Civilization V

[Sten_Friberg]

You don’t have to patch it in yourself. The Babylonians are part of the deluxe edition. If you bought the deluxe edition, then when you entered your key into Steam to activate Civ 5, the Babylonian DLC was part of the package. So no worries.

If you bought the normal pack which offers two future DLCs, then no DLC is available yet, so you can’t do anything right now. Maybe the Babylonian Civ will be offered as DLC to non-deluxe users later, but it isn’t right now.

Thanks for the reply.

It turns out that I did buy the Babylonians, but not the deluxe version of Civ5. Babylonians will be included in the first DLC which will be released “late 2010”.
http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/192830-First-Civ5-DLC-will-be-available-Late-2010

Somewhat confusing for a numbnut like me, but I think I finally got it.

[TheWombat]

Interesting. The maps feel sparse to me with the suggested number of civs - you rarely get borders squashing up against each other. I’m not sure it’s a bad thing, but it feels odd.

I added an extra civ in on my most recent game.

Heh, not my experience at all–playing with the recommended number of civs, I always end up in close proximity to everyone it seems…

[mtkafka]

I believe what JP is trying to achieve is a harder AI without the AI cheating that happens at the King and higher levels. There are a lot of Civ fans that have in the past not bothered playing past Prince for that reason. The problem in Civ5 is that the general consensus is that Prince is not as hard as it was in previous games.

its not as hard because its very easy to game the ai in tactical combat. you can bait the AI into moving into kill zones… at least thats what ive been doing. i do see that the ai does build a nice mix of artillery/infantry (rarely horse), but it just does not move them well …i do think it attacks based on str/hp value but not on ‘a few moves ahead’ tactical value. i dont think many 4x games do that though.

[Orangist]

Heh, not my experience at all–playing with the recommended number of civs, I always end up in close proximity to everyone it seems…

Same here. I started playing on archipelago maps because continents just keep smacking me and everybody else in the same spot, hemmed in by city-states.

[Chris_Nahr]

its not as hard because its very easy to game the ai in tactical combat. you can bait the AI into moving into kill zones… at least thats what ive been doing. i do see that the ai does build a nice mix of artillery/infantry (rarely horse), but it just does not move them well …i do think it attacks based on str/hp value but not on ‘a few moves ahead’ tactical value. i dont think many 4x games do that though.

I suspect it’s the same basic AI as in Civ4, meaning it builds a nice unit mix but doesn’t know how to position them or how to engage multiple targets – because that wasn’t necessary in the old killer stack system.

[Gus_Smedstad1]

I just just today noticed that there were two buttons near the minimap. One that gave some options I’d been missing badly from Civ IV, mainly the resource icons, and the other which has the “strategic” map mode.

I’m weird. I love the board-game look of the strategic map mode. I don’t play in it regularly, but it’s handy for finding stuff since it distills the map down to the essentially information without the chrome.

[McKnight]

its not as hard because its very easy to game the ai in tactical combat. you can bait the AI into moving into kill zones… at least thats what ive been doing. i do see that the ai does build a nice mix of artillery/infantry (rarely horse), but it just does not move them well .…i do think it attacks based on str/hp value but not on ‘a few moves ahead’ tactical value. i dont think many 4x games do that though.

This is indeed true, and is why playing as Japan fundamentally breaks the AI.

[Dejin]

i do see that the ai does build a nice mix of artillery/infantry (rarely horse), but it just does not move them well …

In my last game, which did not go well, Babylon would have crushed my fledgling Turkish empire, except he didn’t seem to want to build anything except Babylon’s specialized Bowmen unit. My capital of Istanbul sat there with one hit point left. I had killed off all his Warriors. His Bowmen could only used ranged fire, so he was unable to capture the city.

I was hoping to actually lose, so I could find out what the Dan Quayle quote was, but no such luck. I finally built a unit and sneaked it down towards Babylon and as far as I could tell, he only had Bowmen. At one level it makes sense – a Bowmen has a 6 strength (same as a Warrior) and an 8 ranged attack (better than a Spearmen’s regular strength). I can see the AI thinking it’s a great unit, so why bother with Spearman or Warriors. But since it can’t take cities, an attack force of only-Bowmen has a pretty major limitation.

[pg1]

It’s because you are weak. If you don’t defend yourself, they will attack.

It’s not broken. It’s just not working how you think it should. It’s actually making a very sensible decision: destroy you while you are weak, get your cities, rather than wait until you are more powerful later one.

You’re wrong. I had a same size army with the Civ who declared according to the adviser and it was full of experienced units plus combat policy bonuses on my side. It was a slaughter but did split my attention and take time. He did tactically catch me out of position but the AI seems to need a either a large numbers advantage and/or a tech advantage to win. I’ve been playing on prince BTW.

[Mitya]

I just just today noticed that there were two buttons near the minimap. One that gave some options I’d been missing badly from Civ IV, mainly the resource icons, and the other which has the “strategic” map mode.

I’m weird. I love the board-game look of the strategic map mode. I don’t play in it regularly, but it’s handy for finding stuff since it distills the map down to the essentially information without the chrome.

And it runs on literally anything. My laptop’s a few years old, intel graphics that ran Civ IV at ~15 fps when things were cranking. V? It’s butter in the strategic view.

[scharmers]

Has anybody actually lost a game in Civ 5 yet? I lazily meandered my way through my first complete game last night (Rome/Prince), and at no time did I actually even feel threatened. I steamrollered the closest civ even before I got legions, then pretty much just explored the map and got into wars when I felt like it. No tweaking city specializations, no city focus, pretty much building what I thought what was cool as opposed to what I needed. I blew through everybody except the last civ (France) who had the whole game to get entrenched on the other continent. Launched a few desultory amphibious assaults, grabbed one city, got bored when Napoleon spammed me with peace treaties, so I maxed out tech and won the space race. On my first playthrough. I did things that in just about every semi-competent 4X game would have gotten me killed, but my strongest opponent pretty much just floated huge armies outside my borders until I got annoyed and ploughed him under.

