5661

Anyone know how do you tell which unique unit upgrades persist after upgrading?

5662

Also, am I correct in understanding that there are no multiplayer mods?!

5663

No MP mods, no. As for unique promotions, they should all continue to exist except for ranged unit upgrades on melee upgraded units.

5664

There is a simple mod that allows this (iirc: “crossbows to cannons”) by keeping ranged unit upgrades in the same family, so to speak.

5665

Meh. The bizarre impossibility of multiplayer mods makes it all moot to me.

5666

Yeah, I’ve always wondered exactly what the hold-up is on that. It’s a rather weird limitation.

5667

My favorite (ok not really but most challenging) games in Civ IV were when I got to 1000 AD or later and looked like I was going win the game, and suddenly the AI came back and kicked my butt. This happened roughly 20% and it is why I played the hell out of the game.

The 189 pages of this thread detail the many failings of the AI in Civ V. I am happy to say that after many patches which include a steady improvement to AI and most importantly many good balance changes Firaxis has made a game worthy of the franchise. The AI still ain’t great but I think it is now good enough.

I was playing as Egypt, one of the better Civ IMO, at the Emperor level. I expanded to 6 cities and was a solid second in the score behind Iroquois and slightly ahead of Russia. My capital was churning out wonders and the rest of the empire was being a good builder. My military was weak but not pathetically so, with garrisons on all cities and walls on my border cities. I had couple of War Chariots, horseman and a Knight as reserve. Russia attacked my 2nd largest city and my military city. I managed to beat of the first attack at cost of a couple of my units. The scary thing was the presence of a cannon. (Interestingly Russia had only horseman vs my knights but had researched down far down this path.). In the initial attack the cannon was well protected and so I could only get range shots at it. Russia retreated its units, and I laughed at the pathetic AI. Several turns it returned again fully healed and reinforced. In a long campaign,which included me rush buying a castle and several military units. Russia proceed to methodically lay siege to my city and destroy my entire army. The AI made a mistake or two but overall I am not sure I would have done much better.

Needless to say the peace treaty demands were excessive but I have no doubt that at least two more cities were doomed. So I restarted from autosave 30+ turns later, and this time concentrated on building on my military. (As I general rule I find best to purchase military units, but after the patches, a city with forge and stables can actually make modern units in 4-7 turns). This time Russia attacked a few turns early, and went after my city state ally. I attempted in vain to defend him, losing a few units. The second attack than went after my military city. My badly wounded army was in no position to stop the attack.

Now don’t get me wrong the AI still does some incredibly stupid things. (But then IBM’s Watson gives stupid answers sometimes.) However, in this and couple other games I have gained a new found respect for the AI military capabilities. No longer am I able to play at the Empire (much less immortal) and ignore my military and expect to survive.

Most importantly for those of you who are builders and found that pacing was to slow (i.e. it took too long to build units or buildings ). After the various patches, the pacing feels much better. For example it is no longer the case that it takes so long to build a military unit that it is obsolete before it gets finished. The ROI on most production boosting building is 10-20% but is highly situational dependent. I also like how they are now many buildings and techs which increase the productive of your hexes.

Overall I think if Firaxis had shipped this game first many of us who were disappointed would have been much happier. I know that for me, the answer to which is the best CIV? has switched from CIV IV absolutely, to they are both great strategy games.

5668

But this never happened because of the “good” AI in Civ 4. It happened because the AI had an expansion advantage, which tuned into an impossible to catch up economic advantage, which turned into the player being steamrolled by 700 knights.

5669

They can’t even get animations to work, and an entire year to allow you to manually save in multiplayer. I think MP mods are a bit beyond their capabilities at this point.

5670

That multiplayer mods are even a difficulty implies a cobbled together multiplayer architecture, which would be tricky and likely time consuming to fix. Designed well multi-player and single-player would be essentially the same thing, with only the interface/client and whether any particular “player” were AI or Human would differ – i.e. there should be no difference between single-player and multi-player mods.

As a result I’d be surprised to ever see multiplayer mods for Civ 5 at this point, which makes me quite sad as I basically only ever play Hotseat with my wife. Very strange that they’d drop the ball on this, but it sure seems that Firaxis did.

