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Although I've owned the game since last year, I finally played it last night with a couple of friends (thanks to a goon that helped me a few pages back with some technical issues) and I'm conflicted. I mean, obviously I'm terrible at the game since I just started playing, but I swear the AI was just full-out cheating by mid-game. About four hours into the match, I was doing fairly well with +35 happiness, five thriving cities, a couple of gold mines, a silver mine, and a gem mine. I'm not sure how much science I had, but I had access to artillery about twenty or thirty turns before anyone else. My cities covered about 1/4 of the map and all of them were connected to my capital. Point-wise, I was doing better than the other two players and one AI combined. Tired of Siam's poo poo, I decided to mass spawn artillery and infantry troops. It took me about 2,000 gold (threepeat Golden Ages really helped me out) and ten turns of production, but I spawned eight artillery units and four infantry units. Sent them all down towards one of Siam's cities. I got the city down to a little bit of health left and as I was about to send an infantry troop in to cap, five elephant units and four infantry units just appeared out of nowhere. My strongest unit only did 3-4 damage per attack whereas their elephant units did 8-9 damage per attack. Within just a few rounds, every unit I had down there was wiped out and I only managed to take out two elephant units. I got way too frustrated and decided to head East and help out my friend who was having a hard time playing as India. America, who my second friend was playing as, was now being controlled by AI and went from having just their capital to having a capital and four cities in just three turns. It took a few more hours, but I made my way to Washington and decided to hold back because I was only about ten turns from finishing the Manhattan Project and being able to build nukes. Sent a nuke towards Washington and was really underwhelmed when I discovered it only does 50% damage to a city. Hit them with another and sent infantry in to cap, but the city was back to half health by the time my infantry was close enough to attack. Also wanna give a special shout out "gently caress you" to Bucharest who was about as northwest as possible. The city was setup in an area where I could only attack from one certain tile and if I made peace with them, they'd declare war on me seconds later because they couldn't move any units without crossing Mongolia's borders. I had to line up five artillery units and send them to their certain death before I could sneak infantry in to cap the city. Still, as aggravated as I was by 5:30 am, I had a lot of fun. I'm probably gonna play as Siam next time because I want those invincible elephants.
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Jul 30, 2013 03:00
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| # ? May 30, 2024 07:29 |
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There are various ways in which the AI can cheat, depending on the difficulty setting, but they do not ever receive any bonuses to combat damage. Siam's elephant unit, Naresuan's Elephant, is not a particularly good unique unit, but it does have pretty decent combat strength. I'm not really sure on what the tactical situation was like, but artillery is not very adept at actually targeting units and if they get attacked directly they take pretty big damage. Atom Bombs aren't super strong or anything. When using one, it's probably smart to keep a speedy cavalry unit or tank nearby so they can zoom in and capture the city on the same turn the bombs drop. The real powerful nukes are the ICBMs. And man, you really gotta get at the very least the Gods & Kings expansion pack. It really improves the game by quite a bit and it's in a $20 bundle with every other piece of DLC (except for the new Brave New World expansion) that commonly goes on sale for $5.
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Jul 30, 2013 03:10
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I've kindof fallen out of love with this game. My initial BNW experience of a tourism victory appears to be the way your meant to enjoy the game. Playing expansionary is so suboptimal it's crazy. The game endlessly slaps you with penalties for expanding since the AI is so hopeless at warfare that only global happiness, a culture penalty, a science penalty, and a gold penalty (via trade routes) can keep you from conquering your entire continent with composite bows in the BCs. They screwed with so many superior aspects of Civ4 so they could implement their hex based combat, then they punish you for using it and have never bothered to balance it so the best strategy remains whoring the hell out of the completely unbalanced unit for each era (composites/crossbows/artillery/aircraft). You can sleepwalk to victory on Immortal by building 3 cities and pursing a culture/diplomatic victory while intermittently shooting the AI's disorganized horde with your mass of ranged units, or you can pursue warfare and have your real opponent be the developers.
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Jul 30, 2013 03:22
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Ashurbanipal's libraries having a Writing slot is good because it lets you ignore one of the things you would want the Great Library for: its great writing slots. The bonus XP is just a side benefit. I am still a BNW rookie, though, even after all my zillions of hours playing this game. I am doing fairly well on Prince but on King I need to be very, very careful not to screw up.
