September 23rd, 2010, 14:33
Posts: 2,313
Threads: 16
Joined: May 2010
I personally love the hex grid and the 1upt. These are major improvements.
I just don't like the vast majority of changes to other core mechanics.
If I could play Civ IV on hex tiles with 1upt (and I would actually just make it one combat unit per tile, so you could stack workers), that would be an awesome game.
September 23rd, 2010, 14:37
Posts: 1,386
Threads: 8
Joined: Jan 2010
Jowy Wrote:Looks like it's my time to shine!!
~ Jowy, beaten Civ4 Monarch once
Shine on you crazy diamond Jowy!
September 23rd, 2010, 14:39
Posts: 23,603
Threads: 134
Joined: Jun 2009
Meh, 1upt right now is just not important. Perhaps in MP it shines more than stacks.
Gold Ergo Sum Wrote:I personally love the hex grid and the 1upt. These are major improvements.
Non sequitur.
Quote:I just don't like the vast majority of changes to other core mechanics.
If I could play Civ IV on hex tiles with 1upt (and I would actually just make it one combat unit per tile, so you could stack workers), that would be an awesome game.
Moddin will be critical...
Current games (All): RtR: PB80 Civ 6: PBEM23
Ended games (Selection): BTS games: PB1, PB3, PBEM2, PBEM4, PBEM5B, PBEM50. RB mod games: PB5, PB15, PB27, PB37, PB42, PB46, PB71. FFH games: PBEMVII, PBEMXII. Civ 6: PBEM22 Games ded lurked: PB18
September 23rd, 2010, 14:41
Posts: 1,212
Threads: 9
Joined: Mar 2007
I like the 1Upt. Only problem with it is that the AI is too stupid to use it well. Stacks of doom were easy for the AI to use (i assume anyways, i know nothing about AI). But they are horrible at 1upt warfare, that's for sure.
September 23rd, 2010, 14:44
Posts: 36
Threads: 0
Joined: Sep 2010
These specifics are great, Sulla â much more educational for me as I try to get up to speed.
I rationalized the point of the city-state gifts as bets the city-states make when establishing contact with a potential empire who will either help or hurt them down the road. This strikes me as historically accurate. I agree that if you arenât near any city-states, you are at a relative disadvantage (15g vs 30g), although I donât know how many civs are going to rack up an unbalancing number of 30g contacts. I also donât think that these are vast sums of money â mine certainly got spent quickly enough on tiles! But in fairness I canât be sure, and think more gameplay is required to be conclusive here.
As for decisions, these come down to which city-states to befriend, since you canât befriend the all. Like you, my first instinct is to beeline for the maritime civs. (Weâll see whether weâre right.) But again, you are competing with the AI for their favors, and thereâs no reason to think that youâll win the race, especially early on. If we discover over time that we can easily beat the AI to presumably decisive city-state relations, then I would agree that the system needs tweaking. But wouldnât you say that adjusting then numbers would solve the theoretical problem?
I completely agree that apart from the AI being stupid at war, it is also not guarding its workers well enough. (How many have you found in barb camps? Way too many.) This has to be patched, as it is presently broken. I say this even though stealing a worker does lead to war, and even though the AI is now a definite competitor, war for a worker may not always be the best idea.
Lemmy sounds like a good, not great, Civ4 player. His explanation of where choices are made in 5 vs 4 seem apropos, which is why I mentioned them. The choices he actually made are a whole different kettle of fish!
What he had to offer with regard to diplomacy is documenting the gradual change in Bismarckâs attitude to obvious hostility, where it more or less settled. The same is true later in his game with Wu. I donât think anyone needs to worry about having no idea where one stands with the AI. You more or less know (including a fuzzy neutrality early on).
That is different from having a complaint about the likelihood that ultimately they will never be your friend. I think Iâm okay with that, because I can still have those Civ4-type religious relations (for example) with the city-states. I like the idea that the big civs are out for themselves, as long as they will cooperate with me when itâs in their interest. In Lemmyâs game he missed out on potential cooperation with the AI because he had no one around on his continent, and made no effort to engage once he met the others (partly because it was almost too late). In my King game Iâve had pacts of secrecy that seemed to result in war as intended. I donât know whether cooperation pacts pay off in any way, because I havenât earned a pay-off, if you know what I mean. That said, for all I know youâre right, and there is no diplomacy worth engaging in with the AI. That would be a big minus, even if I like them being ultimate competitors.
