Civilization V Catch-All

O_O

FeralMonkey wrote:
Shawnosaurus wrote:

Moms & Kings expansion

Wonder why they didn't release this in time for Mother's Day. ;)

Maybe Freud is one of the new leaders?

IMAGE(https://encrypted-tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT5pZFceOfz9EGqqAhhJmu337Gjd4fs2ixaWvloioTXDOGZwGbnEg)

GODS AND KINGS downloaded. I sure hope this doesn't suck.

BadKen wrote:

GODS AND KINGS downloaded. I sure hope this doesn't suck. :)

Be interested to hear what your thoughts are after delving into it.

Civ V: Gods and Kings $30 - $25 Amazon Gift Card + Download code to Steam = $5 expansion + 1 happy Budo

After playing several hours last night, I'm intrigued to try more stuff. I picked a random civ and got Dido of Carthage (free harbor in every coastal city, early sea raiding special unit, elephant "horsemen" and movement over mountains possible).

A lot of the changes took me by surprise, but they are interesting. For example, you can't attack ground units from the sea early in the game; triremes can now only attack cities and other ships. This makes Barbarians a bit more threatening, since you can't just plink them to death from offshore. There were several other tech tree shuffles that I found interesting, too, but I don't really remember all the details. Open Borders requires a later tech now, for example, so you can't explore the whole map right away. Also, it seems like every unit has an upgrade now, which is a welcome change from a lot of the dead-end units in vanilla Civ V.

Religion is fascinating, and plays a bit like Civ IV, but is much more fleshed out. You can pick specific bonuses for your religion, and customize it completely to suit your Civ's circumstances, with bonuses like extra faith for wonders, bonuses for having certain kinds of terrain, happiness bonuses to help fast expanders, and so on. Missionaries and Inquisitors, which you purchase with faith, help spread your religion and prevent the spread of other religions, respectively.

Espionage is very cool, and not at all like Civ IV. You don't have spy units that you move around the map, instead you order your spies around and give them missions via a special interface. To me, that kind of plays like calling out your agents on the red phone and sending them their orders via courier, it was quite cool. You can see inside cities and steal technology from other civs, but you can also station spies in city-states and do things with them, too.

I don't really know what to say about the AI, the game I played last night was rather odd. I was on a continent with two civs that stuck with one city for a very long time, and one civ that only built 2 early cities and started expanding around Medieval time. I was playing a mostly peaceful religion-focused game. By the Renaissance, my religion strongly dominated the continent. I only got to the Industrial age before sunrise started lightening my windows.

The AI used religion competently, and used its spies well also, but there wasn't a lot of warfare in my game, so I can't really say anything about that.

From my first encounter with it, I'm very happy with the expansion so far.

BadKen wrote:

After playing several hours last night, I'm intrigued to try more stuff. I picked a random civ and got Dido of Carthage (free harbor in every coastal city, early sea raiding special unit, elephant "horsemen" and movement over mountains possible).

A lot of the changes took me by surprise, but they are interesting. For example, you can't attack ground units from the sea early in the game; triremes can now only attack cities and other ships. This makes Barbarians a bit more threatening, since you can't just plink them to death from offshore. There were several other tech tree shuffles that I found interesting, too, but I don't really remember all the details. Open Borders requires a later tech now, for example, so you can't explore the whole map right away. Also, it seems like every unit has an upgrade now, which is a welcome change from a lot of the dead-end units in vanilla Civ V.

Religion is fascinating, and plays a bit like Civ IV, but is much more fleshed out. You can pick specific bonuses for your religion, and customize it completely to suit your Civ's circumstances, with bonuses like extra faith for wonders, bonuses for having certain kinds of terrain, happiness bonuses to help fast expanders, and so on. Missionaries and Inquisitors, which you purchase with faith, help spread your religion and prevent the spread of other religions, respectively.

Espionage is very cool, and not at all like Civ IV. You don't have spy units that you move around the map, instead you order your spies around and give them missions via a special interface. To me, that kind of plays like calling out your agents on the red phone and sending them their orders via courier, it was quite cool. You can see inside cities and steal technology from other civs, but you can also station spies in city-states and do things with them, too.

