Civilization V Solo Reports

[Gaspar]

A couple more great reads, T-hawk. Thanks.

[Krill]

Good reads T-hawk Definitely got me beat on the OCC

[NobleHelium]

Using some CSS in the France report I see.

[timmy827]

So the Civ 5 tech tree stays dull after the cool kids left to hang out over in the policy trees.

Good points. I did an OCC-Siam-Space to try out G&K, and had basically the same thing after reaching whatever the research lab tech was; seemed like 15 tech of useless filler before finishing all the ones for space parts. One thing I'd add is the structure of the civ5 tree is so uniform compared to civ4 with (another instance of) smoothly escalating costs. I miss some of the quirks of Civ4 like subsequent techs occasionally being cheaper, significant numbers of techs unneeded for space victory (going all the way back to the ancient age). And things like Astronomy and Divine Right being more expensive to normal-research but unaffected for bulbing costs - arguably that's a weird effect solely from avoiding crossing lines in the visual representation, but added a little extra 'did you know?' replay value.

Nice reads, glad you're doing so many. As I've gotten busy and lazy, I feel that reading your reports gets me most of the satisfaction from exploring the game mechanincs in a tiny fraction of the time

[T-hawk]

Well, you may not get many more at this rate... Now I've got ANOTHER save crashing on entering the Renaissance. Exact same symptoms, same place in the turn processing sequence, same address in the same dll. It's a science game as Korea, which sounds like a common thread, but there's no reason that Korea should behave any differently. Sigh...

[superjm]

Every time I read these reports (and play this game) I always feel like there's a really good freeform strategy game somewhere in there, it just needs to ditch the really obvious railroading and let the player actually make some strategic choices.

Good writeups so far, it's fun applying some of these strategies to my own game. I actually kinda like how broken to bits religion can be if you pick the right beliefs.

[TheArchduke]

Thanks for keeping those reports coming.

The Scout Conga Line really shows what 1UPT creates. Ugh.

[Commodore]

Forgive my ignorance, but did G&K make PBEM any more doable? Although given the apparent blandness of the paths/strategies, I imagine it'd still be a massive unfun MP experience.

[T-hawk]

I always feel like there's a really good freeform strategy game somewhere in there

That nails it. There's a good strategy game somewhere in there and I'm going to bang on Civ 5 until I find it. I think it's optimizing for fast culture, since that avoids some of the worst design spots, ICS and the AI's tactical ineptitude.

Commodore, I have no information on G&K PBEM.

Anyway, the larger news is that I think I isolated the crashing problem. It happens in the Renaissance if either of my two DLC civs (Babylon and Korea) are in the game. It's reproducible by just starting a Renaissance era game with either civ - crashes instantly. Maybe the DLC is corrupt on my machine somehow, though I'm rather not inclined to shovel more time at the problem and just go play other civs instead.

[superjm]

I just finished a Babylon game today (space victory) without crashing so it has to be something on your end.