3441

That’s what I thought, but the high score table says Pangea, which is annoying.

Contrary to a previous poster, I did get the achievement for beating a small map even though it was chosen by random.

Also, if you have achievements for beating a game at each difficulty level, beating it at level 5 should net me 1 through 4.

3442

Don’t forget bonuses. 50% from University and National College (later public school) quickly make the tile +10 (+13).

Founding a city In a jungle spot can also be very effective. Since jungle provides two food and supplies itself that way a few jungle tiles with +2 science from jungle (+bonuses again) quickly add up.

3443

Well, let’s not also forget that if you have that tile worked for, say, 400 turns you’re talking (at a BASE) +2,000 research. Now, a mid-game Great Scientist… sure, burn him for a tech. But early in the game, playing as Babylon? Settling him as a tile in a city you are going to science-spec seems like a great idea.

3444

I wonder if there’s some background reasons for such poor army building by the AI. I haven’t kept any data on this, but I’ve played 2-3 standard games and it feels like the same thing is happening.

The strongest Civ will start out with a lot of gold, and high food/production per city. They will also usually be pretty even on technologies researched with you, if not ahead.

By the time you’ve wiped out their main first army, and they offer a peace treaty, they seem to be in negative gold per turn and their food/production per city is terrible. Usually because they’ve spawn 20+ cities across the map that aren’t viable.

I was quite worried about Alexander coming at me with a gunpowder unit in my last game, because I wasn’t anywhere near researching it. But he only built that one gunpowder unit.

My baseless theory is that the AI is coded to be good at everything - production, growth, research, military - but not specialise. It has to improve each part, and if you cause problems to one of them such as destroying their military, it can’t prioritise sufficiently to compensate.

Possibly the growth is poorly done, emphasising settling new cities instead of buying tiles. Unless I’m missing something about many overlapping cities (bombard defense?).

Re: what to do with great people, I find that sending the Great Merchants on a trade mission to a city state is fantastic if you’re short on gold. +500 instantly is a blessing sometimes.

3445

So I build an Archer,and the MA congrats me on my first ranged unit and recommends I attack from two hexes away and have a melee unit in between to protect it. And the Civilipedia says its range is 2 hexes.

So I get two hexes away from a barbarian encampment with a warrior in between, and the archer can’t attack!! I have to get one hex away before I can shoot.

WTF!:(

3446

Hit “B”.

3447

Clicking on the ranged icon and then selecting the target does not work? Because thats what it tells me to do…

3448

It depends on the terrain as well.

3449

You can’t shoot over hills, for example, if there’s one between you and the target. Unless you’re on a hill as well. Etc.

3450

The AI is definately wonky.

I’m still in my third full game, at Warlord as Japan.

One thing I’ve noticed, despite Tom’s claims on the podcast, at least Civ5’s AI is all about BIG empires.
There’s always one or more warmongers around that keep gobbling up everybody until they are super-huge.

Of course I also noticed the weird diplomacy happenings.
In a war against France centuries back, I merely sat there and waited out the storm, and was eventually offered very favorable peace terms (no cities, though).
In an early war against Arabia, taking a single city netted me an offer for three more, their second biggest among them.
In a much later war against France, they have no remaining army worth mentioning (a few units of Musketeers) vs. a dozen infantry, tanks, battleships, bombers, rocket artillery and helicopter gunships on my side, yet they stubbornly refuse peace offers dictating them any terms and only offer a white peace on their own. Fine, watch your empire burn to ashes.

In the course of that campaign, I liberated Persia’s capital, raising their empires from the dead. Why is it that they then started out at hostile, and that, five turns later, without a single military unit under their belt, they decided their empire needed more breathing space and declared war on me? I had one unit of rocket artillery turn around and fire a single volley of rockets into their capital, and then instantly captured it with a unit of infantry. Welcome to the game … goodbye again.
Liberated nations should love you for what you did, just like the minors do.

As it is … be it by conquest or by normal means, I’m a tad sad to see the infinite city sprawl of Civ3 return.

Even though it sucked on one side, I thought it was kinda cool that I had almost no access to most of the strategic resources anywhere in my lands (I had six cities most of the time).
Lots of horses, a single 2 unit iron mine, one tile of coal, an offshore (4) oil field. Everything else I was forced to go out of my way to get.
I settled a remote arctic island which had three oil fields on it, about 50% of the world oil reserves, I captured a French city pretty far away from my lands for Aluminium and later stopped their almost finished campaign against the Germans to be able to capture a city with access to Uranium.

