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Coolguye posted:Like many other things, I think Alpha Centauri did it best. You can stack units all you drat well please, but if one dies, every other unit in the stack gets collateral damage based on the reactor class of the unit destroyed. I love statements like this. It's not that Civilization V is more cerebral or more tactical, it's that it lowers the skill ceiling to the point that more than the top 1% of players can make effective tactical decisions. You think of stack combat as nothing more than attack moving your economy into your opponent, so 1UPT ranged blobs stretching wars into hundreds of clicks across dozens of turns feels more engaging, even though it's all busywork and it still ultimately just comes down to hammers and promotions. Meanwhile there are fewer actual tactical options available for those able to take advantage of them because archers/frigates/artillery trumps almost everything.
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Jul 26, 2013 06:23
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Cynic Jester posted:Getting +2 happiness from temples as Egypt feels like cheating. 4 upkeep free happiness out of Burial Tombs just makes settling all the cities completely painless. I ran out of space at 12 cities pre-renaissance and I was still at 4 happiness, with every city at 6+ pop. Tradition into 2 points of Piety also meant all those shrines and temples were doing absurd things for my faith income. So many prophets. Think I'll try an ICS style setup with the +2 sci/connection belief and see what happens. Prior to the expansion, you could do a pretty fun Messenger of the Gods (2 beakers per connection) ICS build with Mayas (flat +2 science boost) for a pretty good science return on brand new cities in the early and mid game. But those types of builds tend to be less impressive now with the science penalty for settling cities in BNW.
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Jul 26, 2013 06:25
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Arcaeris posted:Hearing everyone complain about your blue jeans and pop music when you're like, anyone not from the West, is kind of insulting. I wouldn't expect Nebuchadnezzar or Attila or Haile to be exporting pop music and blue jeans, because that's not their culture. Even if they lasted until modern times. If that's insulting you desperately need to get away from video games and find something meaningful to do.
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Jul 26, 2013 06:26
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:edit: He also regularly posts massive walls of text on game systems on the kickstarter update page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonshafer/jon-shafers-at-the-gates/posts I really like the artstyle in that game It reminds me an old old game called Hammer of the Gods (note I'm sure it looks nothing like my nostalgia riddled memory says HotG looked like, but it makes me feel like that's what it looks like ok  )A little bit like Caesar and Zeus the city builders also... Or maybe I'm just crazy. Regardless, clearly their art director hit the right time period 
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Jul 26, 2013 06:27
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Francis posted:I love statements like this. It's not that Civilization V is more cerebral or more tactical, it's that it lowers the skill ceiling to the point that more than the top 1% of players can make effective tactical decisions. You think of stack combat as nothing more than attack moving your economy into your opponent, so 1UPT ranged blobs stretching wars into hundreds of clicks across dozens of turns feels more engaging, even though it's all busywork and it still ultimately just comes down to hammers and promotions. Meanwhile there are fewer actual tactical options available for those able to take advantage of them because archers/frigates/artillery trumps almost everything. I'd agree that the individual unit balance is rather wonky right now in favor of ranged units - I really feel like ranged units as a whole should do about half as much damage as they do. If you want to wear something down, fine, cool, but understand you're gonna be there a while. But that said, at least in Civ 4 (it's been way, way, way too long since I've played Civ 3 or below to remember), out-producing your opponent in hammers was like, the absolute number one consideration on whether or not you could win a war. I used to rewatch high level games through PitBoss for fun, and for the talk of a 'skill ceiling' here the big dogs basically did just attack-move their economies over to an opponent. The stacks would be made in various fiddly ways, with things like queue-swapping, whipping cats, etc, but after it was created a doomstack's capability is extremely binary. Either its blockers can handle the forces it's up against, or it can't. Out-producing your opponent is still a huge consideration in Civ 5, but it's very far from the only one. Tactical movements and army distribution are way more important than before, because a non-uniform army has different considerations and can be pressured in different ways. I've won more than one war against my human buddies by simply having some units out of the way to surround them when they roll up to my cities all big and bad. But again, admittedly, these flanking units are mostly archers and poo poo, so again, balance is too happy for ranged units right now. This doesn't hit on the terrain considerations things like narrow land bridges or large mountain ranges force on you. Anyway, I dunno what you mean by 'skill ceiling' really when even the high skill players just sort of aim a doomstack like a firehose. Are you referring to the fiddling you do to make the production optimized, like queue-swapping and so on? Because stuff like that is totally in Civ 5, as much as I wish it weren't. Coolguye fucked around with this message at 06:41 on Jul 26, 2013 |
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Jul 26, 2013 06:37
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Omnicarus posted:If that's insulting you desperately need to get away from video games and find something meaningful to do. It really should say something different if you're Order or Autocracy though it only really fits for Freedom.
