Now that the game supports PBE, we’ll have to consider organizing a Qt3 MP game. Sure, it might take a while to finish, but it might be fun.
Lorini
5302
It locked up my computer which promptly shut itself down. Perhaps I should wait for the .1 version.
I guess the happiness policies will be even more important now, and scavenging for luxuries even more critical. It will also make it harder to move up in difficulty levels, since I think higher difficulties reduce any initial starting happiness bonus you get.
It should limit the city growth, and actually make the AI more competent since it already prioritizes happiness, seems like.
Changes look good on paper. Eyeballs like big nerfs for really wide empires, while maintaining decent power for moderately wide civs. Like the buffs to Germany and the Ottomans quite a lot.
Just played a small game at Emperor level. Wow. Is it possible the empire management AI is actually worse now?
At 1000 AD in previous patches, my riflemen would at least meet crossbowmen and longswordsmen and maybe even musketeers if an empire got big; now they’re fighting archers and spearmen. With all this insane amount of production they’ve provided in this patch (stones are the new cows and everything is much cheaper to build), why is it the AI actually has fewer units than it used to and manages to build fewer wonders?
Anyhow, I’m having no problem at all managing happiness after a bit of a downer phase during the early medieval period, and the reduced production costs are making all the decisions less important because I can pretty much build everything. I didn’t even bother converting any city-states or fine-tuning specialists and all that jazz; but even so it seems like my little 3 city empire was head and shoulders above the rest of the world by 1000 AD with very little effort.
As for tactical AI, ha. It’s zerging me with workers. I just experienced a naval attack led by 2 workers. What? I mean, I salute the valor of the proletariat, but they might have equipped them at least with some of those plentiful stones that are lying around on the ground all over the place. And oh look, it left a great general hanging out by himself 2 hexes from one of my riflemen. Is it that hard to code a rule saying to not leave leaders unstacked? I do notice the AI is actually moving a few random units around the sides of my empire instead of rushing headlong at me; but this is not a good idea when the only chance it has to save itself is to concentrate its forces. Oh well.
Riflemen in 1000 AD with only three cities?
So I was looking at the time stamps in the Civ5 folder after the game had updated, and I thought “hey, they actually updated the PDF manual!” Then I opened the manual to see what has changed and… apparently nothing. The new stone resource is missing, research agreements still are described as giving a free tech. The manual does list the “publicly denounce” option in the diplomacy section, so I guess they are keeping up with the game version from three patches ago…
Janster
5309
They’ve removed the national college start…now its going to be VERY tricky on harder levels.
I hate to say it, but I don’t think I looked at the actual manual even once for Civ V. Civlopedia? Absolutely and it is up to date, but not the manual. Still, it’s interesting they haven’t gone and updated that - I guess that will likely be part of the “phase 2” of the patching process.
Just finished a game on Prince, down from my usual King since the patch notes issued those dire warnings about improved AI. Well, that must have been some kind of a joke. I had the same experience as Miramon – the strategic AI is actually notably worse than before! Barely ever manages to finish a wonder, expansionist civs expand too slowly, cultural civs make too little culture…
It’s ironic, now that we finally have the end-game replay and graphs back the first thing they show is how the AI can’t keep up with the human player.
I did see one improvement announced in the patch notes: an invasion fleet with 20 or so varied units that properly stuck together. No idea what became of it, though, since I never saw a declaration of war. Apparently the “improved” strategic AI just sailed them back and forth.
Play again on King instead maybe? It may give you a better idea? I don’t expect much at sea, but the AI was before this patch a royal pain on land which is good.
I recall even the Prince AI being better before this patch, though. Strangely, the people in the early impression thread on the 2K forum talk about an improved AI. I’ll have to see if it makes better use of the King bonuses now, at least.
Yeah, I always wind up with 3 great scientists by the time I get gunpowder, and use them to get riflemen and cannons and take over the world. On emperor I can usually get to this point by 800-1000 AD if terrain conditions are OK for my first few cities and no one steals my Great Library. Pre-patch, getting a free Civil Service advance was worth about 30 turns of research, but both the benefit and the cost of the Great Library are smaller now; however I think the cost has dropped more than the benefit, so it’s still worthwhile.
Have they finally beefed up the Civilopedia to add more complete info and better navigation? The one that shipped with the game was terrible and had a clunky search function. The articles had little to no internal hyperlinks for jumping around. Some sections actually told you to refer to the manual(!) instead of reprinting the info right there. It was rather embarrassing.
I don’t understand why some parts of the UI support accessing of the Civilopedia via clicking, while others do not. I’d expect all portions of the UI to support this. Or am I not doing it correctly…?
Xemu
5317
I haven’t logged many games of Civ 5 but the one I started last night seemed to have fairly competent AI. The Iroquois expanded huge and triggered a world war against a few other AI civs, while my nearby neighbor Japan attacked me with a fairly large number of units around 0 AD. No being attacked with workers or the like.
I am still feeling fairly confident I’ll win (level 4, which is Prince I think?) with my small civ and focus on minor powers (Siam), but the AI doesn’t seem braindead at all. Diplomacy is still less cool than Civ 4, but at least they are slowly closing the gap…
The UI isn’t the greatest with the tab system, but it’s functional. Clicking on internal icons/pictures takes you to their pages, etc., and the info is fairly complete. My only real complaint is that sometimes the game info isn’t as distinctly separated from the historical info as I’d like it to be. edit - Oh, and I’d like third- and fourth-button-clicking to act as forward and back arrows, but that’s my own silly nit that I’m picking.
I don’t think I’ve bothered with linking from other areas of the UI, just gone directly to it and then the appropriate tab. Essentially three clicks take you to anything you’re looking for - while not the fastest technique, it’s consistent and that’s enough for me to enjoy.
Just finished another game on King, and the strategic AI worked much better this time. I could narrowly pull off a space race victory after Alexander and I nuked the hell out of each other’s cities.
I like the redesigned tech dependencies, and the increased late-game research costs – there are now (finally) distinct paths to each victory condition.
The tactical AI is still dumb as a brick, though. If the initial wave attack fails the units just stand around. I had one of my cities “besieged” by two unescorted generals, too…
Its a better game now, but I still win immortal too easy…however Deity is cruel and just crazy…I wish there was a difficulty between them :(
