3841

I believe I lost my first city when I hit Emperor. I hadn’t done anything to provoke them, but one of the Civs (I forget which, the games are a blur now) popped up, said “Your lands will be a nice addition to my empire,” and hit my second biggest city with swordsmen and catapults. Since then I’ve never let them advance that far before exterminating them. At least, not on my continent, anyway.

3842

I’ve had the AI take a few cities. Wasn’t completely by brute force either, there was judicious use of catapults initially… it is like as though the AI has a goal to take a city, then once captured, doesn’t know what to do. Maybe it is amazed at itself for taking a city? After claiming the city, there was no further advance for a few turns, after which I managed to destroy the catapults, and launch a half arsed counter attack which was successful.

This was on king difficulty by the way. Most likely from Prince/King upwards, the AI will start focusing on military. In my last King game, I had quite a sizable army to beat back initially, then from there it became a mop up operation against the antagoniser.

The thing that is really annoying me currently with the game is the speed. The Ancient/Classical Era feels about right, then suddenly we go into Medieval/Renaisannce (eh spelling fail) era which for me rapidly flies by before coming to a halt with the modern era. Is it perhaps the way I’m playing, where most of my fighting is to do with early conquest or turtling until the end? I think part of the problem for me also is that with Civ IV, for goodness knows how long now I’ve played Marathon length games, and so I am used to each era being much longer. Certainly in a marathon game with Civ IV, it allowed a player to actually use musketeers, they were viable for a while. But with Civ V and having the slower speeds apparently screwed up from what I’ve read, I’ve yet to actually dive in with marathon speed.

Is it really bad? I would hazard a guess and think that the AI’s length between turns as well would be deleterious to the playability of marathon also.

Yet, with the focus on military, I would think marathon speeds are where the fun would be at in Civ V, having more turns to move units around so they become obsolete much slower.

Ack! I can not decide.

3843

This is pretty close to my own feelings.

I’m not the type of OMG REALISM person who objects to multi-hex ranged fire - although of course no “grognardy” wargame is going to have most modern artillery firing over more than 1 hex of that scale. It’s more that the mechanic would cut down on the AI/Human imbalance some without throwing out the whole idea of ranged units.

In principle I agree about a 2-3 unit stack - again, few wargames impose 1upt - but given how central it is to the game, just allowing ranged units only to stack with normal sorts would strike a good balance.

In truth even getting rid of the current range model or 1 military unit per hex are probably non-starters in terms of throwing out the designers’ core principles. But for modders etc it might make for mods with more competitive AI, without returning to Stacks of Doom.

3844

Personally, I really like the stacking limit. Even with the AI’s difficulties, it means I have far more tactical decisions to make than I did in Civ IV. Speed-4 units are valuable for their ability to maneuver tactically now, and flanking bonuses are a significant effect.

Given the stacking limit, ranged units have to have range 2, minimum. The only way to have a combined arms ancient force, where the spears / pikes protect the archers, is if the archers can shoot over the pikes.

I do dislike that gunpowder units are melee. To get the right “feel,” I think muskets should probably be a lot like archers - range 2, but weak to melee. Cavalry, despite being equipped with firearms, was still primarily a melee force so it can stay the way it is. Riflemen should have both melee and ranged attack, as should later infantry.

3845

I was thinking that gunpowder units could be ranged, but with the ability to fire back when attacked by ranged fire.

3846

I don’t think that’s it. The “flow” is that building up cities is tough with it taking substantial time to pump out a building or unit. Meanwhile, your research is forging ahead like crazy. And because of maintenance costs for the military, you end up witha small carefully selected set of units that often skips units of certain eras as you’ve already researched something better. It doesn’t quite feel right.

3847

Has anyone else used the mod that reveals the entire map once you research Satellites? It doesn’t seem to be working for me.

3848

Personally, I really like the stacking limit. Even with the AI’s difficulties, it means I have far more tactical decisions to make than I did in Civ IV. Speed-4 units are valuable for their ability to maneuver tactically now, and flanking bonuses are a significant effect.

Well, I certainly like a stacking limit, I just wonder if the AI wouldn’t handle a 2-unit limit substantially better than 1. Some of the talk about backpedaling on stacking limits has been a bit coloured by people pining for something like prior civs including, gag, the Civ3 army system, but basically, the only wargame I can think of with literally 1 unit per tile on a biggish scale is Panzer General, which was the definition of beer and pretzel wargaming.