I’m sure my score will end up being much worse than in my previous game, but I had a lot of fun.
Though I have to say, Civ5 is in dire need of a “Beyond the Sword” expansion. Especially diplomacy and the behavior of the AIs has to be a lot more useful/reasonable.
With tech trading gone and the AIs tendency to ask for 1 Gold, 1 Gems, 1 Spices, 1 Uranium and 25 gold each turn for 1 unit of Furs, it’s hardly even worth entering that screen.
Especially peace negotiations are utterly worthless.
I tried to stop a warmonger who kept gobbling up city states aligned with me one time, but every time I entered the “make peace with” list, ALL the options were greyed out. That’s crap design right there, in my book.

Ah well, sorry for the longish rant, I’ll disengage now. ;)

rezaf

3451

Sometimes do, anyway. Last game, I liberated a city state (Ragusa) from the Iroquois. Ragusa showed its gratitude by instantly–and I mean the second that I liberated them, still during my turn–allying with the Iroquois and declaring war on me.

3452

That’s odd, don’t they always get set to ~150 relations when liberated?
Or maybe it was a bug?
Weird in any case.

rezaf

3453

That sounds like a bug. City states should love you forever when liberated.

3454

With tech trading gone

I miss this dearly. What good is it allying with another civ/city state when you can’t gift them some much needed technology?

3455

I had the same experience.
I have seen the AI settle far away lands on archiplago maps and I’ve encountered several British Ships of the Line… but the AI has a tendency to behave stupidly around ships.
And in one game I liberated India twice and saved Egypt from certain doom - even given Ramses some of the cities I conquered from England… only to be called an evil warmonger.

But again, I have always felt diplomacy was the weak point of any Civ game, and certainly don’t remember it being better in IV (just more transparent) - the wonky strategic AI is a worse problem imo. But I agree, AI should be Firaxis’ first priority.

One annoying thing is that gifting units to city states just converts them to a few “they like me more”-points and dissapears the unit. I thought I could gift away some units when trying to cut down on upkeep and help keeping a city state stronger and making the need to go to war for it smaller.

3456

Well, I’m pretty sure you actually could “befriend” the AI to some degree in Civ4 and have it not stab you in the back on the first occasion, with or without any reason. In Civ5, if you disabled diplomacy entirely or limited it to “At War” and “At Peace”, you wouldn’t lose much, which is kinda sad.

Actually, gifting units works just as you’d expect it to, it just takes some turns until the city state receives the unit. But it WILL get it.
I reinforced several coastal city states in my first game by gifting each of them a battleship. Worked like a charm.

rezaf

3457

The manual says that liberated states will vote for you in the UN even if they current allied situation is different. So this is something.

Just curious how much influence did you gain by liberating them?

3458

Ah, ok.

In my experience they always hated me in IV for having the wrong religion, being too close, being… whatever. But yes, they were easier to bribe into liking you. I also kinda miss the idea of vassals, although I don’t think I ever had a vassal. But the idea has merit.

3459

I’ve liberated a number of city states, and while I don’t remember the exact boost, I seem to recall it’s something on the order of 90-100 influence points, maybe a bit more. In general, I think I’ve ended up with something like 170 or so total influence points with them, although I’ve typically already been friends or allies with them before liberating them.

It’s enough that if you already have a great relationship with the city state, you don’t have to worry about them for a long time. However, if you start with a poor relationship with the city state, I can imagine them returning back to a neutral state fairly quickly. For example, if they are at war with you, IIRC they’ll be around a -60, so if you liberate them, that might get you to 40, which is at the friend level for somewhere between 8-15 turns depending on your modifiers.

In one rather amusing case, I liberated a city, which promptly got taken over again. I then liberated it a second time. I wasn’t sure the IPs were going to add, but they stacked on top of each other giving me IPs over 250 (including my original IPs), so I basically didn’t have to worry about the city state for the rest of the game.

3460

It was almost certainly a line of sight problem. Until you get to artillery, ranged units need to be able to see the target. When you go exploring, observe which hexes your scout can and cannot see.

A unit on in a flat hex cannot see past forests or hills.

A unit on a hill can see see over a forest, or see over a hill, but can’t see over a forested hill. Think of the hill as being +1 height, and the forest as being a 1-level obstacle. The top of a flat hex is level 1, the top of a forested flat hex or a bare hill is level 2, and the top of a forested hill is level 3. If your unit needs to be that height to see over it.

This has the peculiar effect that an archer on a hill behind a hill can see units in a flat hex, and the units in the flat hex can’t see the archer. This is a very good spot for archers and catapults, because even without a blocker, infantry units can’t reach them. Moving into the intervening hill will end their movement. Horsemen and knights are the only things fast enough to reach.

  • Gus