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Jul 26, 2013 06:46
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SirKibbles posted:It really should say something different if you're Order or Autocracy though it only really fits for Freedom.
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Jul 26, 2013 06:54
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SirKibbles posted:It really should say something different if you're Order or Autocracy though it only really fits for Freedom. I'm actually a little shocked that they didn't switch this up. I figured for sure that if your ideology was Order then you'd get some comment about becoming book-reading communists, and if your ideology was Autocracy I figured that you'd hear about the trains running on time.
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Jul 26, 2013 07:00
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Coolguye posted:I'd agree that the individual unit balance is rather wonky right now in favor of ranged units - I really feel like ranged units as a whole should do about half as much damage as they do. If you want to wear something down, fine, cool, but understand you're gonna be there a while. But that said, at least in Civ 4 (it's been way, way, way too long since I've played Civ 3 or below to remember), out-producing your opponent in hammers was like, the absolute number one consideration on whether or not you could win a war. I used to rewatch high level games through PitBoss for fun, and for the talk of a 'skill ceiling' here the big dogs basically did just attack-move their economies over to an opponent. The stacks would be made in various fiddly ways, with things like queue-swapping, whipping cats, etc, but after it was created a doomstack's capability is extremely binary. Either its blockers can handle the forces it's up against, or it can't. I guess my main thing is just... why shouldn't your ability to war be tied to your economy and production? In a Civ game at least, I'm not advocating for less tactical warfare in general. Combat is just one component of Civilization's extensive mechanics and I'd argue it shouldn't really be much of a focus, only so much as your combat prowess reflects your civilization's advancement and power. Not to say Civ4 had the perfect system (you're mostly correct about war being a binary affair. Either your initial strike is successful and you snowball that into a total victory or you're stonewalled and can't do much of anything further) or that it was balanced perfectly (cavalry shred everything and its supposed hard counter, riflemen, isn't much of a counter at all; combat balance completely falls apart in the late industrial/modern era) but Civ5 has problematic combat mechanics and, ultimately, success in a war still depends on who has the better economy and production. And yet with all that said, none of these problems matter all that much in either game for me because, again, combat is just an ancillary focus. War is how you cash in the investment into your empire's economy and losing a war is rarely a question of tactics in either game. You lose a war either by A) not doing a good enough job developing your empire in the first place, B) waiting too long to leverage your empire into war resources/not leveraging them properly and then someone else takes advantage, or even sometimes C) just plain bad luck.
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Jul 26, 2013 07:03
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Arcaeris posted:Hearing everyone complain about your blue jeans and pop music when you're like, anyone not from the West, is kind of insulting. I wouldn't expect Nebuchadnezzar or Attila or Haile to be exporting pop music and blue jeans, because that's not their culture. Even if they lasted until modern times. Pop music doesnt just mean Ke$ha or Will.i.am. Literally speaking pop music is just whatever is mainstream and well, popular. The idea of mainstream music in Akkadian catching on as a worldwide craze is pretty drat funny though.