I do agree that 1upt makes maneuver more of a subgame - even more than the strict needs of a wargame, it schemetizes things into an abstract strategy puzzle - but that’s precisely what the AI can’t do. So to me, a small (even 2 unit) stacking limit would keep some of the new fun, allow for 0-range ranged units, and probably make the AI look less lobotomized.

Ah, it won’t happen anyway.

I do dislike that gunpowder units are melee. To get the right “feel,” I think muskets should probably be a lot like archers - range 2, but weak to melee. Cavalry, despite being equipped with firearms, was still primarily a melee force so it can stay the way it is. Riflemen should have both melee and ranged attack, as should later infantry.

Honestly, I like it. In part because I’m not crazy about the multi-hex model of range. And without wishing to get too much into (massive airquotes) “realism,” western warfare, pace Keegan’s book, has 99 times out of 100 involved coming to grips with the enemy even if one side would have rather sat back and shot arrows.

If it were handled that way I’d say best do it KevinC’s 1 hex way, and have it end with muskets. (There’s no “shot and pike” logic for rifles or infantry, which were their own defence in CQB).

3849

I have fond memories of lots of cardboard-counter wargames which had a multi-hex model of range. Panzer Leader comes to mind. All units in that game had multi-hex ranges, though SMG units were quite short, and infantry had “close assault” attacks which were handled differently from normal ranged attacks.

Of course, the scale is quite different, but I don’t really care. A “realistic” treatment of scale has the largest armies in one hex given the size of the map, and then we’re back to the uninteresting stack-o-doom from Civ III.

3850

The scaling really is off, when the speed of tech research is compared to units and building costs.

I’d highly recommend checking out some of the mods that tweak the numbers to help with this. Both Valkrionn’s Economy Mod, and Thalassicus’ Balance Mod modify the balance between research and everything else in the game. They both have a lot of other features too, but that alone makes the pacing far more interesting.

3851

In general I love tactics, and I’d sign up for all that if Civ 5 were a tactical-scale game with an AI that understood the concept of tactics.

But it’s not, it’s a strategic scale game with a combat AI that’s about as bright as a brain-damaged lemur. Sadly the addition of tactics has resulted in the combat side of the game being less interesting to me. Partly that’s because it’s just not very challenging (and mind you this is a lot coming from me, as I am far from an uber Civ combat strategist.) Mostly it’s because it just feels wrong in many ways. The scale’s off and nobody seemed to have thought about longbowmen having the same range as artillery, or the fact that the AI has no clue about protecting ranged units from melee, or protecting any units from ranged attacks … in the end the “tactics” just feel tacked on.

Yes, I do have many more tactical options. But in the end they’re irrelevant because I’m playing against a brain-damaged lemur.

Say what you will about the stack-o-doom, but at least the AI had some idea what it was and what to do with it.

3852

Fond memories here too. Actually, I’m lucky enough to still have an oldschool tabletop circle. But “the scale being quite different” is a heck of a caveat here. Most wargames have more or less appropriate weapon ranges for their hex-scale, simply because it isn’t that difficult or limiting a restriction.

A “realistic” treatment of scale has the largest armies in one hex given the size of the map,

Again I wholeheartedly agree with the perils of “realism,” but it isn’t totally preposterous to “pretend” that the armies are corps/army strength in the post-Napoleonic era, and (somewhat less plausibly) seperate armies before that. The alternative would be some sort of sliding concept of military units, a no-go.

Just bear with me and imagine this:

Maximum of 2 melee or 1 melee + 1 civilian/ranged/GP per hex.
Ranged units fire into adjacent hexes without retaliation.

Advantages:

A: The AI’s tactical clumsiness automatically is mitigated by unit density; conversely, the human’s ability to think 2-3 turns ahead and massacre the AI is minimized.

B: The AI can be instructed to ALWAYS keep its ranged units stacked with a defender, at a stroke eliminating the “suicidal ranged unit” issue and more or less guaranteeing better value-for-money for the AI’s military production.

C: Easier pathfinding without resorting to what could really be called SoD.