I don't really know what to say about the AI, the game I played last night was rather odd. I was on a continent with two civs that stuck with one city for a very long time, and one civ that only built 2 early cities and started expanding around Medieval time. I was playing a mostly peaceful religion-focused game. By the Renaissance, my religion strongly dominated the continent. I only got to the Industrial age before sunrise started lightening my windows.

The AI used religion competently, and used its spies well also, but there wasn't a lot of warfare in my game, so I can't really say anything about that.

From my first encounter with it, I'm very happy with the expansion so far.

Sounds like some pretty good stuff! I take it as a good sign that the AI didn't just default to reckless murder like it usually does.

Encouraging! I have purchased it, but haven't had time to dig in yet. Thanks for posting your impression

Arrgh, I wish this was unlocked here, I've got a real Civ craving and I'd love to play tonight, but I've been holding off for the expansion. Silly regional unlocking.

Redwing wrote:

Arrgh, I wish this was unlocked here, I've got a real Civ craving and I'd love to play tonight, but I've been holding off for the expansion. Silly regional unlocking.

Amen to that. Amazon should ship it tomorrow, I'll have it on Monday probably.

IGN Review here.

Pretty mediocre writing, but this I found particularly interesting/disappointing:

For all the things Gods and Kings adds, including additional options for diplomacy, there still doesn't feel like there's much you can do against the hyper-aggressive AI. When you first meet a rival they'll likely be nice, but as soon as your borders come lose they'll start denouncing you and escalating tensions towards war. No amount of appeasement seemed to matter when it came to slowing down an enemy advance. The bottom line is this: if you're weaker than them and close to their border, they're going to attack. Meaning that, just like in vanilla Civ V, you need to maintain a sizable military if you want to survive. It feels contradictory to my goals when I'm going to a cultural, political or science victory, and makes the AI feel a bit binary. Either you're a military might and they're complacent, or your nation of brilliant scientists or philosophers better prepare for a beat down no matter how good they are to their neighbors.

They never seem to get diplomacy right, it seems. I guess it's realistic that weaker nations get trampled, probably even more so if they're culturally/intellectually superior. But this binary love/hate relationship the AI has with human players since Civ I is really annoying. I'm aching for a Europa Universalis-style diplomacy system with parameters (even if they're behind the screens) like casus belli and infamy.

It may be too early yet to tell, but how large of an expansion do you think this is? Particularly, will this expansion be a must-have for Civ 5 as Beyond the Sword was for Civ 4?

Redwing wrote:

Arrgh, I wish this was unlocked here, I've got a real Civ craving and I'd love to play tonight, but I've been holding off for the expansion. Silly regional unlocking.

Agreed. 18 more hours while I read about other people playing it! Bah!

On the other hand, I am already way too busy this week already so it is probably for the best.

Double post for region-lock rage.

I have not completed a game yet but I don't think I would go back to playing civ v without the expansion.

I got into a couple of wars and rome attacked me with a good unit mix. 2 swordsmen, 2 composite archers and a catapult. They would have rolled me if I was not expecting/ready for it.

I also feel like diplomacy is better now. There are some more options and it feels more fleshed out.

Bottom line; if you like CIV V, this is a great reason to go back and play some more.

Personally; I like it better than Civ IV + BTS, and I played the ever loving snail snot out of that game.

is the only way to hurry up production of wonders with great engineers? I've already got the town on production focus.

Markly wrote:

is the only way to hurry up production of wonders with great engineers? I've already got the town on production focus.

yup.

Also, i realized that they took away the culture bomb ability from the Great Artist. Kinda sad about that because one of my favorite things to do was get the wonder that gives 2 Great Artists (can't remember which one it is, The Louvre maybe)and culture carpet bomb the closest civ.

dejanzie wrote:
Redwing wrote:

Arrgh, I wish this was unlocked here, I've got a real Civ craving and I'd love to play tonight, but I've been holding off for the expansion. Silly regional unlocking.