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Jul 26, 2013 07:10
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The White Dragon posted:Look dude denim is demin. Just because designer jeans say Tommy Heilfiger on them doesn't mean that they aren't jeans. But blue jeans and pop music aren't really associated with anything but what Freedom is a stand in for, basically this: Kaal posted:I'm actually a little shocked that they didn't switch this up. I figured for sure that if your ideology was Order then you'd get some comment about becoming book-reading communists, and if your ideology was Autocracy I figured that you'd hear about the trains running on time. It's just a minor nitpick I don't think it's insulting or whatever the hell the person above taking video games way too serious is on about.
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Jul 26, 2013 07:12
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SirKibbles posted:But blue jeans and pop music aren't really associated with anything but what Freedom is a stand in for, basically this: I guess I'm happier with what it is than I would've been if they were flavored by your leaderhead civ. "Our people are buying your little novelty tiki heads and listening to your ukulele music" would be kinda 
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Jul 26, 2013 07:15
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Super Jay Mann posted:I guess my main thing is just... why shouldn't your ability to war be tied to your economy and production? Coolguye fucked around with this message at 07:23 on Jul 26, 2013 |
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Jul 26, 2013 07:19
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Super Jay Mann posted:I guess my main thing is just... why shouldn't your ability to war be tied to your economy and production? In a Civ game at least, I'm not advocating for less tactical warfare in general. Combat is just one component of Civilization's extensive mechanics and I'd argue it shouldn't really be much of a focus, only so much as your combat prowess reflects your civilization's advancement and power. Not to say Civ4 had the perfect system (you're mostly correct about war being a binary affair. Either your initial strike is successful and you snowball that into a total victory or you're stonewalled and can't do much of anything further) or that it was balanced perfectly (cavalry shred everything and its supposed hard counter, riflemen, isn't much of a counter at all; combat balance completely falls apart in the late industrial/modern era) but Civ5 has problematic combat mechanics and, ultimately, success in a war still depends on who has the better economy and production. I dunno, I don't think my recent steamrolling of the entire world with three units had much to do with my economy. It was my second attempt at king difficulty, standard setup. one spearman and two archers, with era appropriate upgrades got me every capital in the game. My economy and happiness were on a constant knife edge and only really got solid around 1800 AD. I just burned everything else down. I had 1 garrison unit per city because the cities were far enough apart that I would sometimes have 2-3 barbarian camps spawn a turn. I did All of my conquering with the same three units excerpting my first capital. Sure, I was playing as Shaka, so my only remaining spearman/mobile infantry had the buffalo promotions, but I think that speaks volumes about terrible war AI and unit "balance." I didn't even get any use out of the 50% melee unit maintenance UA because I only had the one.
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Jul 26, 2013 07:22
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Captain Oblivious posted:If you're only generating 800~ tourism with the loving Internet of all things, you done hosed up somewhere along the line. My first suspicion is that you're not pushing aggressively enough for Open Borders, nor are you distributing trade routes amongst all civs for the sweet sweet bonuses. Seriously, Open Borders and having trade routes with Literally Everyone is your lifeblood in cultural wins. No I was doing open borders etc, by 800+ I just meant the number at the top of the screen, which doesn't count any of the modifiers. Zulu was constantly pissed off at me though, I got open borders and trade routes with everyone as much as I could but towards the end he wouldn't have anything to do with me, couldn't get open borders to use my music tours on him, and different ideologies meant he was sitting at -9% since all I had was a trade route for a modifier (seriously, I tried to give him my 200 gpt and he told me to gently caress off). I know I didn't play everything perfectly, it was my first time going specifically for a culture win, doesn't change the fact that endgame for culture is slow and dumb if the other person has a massive culture buildup to chew through. I could perhaps have declared war to get a musician in but I was seriously scared of him, he had a massive army and nukes and wasn't afraid to use them and I had 3 cities that were garbage at anything but science/culture and a token army. I'm curious what you think a big number is for tourism though? I was over 2k when I was actually in a golden age vs. people who had positive modifiers with me.
