4461

Spain is very situational you find a wonder first and you get a big bonus, otherwise if you only find one or two and not El Dorado it isn’t a big deal. The Conquistidor is a pretty nice unit.

I agree about the Inca the terrace farm is not really any better than Civil Service farms with water, so the Inca’s have gone from my favorite in Civ IV to a meh civ in Civ V.

4462

The whole point of terrace farms is to give lots of food in places where you don’t get riverside grassland.

4463

Don’t disagree that Spain’s ability is situational and may get hosed by never finding a natural wonder, but was described in early info as simply “+2 happiness for natural wonders instead of +1.” Which sounded completely, utterly worthless. Gold bonus gives them potential strong advantage if lucky, which makes them less worthless. Benefit of an early windfall of +500, +1000, etc. should be obvious, if nothing else, to purchase settlers without ever having to stagnate.

If they don’t find any natural wonders early, their ability is terrible. But it at least has the potential not to be.

Reserving judgment for number of reasons. First, no start in hills, no national bonuses. Also, terrace farms need to be built on hills, adjacent to mountains, in order to receive full food bonus, correct? Finding hills…not hard on most maps that aren’t low elevation. Finding hills adjacent to mountains that haven’t yet been settled and are relatively close to home…much more situational and depends on map layout spawn (similar to how Spain may or may not luck out in finding early national wonder).

Free hill roads and 1-point hill movement are helpful, but find it hard to consider slinger useful. Now that horsemen are depowered, frankly find it hard to consider anything other than swordsmen useful for serious military push.

Some would say disagreements about power levels (where one side feels a certain thing is underpowered while another argues that it’s overpowered) are potentially good sign for game balance. Will need to experiment with Incas more.

4464

Posting without pronouns, definite and indefinite articles interesting. Make one sound like Mordin. Will need to experiment with Qt3 more.

4465

Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face.
The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown.
The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout “Save Us!”…:
…and I’ll look down, and whisper, “No”.

4466

Thanks Chris. Good to know I’m not alone (which hopefully means whatever is causing the crashes will get fixed).

All you crash free people are a bunch of lucky bums ;-)

4467

Exactly what I was thinking haha.

4468

No crashes for me. But the game is just as dumb as ever.

Another half-game played and quit in the middle. Just seems pointless to play on after a certain point.

In this King game I’m doing OK in the middle of three other nations around 0 AD. All are friendly. I’ve just developed machinery and everyone else has swordsmen but no crossbowmen. None of my units are outside my borders, but I’ve just upgraded a bunch of archers and my military capability has doubled in a turn since a crossbowman can usually do half damage to a swordsman and more to other weaker units, and it’s also strong enough to hurt weak medieval cities even with the new penalty.

So the weakest nation suddenly denounces me, the same turn I upgrade to crossbowmen. The other two are still friendly. This is just dumb. I wasn’t on his border last turn, but I can attack him in two turns. So I declare war. Maybe 5 turns later I’ve taken his capital. He surrenders in the usual abject way.

In the middle of this, the other two nations declare war on the hapless loser, despite being nowhere near him. Nice try at piling on guys, but maybe you should try and see if you can even path to one of his cities first.

Next, a couple of turns later the other two nations suddenly declare war out of the blue, from being friendly the previous turn. They don’t even have any units nearby me, and their forces are technologically inferior, but they will ‘take this chance’ to attack or somesuch idiotic thing. So now I can crush them without even having to declare war on them. Silly. What with great scientists, by the middle of this general war I have riflemen when they are still pleased with upgrading to longswordsmen. No contest at all.

Next some random seafaring nations find my continent and instantly denounce me. What? What did I do to you? After taking the two enemy capitals, I gave up. It just seemed pointless to play on, even though I hadn’t yet found the other continent.

And the tactical AI is still uncoordinated. It moves fewer siege units right in front of my forces, but it seems even less capable of attacking now, maybe because it doesn’t want to be counterattacked. Some idiotic pathing bug that likes sea transport is still sending important land units paddling around in the sea when they should be doing something useful on the adjacent land hexes.

4469

Listen to this man. Although I have yet to observe this kind of diplomatic incompetence, the tactical AI seems to be as bad as ever.

4470

Ramp up the difficulty then…I’ve won at Deity, can you? :)

4471

WHOAH! you didn’t… oh you just did… can I see your achievement for proof? BTW, does anybody play this multi? It’s actually quite fun! A little bit slow compared to Civ IV though.

4472

Someone please tell me this isn’t so. Please. I had built up so much hope again, but I don’t want to put 3 hours into something only to find it still sucks on such a basic level as moving pieces around semi-intelligently.

