3261

By the way, Troy’s Flash of Steel podcast about Civ5 is up. I guess Jeff Green was originally supposed to be the special guest and Tom isn’t their either, but it’s still an interesting discussion of the game. I did find it interesting that Troy, despite his somewhat negative review, has put in over 100 hours on the game. ;-)

Edit: Now that I’ve listened to the podcast, one thing that stands out to me is a comment by Julian (I think), who said that on the upper difficulty levels he thought the AI was noticeably better in its use of units. I’ve seen this on occasion on the lower difficulty levels as well - in my last game on warlord I fought a war against Songhai where he didn’t do anything obviously stupid tactically that I saw. There was talk from the developer that the AI was written so that it’s supposed to be smarter as the difficulty levels go up, mainly because they designed it to make more mistakes at lower levels. What hasn’t been clear is at what level the best AI shows up - is it at Prince, where there aren’t much in the way of bonuses applied? Or is it at the top, in which case players who don’t want to deal with an AI with massive advantages are never going to see it? Seems to me that the AI should max out around the mid level, with the other advantages ramped up from there. If it’s not being applied that way, it could be that simply adjusting the AI “smarts” could make the game notably improved at mid-range difficulty levels.

So I guess the real question is whether people think the AI is better in handling its troops at the upper difficulty levels to begin with.

3262

My favorite map is a Small Continents w/Low Sea Level, Temperate, Normal Rainfall. Large or huge. Gives a nice distribution of landmass/sea, chokepoints, civ distribution. All IMO of course.

3263

Too bad that was 4 days ago… no love as of last night, but them’s the breaks. But at least I am not alone in my Civ 5 misery.

I hope the Civ 5 will simply fix the saves when I save in a new slot, it is not a huge deal I am still in the chekcign things out mode as I have not had a ton of time to play seriously… more the shame that what time I did have was chasing down issues they missed. yay.

3264

I’m not sure, but I think the open border agreements allowed them to scout out my cities and defenses enough to prompt their invasions. I allowed open borders with China and Arabia late in the war, though, as it gave both of them better access to fight France.

In fact, the open borders with China has done nothing but help, so far, as they have only the single city on my continent, but have been heavily militarizing there against France, Arabia, and America. I only have one city bordering that Chinese city (I think I gave them Seattle), but the open borders has definitely allowed them to hurt the other powers on my continent.

  1. You were only able to accomplish your diplomatic maneuverings because America gave up the farm. This kind of peace offering should never happen because it’s just like the Civ is quitting and throwing in the towel. Even if you had a massive military at the doorstep of each of their cities, they shouldn’t offer that much. That’s one of those things that has to be fixed.

Although America gave up huge concessions, they still retained their 1st, 3rd, and 4th largest cities (they gave me Boston, which was their 2nd largest, as well as Seattle and Atlanta). In addition, the other 2 cities were conquests from Arabia (Damascus and something else), which meant it probably helped eliminate unhappiness for them.

I guess I’m saying that although it was a drastic offer, it has not eliminated America from the game, and they’re still holding out against China, France, and Arabia.

I’m just worried that long-term, I may have weakened China by focusing them on my continent, as Siam is quite powerful, and right next to both China and India.

3265

That does nothing for me (size remains constant, and it still has plenty of gibberish although a lot less than it did before the script). You might have better luck with the script I linked above, although I think it’s best to just wait it out with new games that you only load from main menu unless something definitive comes up.

3266

I hope the Prince AI isn’t the best, since they rarely use their navy outside of destroying fishing boats.

3267

The AI still isn’t great at higher levels. On Immortal, I saw it sticking Catapults adjacent to my cities, and on Diety, it still doesn’t grasp that putting undefended land units on the water when I have a naval unit nearby is a bad idea.

3268

I am not sure the AI is better at higher levels as much as it is just able to build and support more units so it always appears more of a threat. Have not seen the naval game much.

And those 100 hours I put in - 60 were before the review was published. No one can say I did not play enough to know what I was talking about.

Oh, Tom wanted to join us but he was recording some other podcast apparently. Which is fine.

We miss him terribly on the show and I hope he and Bruce can come on soon and help me gush about Bronze.

