Civilization V

[ShivaX]

I know why kinda, he always moves his units…never stands still…always juggling huge armies around, even when there is NO point…sigh

Which is silly and annoying. I’ve never taken the bonus against fortified units since the only units in the game that ever fortify are Barbarians when they’re on their huts. Every other unit moves every single turn, which is pretty dumb.

[Strollen]

I’ve come to the conclusion that you never want to take the left-hand track on Liberty. The food boost for new cities is never worth it, so you’re more-or-less paying 2 social policies for +1 production per city. That’s a fair boost to your colonies which probably have 3-4 production at the time you get your third policy. The problem is the right hand track is much more attractive, since +1 happiness per city is quite valuable to large empires, and +1 culture per city is arguably more useful than the +1 production because 1 culture / turn is very different from 0 culture / turn. By the time you get around to the left hand track, it’s just not worth it anymore.

Funny I have the exact opposite conclusion, the +1 production (Republic) is my 3rd pick in most games. I figure a hammer is worth 4-5 gold since that is roughly the buy price of most things. The +1 hammer lets you build a monument in say 15 turns vs 20 for a starting city without the +1 hammer. So after 20 turns the +1 culture gives you a total of 20 culture vs 10 culture for Republic not even one hex. A monument cost 1 GPT for 2 culture. So the +1 culture is worth 30 hammers and 1/2 GPT. I agree that Happiness is very nice pick but for 150 hammers you can get a circus in many cities or Colosseum so +1 happiness equals ~50 hammers and ~1 GPT. In generally end up getting all of the picks on Liberty but I leave +1 culture for last.

[hong]

I can tell that SOME ppl in this thread have been spoiled by too many +5 vorpal swords in their treasure hoards.

[rezaf]

Funny I have the exact opposite conclusion, the +1 production (Republic) is my 3rd pick in most games. I figure a hammer is worth 4-5 gold since that is roughly the buy price of most things. The +1 hammer lets you build a monument in say 15 turns vs 20 for a starting city without the +1 hammer. So after 20 turns the +1 culture gives you a total of 20 culture vs 10 culture for Republic not even one hex. A monument cost 1 GPT for 2 culture. So the +1 culture is worth 30 hammers and 1/2 GPT. I agree that Happiness is very nice pick but for 150 hammers you can get a circus in many cities or Colosseum so +1 happiness equals ~50 hammers and ~1 GPT. In generally end up getting all of the picks on Liberty but I leave +1 culture for last.

My reaction was to steer myself away from the Liberty tree completely.
In my first games I always picked it for the boost to settler production, but I’ve since come to the conclusion that this particular bonus is of very minor usefulness because, especially early on, rapid expansion is a no-go anyway.

The fixed bonuses (like +1 Culture or Production) are useful in some situations early in the game, but they quickly lose their usefulness and end up being completely worthless by endgame.
+1 Culture, huh? Each of my cities churns out a hundred culture, so … big deal.
Percent stuff remains useful for the duration of the game.

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rezaf

[kingrich10]

My reaction was to steer myself away from the Liberty tree completely.

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rezaf

After the 33% wonder production bonus I find that heading over to Liberty and opting for the 25% worker bonus works a treat.

I have to say that in previous Civs i was more inclined to turtle up and head for a non-violent victory due to the annoying SoD antics the CPU would pull, it is refreshing to be the aggressive Civ for a change; working out the various tactics on offer (both terrain and unit).

[Therlun]

In my last two games I completely ignored the first three trees and saved up for Piety.
The double experience in tradition is very nice, but costing 3 policies (two with minor advantages) is not really worth it. All other early policies (first three trees) just don’t scale very well.

[hong]

Thrifty Therlun tees fees for three trees.

[kingrich10]

Thrifty Therlun tees fees for three trees.

I’m having trouble saying that sober.

[Lizard_King]

In my last two games I completely ignored the first three trees and saved up for Piety.
The double experience in tradition is very nice, but costing 3 policies (two with minor advantages) is not really worth it. All other early policies (first three trees) just don’t scale very well.

The double experience for military units as well as auto notification of barbarian appearance has been handy through the endgame in most of mine. Just as the other empires are acquiring destroyers and artillery, I have ships with extra range and double attack that can do a hit and run.

[Gus_Smedstad1]

In my last two games I completely ignored the first three trees and saved up for Piety.
The double experience in tradition is very nice, but costing 3 policies (two with minor advantages) is not really worth it. All other early policies (first three trees) just don’t scale very well.

They’re not all that minor for Germany. Locating the early encampment spawns means more free units, the +25% against Barbarians means you can take encampments with just the single Warrior you start with. The Great General can either be an 8-turn Golden Age or half a tech’s worth of combat advantage if you’re doing much early warfare.

Usually I avoid the Honor tree entirely, but I think it’s worth pursuing in that one case.

Personally, I do usually REX a bit. Most games I build 2-3 Settlers pretty early on a Standard map to capture Happiness luxuries. The cost reduction gives you a ~7 turn advantage per Settler.

