Civilization 5 Announced

[Yazilliclick]

Having it doesn't mean it was good though. Civ5 AI is playing with it right now. It's just not doing good. I think if you went back to play those games then you'd find that the game was not advanced AI wise and that the rules of the game were more forgiving for that.

[SevenSpirits]

There is one other balance factor to mention: location of military resources. You will find plenty of horses in the fertile, open lands, but not terribly much else. Nearly all of the iron, oil, aluminum, uranium is off in more rugged locations. And those food-rich regions will tend to be hammer poor. Forests and hills are now of equal value without regard to base terrain, so those desert hills are just as good as a grassland hill. Neither desert, tundra, nor jungle are as inhospitable in Civ5 as they were previously. There is years upon years of interesting map goodness to explore now, even just counting the core map scripts and the sheer variety of terrain combinations that can appear. The biases are part of bringing more value to the interaction between civs and the terrain.

With my help, Jon has been able to bring his vision about the maps and the large, sweeping regions of terrain, to fruition. He was right about the potentials that existed if we moved boldly in that direction.


- Sirian

Hey Sirian, are you thinking of plains as "fertile" terrain? I'm wondering if you realized when balancing the map scripts how much better plains is than grassland, given Civil Service's boost to river food and Golden Age boosts to tiles with a hammer. The main factor for me in judging start quality, other than resources, is number of riverside plains or hill tiles.

[Txurce]

I still really like the alternatives that city-states offer. You can’t just out them in your pocket - their favors need steady replenishing I the face of a competing AI. I don’t think it’s unusual for Civ that the AI doesn’t place as high a priority on the alliances as someone going with Rah’s CS strat. However, the game would be much better if their contributions were scaled to civ size and era. (The latter would slow down slingshot exploits as well.)

My guess is that a CS is coded like an AI civ, thereby contributing to lag. Already a 10-CS alliance has been reported elsewhere, and I have seen them switch sides and declare war.

The AI seems to do some things better, like attacking on two fronts. I’ve read of one 50-50 land-sea invasion elsewhere. All of their trading seems fair at this early stage – no obvious advantages on either side.

On the diplomatic front, I have no doubt that the AI is giving away the farm to many of you… but in the game I’m playing now (King), Montezuma wouldn’t give me the 120 gold he had even after I reduced him to once city – never mind the 8gpt he was currently making. Weird, huh?

In general, I consider negotiating with the AI a blast. Each has an individual response to everything, from crowing to admitting defeat (Montezuma defiant, Caesar resigned). They have allied with me as well as made other deals, but it’s much harder to get them to commit than it was in Civ4. I consider this an improvement.

Regarding pace, my own sense is the same as Sullla’s: slow at first, then it ramps up. Sirian addressed this to some degree. I do know that with each successive game, the pace feels more normal. That said, I’m already playing with 20% more AI as yin suggested, and will try a “fast” clock soon to see what happens.

On the miscellaneous front:

Coastal barb encampments do seem to have triremes off-shore.

Scouts cannot be upgraded, except by ruins.

The “ancient rifleman” has been widely reported, and obviously needs to be addressed.

[timski]

I'm half way through an Iroquois (Emperor) game. On starting I was nervous because their advantages depend so heavily on trees. However, my corner of the map transpired to be quite heavily forested. Within a couple of turns I'd convinced myself I had a lucky start! That "Wow Factor" again? Such map biases play well, by creating a positive psychological impact on player, without necessarily upsetting overall balance.

(Now, if only I could understand The Great Warpath's apparent inability to use forest/jungle for trade routes...)

Meanwhile, the AI continues to amaze me with its mix of genius and stupidity:

My closest neighbor, Askia timed his war with me, just as I was starting to build Mohawk Warriors. Units that I was, erm, planning to invade Askia with. He captures my third city quite succesfully. This third city happens to contain half of my Iron, putting a serious dent in my ability to produce Mohawks. That's precisely what a good player would do in this situation. (Un)fortunately his army's progress stalls due to poor tactical placement (I often make mistakes on unit placement, yet I'm still out-smarting the AI), so Askia never seriously challenges my capital or second city. And a few Mohawk Warriors later, Songhai is all but history.

Ramesses follows an extreme tech beeline-and-Wonder strategy, which is remarkably similar to how players might play Egypt. Exactly what the plan was, I'm unsure, but it involved beelining to Theology and producing the Oracle and Angkor Wat. Which might have been fine, except that Ramesses forgot to produce any Workers or Settlers or... He'd fought no wars, but knows he has Japan and the Aztecs nearby, so can't be seriously expecting a peaceful game. Yet, 130 turns into this Emperor game, his empire consisted of a capital defended by a few Warriors and War Chariots. Ramesses had absolutely no improvements at all. With such a minimal army and economy, he had absolutely no response to my invasion.

In short, the AI isn't all bad. It's just the good half doesn't save it from the bad half.