D: Less gamey. There is an element of fun to placing one’s archer in the correct hex to shoot safely, but I am always bit conscious of this being one of civ’s sillier moments: Ok, my bronze-age bowmen now have a clear shot at their target unit 600km away (standard earth map). And the computer can’t compete in this somewhat arbitrary and abstract chess-game of safe-ranged-hexes, either on offence or defence. Whereas with “ranged advantage = no retaliation,” “safe hex = defended hex,” the AI can’t go wrong as long as it has any melee units left.

To my mind those are a lot of pros as against limited cons:

A: a tiny step back towards the stack of doom. A stack of pensive foreboding, say.

B: Cheesing the AI and riddling his units full of arrows at twice the range of a V2 missile has a certain “brain massacres brawn” fun element. At first.

Again, I realize any number of objections can be made against a simple large scale wargame and the ranged system does suffice for me, I just see no reason why it’s wonderful and indispensible. I guess I’m thinking mostly of modders, since I doubt these features will change in patches. Too central to the game design.

3853

WHY DOES NOONE LISTEN TO MEEE??//

3854

Not at all. Dumb as the AI may be, there have been situations where I’ve had to think fairly hard about how I’m positioning my units. When I’ve been at a severe material disadvantage, tactical options mattered.

My first couple of Emperor games were like that, until I got better at putting together an army instead of focusing too much on building. I’m also currently taking a stab at the Bollywood achievement. I backed off to King for that, and I had the Roman empire throw a good-sized army that I was hard pressed to defeat with just my two cities and the handful of units they could support. I killed 3 trechebuts, a ballista, a couple of legions and spearmen, and 4 Longswordsmen with a couple of horsemen and a couple of elephant archers. Eventually I got Knights, but most of the combat was dancing back and forth with the horsemen and peppering the enemy with arrows.

Part of the problem in this current game is the map kind of sucks. All the rivers were in Roman territory, and there are no Maritime city states on this continent. My cities are barely growing and I can’t afford specialists, which means my science output sucks. The only things that offset that have been lots of Golden Ages and Social Policies, but I think I’m running out of momentum on those Golden Ages, even with the ludicrous amount of excess happiness.

I’ll go further than that: there are two kinds of start in this game. Ones where you have a river, and ones where you don’t. The +1 gold and +1 food per tile post Civil Service is huge in a game where most “specials” are at most +1 to one category. By the time Fertilizer shows up to make up for the food deficit, the game’s largely decided.

3855

Given the usefulness of rivers for cities, and how they can change combat tactically as well, there really should be an option in the start screen that controls how many of them are placed on the map. (We already have options that control the availability of features like Jungles and Forests, and terrain differences like the amount of Hills and Mountains, so it’s a natural addition.) I always like a game with plenty of rivers, both for myself and the AI civs. Unfortunately there’s no way to control that at the moment.

Also, with roads being something the game discourages from building, they should bring back the “rivers count as trade routes if they connect 2 cities” idea. It’s a logical and historically correct notion, and one that would help place more of an emphasis on cities working together, instead of just individual entities doing their own thing – something that Civ V could use far more of.

3856

That’s my experience as well. While the AI may not use very good tactics, at the higher difficulty levels, if I don’t use good tactics, I get crushed. I also found that if I focused too much on building instead of defense, I also got crushed. As I raised the difficulty, I stopped building so many wonders and started building more military.

At the higher difficulty levels IMO it’s particularly important in the earliest parts of the game to really pay attention to your defenses. The AI starts off with more resources and a tech advantage. Until you can catch up, you are at major risk for getting wiped off the map. If you use your capital to build a bunch of wonders and neglect your military, you may get caught with your pants down. Later in the game, when you’ve (hopefully) caught up with the AI, you can spend more time on wonders and other refinements.

3857

I’ve used it and it works fine for me.

rezaf

3858

So, does anyone else think we’re moving away from a civilization simulator and more towards a empire at war simulation?

3859

It doesn’t matter.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the Civilization series in its current form should be retired and all efforts should be directed towards “Civilization Network.”

While I like Civ V, I really do not believe Firaxis is going to bother giving out any more than a few token patches for it.

The Facebook/MMO format is looking like the smart business plan to have if you are not going console.

Age of Empires Online and Civilization Network I think will work, especially on the follow up support side because they will have no choice but to fix things immediately since they will be persistent worlds.

Not to mention that the two games are in both the same genre. Technically, all RTSs are actually Turn-Based Stategy games.

They are coded the same way as TBSs but just flagged to be one simultaneously-taken single turn.

3860

You’re trying way to hard.