New Civ 5 PBEM

[Ichabod]

Anyone interested in a Civ 5 PBEM? I've just bought the game + G&K at the Thanksgiving Promotion in Steam and I've been wanting to try a MP game.

I realize it might be difficult to find people interested in trying it, especially since, as far as I can tell, I can't play the game without the expansion, since I own both. So I'd need to find people with interest + that own the expansion, which, frankly, I don't think is very likely.

Anyway, let us see. Anyone interested?

[SevenSpirits]

I did enjoy playing the previous MP Civ V game, and like I said there, I think more should be run. But I don't want to play in the second one. I'd really like to read some other peoples' take on strategy and not just my own. And the last one was kind of depressing for me, because the competition wasn't great and all the lurkers did was rag on Civ V.

You won't have to use Gods and Kings. It counts as a DLC, and you can selectively turn those on or off. It's probably better to try for a game without it, just because you have a bigger potential player base that way.

[NobleHelium]

Since when you can selectively turn off DLC?

[Ichabod]

I did enjoy playing the previous MP Civ V game, and like I said there, I think more should be run. But I don't want to play in the second one. I'd really like to read some other peoples' take on strategy and not just my own. And the last one was kind of depressing for me, because the competition wasn't great and all the lurkers did was rag on Civ V.

You won't have to use Gods and Kings. It counts as a DLC, and you can selectively turn those on or off. It's probably better to try for a game without it, just because you have a bigger potential player base that way.

Good to hear about the DLC and expansion. I'd prefer playing with the expansion, since everyone is saying the game vastly improved with it, but I realize it might be an issue.

I understand why you don't want to play. Can you help us fix a setting with your experience with the first game? I'd think of things like turning barbs off or at least forbid barb farming to get influence with a city state (I may be wrong, but I think you only get influence for killing a barb camp, not killing barbs near a city state in the expansion). I don't know... Anything you'd like to add?

[Ichabod]

Since when you can selectively turn off DLC?

There's an option in the game. I've seen it for DLC's, but I didn't know the expansion worked the same way.

[T-hawk]

Since when you can selectively turn off DLC?

Since the patch in June (2012) that came along with the Gods & Kings release. It was a widely requested capability and Firaxis actually does listen at least sometimes.

[SevenSpirits]

Good to hear about the DLC and expansion. I'd prefer playing with the expansion, since everyone is saying the game vastly improved with it, but I realize it might be an issue.

I understand why you don't want to play. Can you help us fix a setting with your experience with the first game? I'd think of things like turning barbs off or at least forbid barb farming to get influence with a city state (I may be wrong, but I think you only get influence for killing a barb camp, not killing barbs near a city state in the expansion). I don't know... Anything you'd like to add?

From my vague knowledge about G&K, it's a very single player-focused expansion. One of the main things Civ V's audience complained about was how the AI tried to win instead of being "realistic", and G&K brings the game in that direction. So there is religion, more city state quests, and more intricate and usable diplo with the AIs. Therefore I'm doubtful about how much it improves multiplayer - in fact some of the added features probably just won't work in MP at all. They have patched the base game since PBEM1 though btw, fixing some of the less fair strategies that we saw there. (E.g., now the free GPs you get from Liberty and Hagia Sophia count as a GP you birthed for your GP counter, and are therefore less necessary to go for.)

I personally would suggest playing with default settings including barbs/city states/huts all on, like PBEM1 did, because they provide something useful for your military units to do that isn't directly attacking other players. I actually see this as one of the strong points of Civ V. I think the settings we used in PBEM1 were great, except I guess I'd scrap the denouncement thread since people seem to have trouble with that concept.

[Serdoa]

Depending on how PBEM43 will be handled I would be interested in this Ichabod. I also bought the G+K-expansion some days ago and did actually play with it already. There still seems to be an awful lot of hitting end turn and waiting, but that partly seems to be the case in Civ4 as well, it just doesn't take as long in Civ4 to actually process the turn after you ended it. And of course the city-screen is still not very clear imo (can that be viewed in strategic view as well?).

Anyhow, I'd be interested to play. I think playing with the expansion would be more interesting, as it gives you more to do with the religious as well as the spy stuff, though I have certainly not understood it in detail yet and don't know if it will be an issue for MP or not.

[Ichabod]

Depending on how PBEM43 will be handled I would be interested in this Ichabod. I also bought the G+K-expansion some days ago and did actually play with it already. There still seems to be an awful lot of hitting end turn and waiting, but that partly seems to be the case in Civ4 as well, it just doesn't take as long in Civ4 to actually process the turn after you ended it. And of course the city-screen is still not very clear imo (can that be viewed in strategic view as well?).

Anyhow, I'd be interested to play. I think playing with the expansion would be more interesting, as it gives you more to do with the religious as well as the spy stuff, though I have certainly not understood it in detail yet and don't know if it will be an issue for MP or not.

I'd also like to try a game with the expansion, if that's possible. I've messed around a bit with religion and there does not seem to be anything extremely overpowered with it (it seems a bit underpowered to be exact... most of the religious things give faith and apart from buying some buildings or units, faith only seems to be used to get even more faith - high chance that I'm missing something, though). In certain aspects, depending on the terrain, maybe there is... But then again, terrain always dictates a lot. Espionage I still haven't played with (most of my games so far have been only the first 70 turns or so, just to get a feel for the early game things).

Nice to see there is at least a bit of interest. Now we only need to find at least another 2 poor souls to play with us.

[Azza]

I'm tentatively interested, but I can't put my name down for certain just yet. I might be moving to London early next year, so I have no idea what my availability would be or whether I could play at all if that were to happen.