Troy

3269

This has probably already been posted, but has anyone had difficulty locating other civilizations? I started a game last night with four civilizations and fifteen city states on a normal sized map, and despite uncovering most of the map I’ve still only located two city states and no civs. The game is still referring to the other civs, so maybe they’re just very small and confined to the murky edges of the map? Or maybe there is more area to be uncovered than I’m realizing.

3270

If I’m not mistaken, the minimap can be misleading as it expands dynamically with the borders of your knowledge. Send a scout in a single direction a long way and the scale should change dramatically. It could just be that your opponents have neglected their naval focus, and lack a blue sea navy of any kind, as that has happened to me on a number of occasions. Then they suddenly progress and I’m awash in caravels.

3271

That’s kind of what I figured, only I’m hitting lots of dead ends. I have this picture in my head of the four of them being stranded on some little iceburg off in the corner of the map, or something. I’ll start a dedicated search tonight.

3272

I wonder what would happen on a huge map if you reduced the civs to about 4-6 and just pumped up the city states to the maximum (28, I think?). I’d think that would be an interesting measure of at least part of the AI because pathfinding wouldn’t be such an issue until the end game when you’d likely have superpowers squaring off (if the AI could handle its own continent).

3273

I don’t get it:

Sid Meier’s Civilization V Update Released
Product Update - Valve 16:10
Updates to Rhythm Zone have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:
Fix for a crash that occurs on bootup for customers using a Spanish Windows XP operating

What’s “Rhythm Zone”? [Edit] Oh, wait! A Civ Dance Game! Yay.

I think there’s an error in there somewhere, but it definitely did a download of 22.1 MB.

3274

I almost exclusively play continents script on huge maps. My typical exploration strategy is first explore the home continent until running across obstacles the land unit can’t get past (Civ borders or oceans), find the north and south extremities of the map (watch for tundra and ice), then send a caravel or two sailing out either east or west, whichever is most convenient based on my port cities.

Exploring the world is a game in itself.

3275

I don’t know how the AI would handle it, but I know the couple games I’ve had surrounded by city states were incredibly boring. Granted I was going for culture victory in both, so I suppose you could go aggressive and ram through to the AI nations, but it wasn’t that fun to be isolated from an enemy who won’t really work to seek you out, at least not over water.

3276

So this time – Roman at the King level – I landed 2 musketeers and 2 cannon in a tiny corner of the vast English empire, which had something like a dozen longbowmen with that ridiculous range 3 attack, random other junk units (still capable of killing cannon, though, if they actually wanted to), maybe 60 population, twice what I had.

Yeah, it was no contest.

3277

@HighPlainsDrifter, I’m playing an archipelago map, and to complicate things further I lost my scouts due to a mishap and wasn’t able to rebuild them just yet. Current challenge is to quickly send out a new scout or two to locate that one near-mythical square that apparently will unlock the part(s) of the map I’ve not seen. I agree about exploration. And thanks for the continents tips.

@Mitya, exactly, my plan was/is to roll through and puppetize every city state I come across, which reveals another side to the game with new (to me) types of challenges (I almost always want to be the good guy). Edit: roBurky had a similar idea several pages back, before I got to the point where I could try it myself.

3278

I am finding the AI at King to be maddeningly inconsistent. The initial attacks are generally pretty respectable but than when they fail the AI tends to feed in units piecemeal.

FYI, for you industrial age warmongers. combine the +1 happiness for the liberty tree, the Forbidden Palace, and the Order policy that halves the happiness cost of additional cities, and you actually gain one happiness per city…

3279

That’s my impression of King vs Prince as well. I’m reluctant to give much credit to rumors that the AI plays “smarter” at higher levels because that’s what people always say about games with weak AI, and it’s never true (for strategy games – shooters where “better AI” means psychic snipers are a different beast). Looking through the handicaps XML file, I don’t see any element names that might refer to such a setting – just the usual list of bonuses.

3280

I had a similar situation recently when changing conquered cities from puppet states to annexed cities actually game me +1 happiness each… without the courthouse. My enemies LOVE being annexed! :)