(By the way, I think Bismarckâs technophobia must have another explanation than just AI stupidity. He was much worse off than most of the other civs, despite being good-sized early on. In effect, they were smarter than him.)
Intuitively I always felt that culture should expand in a more general manner than it did in Civ4 â that its targetability was not realistic. However, Civ5 effectively does the same thing â target certain tiles over others. I would much prefer its slow cultural expansion to be âeven,â and as you note, buy certain tiles when you really want that horse. That shouldnât be a difficult adjustment for them to make, and agree that not having done so from the start is bad design.
If can paraphrase one very interesting point you make in your screenshot commentary, itâs that the game looks beautiful, at the price of clarity. Roads are hard to see, and terrain differences are also not remotely obvious. (How many terrain types are subtle shades of soy milk?) I hope that the differences will become more clear to the experienced eye over time, but for now I am 1) always checking to see what the terrain is, and 2) defaulting to the strategic view for ease of use at times other than a major battle (where the strat view makes sense). That is not fun, and having fun is Rule 1.
September 23rd, 2010, 14:55
Posts: 36
Threads: 0
Joined: Sep 2010
Sciz Wrote:I like the 1Upt. Only problem with it is that the AI is too stupid to use it well. Stacks of doom were easy for the AI to use (i assume anyways, i know nothing about AI). But they are horrible at 1upt warfare, that's for sure.
This is the core conundrum. 1upt is incomparably better than building SOD's and beelining for cities. Presumably that will revolutionize MP. For the time being it makes the AI even worse tactically than it was before, because even if it got smarter, combat became exponentially more complex. My hope for the future, apart from patches and mods, is some of those pre-release screenshots, where the AI at least knew how to line up. This is worth considering - how many of us already playing would otherwise think the AI could possibly set up an intelligent range/melee formation?
September 23rd, 2010, 14:57
Posts: 2,313
Threads: 16
Joined: May 2010
Krill Wrote:Non sequitur.
You must've missed Sooooo's question on the prior page there.
Also, in the general discussion about city-states, several posters seems to suggest that they aren't broken because an A.I. might beat you to allied status. Now, I haven't tried yet, but unless you cannot make a gold gift to a city-state allied with another party (problematic in and of itself), then you can always "beat" the A.I. to allied status with a city-state by getting a bigger relationship modifier than the A.I. More than two Civs can be above the 60 point threshhold in relation to a city-state. The city-state just gives the allied status to whichever one has the higher modifier. So you can always cash rush your way to allied status if you have the money, no matter what any A.I. does. Or at least I think you can based on my play sessions.
September 23rd, 2010, 15:03
Posts: 8,798
Threads: 75
Joined: Apr 2006
sooooo Wrote:To the people who have the game: What do you think of the 1upt rule instead of stacks of doom?
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
September 23rd, 2010, 15:09
Posts: 297
Threads: 2
Joined: Sep 2010
One suggestion: Play on Deity! I have no idea how to win that. Indeed, surviving 100 turns of Deity demo is non-trivial. But in the demo I see changes:
* The AI isn't fixed, but it is less dumb.
* Allied City States become (AI) targets - the "free food" isn't so free.
* Ruins now mostly benefit the AI due to their vast starting armies.
* Oh, and the sheer scale of the carnage is fun to watch!
Whether those changes are for the better is another question entirely. And this doesn't fix issues such as biased start positions or lack of feedback. But I'd encourage people who are on the verge of abandoning Civ 5 to at least take a look at the hardest difficulty, and see what you make of it.
September 23rd, 2010, 15:10
Posts: 8,798
Threads: 75
Joined: Apr 2006
sunrise089 Wrote:: see, i think the basic "civ4 had issues to, so civ5's issues should be glossed over" crowd is forgetting how minor civ4 issues were
This (from a chat).
There are multiple orders of magnitude between the Civ 4 and Civ 5 problems at launch. It won't impact the bottom line much, but FWIW they've lost my benefit of the doubt.
Darrell
|