jpinard
3596
Any of you ever play with Barbarians off?
I have when they annoyed me the previous game, but I enjoy the combat (I know many don’t, but I like the 1UPH units and animations, and the mechanics of unit placement, terrain and how it impacts the results, promotions, the various units themselves) and barbarians are a fun way to get me into the action faster and as such I usually leave them on.
KevinC
3598
The map generator still start civs way way way way too close for my tastes. I’m on a Large continents map with only 8 players (I removed a few AI and reduced City States down from 15 to 10) and I have 5 (!) cities within 8 hexes of my starting city. I restarted twice and have gotten similar results, it’s kind of annoying because there’s basically no exploration and very little expansion without bulldozing my neighbors.
Interesting. I only started/played one game so I don’t have a good slice to offer you by way of comparison, but my only neighbor is very far to the north. This is default number of AI’s on a default sized map (Small, I think).
He’s the only AI I’ve found so far, but I know my AI buddy to the north is considering war with the Mongols, so they must be around further North, I assume.
KevinC
3600
Good to hear. It’s only a sample size of 3 so I might just be really unlucky, but now I remember this being a huge frustration of mine when the game launched. I believe there was a mod to fix it, I should probably try to hunt that down somewhere.
robc04
3601
I don’t have the expansion, but I definitely have a variety of starts - sometimes a neighbor or two and sometimes more crowded. I tend to also do large continents.
KevinC
3602
Just to follow up, I re-rolled the map again. This time I’ve hunted far and wide and I only have been able to find one neighbor, and I feel like I’ve explored a large portion of the continent I’m on. Which I’m guessing means that the other 6 AIs are piled on top of each other somewhere else. ;)
Can I just thank Spock and Scott for pointing out that map naming option. How on earth was that not automatically on? It makes the maps much more interesting.
Spock
3604
This won’t help you in the early game, but supposedly there’s a World Congress resolution that allows you to attack enemy missionaries with your regular units. Count me in!
That said, my game has had zero missionary spam, even though the other civs all beat me to religions. I imagine it will arrive sooner or later. Then again, I turned off religious victory, so maybe that’s why?
Random Hall of Fame factoid: you can get old saves into the HoF, supposedly, if you reload a near-victory save and win again. I haven’t tried yet.
Another minor improvement: the Great People screen is now all on one screen, so we no longer have to scroll. Edit: Oops, never mind - I do have to scroll.
I love the music for the Maori. It may not be to everyone’s taste, and I’ll probably be sick of it after a dozen hours, but so far I like it.
Actually, just about everything Maori is cool. I may start another game as them, just to see if I can do a better job of finding a first city spot.
Spock
3605
I know, right? Why are the devs hiding one of the expansion’s nicest features? lol.
When I think about all my favourite Civ memories across all version, they always involve a narrative or story about my empire (created in my head). Naming the map features is just such a fundamentally human thing to do to help people create those stories… its now the war in the Talus mountain gap, not just that time I fought 4 Germany units in some hills.
I was just thinking about this in terms of the 1 unit per hex, which I love from a story perspective as it enables me to manoeuvre like a genius general. Of course that requires the AI to lose competently, as it is hard to maintain that narrative when it is clear that the AI does not understand what a catapult is.
robc04
3607
Getting 22% off is probably the cheapest its going to be for a while, right? It may hit 25% off this summer and no more than 33% by winter. That probably means I should just get it now right? :-)
Anyone have strong feelings either way?
If you are in the market for a game like this right now, yeah you’re talking a few bucks months from now at best, maybe $6 additional in savings by the end of the year if you can get it 33% off. You’ll almost certainly get $32 worth of fun out of playing with the game again and enjoying the new features the expansion provides, including and not limited to all the new Wonders, tile types, civs, and the like. Unless you have other games you are in the middle of, of course. I picked it up despite Metro Exodus dropping and I’m in the middle of Etrian Odyssey Nexus on the 3DS. I don’t really need another game, but I did have a lot of fun so far with Gathering Storm, and I plan to play it most of this weekend.
You can make them promise not to convert your cities - one of the new options in diplomacy.
Edit: and the map naming option was on automatically for me.
Spock
3610
@saracen31 Even the mountain/desert naming options were on for you? When I started, only river-naming was on for me.
So I’m in the middle of my first peaceful emergency competition – disaster relief to Mali, which was hit hard by a storm. The prize for first place is a diplomatic victory point. The Canadians, Swedes and my Maori are all vying for it by sending Mali gold (as if they need it!) and completing the disaster-relief Project. Pretty cool!
KevinC
3612
From what I’ve seen so far, not really. Haven’t even played a full game yet though.
Combat AI is probably the same, I was never put out by the combat AI though personally. It does dumb things, I do dumb things, it works out fine. Diplomacy AI seems to be a little more considered with the Diplomacy Favor system, I’ve seen the AI vote down a … law, or whatever they are called, that I voted for because it benefited only me and not him. He’s also growing more unfriendly with me as I convert his cities to my religion, and as his army grows bigger than mine, which is making total sense (I’d be upset as well). I’m way too early in the game and only have one AI neighbor though, so results are honestly overall inconclusive. I’m really enjoying my time in the game though again, I put about 2.5 hours in and I am eager to get back to it, fwiw.
@Spock You’re exactly right, mountain and desert naming was off. The others were on by default, nice catch!
Standard maps seem a lot more interesting. I got a standard continent that was 1-2 tiles wide and ran north-south for most of the map length. Couldn’t reach other civs by land.