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Jul 26, 2013 07:23
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I think it'd just be better if the leader said "Our people have abandoned their cultural heritage for yours, I fear for the future." Or something generic like that. edit: You know you could have done a combat rock tour on him right? Get some great musicians and units to protect them near his border> declare war > most metal rock tour ever. 138 fucked around with this message at 07:32 on Jul 26, 2013 |
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Jul 26, 2013 07:27
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Holy god i am terrible with tradition. By turn 50 i was dead last in every single stat and falling. In my practice rounds i typically consider the game over by turn 100 because it's unwinnable for the AIs, not for me.
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Jul 26, 2013 07:30
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Pvt.Scott posted:I dunno, I don't think my recent steamrolling of the entire world with three units had much to do with my economy. It was my second attempt at king difficulty, standard setup. one spearman and two archers, with era appropriate upgrades got me every capital in the game. My economy and happiness were on a constant knife edge and only really got solid around 1800 AD. I just burned everything else down. I had 1 garrison unit per city because the cities were far enough apart that I would sometimes have 2-3 barbarian camps spawn a turn. I did All of my conquering with the same three units excerpting my first capital. Sure, I was playing as Shaka, so my only remaining spearman/mobile infantry had the buffalo promotions, but I think that speaks volumes about terrible war AI and unit "balance." I didn't even get any use out of the 50% melee unit maintenance UA because I only had the one. Well I should have clarified that I was speaking more in human-vs-human terms. Introducing the stupid batshit AI into the equation kind of muddles the discussion a bit because, well, the AI didn't even know how to war properly when they had doomstacks, much less having to utilize Panzer General style tactics. Indecisive posted:No I was doing open borders etc, by 800+ I just meant the number at the top of the screen, which doesn't count any of the modifiers. Zulu was constantly pissed off at me though, I got open borders and trade routes with everyone as much as I could but towards the end he wouldn't have anything to do with me, couldn't get open borders to use my music tours on him, and different ideologies meant he was sitting at -9% since all I had was a trade route for a modifier (seriously, I tried to give him my 200 gpt and he told me to gently caress off). I know I didn't play everything perfectly, it was my first time going specifically for a culture win, doesn't change the fact that endgame for culture is slow and dumb if the other person has a massive culture buildup to chew through. I could perhaps have declared war to get a musician in but I was seriously scared of him, he had a massive army and nukes and wasn't afraid to use them and I had 3 cities that were garbage at anything but science/culture and a token army. I'm curious what you think a big number is for tourism though? I was over 2k when I was actually in a golden age vs. people who had positive modifiers with me. I guess it depends on what everyone else is doing. In my Venice cultural win I hadn't even made it to the Atomic Age before my victory came in. I was making around 300+ tourism a turn at that point with the hotel and I didn't even get a chance to pass the International Games in. E: Actually it could have been because that game was on King. I only recently started doing Emperor games. Super Jay Mann fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Jul 26, 2013 |
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Jul 26, 2013 07:36
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I don't know what difficulty you're on but I'm just getting used to king and the first 200 turns or so are me just surviving/setting up the future. Once I get a tech lead I don't lose it and that's when I decide whether I'll take out the runaway or just try to be peaceful. It really does seem that the higher the difficulty is the better being a warmonger is. edit: I was responding to tulip
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Jul 26, 2013 07:36
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Indecisive posted:No I was doing open borders etc, by 800+ I just meant the number at the top of the screen, which doesn't count any of the modifiers. Zulu was constantly pissed off at me though, I got open borders and trade routes with everyone as much as I could but towards the end he wouldn't have anything to do with me, couldn't get open borders to use my music tours on him, and different ideologies meant he was sitting at -9% since all I had was a trade route for a modifier (seriously, I tried to give him my 200 gpt and he told me to gently caress off). I know I didn't play everything perfectly, it was my first time going specifically for a culture win, doesn't change the fact that endgame for culture is slow and dumb if the other person has a massive culture buildup to chew through. I could perhaps have declared war to get a musician in but I was seriously scared of him, he had a massive army and nukes and wasn't afraid to use them and I had 3 cities that were garbage at anything but science/culture and a token army. I'm curious what you think a big number is for tourism though? I was over 2k when I was actually in a golden age vs. people who had positive modifiers with me. Concert Tours makes endgame culture not slow and dumb. You just have to do them if you don't want things to take forever. Basically as Brazil try to bank a great artist or two and when you notice that a musician will be generated soon, pop a golden age, and bomb them with massive tourism. Keep in mind that the concert tour strength is based on when they were generated. If they're antagonistic against you and refuse to open borders and have a big military, just find a safe spot to sneak a musician or two in after declaring war. I really cannot overstate how powerful late game concert tours are.