Amen to that. Amazon should ship it tomorrow, I'll have it on Monday probably.

IGN Review here.

Pretty mediocre writing, but this I found particularly interesting/disappointing:

For all the things Gods and Kings adds, including additional options for diplomacy, there still doesn't feel like there's much you can do against the hyper-aggressive AI. When you first meet a rival they'll likely be nice, but as soon as your borders come lose they'll start denouncing you and escalating tensions towards war. No amount of appeasement seemed to matter when it came to slowing down an enemy advance. The bottom line is this: if you're weaker than them and close to their border, they're going to attack. Meaning that, just like in vanilla Civ V, you need to maintain a sizable military if you want to survive. It feels contradictory to my goals when I'm going to a cultural, political or science victory, and makes the AI feel a bit binary. Either you're a military might and they're complacent, or your nation of brilliant scientists or philosophers better prepare for a beat down no matter how good they are to their neighbors.

They never seem to get diplomacy right, it seems. I guess it's realistic that weaker nations get trampled, probably even more so if they're culturally/intellectually superior. But this binary love/hate relationship the AI has with human players since Civ I is really annoying. I'm aching for a Europa Universalis-style diplomacy system with parameters (even if they're behind the screens) like casus belli and infamy.

You don't have to have a strong military to defend yourself. You've generally got the advantage on home ground, you can easily fend off an army twice the size or more if you're careful. Plus if you're a tech powerhouse, your units will be stronger anyway. I don't really get that complaint.

Fair enough on the AI being a bit wacky though, at least in Vanilla, won't be able to try out the expansion until midnight.

Redwing wrote:

You don't have to have a strong military to defend yourself. You've generally got the advantage on home ground, you can easily fend off an army twice the size or more if you're careful. Plus if you're a tech powerhouse, your units will be stronger anyway. I don't really get that complaint.

Yes, especially given the real-world historical record. I can't really think of any empires that neglected military might and focused purely on other pursuits and still lasted and thrived.

MikeSands wrote:
Redwing wrote:

You don't have to have a strong military to defend yourself. You've generally got the advantage on home ground, you can easily fend off an army twice the size or more if you're careful. Plus if you're a tech powerhouse, your units will be stronger anyway. I don't really get that complaint.

Yes, especially given the real-world historical record. I can't really think of any empires that neglected military might and focused purely on other pursuits and still lasted and thrived.

For the record, I LOVE Civ V, IV, and II. I did mention that militaristic inferior empires will get trampled in real life and that I like this being reflected in Civ.

But I'm more of a roleplayer than a min-maxer, and the AI is the highest obstacle for my WSOD.

Examples:
- Civs with roughly equal military might have status 'Friendly', then declare war out of the blue. During the war they hate your guts, but after you decimate their army and get a white peace they suddenly LOVE you again.
- About that white peace, for some reason that's about the highest attainable goal. Even after you have decimated their army, conquered the AI's biggest cities and stand ready to mop up the rest they will NEVER give you more than a white peace with maybe some small tribute thrown in. More than once I've been forced to wipe a Civ of the map because their peace offer was laughable.
- I once had a game where I waged zero wars against other Civs, and attacked only one city-state. Throughout the game, from 1000BC until my cultural victory, I was known as 'the unreliable war-monger'. The AI on the other hand doesn't seem to suffer from backstab penalties.
- Sudden flips in relationship status, from Friendly to Cautious, without any apparent reason.
- The constant denouncement tsunamis.

I think Firaxis has always (ab)used the AI diplomacy to balance the game. This is understandable, certainly at the higher difficulty levels. If a player Civ rises above all others in score, wonders, science, culture etc. then I also get why AI players would conspire against you. But maybe they should not do this when you're in the middle of the pack. This way Firaxis could still use the AI diplo as a balancing tool, but only when it's needed, and it wouldn't break my WSOD as much.

dejanzie:

The chief difference from IV to V was that they removed transparency, so the player couldn't manipulate the AI to within the last point of optimization. The AI is still a code and it still responds to trigger events or actions within the game. Denouncements are as strategic as declarations of friendship and/or nonaggression. You can even do it to the AIs, actually.

