Civilization V

[Jag]

It gets better. Around 1925 I got a little annoyed at that upstart Ramses, who had pretty much conquered the other continent except for a few holdout Iroquois cities. Then he made the mistake of attacking one of my client city states I’d bribed on that continent. I decided to teach him a lesson, and sent my waves of mech infantry in supported by aircraft. By 1935 the entire continent except for Thebes was mine. Which means I’d added another 10-15 cities.

How are you getting mech infantry in 1925? I just got to Mech in 2010 with a fairly large, but happy empire. It does seem like my tech was going very slow.

[Chris_Nahr]

Didn’t catch if anyone answered this, but my thoughts are that it is either broken or designed to go to the next unit of the same type. I tend not to use after some early attempts and stuck with clicking on the “unit has moves” notification, which does the same thing, or manually selecting.

Nope, works as expected for me and moves to the next unit of any type. Must be an intermittent bug.

[rezaf]

How are you getting mech infantry in 1925? I just got to Mech in 2010 with a fairly large, but happy empire. It does seem like my tech was going very slow.

What were the specifics of your game?

In my first game on Chieftain, I got to Mech Inf about the same time (2010), but I had to abandon the game because it kept crashing on me shortly thereafter.
Then, in my second game, I bumped up difficulty to Warlord.
Strangely, everything went at a different pace in that game - everybody had gunpowder < 1000 AD, industrialization began in the 1500s, iirc, and I won the game by science (spaceship) victory in 1940 - I could have won almost a century earlier if I hadn’t been dragged into some big conflicts forcing me to redirect resources to the military.
All games were on standard size maps, the chieftain one on a continents map, the warlord one on pangea (I officially hate that map type now).

Edit: Oh, about quirks, I hate the interface “functionality” that moves around the different action buttons. I.e., I have 5 units I want to fortify, but different unit abilities cause the fortify option to move around, so I have to play “spot the fortify” button or risk accidentally clicking on “Pillage”, which has a tendency to appear in just that spot.

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rezaf

[Gus_Smedstad1]

How are you getting mech infantry in 1925? I just got to Mech in 2010 with a fairly large, but happy empire. It does seem like my tech was going very slow.

I think I had mech infantry in the mid-1800’s, actually. By 1925 I had 6-7 of them.

The key to research is twofold. First, it’s primarily about population, since every population point gives you +1 science. Second, the primary purpose of Libraries isn’t the +0.5 science per citizen, it’s the 2 specialist slots. There are very few ways to boost your science in Civ V, and specialists are the primary method. Each one gives you +3 science and +3 Great Scientist points. That’s huge in the early game, a size 6 city gives +9 science with a library, but +15 with two specialists. This means you need 4 food over and above what you need for acceptable growth, so getting a big food surplus is a requirement for research.

In addition, I never, ever settle a Great Scientist. Sure, +5 science can look reasonable when techs are only costing 80-100 research, but it doesn’t take long to get to the 500+ science techs. Saving your first Great Scientist for that has little opportunity cost, because it won’t take long at all.

The value of the 3 Great Scientist points is thus another 5-6 science in the early game, so two full time Librarians effectively increase your science to 25-27 or so for size-6 city, or roughly triple the value without. As the Great Scientist costs go up, so do the research values of those free techs. Electronics (for Mech Infantry) is around 2500 science, though I don’t have the precise value in front of me, and I believe it’s scaled to things like map size and possibly difficulty, though I haven’t paid close attention.

[Gus_Smedstad1]

I have to play “spot the fortify” button or risk accidentally clicking on “Pillage”, which has a tendency to appear in just that spot.

I’ve done that. It’s annoying.

[Jag]

The key to research is twofold. First, it’s primarily about population, since every population point gives you +1 science. Second, the primary purpose of Libraries isn’t the +0.5 science per citizen, it’s the 2 specialist slots. There are very few ways to boost your science in Civ V, and specialists are the primary method. Each one gives you +3 science and +3 Great Scientist points. That’s huge in the early game, a size 6 city gives +9 science with a library, but +15 with two specialists. This means you need 4 food over and above what you need for acceptable growth, so getting a big food surplus is a requirement for research.

Yep. I was manually controlling my specialists preferring to use citizens for food and production.

What were the specifics of your game?

Standard Earth, Prince level. Playing the Irioquois (stupidly). I had multiples of every resource. Owned the Americas, Europe and North Africa. It sounds like poor city management for me.

[Jag]

The key to research is twofold. First, it’s primarily about population, since every population point gives you +1 science. Second, the primary purpose of Libraries isn’t the +0.5 science per citizen, it’s the 2 specialist slots. There are very few ways to boost your science in Civ V, and specialists are the primary method. Each one gives you +3 science and +3 Great Scientist points. That’s huge in the early game, a size 6 city gives +9 science with a library, but +15 with two specialists. This means you need 4 food over and above what you need for acceptable growth, so getting a big food surplus is a requirement for research.

Yep. I was manually controlling my specialists preferring to use citizens for food and production.

What were the specifics of your game?

Standard Earth, Prince level. Playing the Irioquois (stupidly). I had multiples of every resource. Owned the Americas, Europe and North Africa. It sounds like poor city management for me.

[Reldan]

Edit: Oh, about quirks, I hate the interface “functionality” that moves around the different action buttons. I.e., I have 5 units I want to fortify, but different unit abilities cause the fortify option to move around, so I have to play “spot the fortify” button or risk accidentally clicking on “Pillage”, which has a tendency to appear in just that spot.

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rezaf

I just hit “F” to fortify units. Seems safer.

[DeepT]

When you get great people, like scientists / merchants / engineers are the infrastructure upgrades (land improvement options) worth using or do you use them for other abilities?

