It seems that’s true. After proclaiming my new peaceful ways I sat down to conclude my game from 1850 to the end.
Not long after the lucky distraction of the Aztecs allowing me to wipe the Russians off the map they decided to turn on me. Despite having a superior military force of 5 or 6 cannons over thier pikemen and archers I suffered significant losses trying to take down their 3rd city. Due to the mountains and bounded by sea tiles I only had a narrow gap to attack. This meant some casualties on my part. After a protracted standoff I eventually got the upper hand, confirmed by numerous claims for peace from the Aztec leader. Took control and made a puppet of the city. By this stage I had fallen behind on productivity and research so made peace knowing the Aztecs were weakened enough to be no challenge during the end game phase.
At this point, with only the ottoman empire left I realized I needed to focus on either culture or science for the win. Apollo program it was to be.
Somewhat level in other areas I had a much better research tree than the ottomans and pumped everything into research. The AI recognized this and began to denounce me, war was on the horizon again. Sure enough, as I built the SS cockpit and engine I spotted ottoman ships appearing on the edges of my border. A quick gift of gold seemed to hold them off for a few turns but they returned and war was declared! With a depleted army and weak defenses following my decision to concentrate on the science it meant I just needed to play for time to complete the apollo program. I distracted them and allowed one of my coastal cities to be captured before finally achieving the science win. Epic!
So great to get back into the game. But it reminded my just how sapping it can be to play a full campaign, even on fast mode.
So, any other suggestions for my next playthrough? Any good scenarios? Should I start in the industrial age and choose a slower game mode? Any challenging map types?
I’m actually pretty disappointed that this never happened. I actually find it pretty shocking that it never hit. Then again, Elemental’s never did, either, did it?
Alas, modding, he was a good fellow. . .
Quaro
5903
Good Civ 5 piece from the Verge:
Beach’s goal: Make Civilization V play differently depending on the choices you make throughout the game.
Just like in A Mighty Fortress and Here I Stand, the players’ choices will tailor their experience and alter the way the game plays out and how they must adapt to win. And unlike the religions in Civilization IV, religions in Gods & Kings will be unique and will allow players to affect the balance of power well into the later stages of the game.
“Historically a lot of religion is just the layering on of beliefs over places,” says Beach. “Like when Christianity got to the new world and hit all of the native American cultures, there are weird interesting perversions of Christianity where Aztec gods are sort of reworked and recast into their new Christian equivalent, but a lot of those belief sets were still there at a fundamental level.”.
I am happy to see that the expansion will include Religion it is the one of things I missed from Civ IV a lot.
But honestly they really really really need to make the AI better. I thought it had been improved but after playing 4 game over the last week (I quit generally in the 1000-1500AD when it is obvious they I am going to win) I am afraid the AI is still pretty poor at most tasks, and downright awful at tactical combat and capturing cities. After being declared war on probably 30 times (often by more than one Civ at a times) I lost a grand total of 1 city and probably no more than 10 units, while killing hundreds. All this why building most Wonders at the Emperor level across all 4 games even with a warlike civ like the Aztecs.
Emperor is supposed to be challenging it isn’t.
Miramon
5906
Yeah, I have exactly the same experience. The Emperor-level handicap is enormous; enemy civilizations appear to be able to crank out something like 6 units per city in a few dozen turns with no problem, and they can build twice as many cities as you early in the game with no problems at all. But they are just so damn stupid…
I also typically play at Emperor (the next level up feels too punitive), and I also typically quit after I wipe out whoever has been annoying me the most by attacking over and over again because they think that a mere 3:1 unit advantage will somehow give them a victory.
It’s still kind of fun to rush development to that magic moment in the first millennium in which I jump from longswordmen to riflemen in a single turn. Can I do it by 800? Yeah. By 700? Yeah. 600? Now that can be tough if I don’t get the right wonders done and don’t have ideal resources nearby… I’m sure there are people who can do the same thing at super-ultra-grand-deity level, but I also don’t want to spend much time thinking or optimizing cities every turn, I just want the game to move…
It seems to me that the game should be a reasonably interesting challenge with par rules for all players; player-favorable handicaps are great to make things easy for new human players, but player-punishing handicaps are not a good way to make things easy for stupid AI players.
