Well, according to Steam, I’ve dumped about 80 hours into Civ5, but approximately 16 of that was me sleeping while leaving a game running.
I’ve also managed to read (I think) the last 40 pages or so of this thread, if not a hair more.
Overall, I’m having a freaking blast, mostly because I like to build empires without a lot of fear of the AI screwing everything up.
That said, tonight’s tech victory game wherein 200 turns in the enormous Songhai and Arabic empires declared on my simultaneously and swarmed in from opposite sides of my empire with hosts of city-states in tow was absolutely terrifying. Dozens of units poured through the mountains separating me from Songhai, including their bastard-faced axe-wielding horsemen. Even more units (longswordsmen, pikemen, and crossbowmen) spread across the western plains separating me from the Arabic world. My tiny garrisons of horsemen, warriors, and chariot archers crumbled in a single turn. . .
. . . and then nothing happened. Prince-level difficulty, and these enormous walls of units just danced around my border cities, sniping anything I produced there but otherwise leaving my cities alone.
I had a pretty huge store of gold built up, so I bought off some city states who bordered the paths that each army was walking to get to my area, and they began ransacking the enemy cities that helped create said paths, drawing back most of the enemy force after about a dozen or so very tense turns.
Since I was pretty far ahead in tech, my first set of fresh units were popping out around then (infantry, cavalry, and artillery) and I mopped up the units that had been left behind in my area before sacking a couple of cities on both the eastern and western fronts. The two foes capitulated, their city states sued for peace, and 10 turns later, I wiped them both off the face of the earth, freeing some conquered city states in the process.
And so 250 turns later, I got my scientific victory while Germany engulfed the entire world except for my medium-sized continent in the center. His army size was twice mine and he was my equal in tech. Every city state that wasn’t my ally had been annexed by him and he possessed the lion’s share of the world’s strategic resources.
Point being, as a little empire-building tinkerer, I had a great deal of fun. But it boggles my mind to think that I survived the two-front war and the end-game. I’ve read some of you talking about how an enemy declaring war on you brought nothing but ranged units (meaning they couldn’t conquer the cities after weakening them), but that was hardly the case for me. Sure, trebuchets, archers, and chariot archers abounded, but there were also cavalry and longswordsmen and pikemen swarming around for turn after turn after turn. . . why didn’t they even TRY to strike my cities, even from afar? The two armies combined could have wiped me out of the game in about 5 turns flat if they’d just blindly thrown themselves against my city without a hint of strategy whatsoever.
To say nothing of Germany, who despised me for being a warmongering, wonder-hording, city-state aiding son of a bitch ahead of him in the tech race. He had a caravel that he found my continent with and not a single other naval unit I ever saw. Then again, I didn’t have any either, till I bought a destroyer in the last dozen turns to see what he was up to. He could have sailed his entire army over as embarked units and I wouldn’t have been able to do a damn thing to stop him from hitting my coast.
I am unable to conceive of how an AI that has no strategic disadvantages (Remember, Prince difficulty here) could fail to obliterate me. . . but insofar as I am terrible at videogames, I find it pretty fun to play against :)
