Lorini
5381
And I thought this was an excellent example of DLC that works for the consumer and for the company. The game shipped with 18 civs, which is plenty to enjoy the game with. And if you are hard core and want to try some other different civs, you can optionally buy more. 18 civs can provide plenty of variety without any additions.
I guess if someone is compulsive and just has to have everything for a game it could be an issue, but really they should work on their attitude instead. Figure out what you want and then buy that.
Lastly, I really hate it when people complain about more choices. I don’t understand the “give us less choices!!!” thing.
Blips
5382
I thought that the Civ V DLC was relatively well priced (compared to other companies / games practices) and too that it was a good example of DLC done right.
For people like me though, DLC is a huge issue because I’m extremely compulsive when it comes to ensuring I’m getting the “full experience”. This is why preorder bonuses drive me absolutely insane.
Lorini
5383
Just ask yourself “what happens if I DON’T buy this?” And keep repeating the answer (hint: NOTHING) every time you want to buy compulsively. Takes a bit, but eventually you’ll get out of the habit.
KevinC
5384
I actually like the way they’ve done DLC quite a bit, I just hope it doesn’t preclude a real expansion that adds new gameplay, you know?
Their DLC is fine as DLC goes. I’m not a fan of the concept, but it isn’t obnoxious like it can be with some other games.
I also suspect the CiV DLC is fueling these huge, sweeping patches that are actually FREE of course. Just a theory, but I have been buying the DLC not just becuase I like new Civ’s in my games, but also … just in case I’m helping fund the games ongoing patching. Just in case.
I have 167 hours played in Civ V plus the god knows how much I put in pre-release, and I still haven’t won with all 18 civs it shipped with.* And I haven’t been repeating civs much at all; I have 2 wins with a couple of them but that’s it.
Not super pissed about the amount of content Civ V shipped with.
- though if I hadn’t played a couple of DLC civ games (Inca) I may have just finished 18/18.
Yeah, I save my games with the game number in the game name, and I’m on game 19 (not including games that I started and lost before I got around to saving). I’ve been doing random exclusively, so there are still quite a few Civ’s I’ve never played as (or I lost as before the game really got rolling), and there are in fact a handful of Civ’s I’ve never even SEEN yet. Very cool, lots of content. I don’t really even want an expansion, just keep tightening and polishing the game and AI, and I’ll be happy.
Though I would eventually like a new take on espionage!
Dejin
5389
Ugh, I’m definitely in the anti-espionage crowd. It’s all a matter of personal taste of course. I prefer to focus on straight up fighting and economics. I don’t like having to deal with espionage, and please let’s make sure we don’t go back to having to manage individual spy units.
Yeah, I should clarify that I don’t want a deep and complex system, but I would like something in place to be able to see troop placement, city buildings current projects, maybe see what other AI’s have for civics, and even have hidden alliances in place that you can detect (but maybe NOT let you sabotage relations between other Civ’s, I really hated that in Civ IV).
Actually… hmn. Maybe I don’t want espionage. Shit, wtf do I know?! :)
Well, that was interesting. I’m playing a game on lowly Prince as Denmark and, for the first time ever in Civ5, I had a city taken. I’m a builder, so I didn’t mind the lack of challenge in the combat situations at the level I was playing at, but I can see a big difference in AI strategy already (I last played in December). Darius actually declared war, rolled in with at least six units of various types, surrounded the city, and didn’t get distracted until he took it a couple of turns later. I was out of position thinking that, since he had recently asked me to join him in a war against India, I would be safe for a bit. Unfortunately, he declared war on me first (and India after he took my outlying city).
Though, it may be that I’m a bit rusty not having played since last year, but having a city taken that early on in the game is very unusual for me. I think Darius made a mistake in splitting his forces to go after India instead of finishing me off (I only have my capital left now) as it’ll give me time to regroup and engage. I’m playing on a small continent, large map, so my continent only has the three of us.
On King, I quite often lose cities to an AI player’s initial attack. They are really pretty good at building up a strong force and overwhelming a city’s defenses, at least if they have a land route to the city. It’s in the aftermath where the AI falls apart, when they have lost most of their units and can’t produce replacements fast enough. My counterattacks usually succeed because of that.
I’m quite happy about the lower unit costs after the latest patch, by the way, because I’m mostly playing as a builder and don’t keep too many units at hand. Quickly building up a force when I need one is now much easier.
Is there anyone who is participating in this thread who is following the developments of the mod community; most notably perhaps Thal’s Civ Mod?
I’ve gone over to Thal’s unofficial patch and balance mod for a while and it has definitely heightened my enjoyment of the single player game.
I was actually surprised when Washington, after getting destroyed on my frontlines, decided to retreat and transport his units over water (unbeknownst to me) and dump them off behind my lines near my capital. I managed to reposition my troops in time to avoid any serious losses, but it was still pretty cool to see that.
That said, the AI still makes really dumb decisions.