The legacy of IV is the event-triggered deal-table diplomacy. This hasn't changed all that much in V, and is somewhat better than the awful diplomacy of earlier Civs. Could use some work on the format of the feedback they decided to keep.

You can hover over the relationship status to get a list of reasons for the relations being what they are. That can be helpful.

I've played around with this expansion a bit and it is a clear improvement. I am really enjoying the religion aspect and it may be even better than the implementation of religion in Civ4. The addition of leaders, techs, units, wonders and diplomacy makes it a must buy if you like Civ5.

I am on record as being dissapointed with vanilla Civ5. I like the game, it just doesn't compete with some of the complexity and systems that were in Civ4 BTS. This expansion brings it to the point that it competes with BTS on most fronts and the elimination of the stack of doom and more strategic combat is a clear improvement.

Thumbs up from a longtime Civ fan.

Kier wrote:

You can hover over the relationship status to get a list of reasons for the relations being what they are. That can be helpful.

Yeah, through patches they slowly brought some of the background info to the front, to the chant of a thousand gleeful told-you-so's from the power players at Civ Fanatics. It's helpful, but it sometimes reveals the ineptitude and irrational flip-floppery of the AI as well.

I'll leave it at that. Civ V is still a fantastic game, I'm just mildly disappointed they still haven't focused on prepping the series' only child left behind.

This expansion is great (to me)! So many little things that make me happier! Like unit health values for example. And religion is handled so cleverly! For anyone thinking religion is Civ4 religion, it definitely isn't. It's a custom set of bonuses that you assemble over time. You don't just race for a tech then spam the world for a diplo buff.

And the AI's war strategies seem better. At least so far. They don't suicide units or send them in one at a time like they did before. Last night the Danes lured me out of my borders and had an ambush trap set up with a ton of archers. Which was awkward because I had the same scheme on my side too. The AI seems more intelligently cat and mouse in fair fights. Which is refreshing.

Played a half hour or so before work, after it unlocked for the antipodes last night. So far: haven't seen much new, although I did like seeing more stuff from city-states, in particular:

Spoiler:

"Lisbon wants you to bully Troy" (go to Troy and demand tribute)

Has anyone conquered a mercantile city-state? If so, do you get to keep the luxury for yourself?

Yeah I mostly agree with your sentiments dejanzie, the AI can be a bit all over the place. My comments were more on your linked review, insisting that you need to be a military power to succeed, you really don't (although it can help!).

The diplomacy doesn't trouble me too much since I mostly treat all the AI players with a healthy dose of paranoia, I almost expect the illogical mood swings! I think it comes from sneaky AI buggers in Civ IV stomping my outlying cities with surprise stacks of doom after declaring war all of a sudden, the backstabbing sods.

These days, I tend to do the backstabbing.

I did have some problems with performance after I got into the gun powder era.

I was playing on a huge terra map and the turns eventually took about 30 seconds to process. That is too long for me. I had to put that game a side.

Kyekye wrote:

The AI is definitely more strategic. Ghandi started one of those unprompted wars against me (which really, is how I start all my wars, so fair is fair) and rather than slowly move warriors towards me one at a time he surrounded my city with war elephants and pikemen in 2 turns and captured the city 5 turns into the war. Pretty slick actually.

That alone is enough to make me think I should buy this expansion.

I've been really liking some of the new aspects that this expansion brought. The ocean combat is incredibly satisfying now. I was able to conquer cities with a few ironclads and establish footholds within new continents. Religion is interesting, but not a critical must have. The new civs are useful, but not at much of an advantage above the old civs.

I guess my only complaint goes on the pile of diplomacy and enemy AI. It's still odd to have a friend declare war on you, but they suffer no diplomacy penalty for it. If I did this, every single civ puts a negative on me of declaring war on a friend. Also, some of these historical civ personalities make the game a little too stagnant or predictable. I pretty much know who to pick on, who to avoid, and who to fast expand against right out the door. The "random personalities" has become a must-check option in the advanced options menu for me.