Until the developers find a way to figure out their own rules well enough to tell the AI players what to do, the game will be a disappointment. If the game systems are such that it’s too hard for them to code good AI, then instead of adding yet more complicated game systems that will be even harder for the AI to deal with, they should consider rewriting the basic mechanics so that their apparently inept AI programmers can actually code successful strategies and tactics.
jpinard
5907
Civ IV had the ability to have tons of people run games and source that data to make the AI better. Doesn’t Civ V have that same capability?
Quaro
5908
That Civ IV project was interesting, but the unofficial AI updates made by the community were a lot more effective at improving the AI in general.
Looks like an embargoed expired. (Here’s a CNN preview.) Lots of hands-on previews coming out. Did we have a list of all nine new civs before? Cause we have one now. Plus, looks like it comes with a Steampunk scenario. Release date is June 19.
You must be one of the uber-players. I play King and half the time I get my ass kicked.
Same here. My victory or defeat tends to hinge largely on my starting position though. I get stuck on an island or in cold terrain and I might as well call it a loss.
My usual style of play does depend on having at least a halfway decent starting position; if I have no food or no production or no luxuries for some reason, I can be easily overwhelmed by an infinite number of axemen. But once I get my third archer, I can kill an infinite number of axemen…
KevinC
5913
Maybe I’ve just been under a rock, but it seems odd that the expansion is coming in less than a month and there’s next to no buzz on it. I almost forget it even exists. I thought Civ5 was pretty successful, so the lack of marketing is kind of strange to me. The CNN preview linked above is the first I’ve heard in months.
I think it’s a couple of factors. Everyone is in the grip of Diablo-mania right now, so it’s likely that no one wants to spend a lot of money on marketing another PC exclusive until some of that blows over. Plus, I think a lot of steam (har har) has been lost for this based on the fact that a lot of people just think of it as more DLC for a game that has a ton of it already. Steam sale ahoy!
I’m excited for it, but then again, I didn’t let the AI problems in the base game bother me anyway.
Yeah, I actually still get challenged by the AI on Prince - mostly becuase I play in a bubble and ignore the AI until it crashes into me in a wave of Catpults, Knights, and Pikemen. :) But also becuase I’ve never been great about min/maxing my strategy, so I’m just playing to have a good time, which always works out. I really like CiV and it’s only gotten better and better with patches. I’m pre-ordering this on Amazon this weekend and I’m very excited to get my paws on it.
KevinC
5916
I thought about the D3 angle as well but was unsure how much that would impact a TBS game (or it’s marketing schedule).
I’m cautiously optimistic for it, mainly because it fills in what I thought were massive holes in the vanilla game. I won’t say religion and the like was the end all and be all of implementation in Civ4, but it did offer different angles to play. I had starts in the desert or on the coast where I was poor in materials like copper/iron, so I’d go the Religion angle to generate an economy and try to keep neighbors friendly. I miss those kind of dynamics in Civ5. On top of religion, I felt the diplomacy in general was just awful in Civ5, although that got a little better with subsequent patches.
It maybe sounds trivial, but the straw(s) that broke the camel’s back were the MP deficiencies. No animations bothered me, not because I needed the eye candy, but in a more tactical battlefield where I’m getting struck from 3+ hexes away it was a royal pain in the ass to sift through all the combat messages and try to figure out just what exactly happened to my infantry or why my tank was suddenly at 10% health. The worst part in MP, though, was the fact that the AI was dead. The AI performs no interaction with the player, it won’t initiate diplomacy at all. Those two things combined just made MP one of the most dull experiences I’ve endured. The lack of Mod support in MP ensured that it couldn’t be fixed unless Firaxis did something, but alas, their MP engineer was taken off the project to work on the Facebook game. Yay.
Speaking of both the mods and diplomacy AI in MP, does anyone know if those are being addressed in the expansion?
Maybe they’ll go full Stardock and just remove it!
That felt low. Probably because it was.
Dejin
5919
The game itself and all Civ DLC is 75% off for the weekend. I went ahead and purchased any Civs which I was still missing.
Hat tip to Kraken over at OO.
Lots of great details/info can be found here.
Official web site was also launched, and shows off the new civilizations and some other great info. Found here.
Looks like pre-ordering it gets you 10% off at Amazon. Being a huge fan of the civ series, and CiV in particular, this was a no brianer for me. Hopefully the changes to combat (which will allegedly help the AI perform better as well as providing a more satisfying wargame experience) and the non-combat systems like religion, improved city-states, and improved diplomacy and espionage will help make this game even better.