Tried Hot Seat mode out with my son today, he loved it and it was fun to play with him while showing him the ropes. He’s really enjoying it, hopefully it will go down on sale for him to pick up his own copy ($33 is still a bit steep, since he can play with me at the moment).
I was in the mood for some Civ so I busted this out today and played a few aborted games. It reminded me of several things I didn’t like back when I was playing this last year.
I still find advancement in it to be frustratingly slow. It takes forever to build up your cities to the point of being able to do anything meaningful. Rapid expansion isn’t an option due to maintenance costs, but sitting there putzing around with two cities for three thousand years bores me.
In my last game I was playing as Japan. I built two cities and then beelined for my Samurais in the tech tree. Meanwhile, I figured I’d try to conquer a city-state in order to secure the only Iron resource available to me, a resources that I’d need for my inevitable war with Greece. He already had iron too and already declared war on me (from the other side of the map … for some reason).
But I simply couldn’t capture the city-state. I had built up a force where I could place units in literally every hex around the city, but still couldn’t capture it because my units were too weak. I just don’t think this game wants you to do any city conquering that early in the game, with low-level units like Warriors/Spearmen/Horsemen. But what am I supposed to do? Trade for that resource? I’m Japan, damn it. We take what we want from honourless dogs.
I remember feeling that there wasn’t much choice in the tech tree when I played Civ V last year, and that still seems to be the case. You can’t really specialize, you have to take every tech in order to secure resources to keep your population happy. It sucks.
The graphics in Civ V have spoiled me though, and it’s hard to go back to Civ IV. I want to though. In IV it felt like I had more freedom to develop my civilization the way I wanted to.
City state are usually much tougher than cities of major nations. I think they get free city upgrades, including defensive buildings. You really need artillery against them. I bet you wouldn’t have had any trouble capturing Alexander’s cities with the forces you threw at that city state.
Rywill
5398
Yeah, my experience is that in the ancient era you really can’t take a city without iron, particularly a city-state. It’s a weakness in the game’s design IMO – in later ages there are sometimes workarounds you can do, with sufficient numbers of non-resource units, but in the early goings it’s basically you either have iron, or you’re not invading. I usually hold off settling my second or third city until I’ve discovered iron-working, specifically so that I can make sure it’s near some iron if possible.
On the tech front, I don’t think you’ve ever been able to specialize in civ games, have you? You always work your way through the whole tree, at least until the modern era (then you can specialize). The choice comes from what you beeline for, what you let lag for a while, etc., not in choosing one branch over another.
It’s not about maintenance costs, but happiness when expanding. So, always make sure you’re getting at least one new happiness resource per newly founded city and always trade away excess resources for new happy resources whenever possible.
As for conquering cities, I’m glad they have made conquering them harder because a popular strategy was to just rush them with horsemen, making artillery useless. Now artillery plays a huge part in the game, not only for capturing cities, but for defense.
I started a game with Babylon to check out the new patch and so far it seems the game has definitely improved a bit more since I last played several months ago. One of my major complaints was the lack of production, but that feels better to me now with the lower building costs and the additional ways to get more hammers. I got a pretty good starting position with my capital having marble, stone, and 3 copies of incense for a nice balance of production (Stone Works helps) and luxuries. My next two cities had lots of cows, sheep, and horses to make great use of the Stable for extra hammers. The Stable may be my new favorite building.
I was concerned that the new happiness constraints would be an issue, but so far it hasn’t been a problem since I have some luxuries and only engaged in one small war. I also only have 3 cities at this point (cannot remember what year I’m in, I think a few hundred AD). Happiness may be more of an issue for a warmonger/expansionist, but I don’t think it will be too bad with some of the buildings and social policies available. What may be tougher now is going up in difficulty levels due to the progressively lower starting happiness bonus. I’m only playing on Prince (Normal difficulty) so I can get a feel for the new features. I’ll probably try playing as more of an expansionist next time to see how that goes.
Gold seems kinda tight to me since the trading posts got nerfed. They aren’t really worth it until you get later techs or policies to beef them up (kinda like the old Workshops in Civ4, which kinda sucked until you had the right techs or civics). For gold, it appears you really need to sell some extra luxuries or get into warfare, or of course build the money buildings. I’ll have to look into more ways to make money so I can make better use of the surrounding city states.
I cannot comment much on the AI, but I did run into the issue where I took one small city from a Civ and had him throw me a ridiculously good deal when I proposed peace a few turns later (pretty much all his luxuries for 30 turns and gold). He didn’t have much of a military so I could have kept stomping him after building a few more units (didn’t realize mounted units got such a nerf against cities, which are now tougher too, oops!), but the deal was still rather desperate since Peace Treaties are only 10 turns long.
One trick I finally realized is that when a city requests a luxury you don’t have, go ahead and trade one of your singleton luxuries for it so you can get the growth bonus with no net change in happiness overall.