[Added a picture - note the lack of improvements on turn 133, as I prepare for war:]

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Exploits are exploits; would it matter if a car's brake defects only be revealed 6 years after the fact?

This simply is not true at all.

First of all, if we are finding super obvious problems with the game in the first week, who knows what we will be finding a month in or a year in. The fact that there are far more obvious exploits only makes it more likely that there will be indeed many more non-obvious exploits.

And you say you lost a cultural victory because your friend sneak-attacked you. Well..if you played your cards right, that would be categorically IMPOSSIBLE in Civ4.

I ended up going back and winning that game anyway, but I almost didn't even bother because it was stupid. And obviously, the developers didn't intend Open Borders to work that way on a war declaration since they already patched it. How did something so obvious and ridiculous get into the release version? Losing from a locked in winning position would've only happened in that scenario because of bad game design. Was I really suppose to marshall my troops to ROP-rape my own allies? Absurd.


And the 5-turn Rationalism Golden Age also glitched down to 4-turns, just like the 6-turn Piety GA. I don't know if this is a result of Chichen Itza, or if they both always glitch to 4-turns?

[SevenSpirits]

And the 5-turn Rationalism Golden Age also glitched down to 4-turns, just like the 6-turn Piety GA. I don't know if this is a result of Chichen Itza, or if they both always glitch to 4-turns?

Were you playing on quick speed?

All golden age lengths on quick get multiplied by .8 and rounded down, so 6 and 5 would go to 4. (Incidentally, since just about everything else gets multiplied by .67, this makes golden ages unusually potent in quick.) Yes, that is poor social policy descriptions - it should actually say 4 if that's how long it will be.

I've had the same thing where I had Chichen Itza and got a 4-turn GA from Reformation. I think it's just that Chichen Itza doesn't affect those social policy golden ages. Whether that's a bug or a documentation failure, it sure is irritating!

[Sullla]

I wrote up a report on my Emperor game over on my website. I figured it was time to start formalizing some of these thoughts for posterity later. Check it out: http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/americanempire.html

I don't have a full Civ5 section up and running yet; still need to work on the graphics for that. Sorry about that, will add in the navigation buttons later.

Also, unrelated question for Sirian: the Warpcore's hosting went down sometime in the past year. I miss the reports for Civ3/Civ4/Diablo. Any chance we'll see those restored in the future?

[Gold Ergo Sum]

This is my cultural game I played with Ramesses trying to see how many Wonders I could build. I only built one city for the first 200 turns (stole both Ottoman cities despite building about 5 units), and then razed two of Catherine's when she brought a sneak attack and planted my own city there so she couldn't try the same nonsense again.

I had long since won this game, but kept playing to mess around with some more modern units. At the close, I was ahead 25 Wonders to 1 for Japan and 1 for Russia.

In every game I've played, Japan has been an A.I. monster And taken over at least 40% of the land. I have been harassing him and taking land back for about 40 turns here though. Catherine ended up taking over about 60% of the land in this game, but could never make any progress on me, through stupid tactics, and the fact that I had built Himeji Castle, Great Wall of China, and basically every other Wonder.



I just cannot see how going for the culture victory makes sense on anything but a OCC. You simply cannot expand at all without slowing down your cultural progress. In this game, I had three cities for 75% of the game, built essentially every wonder, had every single culture producing building up quickly, beelined the culture producing social policies and Wonders, and ran cultural-focused cities when possible, and it still took me until really late (1990-ish I think) to pull the culture victory. Granted, Oda and Cathy declared war on me for most of the last 300 years, and that meant I had to actually build units, but I don't think that slowed me down considerably.

I am sure someone will figure out ways to do a quick culture victory, but I am not sure T-Hawk is going to be dropping cultural victories in 1300 in RB games anymore.

Were you playing on quick speed?

Nice. I think that is the explanation. So dumb that it doesn't adjust the descriptions on the Social Policies page.

[Sciz]

I wrote up a report on my Emperor game over on my website. I figured it was time to start formalizing some of these thoughts for posterity later. Check it out: http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/americanempire.html

I don't have a full Civ5 section up and running yet; still need to work on the graphics for that. Sorry about that, will add in the navigation buttons later.

Also, unrelated question for Sirian: the Warpcore's hosting went down sometime in the past year. I miss the reports for Civ3/Civ4/Diablo. Any chance we'll see those restored in the future?

Starting reading a bit, good read as usual. You asked about whether you could find a meter on how close you are to a great general, and you can through the military info screen or whatever it's called. It's choosable in the same drop down menu as demographics anyways.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Yeah, very good write-up Sulla.

Since I just picked up Civ IV in May, nearly everything I know about Civ IV came from reading your write-ups (and those of Kylearan and T-Hawk). No doubt I will learn much on Civ V from your write-ups (so long as you don't go back to Civ IV).

Interesting that you took out Japan so fast. They have been the most aggressive and competent A.I. in my games so far, since I've left them to go buck wild on the other side of Pangaea each game.