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Jul 26, 2013 07:39
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daveftw posted:
In most of my games Petra is gone before turn 80 
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Jul 26, 2013 07:42
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Verviticus posted:In most of my games Petra is gone before turn 80 I've heard of it falling that early but I've never failed to get Petra if I've been specifically aiming for it, even on Emperor. Guess nobody likes desert in my games?
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Jul 26, 2013 07:44
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I'll have to try some multi civ at some point in the future, as I'm sure that combat is much more dynamic there. I guess next time I go for a domination victory, I'll bump the difficuly up another notch. I've still got a lot to learn on king for any other victory though. Hell, I still haven't gotten a culture victory on prince.
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Jul 26, 2013 07:51
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The Hawaii guy built a city right where I wanted to build my third. It's pretty close to me and is going to be key since it's on a peninsula. I'm afraid that if I declare war, raze it, and make peace that everyone is going to think I'm a warmonger like in my first game. Any tips?
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Jul 26, 2013 08:06
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Super Jay Mann posted:I've heard of it falling that early but I've never failed to get Petra if I've been specifically aiming for it, even on Emperor. Guess nobody likes desert in my games? One of the benefits of Liberty even thoough it's less useful now is being able to plant petra exactly when you want.
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Jul 26, 2013 08:08
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What would probably improve melee units is if melee attacks were always 'decisive'. So when one melee unit attacks any other unit, they keep fighting until either it dies or they die. It means you couldn't retreat archers and heal them up, they just get one-shotted by any melee units. Taking cities would be a different story as well - you'd always lose melee units taking cities, but you'd do a lot more damage per turn.
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Jul 26, 2013 08:10
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KingKapalone posted:The Hawaii guy built a city right where I wanted to build my third. It's pretty close to me and is going to be key since it's on a peninsula. I'm afraid that if I declare war, raze it, and make peace that everyone is going to think I'm a warmonger like in my first game. Any tips? Do it, the war theme for Kamehameha is great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXOLRXzs_qo
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Jul 26, 2013 08:12
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Pvt.Scott posted:I'll have to try some multi civ at some point in the future, as I'm sure that combat is much more dynamic there. I guess next time I go for a domination victory, I'll bump the difficuly up another notch. I've still got a lot to learn on king for any other victory though. Hell, I still haven't gotten a culture victory on prince. Combat is actually even worse in multi. The computer not realizing that the archer carpet is optimal hides how bad the combat system is. Multiplayer war between good players is all about a rush toward composites then crossbows.