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Jul 30, 2013 03:30
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:There are various ways in which the AI can cheat, depending on the difficulty setting, but they do not ever receive any bonuses to combat damage. Siam's elephant unit, Naresuan's Elephant, is not a particularly good unique unit It is a fantastic unit, requires no special resource and hits like a ton of bricks, absolutely destroying any other mounted units. Holds its own vs Pikes, and, when upgraded into cavalry, lancers. One of the better UUs to be sure.
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Jul 30, 2013 03:35
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:There are various ways in which the AI can cheat, depending on the difficulty setting, but they do not ever receive any bonuses to combat damage. Siam's elephant unit, Naresuan's Elephant, is not a particularly good unique unit, but it does have pretty decent combat strength. I'm not really sure on what the tactical situation was like, but artillery is not very adept at actually targeting units and if they get attacked directly they take pretty big damage. Thanks for the info. I have G&K and one of my friends has Civ V Gold, but our other friend just bought the game a couple of days ago ($30 for the base game itself  ) so we couldn't play with any DLC. He kept getting an error when we were trying to ready up in the lobby.edit: Speaking of tanks, I couldn't produce planes or tanks because I never found any sources of oil. I clicked the strategic view button in the bottom-right corner of the screen, but I never did see oil anywhere. Luckily I didn't need oil for the atomic bomb, even though a plane drops it. last edit: Also, how do I upgrade units with gold? I picked the policy that says 33% less gold to upgrade units, but I never saw any way to spend gold aside from skipping production of a unit or giving it to another nation. Bloodplay it again fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Jul 30, 2013 |
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Jul 30, 2013 03:38
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Decided to try Brazil, on Immortal as my first time since they looked awful. Turns out their improvement is fantastic, and you can just change golden ages late game, allowing insane tourism, which since you are not cutting jungles, they also wind up with crazy science after universities. This was the first time I actually achieved a cultural victory before the council vote.
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Jul 30, 2013 03:45
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Bloodplay it again posted:Tired of Siam's poo poo, I decided to mass spawn artillery and infantry troops. It took me about 2,000 gold (threepeat Golden Ages really helped me out) and ten turns of production, but I spawned eight artillery units and four infantry units. Sent them all down towards one of Siam's cities. I got the city down to a little bit of health left and as I was about to send an infantry troop in to cap, five elephant units and four infantry units just appeared out of nowhere. My strongest unit only did 3-4 damage per attack whereas their elephant units did 8-9 damage per attack. Within just a few rounds, every unit I had down there was wiped out and I only managed to take out two elephant units. You're not very specific in this post about exactly what units you had, but assuming you meant GW Infantry infantry (or the next level) and not Riflemen or Musketmen, then Siam's elephants should have been hamburger meat. That or your units had practically no promotions and Siam's were elite veterans. And even then, 8 Artillery will murder 3+ units a turn with good control. If you really meant you had Cannons and Musketmen, then duh you should have gotten stomped by units coming outta nowhere, specially if their cav hits your cannons right away. Corvinus fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Jul 30, 2013 |
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Jul 30, 2013 03:52
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Bloodplay it again posted:Thanks for the info. I have G&K and one of my friends has Civ V Gold, but our other friend just bought the game a couple of days ago ($30 for the base game itself You need Biology to uncover the oil resource on the map, without it you can't see it or build oil wells. When a unit that you can upgrade is selected, an icon of a star over some chevrons appears on the unit action bar on the left side of the screen, that's the upgrade icon. Basically once you research the next type of unit in that line, you can spend gold to upgrade your obsolete unit to it. You can also give gold to City States to ally with them, another good use of gold.
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Jul 30, 2013 03:59
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SickZip posted:I've kindof fallen out of love with this game. My initial BNW experience of a tourism victory appears to be the way your meant to enjoy the game. Playing expansionary is so suboptimal it's crazy. The game endlessly slaps you with penalties for expanding since the AI is so hopeless at warfare that only global happiness, a culture penalty, a science penalty, and a gold penalty (via trade routes) can keep you from conquering your entire continent with composite bows in the BCs. They screwed with so many superior aspects of Civ4 so they could implement their hex based combat, then they punish you for using it and have never bothered to balance it so the best strategy remains whoring the hell out of the completely unbalanced unit for each era (composites/crossbows/artillery/aircraft). You can sleepwalk to victory on Immortal by building 3 cities and pursing a culture/diplomatic victory while intermittently shooting the AI's disorganized horde with your mass of ranged units, or you can pursue warfare and have your real opponent be the developers. I think that you make a fair point, in that most of the challenge in the game comes from the human player's insanely constricted ability to expand. After a while you start to realize that, without happiness limiting you in the early/mid game, you would absolutely crush the AI at any victory type. Especially now that it takes no effort to manipulate the AI into peacefully feeding you gold and science via trade routes and resource trading even if your army is laughable compared to the enormous one they get for free. Civ has always been a game of mechanics/AI manipulation at high levels, but it has never before been so easy to passively win just by implementing any macro-strategy up to Immortal. Seriously. I don't know if any of you have seen the Poland Oracle rush/Tradition/Liberty build order that was recently posted on Civfanatics, but it trivializes the game. And it works because a single Comp Bowman is all you need to ward off barbs - your neighbors won't rush you pre-70 unless it's Shaka or Monty.