[YourConscience]

I find it a pity that they didn’t play more with a larger variety of firing ranges of the units. I’d imagine that cannons would be able to fire three, and artillery four hexes. This would also allow riflemen to be a two-hex unit. Generally, tactics would become closer to what we know form history line and battle islands, and hence, more interesting. But first the AI would have become a little (I mean a lot) better at using its units. Not constantly shuffling them around, for instance. Or covering those precious artillery units.

Also I’d like to see later-stage artillery units to have the ability to do strategic bombardment - that destroys roads and other improvements (as if they were in-place and pillaging). Or even give artillery a chance to destroy buildings in a city. Or perhaps this feature is in there and I haven’t discovered it yet, despite several playthroughs on emperor. Sadly, it was too easy to win these - mostly because it is too easy to steamroll the AI with far fewer units (and even outteched units).

[Dejin]

In my last two games I completely ignored the first three trees and saved up for Piety.
The double experience in tradition is very nice, but costing 3 policies (two with minor advantages) is not really worth it. All other early policies (first three trees) just don’t scale very well.

My experience was that the games where I did not go up the Honor tree often resulted in me getting crushed by the AI. The double XP is great. But the 15% combat bonus from adjacent units is also very useful. The discipline bonus combined with having a Great General backing up your units can easily make the difference between victory and defeat.

[Dan_Theman]

Certainly not a Civ expert, but I’ve also enjoyed the Honor tree for the reasons everyone above has mentioned. I go for the double experience in every game, regardless of civ. Besides, the percentage gains by their very nature will scale to later game scenarios (albeit, air won’t get much of a benefit with many of them).

[Strato]

I find it a pity that they didn’t play more with a larger variety of firing ranges of the units. I’d imagine that cannons would be able to fire three, and artillery four hexes. This would also allow riflemen to be a two-hex unit. Generally, tactics would become closer to what we know form history line and battle islands, and hence, more interesting. But first the AI would have become a little (I mean a lot) better at using its units. Not constantly shuffling them around, for instance. Or covering those precious artillery units.

The trouble with increasing the range is the effect it has on the map scale. If a cannon fires three tiles, then, that is a pretty hefty range, especially considering units move two tiles, and, likewise, enough to potentially pass over inland seas.

[ravenight]

I find it a pity that they didn’t play more with a larger variety of firing ranges of the units. I’d imagine that cannons would be able to fire three, and artillery four hexes. This would also allow riflemen to be a two-hex unit. Generally, tactics would become closer to what we know form history line and battle islands, and hence, more interesting. But first the AI would have become a little (I mean a lot) better at using its units. Not constantly shuffling them around, for instance. Or covering those precious artillery units.

I’m not sure this would be a good idea, because ranged units are pretty strong right now. What I’d actually like to see is having gun units with a lower ranged strength than their attack strength but the ability to do a 1-hex ranged attack (thus not risking damage to themselves).

[ArmandoPenblade]

I actually had an enemy use air in Civilization!!!

I won a Cultural victory (on Prince, unknown map size or config as I randomized it) around 2020 and decided to power military for a while (Modern Armor, Rocket Artillery, and Mechanized Infantry, my game-ender du-jour) and declared on Japan in the 2040s. I retook the city state base of operations they’d established on my continent and then proceeded to push across the channel with a battleship providing cover (they had a single destroyer up there).

Except that my 4 tanks, 4 infantry, and 2 artillery were quickly whittled away by a deadly mix of helicopter gunships, Zeroes, and Jets, allowing their couple of units of artillery to polish me off and push me back into my continent and secure a victory by my artificial deadline of 2050.

I think I saw a total of 3-4 planes in use every turn (along with 2 helicopters). . . and there’s not a lot that my ground army could do to survive that :)

[Chris_Nahr]

I actually saw an AI build helicopter gunships before! Never fighters or bombers, though. Maybe it’s because Japan has unique fighters (Zeroes)?

[Gus_Smedstad1]

Helicopters don’t really count as air, since they’re just a melee unit that ignores terrain. Zeroes and Jets, well, that’s more like it. So far the main reasons I’ve built jets have been for anti-ship operations (since they don’t have the naval penalty that bombers do) and for the 6-hex recon ability. I generally don’t built regular fighters, though I do build regular bombers, since I often neglect the combustion techs required to get to jets / stealth bombers.

[ArmandoPenblade]

Japan actually beat me to every era in the game past Medieval, so I assume that it, yes, just built a shit-ton of Zeroes in the late Industrial/Early Modern, and by the time it got to Future Tech, it just started upgrading them to Jets, seeing as how it had an enormous gold surplus the entire game.

[YourConscience]

I’m not sure this would be a good idea, because ranged units are pretty strong right now. What I’d actually like to see is having gun units with a lower ranged strength than their attack strength but the ability to do a 1-hex ranged attack (thus not risking damage to themselves).

That 1-hex attack difference to 2-hex attacks is also a very good idea. But the map-scale isn’t as much of a problem. Yes, the increased ranges will alter the way you treat the map, deepening the fronts. Also the economy will have to be changed a bit to support a bit more units than currently. And also the range-based damag should be reduced so that a single catapult will not vanquish a warrior detachment with two shots anymore at the range of 2.

Hmm, perhaps I should just go and make a mod for this. But I fear that the AI will be even less stellar with such changes because it can’t even handle the current artillery units properly…