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Jul 26, 2013 08:34
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So in my latest game I started as Venice, and discovered I was on a small continent with two other civs, literally sandwiched between Atilla and Askia. I figured I was hosed. Well, with me as Atilla's only neighbor and him amassing an army, I became increasing scared until I noticed that he wasn't expanding... and he had no battering rams. I checked, and yep, he's going Tradition. And then he later opened Patronage and only has his one city, growing at a good clip. I've never seen such things. Meanwhile, Askia is going Piety/Aesthetics. So I guess I'm taking the war to these lazy peace loving hippies instead.  Edit: Also on this small continent and its small offshoot islands: 4 city states, all with pearls. KingKapalone posted:The Hawaii guy built a city right where I wanted to build my third. It's pretty close to me and is going to be key since it's on a peninsula. I'm afraid that if I declare war, raze it, and make peace that everyone is going to think I'm a warmonger like in my first game. Any tips? Most civs don't actually care about taking a single city and then peacing out. If you want, you can mitigate the damage by bribing whoever you think will care into declaring war first. Before declaring war, ask some other people if they want to go in with you at the same time (in the discuss section of diplomacy). Be careful, sometimes they'll say "yeah, let's do this!" and war will be declared immediately, and other times they'll say "okay, but give me 10 turns to prepare" and you'll have to wait. Either way, it's just a single city. They probably shouldn't care too much unless they're typically super sensitive to that stuff.
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Jul 26, 2013 09:28
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Or ask his neighbours how much they'll pay you to declare war on him. You can sometimes get a nice early payday doing this.
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Jul 26, 2013 09:33
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I bought the Gold Edition (vanilla + G&K) on Steam sale and having concentrated on Paradox games for years on the strategy front this has been pretty interesting and refreshing. But - this will sound real weird coming from a Paradox player - I don't like the graphics. The UI is full of big buttons that look like candy. It's something I'm not used to but not too bad I guess. But the textures are something that looks outdated by half a decade. I played Civ 4 with the Blue Marble mod and it looked better than textures in this game. Are there any graphic mods for Civ 5?
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Jul 26, 2013 09:57
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Rurik posted:I bought the Gold Edition (vanilla + G&K) on Steam sale and having concentrated on Paradox games for years on the strategy front this has been pretty interesting and refreshing. Your issue is aesthetics not graphics. Civ 5 is technically much prettier than Civ 4. I also hated the UI when I first switched, if it's any consolation.
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Jul 26, 2013 10:15
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natetimm posted:Your issue is aesthetics not graphics. Civ 5 is technically much prettier than Civ 4. I also hated the UI when I first switched, if it's any consolation. I agree somewhat, on the UI at least, but the textures really are worse in my opinion. Everything from jungles to deserts to hills looks not that sharp and kind of gray. The colors could use more contrast.
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Jul 26, 2013 10:23
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I have 6 (About to be 8) stone quarries up and running, my Islam has Stone Circles, Pilgrimage, Mosques, Holy Warriors, and Itinerant Preachers, and I'm one policy away from completing Piety. 
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Jul 26, 2013 10:49
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RagnarokAngel posted:Pop music doesnt just mean Ke$ha or Will.i.am. Literally speaking pop music is just whatever is mainstream and well, popular. Go listen to Rachid Taha's version of Rock the Casbah on YouTube. You will understand completely how the whole world can fall for Tommy Heilhitler jeans or the Scarab Beatles.
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Jul 26, 2013 11:25
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thehumandignity posted:I have 6 (About to be 8) stone quarries up and running, my Islam has Stone Circles, Pilgrimage, Mosques, Holy Warriors, and Itinerant Preachers, and I'm one policy away from completing Piety. Volunteer nukes are always awesome. Islam is the light!
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Jul 26, 2013 11:29
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Tulip posted:Volunteer nukes are always awesome. Islam is the light! I don't think that's a thing you can do.
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Jul 26, 2013 11:43
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thehumandignity posted:I don't think that's a thing you can do. Which is a real shame as it'd give a whole new meaning to being prophet-bombed.
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Jul 26, 2013 11:56
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Tulip posted:Holy god i am terrible with tradition. By turn 50 i was dead last in every single stat and falling. In my practice rounds i typically consider the game over by turn 100 because it's unwinnable for the AIs, not for me. You're really going to need to give more info than this if you're not just threadshitting. What did you do? What happened?
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Jul 26, 2013 12:29
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Reveilled posted:Which is a real shame as it'd give a whole new meaning to being prophet-bombed.
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Jul 26, 2013 12:53
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