Rywill
4441
Could it be that an AI had already pledged to protect? Maybe only one person can be protecting a CS at a time.
rezaf
4442
I haven’t played Civ5 lately … have they made the option actually have a meaningful impact now?
In my games it didn’t seem to impress the AI players all that much (as in, it didn’t stop them from DoWing the minors I was protecting), I didn’t get any positive benefits I really noticed and I still had to DoW the offending Civ manually if I actually wanted to do something about their transgressions.
A nice armchair-designed solution would be to allow your units to attack the units of the Civ that attacks the city state within the territory of that state.
So you could send in a few troops to help them out.
I know, technically you can gift them units, but you can’t get them back, the city state usually uses them in foolish ways and, most importantly, it takes a while for the units to arrive, which is usually far too long, because a city state falls far too quickly.
So, was anything done to make the option more helpful?
rezaf
Me too, looks like a bug to me. Logically there would be no point in pledging to protect an ally since it’s already your ally anyway, and a city state only has one ally at a time.
Not that I’ve heard but I haven’t really used it myself.
In my second game with the new patch, I did have a major war but it was a rather one-sided affair (riflemen vs medieval units) so I still can’t say anything about the tactical AI. I do like the new diplomacy system very much – I got so friendly with Isabella on another continent that she even agreed to declare war on my enemy.
Unfortunately, a strange quirk from Civ4 has made a return as well: Suleiman was shown as “friendly” when his only modifier toward me was a red one, and soon after he attacked me! I did notice that Suleiman is a rather friendly guy in most games, so maybe his basic disposition pushed up his attitude above zero. Or maybe it’s a bug.
Dejin
4445
Could be. I loaded up a couple games and either no one is protecting in those games, or there is no way to tell who is protecting who. Seems like not knowing whether or not that City-State you’re about to attack is protected by someone might be helpful. In fact, I just got in big trouble with Bismark for taking out a city-state who he was apparently protecting (Diplomacy tool tip says “You have killed city-states under their protection”). The annoying thing is, I went to war with Arabia, because Bismark had asked me too, and I took at Rio De Janeiro because they were allied with Arabia and at war with Bismark and myself. And know Bismark is mad at me? Very annoying.
I did discover a few items that either got added, or I hadn’t noticed before. The Diplomatic “Global Politics” tab now lists how many policies each leader has in each policy tree and also lists what wonders of the world they have built.
Also something that might be worth experimenting with, I think leaving enemy Civs with one or two lame cities might be better than taking them out entirely. I’m pretty close to the bottom of the totem pole, but I’ve taken out Persia and the previously mentioned Rio De Janeiro and everyone seems to think I’m “a warmongering menace to the world”. I wonder if I had left Persia with a few cities, if I would be viewed more favorably.
The Mac version is extremely not optimized, though. I played a standard map game at the native resolution with the bugs before this patch and it slowed down pretty quick. You could get better performance and the higher resolution using Boot Camp but I don’t really want to do that.
At this point, I’d agree that there seems to be a bug somewhere in there, unless one of the games that ydejin found that in was initiated in the old version and was therefore just a continued save.
I tested the theory on whether two civs could pledge to protect, and found that it worked just fine (Ramses pledged to protect Helsinki, and then I pledged the next turn), so it’s not something that is precluded by the actions of another civ.
As another odd note, for the first time I found that another Civ withdrew its pledge to protect - something I didn’t know could or would happen.
Dejin
4448
Nope, these were new games started post-patch.
On an unrelated note, is anyone else getting crashes? I’ve had at least five crashes since I picked up the patch.
Some people seem to get more crashes now, but for me it’s just as stable as before.
No stability problems here either, for what it’s worth.
No crashes for me, either. However, I just did the one test game to check out the city state issues (… which I then got hooked on and played for a couple of hours - damn you, Civ!!!)
EDIT -
Here’s another shot in the dark - with the allied city state that wouldn’t allow you to pledge protection, had you met another Civ at that point? The pledge is a commication to other civs, and if you haven’t met any then I could understand the option not being there.
I wish someone would make a decision about how to handle the situation where you are unable to do something that you might normally be able to do in this game. For example: pledge protection to a city state or build great people tile improvements when the great person is standing on a city tile. Do you a) show the option grayed out with a mouseover explaining why you are unable to do that action (hint: yes, this is what you do) or b) remove the option completely so you have no clue how to take that action or that the action even exists?*
*Real answer: c) release another downloadable civ for five dollars.
Anyone else tried playing Spain? Did my first custom game other day with Isabella on Prince difficulty and when first natural wonder was found on turn 4-5 or so using initial warrior to scout, natural wonder not only gave +2 happiness (rather than +1), also gave a whopping 500 gold, more than enough to purchase a second settler outright on the spot.
Gold bonus not documented in anything read previously about Spain. Anyone know if this is one-time bonus? Seems extremely powerful, almost unbalancing, if found early-game.
Was that one of the special new natural wonders (El Dorado?) added by the patch?
MattB
4455
I had one last night during the last turns of the scenario. However, I also had it running in the background for about 4 hours waiting for me to remember that I was playing it, so that may have been the cause.
Old Faithful. Which was in original Civ 5 pre-Spain and used to just give plain old +1 happiness.
MattB
4457
I’ve been mostly trying Spain, and yeah. The gold bonuses are rather hefty. The second bonus is 1000 gold. I haven’t found anymore before anyone else yet though.
In that case, Spain is much better than previously thought. Much.
Incans seem very underpowered and terrace farm doesn’t seem worth effort.
Totally disagree about Incas being underpowered – I think they’re rather overpowered! They do have to start in hilly terrain, obviously, but terrace farms are a huge growth boost early on where you otherwise could barely reach a decent city size, the free hill roads are nice, and the 1-point hill movement for all units is extremely useful in battle. The slingers are not just stronger than archers, they also can evade melee attacks --and keep that bonus after upgrading to modern units!
I haven’t yet played Spain but I’m glad to hear about the massive gold bonus, otherwise its traits really seemed rather wimpy.
Rywill
4460
I haven’t tried Spain yet, but that bonus also sounds very volatile. Some games you might get massive cash because you started near several natural wonders, other games you might end up in the middle of other people and not get the massive bonuses at all. It does, however, give Spain a really good reason to explore (particularly the ocean – helloooo two-wonder Great Barrier Reef!), which is sort of thematically cool.