The best thing I can say about Civ 5 is that it makes me appreciate and want to go back to Civ 4 all the more. Civ 5 is Facebook civ. Sheesh.

[Genji]

It was a hard choice between Sir Digby and Numberwang. :D

@roBurky: I also like the island gameplay but I always get thrown into cold islands with lots of tundra and no other resources. /sadface

I was getting this a lot (starting near to tundra) while playing Catherine/Russia. Solved it by disabling ‘Biased Start’ in the in the advanced options. After that my starting locations were much more varied.

[Arboris]

Greetings folks,

I am considering a Graphic Card Upgrade for Civ 5 and I was curious if anyone could reccomend a good upgrade based on my current system specs…

Asus P5N32-E SLI Motherboard
Windows XP Pro OEM SP3
Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 (3.0 GHz, FSB1333, 4 MB L2) CPU
3GB of Ram
x1 Asus GeForce 8800GTS 640MB Video Card
Seasonic 650W High-Efficiency Power Supply
Thermalright SI-128 Heatsink w/ 120mm Quiet Fan

I don’t want to go overboard on the upgrade if I will run into a bottle neck issues due to cpu limitations that will greatly diminish the card’s performance.

Any suggestions?

Thank you!
-Arboris

[olaf]

I have a 1Gb GTX 460 running stock clocked and it can handle the game at max settings 1920x1080, easily. The game does lag on turns though, late game. My CPU is an i5 760 @3Ghz.

[Reldan]

Has anybody actually lost a game in Civ 5 yet? I lazily meandered my way through my first complete game last night (Rome/Prince), and at no time did I actually even feel threatened. I steamrollered the closest civ even before I got legions, then pretty much just explored the map and got into wars when I felt like it. No tweaking city specializations, no city focus, pretty much building what I thought what was cool as opposed to what I needed. I blew through everybody except the last civ (France) who had the whole game to get entrenched on the other continent. Launched a few desultory amphibious assaults, grabbed one city, got bored when Napoleon spammed me with peace treaties, so I maxed out tech and won the space race. On my first playthrough. I did things that in just about every semi-competent 4X game would have gotten me killed, but my strongest opponent pretty much just floated huge armies outside my borders until I got annoyed and ploughed him under.

The best thing I can say about Civ 5 is that it makes me appreciate and want to go back to Civ 4 all the more. Civ 5 is Facebook civ. Sheesh.

I did have a loss when I was going for my Siam one-city cultural victory. I had open borders with Persia, and out of the blue he declared war on me and hit my capitol with about 6 units on the same turn, taking it out. I actually had the stuff to retake it, but apparently the game doesn’t let you do that if it’s your last city so it just immediately went to the defeat screen. It’s like - all his units attack before you can even go… you lose.

I had to back the game up like 2 turns and make sure my military was a couple hexes closer to the city, at which point I easily defeated his attack.

[Damien_Neil]

And it runs on literally anything. My laptop’s a few years old, intel graphics that ran Civ IV at ~15 fps when things were cranking. V? It’s butter in the strategic view.

I noticed that. My earlier “what the hell, Firaxis” complaints are withdrawn–the strategic view is a great compromise between pretty graphics and not-insane system requirements. The only thing I’d ask for is a netbook mode that starts in the strategic view and doesn’t try to load anything else.

[jpinard]

Greetings folks,
<<snip>>
Any suggestions?
Thank you!
-Arboris

I’d suggest you NOT upgrade for Civ alone. The differences you’d see are so small you’d be very disappointed. Just for comparison, I’m running 1920x1200 everything maxed and ramping the graphics way down doesn’t make much difference. If there are other games you’d really like to tweak out, make your decision on that.

---

Anyone know if there’s a way to save your game start settings? When doing an advanced game setup it’s a big pain resetting every little thing manually.

[DaleKent]

Hi folks, if you want to know how to make proper mods and package them without the tools (so you can make mods and distribute them now before the tools are released), I’ve detailed how it’s done. :)

http://www.weplayciv.com/forums/entry.php?22-The-way-to-a-man-s-heart-is-through-his-modinfo-and-civ5mod-files.

[Dejin]

Has anybody actually lost a game in Civ 5 yet?

Hell yes. I started off in Prince Standard Map and stomped all over the AI, didn’t even bother finishing. I beat a Duel-game on King. I won a standard game on Emperor. Decided that felt to easy and cranked it up to Immortal. I got my butt kicked repeatedly on Immortal. I did manage to win one game on a Duel-sized map starting in the industrial age, but I concluded Immortal was way too hard for me. I backed off to Emperor and proceeded to lose a bunch of games. I might win the current game, we’ll see: Tiny game on Pangea, I’ve got Montezuma cowed, but Bismark just declared war along with all his little friends (3 nation-states) and he’s got a ton of Landsknechts coming at me – I think I’m on par with him tech-wise and I’ve got one nation state ally, but Bismark has got an awful lot of units (Landsknechts are essentially Pikemen, but cost half the price of a Pikeman), no idea where the fourth Civ is. I think Emperor is a good challenging level for me right now.

I’d say I’ve lost a good 6-8 games by now, where lost means, I reached the point where I realized I wasn’t going to win, and in fact, my civ was no longer anywhere near competitive, so I quit.

[Merneith]

Quick question - is there a list somewhere of which city buildings will require specialists and which are just basic buildings? The in-game description of the cities isn’t always clear and in my last game, I ended up building some stuff I didn’t have specialists staff.