

[Atlas]

Non sequitor

You must've missed Sooooo's question on the prior page there.

Actually you missed Krill's point

I think Krill contends it is a non sequitor to like both the hex and the 1upt, since the hex limits the number of units you can have in proximity to a target. Where as were SoD still possible the hex would not be relevant

[Gold Ergo Sum]

It's a non sequitur because sooooo wasn't asking for a personal reply of what method you prefer, but how it works as a mechanic. Which hinges on the word improvement: a bringing into a more valuable or desirable condition, as of land or real property; betterment. I doubt that there is any way to prove conclusively which is better in isolation. We do know that at the moment the AI sucks at using 1upt though. So you can't obectively claim that 1upt is an improvement over stacks [i]in this game, at this moment in time.

First of all, I can call anything an improvement that I think is an improvement. He asked for an opinion. It is pretty clear that 1upt and the new combat system opens up more tactical decisions to be made, and places a greater importance on unit positioning. The fact that the A.I. sucks ass doesn't change that reality. Putting all your units on one tile and smashing it against the other person's units is not tactics, except in possibly choosing which units to place in the stack.

Where as were SoD still possible the hex would not be relevant

I disagree. The hex tiles would still allow for a more natural geographical layout and also for units to move in a more coherent fashion (no more moving at the same speed zig-zagging as you do in a straight line).

[ThERat]

If you guys can find out in your first few sessions that the AI is really dumb and the game far too easy, why didn't the beta testers ring alarm bells? Really beats me.

Yesterday I tried AW in the demo declaring even on city states (I know this is extreme). After a few turns of war, the AI came back asking for peace and was ALWAYS willing to pay a lump sum and gpt although I had not beaten a single unit of theirs nor did I even know where are their cities. Such an outrageous flaw should never get undetected...what were they doing?

[haphazard1]

- Opening difficulty extremely dependent on starting location. A poor starting location makes the game massively tougher. [OK, maybe this isn't new to Civ5, but it's not good.]

- Related: game is too dependent on having the right resources near the start. If you lack strategic resources, you are really screwed. Having the good luck to start near multiple luxuries makes the game enormously easier.

Does anyone know if the "legendary start" option applies to all civs, or only to the human player? If it applies to all, at least it would be less imbalaced.

- Different civs are horrendously unbalanced. Some of them are all but useless (poor Ottomans...) Companion cav is as bad as the Civ3 Immortal, brokenly powerful, since the AI is too dumb to build spears.

Maybe this could end up more like MOO, with some civs widely acknowledged as "strong", others as "weak", etc.? Adjust the level of challenge by intentionally playing weak races and so forth?

- The AI is abysmally dumb when it comes to combat. I watched the big, bad Persian Empire walk one unit at a time into the killing fire of a city-state, losing about six units over the course of two dozen turns while achieving absolutely nothing. It was... painful to watch, given how expensive units are in this game. When I went to war, the AI mindlessly walked archer units right up next to me to be killed (just stand 3 tiles away and counter-attack), and continued to bombard *BARBARIANS* with their cities while my units were at the gates ready to attack. My Roman ballistas, the units doing all the city-killing, were never targeted even once. Oh... my... God.

- True, Civ4's AI is poor at warring, but at least it knows how to defend itself. You'll still lose units taking the cities it defends. I've already killed entire civs in Civ5 without suffering a single combat loss, because the AI is just THAT STUPID in fighting.

Wow. I was worried that 1UPT would be a big advantage for the player, with humans exploiting the tactically-poor AI to defeat forces 50% (or maybe even 100%) larger.

But crushing entire AI civs without even losing a unit?

Because there are so many fewer units in this game, the situation is much worse. And that's not even counting how ridiculously easy it is to sucker-punch the AI and steal its workers. Hmm, I can spend 17 turns building a worker in the early game, or I can smack the one that local AI neighbor is dangling on his border with no real repercussions (because it feels as though you can never befriend any of the AI civs in this game). What's the better option there?

...

Was there any real diplomacy there, mutual interest and shared friendship? I just saw every AI off doing its own thing, same as in my games. I've tried to be friendly to some AIs, and gotten very little in return. It's just like the Civ3 AIs all over again; you can deal with them, but they will never really be your friend.

This is exactly what I was worried about with the "black box" diplomacy -- that it does not make diplomacy deeper, it makes it meaningless. If the AI can not trade you tech, can not even trade you a map, and will never vote for you (unless conquered and liberated), and will never be your friend...what is diplomacy for again, exactly? Where is my incentive to be anything but a ruthless warmonger, attacking and taking whatever I want whenever I want it?

It isn't like the AI is going to be able to stop you militarily....

[ThERat]

If can paraphrase one very interesting point you make in your screenshot commentary, it’s that the game looks beautiful, at the price of clarity. Roads are hard to see, and terrain differences are also not remotely obvious.

Funny how I felt Civ 4 was a step back in this regard versus Civ 3...Looking at the screen-shot from Sullla, I agree it's horrible to play

[Krill]

First of all, I can call anything an improvement that I think is an improvement. He asked for an opinion.

Subjective!

It is pretty clear that 1upt and the new combat system opens up more tactical decisions to be made, and places a greater importance on unit positioning.

You get this with stacks as well - you can check out the little unit exchange that went on between India and Egypt in PB3 if you want an example of single unit tactics in a stack warfare game.

The fact that the A.I. sucks ass doesn't change that reality.

We have gone from opinion to reality in the space of 2 sentences here

Putting all your units on one tile and smashing it against the other person's units is not tactics, except in possibly choosing which units to place in the stack.

Not only is that simplistic, it's also not the truth of the matter. Placing all of your units into a stack and then walking them into someone elses land, or even neutral territory is suicide. For instance, check out the Lin-Krill war in PB1 (turn 110ish)

[sunrise089]

Putting all your units on one tile and smashing it against the other person's units is not tactics, except in possibly choosing which units to place in the stack.

When is this actually done? In my high-level games versus the AI the AI tended to have plenty of units outside it's main SOD, and I certainly didn't just want to plant my stack next to theirs and get killed via collateral. Sure I wanted THEIR stack to end up next to mine, but there was plenty of tactical gameplay in order to get that to happen.

In MP you only see uberstack vs uberstack when several players have combined stacks and are trying to kill on enemy city while other enemies rush defenders in. It's still uncommon too, because it means both sides think they have an advantage, and one side is wrong. And, such moments are some of the best MP moments, not the worst.

[Jowy]

By the way, look at that image above. Can you tell which tiles have roads on them? Because I sure as hell can't! What a mess, not cleanly presented at all. The silk tile actually does have a road on it, not that you can see it. Also, the marble resource is a GRASSLAND tile. Could have fooled me!

Try hitting the F9 key

[Tatan]

And of course, the fact that the AI can't handle 1upt well wouldn't be nearly as bad if Civ 5 had great multiplayer compatibility, but...

I miss PBEM.