Civ 5 Adventure One by T-hawk

[T-hawk]

'We want a Civ5 Report* from T-hawk' Petition

MJW
Bob
ASM
Mist
Krill &
kalin
NobleHelium &
MNG

http://www.dos486.com/civ4/civ5adv1/

[NobleHelium]

I like the new navigation box.

[Bobchillingworth]

I like the new navigation box.

Ditto!


Also, great report! I can't ever see myself purchasing Civ V (at least, not anything with its present issues), but I do enjoy reading about the game regardless.

[MJW (ya that one)]

1. Over 30 gold from a city state. .
2. "That Stable adds 2 more hammers to Washington for more snowballing, and those Horseman units were well known for ruling the world at least in earlier Civ 4 patches."
3. Cannon can attack without leaving itself exposed. Use roads, move set-up and fire. Attacker cannot do this because you cannot use enemy roads. This trick becomes second-nature after a little while. This is one of the reasons why defenders have a big edge in Civ5.

This report is really good for a new player. I'm sure you will quickly get better than me at this game. I'm just poking fun at you while I can. :neenernee

My only real thought it does not feel like Civ5 has a hard cap at least for me. There is happyness sprinkled all over the tech and social trees. So there is always some way of upping happyness is the "near" term.

[Sullla]

Thanks for adding your thoughts here, T-Hawk. I will be curious to see if your opinions on the mechanics change when you play more games (and see some of the more tedious/repetitive shortcomings play out over and over again).

The one thing that I want to point out is that everything that RB has done with Civ5 has been played under a giant variant rule, not allowing the player to trade for any AI gold whatsoever. That's a massive restriction on the gameplay, and the mechanics are significantly worse off if the player isn't tying their own hands like that. You mentioned that you approved of removing the sliders, because it makes gold more worthwhile; the problem is exactly the opposite, as it makes gold much TOO valuable instead, since you can literally purchase anything you want at any time if you have gold. Insta-complete units on demand, magic buildings popping out of nowhere, city state alliances, research agreements, AIs dancing around declaring war on your command, etc. There's an infinite amount of gold to spend if you remove that whole variant restriction. In my opinion, you give Civ5 far too much credit here, when RB has had to slap major restrictions in place to make this work.

I also want to see how you feel about those AI war declarations when you're on your 10th game and not your first. And did you really fall back on the "realism" argument to make a case for Civ5? Seriously?! :neenernee

Thanks, I greatly appreciated reading through this report.

[T-hawk]

Over 30 gold from a city state. .

No, that's correct. The English phrase is "hand over". http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hand%20over

3. Cannon can attack without leaving itself exposed. Use roads, move set-up and fire.

Yeah, when defending, I got that. I was talking about attacking with cannons. The city can always shoot the cannon first, or a defending unit can attack the cannon. Artillery can avoid that and therefore are much better.

My only real thought it does not feel like Civ5 has a hard cap at least for me. There is happyness sprinkled all over the tech and social trees. So there is always some way of upping happyness is the "near" term.

There are many sources of happiness, yes. But my point is that they can and do run out. And then you can't create more happiness at any cost except by settling more cities. It feels like a hard cap to me, although of course we're just debating semantics.

[T-hawk]

The one thing that I want to point out is that everything that RB has done with Civ5 has been played under a giant variant rule, not allowing the player to trade for any AI gold whatsoever.

Indeed. I intentionally played this game without reading anything on the Civfanatics strategy forum, but now I have, and it's clear how much of a different game it is with hundreds of gold streaming in from the AIs for superfluous luxuries. Research agreements as a knock-on effect are the biggest difference; having enough gold to always sign every possible RA means you can all but ignore your own science development. And all the free gold pushes strategic choices in narrow directions, to the RA enhancers and purchase cost reducers.

But if we can fix such a major portion of the game with such a simple rule, why not do so? Civ 3 had worse problems and still served as our major entertainment for many years. The need to ban bilking AI gold doesn't constitute a fatal flaw. Our games won't be comparable to those on Civfanatics, but that was never true for Civ 3 either.

And did you really fall back on the "realism" argument to make a case for Civ5? Seriously?! :neenernee

Sure, why not? Realism is never a determining factor, but if a small token falls on the side of realism, why not note it? People complain when the player suffers a worldwide dogpile (like in our succession game)... but all the nations of the world SHOULD resist a bloodthirsty conqueror. Unless you think we should have let Germany win World War II.

[Sullla]

Well, except for the fact that the AI plays by completely different rules when it comes to aggression; they can war endlessly with no real repercussions...

I'll refrain from further comments, since I don't want to rain on anyone's parade. I just don't get it. Why make so many excuses and invest so much time in what is clearly a mediocre strategy game? Why not just play a better game? For the life of me, I cannot understand this fascination.

You did see that Diablo 3 just came out, right?

[T-hawk]

Because there is enough good stuff in Civ 5 to be worth delving past the problems. The tactical combat makes for interesting puzzles, my notes about cannons aside (and they are working exactly as designed, just require the tactical effort.) Social policies are interesting and the Civ 5 culture victory is a whole new way of building in Civilization games that we haven't seen before. And even if buildings and growth are overcosted, it's still interesting to puzzle out what is worthwhile and what isn't.

It feels like, of all things, a Super Mario Bros game. You don't really care if grabbing the mushroom powerup is always correct, it's still fun to do. You don't care if the goombas are playing Always War against you because that's just how the game is. And like a Mario game, it might indeed wear off after a few playthroughs. I feel like I want to collect all the stars - victory types and difficulty levels - and then I'll be done.

You did see that Diablo 3 just came out, right?

Yeah... but I really don't need another thousand-hour time sink in my life right now.

[oledavy]

Loved the report T-Hawk I'm looking forward to reading about any future games you play.