Xemu
6181
I like the little tweaks the expansion has made to diplomacy. Setting up embassies, requiring Friendship to trade techs, better visualization of what enemies are thinking.
Yeah I like the changes as well… embassies especially. The diplomatic system is still a little odd compared to the many other systems out there, but I think it got much closer to working correctly with the expansion.
In my games so far the AI has seemed pretty consistent too. In the times I’ve gotten into fights it’s always been pretty clear why… usually settling too close to someone’s borders or being too aggressive in general.
I’m really enjoying the increased feedback from diplomacy. For example, when you agree to the AI telling you not to settle near its cities, it will actually notify you later of the increase in relations if you live up to that promise.
I also had an instance where I found out via espionage that the Vikings were plotting to attack Siam, so I was actually able to tell Siam about the “intrigue” to increase our relations.
rezaf
6184
raises hand
Civ5’s “tactical combat” is a travesty.
I like me some Panzer Corps/General, but the hex-based 1UPT combat just isn’t the right thing for a Civ game. Wrong scope.
If you allow the player a reasonable amount of somewhat diverse troops, you end up with constant traffic jams (Civ5).
If you go the CtP route and make actual armies (which was really not a bad idea, good call DKDartagnan), you end up with so few units on the table (and the “tactics” already rolled into the armies themselves) that hexes or tiles make no difference whatsoever.
I like Civ4’s combat just as it is, thank you very much.
rezaf
Ugh, yuck. Civ IV had crazy boring combat. I would rather have fun combat than boring stacks.
Sepiche
6186
Meh, I never liked the stacks of doom approach and still think Civ 5 was worth it if only for the change to combat mechanics. Civ 5’s system needs polish and better AI, but overall I think it makes combat much more enjoyable than previous Civ games.
I’m not sure I understand why hexes are better than squares…
Most wargames use hexes because it allows for more natural movement than squares and more granularity for frontage and flanking purposes.
I wouldn’t. Combat in Civilization should be highly abstracted. I can play Panzer General or buy Unity of Command for hex-based, tactical combat. The idea of tactical-level combat within the scale of 6,000 years of global history seems absurd.
rezaf
6188
Like I wrote, stacks of doom were actually a VERY rare sight in single player unless you created them yourself. In higher difficulties and with modded AIs, they appeared more often, but were still not exactly commonplace.
And, yeah, hex based combat is basically better, but in Civ5, it just doesn’t work out all that well, and no AI improvements will be able to address this.
Heck, it’s a chore for the player to move his force while trying to maintain some semblance of formation.
For what it’s worth, my favorite implementation addressing this particular issue is that of Master of Magic. You can have a diverse force, but are limited in a reasonable way (up to 9 units only). Actual combat takes place on a different map (isometric, but hex would work just as well).
Civ4’s implementation sure is nothing to write home about, but it worked ok, and to me, warfare was just one aspect of a civ game, and I was ok with the fact that they simplified it.
Edit: And I mentioned it long ago in this very thread I think, if the SoD is your main concern, the Civ series itself already had a pretty sound solution to the problem implemented long ago, which didn’t force anything upon the player like 1UPT does, and did nothing to make movement more complicated and annoying, yet provided a very strong incentive NOT to stack your units - in Civ2. What was that solution? When a stack was attacked, a single defender was auto-picked, and if it was defeated, bye bye entire stack (unless it happened in a fort or city, then just the defender died). No sane being stacked a gazillion units back then, the risk of losing them all to a bad roll was much too high.
rezaf
Sepiche
6189
Well I definitely agree with that at least. I’d totally play a Civ that tried something along those lines.
Grifman
6190
Let’s not go there because there’s a lot of stuff that’s absurd in a game with that scale of time. It’s a game convention, nothing more, nothing less, and no more absurd than any number of other game features. After all, for starters, what single civilization has ever lasted 6,000 years?
robc04
6192
An army approach would be interesting. It is odd for an archer to be able to shoot 2 hexes away when 2 hexes probably represent many miles. It would be cool to create an army and have a reasonable limit for the number of units in a hex. Certain units could perform better in some particular terrain. You can still have unit perks to boost their performance with experience. Maybe have different phases to combat (artillery, ranged, melee), provide air support. Perhaps assign different stances to your armies to make them have different battle behaviors.
