That’s really less important than road length. One reason ICS was so successful pre-patch was that you connected cities with a minimum amount of roads. Trade route income depends only on the destination city size, not distance, so every extra hex of road costs you money. Further, every city has a built-in road hex that can link more distant cities, and that “city road” is upkeep-free. In the mid to late game other income swamps this, but in the early game this is a big deal.
Building a ton of cities does not adversely affect social policies. Sure, there’s an increase in cost with every city, but you can offset that if you get serious about building cultural buildings as they become available. It’s not the most effective way to win compared to devoting the hammers to research or military, but it works.
Dejin
4522
When it came out, I thought the game was great, and voted it as such in the poll thread. I think it took me almost 100 hours of play before I discovered that the AI could not understand what to do with Naval units at all, and simply never built Air units. That took the game down a lot of notches for me. I suppose it doesn’t invalidate the enjoyment I had with the game before I discovered the AI flaws, but unless they get fixed it seriously cripples Civ5’s standing in the pantheon of great games.
Dejin
4523
I thought I saw somewhere that each new city increases the cost of social policies by a third. Doesn’t that mean that the cost goes up exponentially? (1.33)^n
Also in my particular case, with AI cities built on tundra, I don’t see how those cities can make up for their policy and unhappiness cost. They don’t have the population or resources to build the cultural building that they would need to become social policy neutral. I suppose the AI could “purchase” these buildings for them, but that just doesn’t seem very cost effective.
For me this is the first game in the series, which isn’t completely superior to the previous ones. Now to be fair Civ IV was my game of the decade so that fact this Civ V isn’t a better game doesn’t mean Civ V is a bad game. It isn’t as my 150+ hours will attest.
I also probably won’t rotate back to Civ IV, simply cause I played the heck out of it. I generally attempted every Civfanatics game of the month, plus another game or so month.
However, if I think of Civ IV vs Civ V in the classic “if you are stuck in a desert island…”. It is pretty much a toss up. I like the mechanics and the much greater flavor among the Civilization in Civ V vs Civ IV. There are certainly elements like religion and a better tech tree in Civ IV than Civ V. (The bottom 1/2 of the tech tree doesn’t need to be researched starting with combustion to win either a tech or diplomatic victory in V).
In Civ V after the patch, most of the exploits the players used to be an early warmonger have been fixed. The cities especially with walls/castles, coupled with an annoying tendency of the AI to spam cities are tough to take. The big changes to > -10 happiness mean you pretty much have to slow down to heal your units and raze the cities to get your happiness rating back to positive.
The biggest current difference between is them is challenge the AI player presents. A peaceful AI at higher difficulties does present a challenge to the space race. (I haven’t had a serious late gate challenge pre patch, before the patch I had a couple). So a big AI player may actually have a shot of winning the game. However, what the AI doesn’t provide is much of a challenge offensively. I have yet to see the AI take out a city other than a tiny city they recaptured. I simply don’t fear any AI attack (I’ve avoided the multiple AIs declare war on me so far). As long as you have a enough money to buy a wall and a defensive unit you don’t need much of a military. Once you beat back the initial assault the AI will throw units at you piecemeal and that is a recipe for defeat and XP harvesting for your units.
In contrast the CIV IV Stack of doom for all of its flaws was something to be legitimately fear by a builder player like myself. If you didn’t have a sufficient military the AI would and could come kick your butt.
No, though that was the way I read the tooltip at first as well. It’s linear. The social policy cost is Base * (70% + # of cities * 30%). Each new city adds a fixed cost, and the increase is rather less than the new production you gain. Against that you can weigh the few unique culture generators like Stonehenge, but that’s not that important. Overall it’s easier with more cities, since more cities generate more science, and you unlock the upper-level culture buildings faster with more science. Particularly the Broadcast Tower, which doubles all culture production.
Tundra hills are just as good as regular hills. So are any forested tiles or fish tiles. It’s only the bare, flat tundra hexes that suck. Against that, the free city hex is one of the best around at 2/2/1. Paying 2 unhappiness for that isn’t an awful tradeoff.
Dejin
4526
Wow! Thanks Gus. That completely changes my strategic calculations on culture.
No it goes up by an additional 30% from the base cost. So if a policy would cost 1,000 culture with one city it cost 1300 with two, 1600 with three, and 3,000 with 10. There are some pretty cost effective cultural building like the monastery and several unique building that actually make it easier for you to get more policies if you get more cities.
After the patch the AI seems to build lots of cities everywhere. NOt sure if that a function of defensiveness, or they just gave the AI different penalties for multiple cities.
Post patch I’ve observed that AI is much better about using naval units in combat. I haven’t engaged in much of the way of naval warfare, but they definitely use naval units to assist/defend in attack.
I watch several AI vs AI battle in the late game and I even saw fighter on fighter combat. Improving both Naval and Air building and usage was in the patch notes and appears to be better. Although presumably not great still.
JMR
4529
I have 240 hours logged playing Civ 5 and that’s probably way more than I ever invested in prior Civs. The streamlined GUI and tech tree has a lot to do with it coupled with my undeveloped 4X skills means I’m pretty much oblivious to the AI’s shortcomings that many beardo strategy gamers find glaringly obvious. So, yeah, I’m enjoying Civ 5 a lot.
With that said I attempted my first king game post patch and by mid game I knew I was going to lose so I parked a unit near warring AI’s and watched them go to town on each other. I witnessed Ram use planes and guided missiles to attack Askia’s cities, some of which had anti aircraft guns. The AI now has a naval presence but I haven’t seen enough of it in action to gauge whether or not it uses it effectively but the seas are no longer empty.
The two things off the top of my head I’d like to see changed (or at least two things I miss from Civ 4) are:
-
Iron sources revealed with bronze working – kind of aggravating to invest so much time in researching iron working only to discover that you have none in your territory.
-
Allowing aerial units to bombard tile improvements especially now since the AI places its cities closer together. Tightly packed cities makes it damn near suicidal to send units with the sole purpose of crippling the AI by pillaging his resources. I loved doing that in Civ 4 when conquering wasn’t an option.
Civ4 revealed copper with bronze working, not iron. Copper is gone altogether from Civ5, that’s why nothing is revealed with bronze working.
One heck of a scoop there!
That’s pretty soon but otherwise not too unusual. Sid Meier’s Brian Reynolds didn’t stick around for Civ3 IIRC, and Soren Johnson definitely left before the second Civ4 expansion – possibly even before the first? For some reason, Civ lead designers don’t tend to stick around.
I think it’s like being a ship captain in the Navy. You get two years in the big chair (or one Civ game), and then you either get promoted to admiral or you get out of the Navy. Only problem is, Firaxis already has an admiral, a pretty senior one.
Wait, is that thing about the Navy for real? I thought it was more like Star Trek.
Yes. If you are passed over for a promotion (usually a second time), you are expected to resign. Up or out!
Hear tell, Mr. Meier is engrossed in Facebook game and was apparently hands-off on Civ 5 and Civ 4, deferring to Mr. Shafer & Mr. Johnson, respectively. Unsure as to what this means for future development.
[quote=“Maniac,post:4537,topic:57697”]
Yeah right.[/QUOTE]
Not sure what objection is here. Mr. Shafer kept his word and remained on board for first big patch that everyone was bellyaching about. Quite possible he had another opportunity to pursue or commitment elsewhere.
Best of luck to him, regardless.
Telefrog
4539
Jesus. It’s a bloodbath over on CivFanatics. It makes me glad that I’m not that hardcore about this game.
Yeah, I hope that it’s “sad happy news.” Best of luck to Jon, wherever his awesomeness may take him. ;)
