3521

Hell, building a trading post and telling a single citizen to work that tile is equivalent to having 7 citizens all work hills with mines on them and having the city set to produce Gold.

You can always build Wonders, even if you’re not going to beat the computer to completing them - the gold rebate you get back when they finish theirs first is better than 10% of the hammers produced (I don’t know the exact figure, but I’ve gotten a couple hundred gold from this before and the wonder certainly was no where near 2000 hammers to build), so even that’s a better deal than making Gold directly.

In reality though, you might as well build Research, because Science is always good and that at least provides a 25% return.

One thing to note is that if you build Trading Posts on squares that otherwise don’t produce Gold, those squares will thereafter get the +1 Gold bonus in Golden Ages, which makes Trading Posts on Plains and Grasslands even better.

3522

I’ve finally bought this game. I now only have 117 pages in this thread to review.

3523

Or asking on an internet forum where people answer in >1 hour, which is what these crazy kids and their tubes of information like to do. Look, I’m glad they included a pdf for that one time I looked something up and it wasn’t there, and for the comfort reading that grandpa gamers apparently still need, but there’s no doubt that their eco-manual approach is founded on this very obsolescence I describe. But I guess Firaxis…is just stupid, then, by your reckoning, since a manual is so essential.

I used to read manuals cover to cover, up to and including legendarily slow reads like the SimEarth monstrosity. And I pre-read manuals all of the time when I play boardgames, although nowhere near as diligently as others with that interest, because that genre of entertainment radically varies in terms of what might be thought of as GUI. But I can’t think of anytime recently when a videogame manual has preceded diving into the game headfirst, and games that require that are either literally from another time (as attempts to play Xcom are showing me) or victims of a design philosophy that is rarely seen outside of a minority of PC games. Demon’s Souls is an example of a fairly game that unintentionally was carried almost entirely by internet discussion in its import form, and you can see that it was hardly poorly received for a niche title because it shipped with one little napkin of English instructions. If the Civopedia included game mechanics more fully (everything that’s in the manual plus the notable omissions), it would be even more of a standard bearer for how a 4x game can reach a wider audience while still being palatable to the more traditional fans. As it stands, lecturing people for RTFM is a shining example of why the fans of PC gaming are sometimes its worst enemy.

3524

I’m trying to recall, but in Civ IV it didn’t seem like the AI built aircraft much either. I don’t recall having to invest in SAM infantry or fighters much. They usually did put up a patrol or two though.

3525

Playing a game with four cities tonight, and it made me realise the beauty of the game mechanic of having research tied to population. It really does contribute to smaller nations still remaining viable technology wise even right up to the end game I think, if the 500+ science I was pushing out each turn meant anything. In effect, I was able to grow my four cities to be quite large in the population stakes - 20 and more citizens in each, and still my empire was happy, and happiness meant ongoing population growth, buffered by the maritime city states.

Compared to a prior game where I had a much larger empire, struggled to maintain happiness, yet was getting about the same amount of research because my each of my cities were much smaller due to lack of food, and the frowny face greeting me.

3526

Larger empires with lots of cities generate far more research than little ones. Mainly because, as you say, science is tied to population.

Pop is pretty much capped at the number of +happy bonuses you have. Each city costs you 2 unhappiness before improvements, but a city that can work a new luxury gives you +5 happiness, for a net gain of +3 citizens to your cap, and thus to your science. Once you’ve got Construction, each Coliseum adds +4 happiness, for a net gain of +2 even for cities that don’t work new luxuries. As you unlock more happiness buildings, the additional cities become more and more efficient.

There are also significant bonuses that scale with the number of cities. Maritime city-state food bonuses are significant, because they let you run Scientist specialists. The Citizenship Liberty bonus gives you +1 happiness per city, the Forbidden Palace is -1 unhappiness per city, and the Communism policy is -1 unhappiness per city - though honestly Communism comes late enough that it’s not so important for research.

That said, not all city sites are equal. Scientist specialists have a very large effect on your science output, but require that you run a significant food surplus. You want tiles that yield 4+ food, and that typically means a river site for the +1 food / farm from Civil Service, or 3-4 Maritime allies. Once you got +6 food or so per city from city-states, even cities on relatively poor sites can be research powerhouses.

3527

An enterprising person managed to create their own game replay script, with score histogram!