Or you can have armies, but when combat starts the player zooms into a tactical battle map based on the occupied terrain. Something like that may make battles too time consuming to get through an entire game though.
I was also referring to geographic scale and doing so in the context of levels of abstraction.
tgb123
6194
getgamesgo.com is still offering a “pre-release” price of $21.98, which I think will be the cheapest you will find it, at least until the Christmas sales. And yes, it is legit. They emailed me a Steam key, and I’m downloading now. Just make sure when you place your order to change region from U.K. to “other parts of the world”, so it get processed in real money.
I am so fucking weak.
Seems like a lot of changes to research (DoF for RAs, great scientist nerf, no more HG -> PT slingshot?), I wonder if you can still keep up with the AI techwise on immortal and deity without conquering everything.
In vanilla Civ5 I had trouble keeping up on emperor when going for a tall empire and diplo/science victory without puppeting lots of citys.
Edit: Started a game as Byzantium on a pangea map and played maybe 50 turns, my neighbors are Pachutli and Songhai, Rome and Japan are somewhere too. The game just plays completely differently, no more selling open borders seriously hampered my scouting and cashflow.
Taking liberty got a tiny bit worse but IMO it’s still the best starting policy, it’s too bad that they did not move legalism further down in the tradition tree.
AI seems to be the same so far, Pachutli is really annoying as usual and needs to be exterminated asap. Rome and Japan are “friendly” but have already backstabbed Songhai, everyone is coveting my lands (3 cities in crappy plains/desert locations) even though there is still plenty of space to settle in.
Gods & Kings is $20 here http://www.mupromo.com/deal/12900/civilization-v:-gods-&-kings
A friend tried it (plus other people have commented about it) - you’re sent a key to redeem in steam that works whether you have the pc or mac version of the game.
The same trick works if you have Civ V: Game of the Year and need to pick up the missing DLC (Ancient Wonders and Korea) from gamersgate. That DLC is 75% off for the mac right now but the codes work with the pc version too.
I’m puzzled as to why they STILL haven’t successfully made combat about combined forces - and followed Call to Power/Kohan - where you make an army using a simplified setup.
One of the worst aspects of Civilization is and always has been the combat. The map is littered with individual units - and it’s such a fucking pain having to move them individually - and it slows the game down both in terms of flow and performance.
Not only that, but they’ve kept the workers/engineers/settlers model for all sequels as well, where Call to Power demonstrated the perfect and natural evolution to solve this micromanagment nightmare.
The current model works reasonably well in the beginning of the game, where you only have a handful of units moving about and scouting. But mid-late game it’s really the bane of the experience. It would be so easy to have “forces” where you combine artillery/ranged/cavalry/melee and so on - into one logical cohesive unit. Then you could have a natural limit on “force units” based on economy or logistics/supply. Say, between 6-24 armies roaming the map - and having a shared resource pool to develop your lands like in CtP.
It would also aid multiplayer flow immensely.
It would be nice perhaps if they could increase the use/utility of great generals and admirals. Like, have more of them and use them as containers for military units, allowing you more tactical options, including of course having more than one unit in a hex. Limiting it to the number of leaders you field would keep it from becoming a war of stacks, but would actually make it possible to concentrate forces and take advantage of having those generals and admirals better. Of course, the AI would probably choke on it…
Dejin
6199
They tried that in Civ 3, I seem to recall it wasn’t particularly well received.
Personally I haven’t found Civ V armies to be particularly onerous. I think my unit count for Civ V is generally much lower than in previous versions. I don’t play Huge size maps though (although I do often focus on military victory), so YMMV. I’m also perhaps used to handling a fair number of units from my wargaming experience. Civ V army size is a pittance compared to something like the original Panzer General’s armies.
Civ 3 implementation of “armies” was abysmal - and were basically just giant stacks of units taking turns in battle.