5671

Civ V lies between Civ IV and Civ Rev. It’s not the greatest Civ, it’s not really an improvement over Civ IV. What it does have are great aesthetics: aside from Baba Yetu, Civ V’s soundtrack is superior to Civ IVs, by a pretty decent margin as well, as there are essentially multiple regional soundtracks, the graphics are clear and bright, the game looks and sounds fantastic, William Morgan Sheppard is a better narrator than Nimoy (though, i think, the quotes chosen are a bit weaker overall), and the gameplay… well, they tried, and half succeeded, at making each Civ play differently than each other by giving each Civ one unique trait, not two traits out of a shared pool. Only half so, though, because some traits just aren’t as interesting, or as useful, as others. One unit per tile… doesn’t really work. (I think i’m going to mod it to make 2 units a tile the default, and see if that helps and is still playable by the AI, i remember seeing the XML files and i think that’s an easy change to make). The scale of the game is all wrong for 1 unit per tile, and it’s such a basic, fundamental, and obvious flaw, it forces me to question how mature the lead designer is (or was) and his ability to understand scale among different genres (Panzer General vs. Civ V as the rasion de etre for 1 unit per tile only works when you have as many units as Panzer General on maps as large as Panzer General).

And that’s really Civ V in a nutshell; looks great, sounds great, plays faster, tries to make every choice more meaningful and cut out the fat… but, in the end, it only half succeeds. Aside from the AI issues that have been harped on forever, the big killer (for me) is the lack of economic choice; happiness the primary driver and limiter of settlement and population growth, and the AI on higher levels gets huge happiness bonuses. IE, there’s nothing to it but that you’re going to have less - considerably less - population than the AI. I mean, like 1:5 or 1:10 ratio, vs. the AI, which just breaks any illusions at all about the Civ part of the game. There is considerably less diversity economically, though later patches have helped a lot here, and you’re going to play every Civ the same as every other Civ… no more “economic” powerhouse like the English, unless you specifically hit a couple of economic wonders, have really good terrain, and super-specialize the city.

But all that being said, i think it’s worth 12-13$, no question. But then, i thought Empire (and Napoleon) to be the best games Creative Assembly has ever made ^^. You will hate Civ V if you’re expecting a well designed, well balanced, extremely deep game. If you’re looking at Civ Rev, otoh, and thinking “wow, this game is simple, i want to move up to the big leagues!”, Civ V fits the bill.

5672

Even sounding the same harp again and again, I couldn’t disagree more.
One unit per tile is THE most important and well done improvement the Civilization series ever had.
Yes the scale is a bit off (although I don’t see how 453 knight units in one tile scale better), but doing away with stacks brings the entire game to a whole new level of strategy.
Besides scale, what are the disadvantages of one unit per tile for you?

5673

I thought strategy was this game’s weakest attribute, I don’t get it.

5674

The problem is, basically, not enough units, not enough tiles, and not enough turns.

One unit per tile would be cool if we had big Antiem-esque battles over a hundred hexes, with 25 units on each side, jockeying for position. One unit per tile there would make sense.

Here, i have… four units, that have… seven hexes to reach the enemy town from mine. The game advances so quickly on standard that by the time i’ve “flanked” an enemy’s border, another group of units has been made. So i move them all forward straight toward their city, without caring at all about regional terrain, and try to stay on the hills,… and that’s it. There is hardly any strategy there other than stupid “keep your archers/seige in back”. That’s not even fun, really, it just slows things down. The fact that crossing rivers always kills the turn, no matter how few or many moves you have left, is an excellent example of the badly thought out combat system; on one hand, ending turns after crossing seems “interesting”: otoh, ending the turn no matter how many moves left creates weird movement orders where you always cross with your last point, so you game the movement system to your advantage. Another incredibly weird and stupid decision is that “instant heal” upgrade, which just scuttles any possibility that this combat model is anything but childish and “fun” rather than some kind of serious wargame simulation (or even half assed complex system, forget the serious part). Also, that they had something like 40-50% combat penalty when fighting on plains on defense, was so stupidly, inanely, obviously broken, that of course they patched it out completely later on, because it gave such a huge advantage to the player in this i-go you-go turn system; and which shows, imo, they didn’t really know wtf they were doing, to be, um… kind of blunt and harsh about it.

There are lots of combat modifications you can create to try to adjust this nonsense. Making combat slower by giving more hp, or less damage, to all units makes things a bit more interesting; one unit starts to represent a whole army that way. But the effort i’d have to do to figure out the numbers and balance juggling by rejiggering the whole combat system is more effort than i have time to spend.