Why this wasn’t in the game to begin with, as it was in Civ IV, is a complete mystery to me

3528

I’m still trying to make Bismarck work, and failing. How is the barbarian conversion ability a bonus? Instead of 25 gold per camp I get a ton of crap units that I have to pay upkeep for – or else disband, usually outside of my borders so no compensation.

By the way, has anyone figured out yet how unit maintenance fees and that mysterious unit supply overview are related?

3529

Wow, that’s sweet. Great advertising for the HTML 5 canvas element, too. :)

3530

In the early game, I’ve been able to use those barbarians to form a “Condor Legion” of “volunteers” to wreak havoc on other civs. Assuming you want to go warmongering early, that can be good–they die off as you fight so you don’t have to feed them for very long. But as time goes on, it’s pretty useless.

3531

I started with sending my starting warrior and a second one I built out to explore and raid barb camps for more units, then brought my army back together to use all my free units to take a quick city off the scariest bordering civ (Japan) then expanded and built up my cities until I researched swordsmen, crossbowmen and Landsknechts. By that time I had the right side of the Honour tree done, so I upgraded the archers and brutes at 50% normal gold cost to swordsmen and crossbows and went and knocked out the Egyptians. I’m just coming into the gunpowder age with an 8 city empire at around turn 150 I think, as second world power after the Russians (this is on Pangaea, Emperor difficulty). It’s looking like I’m going to be able to sweep the west of the world, Russia is going to take the east and then eventually one of us is going to go and start Barbarossa on the other.

I can see Germany being less good on maps where you can’t explore most of the total land mass for barbarian camps, as you wouldn’t be able to get such a critical mass of free units to roll another civ over in the early game. But for Pangaea they’re pretty good as far as I can tell.

3532

The best I can figure, they are not related, though I am not sure I have ever gone over the supply limit.

I do know that unit maintenance is quasi-linear per unit: meaning every second unit causes the same uptick in maintenance on that specific turn, every odd unit costs no more additional maintenance. I have not figured out any further relationship between maintenance and turn except the former seems to go up exponentially with the latter. Unit maintenance becomes crippling by endgame.

3533

Certainly, it’s a powerful argument for Autocracy and the 33% discount for any amount of expansionism.

3534

I’m sorry if this has been brought up before, but I’ve seen posts on the 2K forums discussing that the AI:

-Isn’t effected by unhappiness (no growth/production penalties)
-Is able to produce military units in puppet cities
-Isn’t effected by negative gold balances (no unit disbanding, etc)
-Can establish Research Pacts without gold

Is all this true? If so, that’s… I mean I’m okay with the AI getting some gold/tech/production bonuses based on difficulty levels, but those are some pretty core mechanics of the game. If it’s true, it really limits how you can fight the AI. You can’t deprive him of luxury resources, wealthy cities, etc and have an impact.

I’m okay with AI getting bonuses, I’m not okay with the AI having a completely separate set of rules than I am unless the game is specifically set up to be asymmetrical (such as AI Wars).

3535

Could you provide links to the specific allegations and any confirming data that is offered? This seems like a very difficult argument to address secondhand.

3536

Can you link to the thread? If so, that’s disappointing. That would greatly hurt some of the global strategies a human might use against them.

3537

I’ve seen it brought up in a few threads, but here’s the thread (Note: not just the OP, there’s more statements made on the first page) I just read that motivated me to post and inquire with the fine Qt3 community.

3538

Well, I can’t address most of those for lack of evidence, but this

The AI also knows everything about you and you know nothing about it. It always knows when I am weak so it attacks, it knows when I am strong and it backs off.

seems a problematic allegation. I have seen predatory behavior when I am broke or some other obvious variable is at play, like being attacked by other civs that are stronger in their rankings. That I expect since it is globally available intel for me as well. But everything I’ve seen suggests that the AI is really limited to what it can recon with view distance or open borders when it comes to assessing your military capability in anything but broad strokes.

3539

I have to agree with the second point. I would never have survived my single city culture victory otherwise. I had only two military unit (the starting warriors) and one boat to defend against barbarians. If the Ai had xray vision it would have seen through my gigantic, but defenseless border/fog of war. Furthermore, three other civs took turns in harassing me for “open borders” every 2 turns…

3540

I just hit turn 700 or so and got the Manhattan project done. I have been rushing the nuke for the past few hundred turns because I have a bug where I am in a permanent peace treaty with Siam, and apparently other people have gotten it too. That really makes me mad, to be honest… I had invested so much time in this campaign and then a bug like that makes it impossible for me to kill one of the biggest civilizations…