[McKnight]

Settling a few GS next to your main science city makes a huge difference. I haven’t really used the other 2 at all to be honest though.

[Lloyd_Heilbrunn]

Didn’t catch if anyone answered this, but my thoughts are that it is either broken or designed to go to the next unit of the same type. I tend not to use after some early attempts and stuck with clicking on the “unit has moves” notification, which does the same thing, or manually selecting.

Well, my only units for a while were two warriors and it would not send me to the next one either.

My big problem is I get a next turn button flashing to click on when I still have moves, not a “unit has moves” notification, so I’m not sure when you mean by the latter…

[Cold_Blooded]

When you get great people, like scientists / merchants / engineers are the infrastructure upgrades (land improvement options) worth using or do you use them for other abilities?

Depends on situation, though unique ability (rather than improvement) tends to seem more useful, particularly earlier in game where you aren’t completely dominant yet.

Persia has real reason to expend great people to start golden ages, particularly on cusp of military offensive.

Space race games make expending great scientists for free techs a no-brainer, particularly when playing Babylon.

Did find self building improvements with great artists in a late, late, late culture victory game playing Egypt. Owned pretty much all the land there was to own so culture bombing was pointless, and golden ages weren’t really needed, and had capital specifically tuned to churn out great artists (Hagia Sophia, garden, National Wonder, all culture buildings tuned to great artists). Bonus culture per turn on improvements was most efficient way to contribute to last push towards unlocking Utopia.

[frank_austin]

In my attempt at a conquest game last night I got really pissed off at one simple mechanic: When you take over and raze a city, you end up paying the maintenance costs on all the tile improvements until the city is razed. That’s ridiculous.

[sinnick]

I just finished my first Civ V game last night, and must concur with the crowd about the bad AI. I was playing France on Prince, standard size map of continents. I basically steamrolled over all my opponents and won a domination victory by 1850. It probably could have been earlier too, since I didn’t realize that all you had to do was take out the enemy capitals, rather than their whole empire. Had I known that, I would have focused on doing that first, rather than a sweeping takeover of the entire second continent.

A few things that blew my mind:

• I was consistently ahead in military tech. By the end I was using Foreign Legion against spearmen. The A.I. never seemed to upgrade anything. I don’t know if he just didn’t have the gold or the tech for it or what.

• The AI never attacked my cities. Maybe because it hadn’t built enough units? Usually before declaring war in a game of Civ, I’ll make sure I’m not fighting an enemy on multiple fronts – or if I have to that I’ve got decent defense at least. But by the end of this game it didn’t seem to matter. I could declare war and start taking over cities in one tiny corner of the map and be confident that units would never start crossing my borders elsewhere.

• When attacking his cities, he would always bombard my ranged unit first, rather than the unit actually posing the threat. I could approach a city with Infantry and an archer, and be guaranteed that the infantry would never be targeted.

I’m by no means a Civ expert, but Civ IV trains you pretty quickly to build up a major army fast or be destroyed. I wonder if that’s why so many of us find the combat in Civ V so easy. The A.I. just doesn’t seem to get its army up fast enough.

[Jag]

I’m seeing similar AI issues, especially with the lack of any naval ability. I hate to say it, but it may be time to shelve the game until the first major patch.

[razarok]

• I was consistently ahead in military tech. By the end I was using Foreign Legion against spearmen. The A.I. never seemed to upgrade anything. I don’t know if he just didn’t have the gold or the tech for it or what.

• The AI never attacked my cities. Maybe because it hadn’t built enough units? Usually before declaring war in a game of Civ, I’ll make sure I’m not fighting an enemy on multiple fronts – or if I have to that I’ve got decent defense at least. But by the end of this game it didn’t seem to matter. I could declare war and start taking over cities in one tiny corner of the map and be confident that units would never start crossing my borders elsewhere.

• When attacking his cities, he would always bombard my ranged unit first, rather than the unit actually posing the threat. I could approach a city with Infantry and an archer, and be guaranteed that the infantry would never be targeted.

I’m by no means a Civ expert, but Civ IV trains you pretty quickly to build up a major army fast or be destroyed. I wonder if that’s why so many of us find the combat in Civ V so easy. The A.I. just doesn’t seem to get its army up fast enough.

In my experience the AI, at least on lower difficulties, immedately spends all of its money on research agreements as soon as it can afford them…

[Miramon]

In my experience the AI, at least on lower difficulties, immedately spends all of its money on research agreements as soon as it can afford them…

Right, so it never has any left over to pop units for a war. On the other hand, this means that if you as a player have a tech lead, you can win even more easily through these agreements, since you can manage your money better and the higher tech player gains more advantage from them. The AI never ever turns down a research agreement if it has the money and isn’t at war with you, so far as I can tell.

[scharmers]

In my attempt at a conquest game last night I got really pissed off at one simple mechanic: When you take over and raze a city, you end up paying the maintenance costs on all the tile improvements until the city is razed. That’s ridiculous.

I enjoy the “feature” of having a razing-in-progress city still able to produce wealth…or [I]research/I “Noli turbare circulos meos” indeed!

[frank_austin]

I enjoy the “feature” of having a razing-in-progress city still able to produce wealth…or [I]research/I “Noli turbare circulos meos” indeed!

They can’t, though. They’re in uprising and therefore doing nothing for 5 turns, I thought. Nevermind that you’re still paying the farmers and traders out of your own coffers.

[Anaxagoras]

They can’t, though. They’re in uprising and therefore doing nothing for 5 turns, I thought. Nevermind that you’re still paying the farmers and traders out of your own coffers.

Rebels got mortgages to pay, dawg. The world doesn’t stop just because you want it to.