5675

Nah. Strategy, definied as how the game forces you to consider your options, is one of the game’s strongest features. Combat AI, defined as how the computer opponents deal with the choices they’re faced with when at war, is probably the game’s weakest. However, it has considerably improved from where it started. It’s still not up to snuff with a human, and anyone expecting to lose half the time on an even playing field will be dissappointed. That’s why most levels give some advantages to the AI opponents in production, combat, economy, happiness, etc…

But if you can put aside any demands for bonus-free competency, then it’s quite fun. It doesn’t replace a fully decked-out Civ IV as I find some unique aspects of that quite compelling and enjoy its greater depth at times, but Civ V is certainly deserving of your attention if you think it might be a game you’d like and multi player isn’t really high on your list of priorities. At $12.50, it’s a steal. And yeah, the DLC should be on sale as well because it’s pretty decent stuff although certainly not required for enjoyment of the title - you just get extra civs, maps, and scenarios (think scripted win conditions for each civ).

5676

I… I really enjoy it.

I won a game on King (Domination, Continents, I ended up nuking the fuckers back to the stone age when they tried for a space victory and apparently slaughtered 30-40mio people during the events of the game) and it’s definitely the most enjoyable game of Civ I’ve played in a long time. Chick Parabola etc etc.

The best fights were in the early game on my continent with three civs, including mine. I had one side mostly to myself, and the other (larger) chunk was shared between the Germans and the Russians. That side had all the iron, derp. Well, except for one decent size deposit (the resource deposits are different sizes, awesome) mostly on their side of a hilly bottleneck beyond a city state that I ended up conquering.

The AI settled the area just before I could, so I had an extended back and forth against the Germans on this hilly terrain, which occluded my siege and ranged units and generally made it impossible to get a good firing solution that would let me isolate and wear down the enemy melee swarm. Not much room for maneuver as the German capital was also part of the field, slightly to the north. I managed to get muskets and cannon, but they just weren’t enough to make the push against the cities. I tried swimming around from the north, but I couldn’t break their lines.

Eventually the Russians entered the fray on my side, so I pulled back and gave the German AI breathing room to go after them. Which it did. And I promptly went in and cut off its duders, hitting them from behind while the Russians pounded from the front. Their army badly damaged (but reinforcements already massing), they sued for peace, offered the city I wanted. I didn’t want to risk the Russians grabbing it, so I accepted.

I heavily fortified the area and massed a huge force there before going after the Russians (two iron deposits) who were across the desert from my new city. Not long after I went down there and started hammering the Russians the Germans attacked again. They beat the hell out of my outlying castles, but couldn’t quite mass enough to make a serious offensive against the city (terrain working in my favor this time). Eventually the Russians went down, but they fought well and did what they could. Just not enough troops, and the terrain was too flat to avoid my serious bznz concentration of cannons.

Once I had the whole continent it was a race to the modern era against the other side (China, Japan, Persia). The AI Chinese out-teched me, and the AI Japanese out-armied me but had shite tech. The two of them wiped out the Persians who had been competing with me for city states (I needed oil, aluminum and uranium, and all three were pretty heavily concentrated around the CS).

So I did the smart thing and built an arsenal of nuke missiles, popped them onto nuke subs and saved up enough cash to rush another several.

I started with a nuclear salvo against the Japanese and followed it up with a carrier based bombing campaign. Eventually secured an outlying island of the Japanese that had Uranium, doubling my supply (I also nabbed the social policy that doubles city state strat resources, so I had LOTS of nukes).

I was starting to get really worried by the Chinese space campaign, as were the Japanese apparently. Japanese offered a peace deal and I took it. Maneuvered my nuke subs into position and unleashed doom on the Chinese, apparently wiping out all their space assets in one flaming salvo. The Japanese had the single source of uranium on their continent, so they tossed in a couple atomic bombs before sending in the remains of their likely shellshocked armies. By now the continent looked like something out of the Fallout series.

Eventually I nuked and GDR’d my way through what remained of both empires and scored a domination victory.

Parts I liked:
the systems were fluid, slider free and sensible
cities were defensible hard nuts rather than soft targets
most fighting in the field rather than city sieges
the AI responded fast when the strategic situation turned against them and made sensible decisions (if I had been in Japan’s shoes, I’d have done the same thing and the Civ4 AI would have flipped me the bird)
the AI didn’t hold grudges when a greater threat was around (AI Japan post nuking was FRIENDLY to me while China was still around, AI Russia flipped sides multiple times)
the AI made acceptable use of terrain
hexes
not being able to hide all my units in cities

Parts I didn’t like:
late game balance is horrible (I won the game with stealth bombers, nukes and a couple mech inf backed up by a couple GDRs)
nukes have no counter (you put them in nuke subs and hope the enemy doesn’t nuke you first) and kill all ground units in AOE
AI wasn’t aggressive in contesting the sea in a continents game (my subs wiped the few destroyers they sent out), especially when they were getting dominated by sea based assets

In general I’d say that the game works quite well up until the modern era when things start to break down in a nuke filled hellfire. The AI doesn’t seem to aggressively go for nukes, so the player really has a monopoly at that point. But I guess they want to give the attacker the initiative since up til the modern era the defender is generally the one with the power.