(P.S. Don’t tell me to move to Deity level. I’m not interested in a game where the game is only made fun by just handing the a mentally incompetent AI nuclear missiles while you are supposed to fight it with a slingshot.)

4473

It all depends on the quality of that slingshot …

j/k. I doubt most of us will have an authoritative view on the AI without playing several games. The one thing I can absolutely be certain of is that the AI will still make some mistakes. Then again, so will I.

4474

My experience post patch is that the AI is still not doing a good job keeping it’s ranged artillery in the back. Although it’s possible that the problem is poor strategy in determining its overall force composition rather than a problem of tactics. I had one skirmish where the AI pushed his archers out front, and another where a trebuchet was stuck out front. However in both those battles the AI did not have any non-missle troops to stick out front.

4475

Overall I think this patch is very good I am finishing up this game as the Chinese. I played several other games upto AD as Inca, Spanish, and one Chinese post patch.

They reduced/eliminated maintenance costs on important items walls, circus, and introduced a few national wonders which seems to result in more money. Playing as the Chinese with +4 gold/library helps also.

I think they got rid of three most abusive player exploits, saving up cultural points and promotions, eliminating the specialist slots for the libraries, and nerfing horseman.

The other huge change is the city strength, which unfortunately is a mixed blessing. I managed to roll over the French with a 4 Cho-Kun-Nu, a few swordsmen and a Knight.
However, it was significantly harder than pre patch.

The flip side is the stronger cities seem to really be a challenge for the AI to take out. In both my war, despite starting off weaker than my opponent I was easily able to defeat the initial attacking army. The AI for the initial attack is reasonable. The problem is the follow up so once the initial melee units get chewed up the AI doesn’t bring up additional melee units to finish off the city. I also notice in late game that AI attacking city states results in stalemate in most situations.

4476

Next, a couple of turns later the other two nations suddenly declare war out of the blue, from being friendly the previous turn.

Next some random seafaring nations find my continent and instantly denounce me. What? What did I do to you?

I played 1 game and found the same thing. I had been kissing Germany’s ass the whole game, giving what they wanted even when they demanded silk. They were only a little behind me in power, and I was only coming 3rd. I was also friendly with Alexander who was winning. Then suddenly Alexander and France (2 most powerful by a long way) delcared war out of the blue and Germany and the rest of the world denounced me (including the Indians who I had just met a few turns earlier).

Thing is I wasnt even winning and the AI’s still hate me for no reason.

Also, Alexander and Napoleon had been earning 200+ gold a turn for a long time, as if they were in a never-ending golden age. Some really dodgy mechanics behind this game.

4477

Can’t speak for the silly AI hostility, but 200+ gold a turn isn’t that difficult to achieve with a large empire, trading post spam, and a road network. Except for a few key cities optimized for hammer production, trading posts are generally a better option than either mines or lumber mills. Big gold production means lots of city-state allies and research agreements.

As for the AI, you really have to play as if any AI player on the same continent will declare war on you sooner or later, no matter how “nice” you are to them.

4478

Yeah, having pretty much finished a full game with the new patch, this is underwhelming. The AI does seem to fight a little better but still does a lot of dumb things, including leaving guys standing around to get slowly bombarded to death rather than moving them out of range. (That seems like it should be a really simple thing to code. Is this where I plan on stationing this unit permanently? Is it in range of enemy artillery?) The AI also still doesn’t seem to do very much with naval or air power, although maybe that’s just a quirk of my particular map (two mega-continents with little interaction between them). Overall, I’ve never felt like I was under any military threat the entire game, and the two times I went to war I steamrolled my opponent.

The new diplo system, as others have said, is interesting but sometimes bizarre. As with other folks, I’ve had weaker-than-me empires that I’ve spent the whole game fellating, who were part of a network of mutual declared friends, suddenly denounce me out of nowhere. Maybe there’s some reason for it, but if so the game should make clear what that reason is so that it doesn’t look like complete randomness. And the AI still does that weird super-capitulation where someone you’re technically at war with, but not actually doing anything about, will suddenly offer you his entire bank account and all his resources for peace.

I like the new diplomatic options, though, and the return of the bullet points telling you what the AI does and doesn’t like about you is nice. The rebalancing of units, and happiness generation, is also great.

4479

I was routinely earning 200+ a turn even without golden ages than it got close to $400. I didn’t have much of army but money wasn’t a problem.

4480

This is commonplace. I have a sneaking suspicion the AI is trying for an XP exploit. It especially loves moving an axeman or something like that in range of a barb trireme and camping there. Forever.