Loved the total lack of micro, so very different from Civ4 in that respect.

5677

I am not sure how many people, if polled would say that music and a better narrator were at the top of their list for improvements on top of Civ IV. The soundtrack for IV was good and the narrator, Nimoy, did a great job too. It didn’t “need” to sound better. It’s nice that it does but if the best thing someone can say about Civ V is that the graphics and the sounds are better… then there is a clear disconnect between the player base and the makers of the game. Maybe they accidently walked into the COD room instead of the strategy conference.

5678

Let me agree and disagree with you both.

In the case of Civ IV, I strongly disagree about the AI. The AI bonus (economic, happiness etc.) for both games are entirely player selectable by difficult level. If you think the AI is cheating too much lower the difficulty level. I think the global happiness bonus presents a more a difficult and artificial obstacle for the Civ V player than the Civ IV.

But you shouldn’t underestimate the achievement of CIV IV AI.
The basics of any military operations are to do the following

  1. Scout the enemy to determine their weakness.
  2. Gather an appropriate size force.
  3. Attack the enemy weak point in a tactically sound manner.

Now very very few strategy games do all 3 steps correctly. Heck plenty of games don’t any very well. Civ IV does.
1 it found a strategically important city that wasn’t well defend via open borders, spies etc.
2 It used the Powell doctrine i.e. appropriate force = Overwhelming.
3. Because of the (flawed IMO) way CIV IV treated stacking, a tactically sound way of attacking is this. “Put all your units in one stack, make sure you have units to counter any type of counterattack (i.e. Pikeman vs horses) include lots of siege units. Then march the stack to a rough terrain square next to the city. Bombard the cities defense to zero, the sacrifice a few siege units and take out the city. Heal, reinforce, rinse and repeat on the next city”.

Now you can argue this is “cheating”, but I say this is pretty smart AI.
I also say that it can’t be do easy to program because I’ve lost count of the strategy games where the AI sends its units in piecemeal to attack or defend and it lets me use my smaller army to defeat them in detail.

Now Civ V seems to an adequate job in #1 and at times #2. Where it failed utterly is in #3. This is because I don’t think it is possible to describe “tactically sound fashion” in few sentences in 1UPT game. 1UPT is just a lot harder to program to do a good job. (I have not played it a lot but the Panzer General remake Panzer Corp doesn’t seem to have particularly good AI either). This resulting in frustrating experience, where I and many other good player could complete a game at high difficulties and lose 0-2 units the whole game. It ruined the competitiveness of the game. Although, I appreciate for many players they like the simcity building aspect of Civ better and don’t really care the AI is is tactical idiot.

To me education of the AI from moron to C students is big deal. I like the interesting choices the 1UPT gives me as a player and I don’t miss the stack of dooms. . So I agree with Thurlun that 1 UPT is very nice addition to the series, but only until now. But 1UPT doesn’t make add a new strategy layer to the game, what it does do is improve the tactical game immensely and I think it makes it more fun, but only against vague competent opponent.

What I did miss in Civ V compared to Civ IV is never having to make a choice of guns vs butter. The AI in Civ V is good now enough that if you don’t maintain a decent military you’ll invite attacks from other Civ Vs and they now know how to use the army well enough to capture defended cities. This makes Civ V an interesting strategy game, do I build another city which I need for the long term growth of my empire, or do I build another swordsman to prevent my neighbor from attacking.

I completely agree with Enidigm in that asethics, UI, of CIV V are a big improvement. I also think with the new patches they’ve done a good job in making the player choices more interesting. I disagree somewhat in that I think that the Civ’s play pretty differently. A Civ like Germany is much stronger as war monger than a civ like Egypt or India which are very suited for a builder strategy.

5679

Good AAR. Did I understand this correctly that you liked (loved?) Civ IV, but held off buying Civ V until now? If so how come. I think Civ V is at under $20 is steal, on the hour of fun/$ spent.

5680

Uh, because I had 4 at release and remember what a shitfucking nightmare that was?

But yeah, I helped with several of the major mods in Civ3 and Civ4. It’s a fun series, but I’ve been pretty burned out on this style of game. And then my brother trolled me and it turns out it’s not the same style anyway, so all is well!

I like it, the AI is reasonably competent, and the game is still rough. I just had a game as the Russians on King where I got cornered into a tiny part of a map and the Mongols just wtfpwnt me in an early war. If I had but world enough and time, etc etc.