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Jul 30, 2013 04:00
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Corvinus posted:You're not very specific in this post about exactly what units you had, but assuming you meant GW Infantry infantry (or the next level) and not Riflemen or Musketmen, then Siam's elephants should have been hamburger meat. That or your units had practically no promotions and Siam's were elite veterans. And even then, 8 Artillery will murder 3+ units a turn with good control. Yeah, I meant the units titled "infantry," not riflemen or musketmen. I had access to them around the same time I had access to artillery. My problem was that the artillery cannons that had been pounding on the city were on the front lines and I couldn't get my infantry between the cannons and the elephants, so the elephants just ravaged the artillery units. Even if I had gotten my infantry to survive, the city was already back to full health within a few turns and there's no way I could've taken the city out. Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:You need Biology to uncover the oil resource on the map, without it you can't see it or build oil wells. I didn't grab biology until it was the last option left, but I must have missed the oil in the description. I spent the rest of the game spawning artillery, infantry, and anti-tank cannons until nukes were available. Thanks for the info about upgrading with gold. I was under the assumption you could level up troops (i.e. +20% to enemies in open/rough terrain) with gold. Makes more sense that you can upgrade older units. I'm not even sure I had any older units left, since I was raking in 200+ gold/turn and just buying them outright. By turn 150 or so, I was exclusively buying units and spent city production on stat-enhancing upgrades. Thanks for the help, everyone. I'll hold off posting in the thread until I have another twenty hours or so under my belt.
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Jul 30, 2013 04:20
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Bloodplay it again posted:I was under the assumption you could level up troops (i.e. +20% to enemies in open/rough terrain) with gold. That might make for an interesting UA actually...
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Jul 30, 2013 04:24
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starfish prime posted:I think that you make a fair point, in that most of the challenge in the game comes from the human player's insanely constricted ability to expand. After a while you start to realize that, without happiness limiting you in the early/mid game, you would absolutely crush the AI at any victory type. Especially now that it takes no effort to manipulate the AI into peacefully feeding you gold and science via trade routes and resource trading even if your army is laughable compared to the enormous one they get for free. Civ has always been a game of mechanics/AI manipulation at high levels, but it has never before been so easy to passively win just by implementing any macro-strategy up to Immortal. Could I get a link to that thread?
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Jul 30, 2013 04:41
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Super Jay Mann posted:That might make for an interesting UA actually... Huh, that actually would be a pretty interesting UA. You'd need to limit it, somehow, possibly make it so that it'd cost more and more each time, and more expensive with later-era units (like how regular upgrading works already).
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Jul 30, 2013 04:42
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Bloodplay it again posted:Yeah, I meant the units titled "infantry," not riflemen or musketmen. I had access to them around the same time I had access to artillery. My problem was that the artillery cannons that had been pounding on the city were on the front lines and I couldn't get my infantry between the cannons and the elephants, so the elephants just ravaged the artillery units. Even if I had gotten my infantry to survive, the city was already back to full health within a few turns and there's no way I could've taken the city out. Posting isn't bad if you learn from it, so don't worry too much. Civ5 has zone-of-control for military units and cities, so to protect my siege units I like to give a couple melee units Cover and/or Cover II when possible to take hits from ranged units and cities while my own ranged/siege sits behind and smashes everything. Also having a unit with Medic in behind the meatshields to give them extra healing helps out a lot. Edit: I haven't tested for BNW, but do mounted archer units still effectively lose their ranged promotions upon upgrading to knights/cav? Corvinus fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Jul 30, 2013 |
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Jul 30, 2013 04:52
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So it seems like Indonesia's UA is either bugged, at least sometimes, or the description is wrong. I got my first unique luxury from conquering a city, which may have been intended, but I never did get my third. I've conquered several other cities on different continents, and founded a couple, but I only ever got two unique luxuries.
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Jul 30, 2013 05:03
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What do I have to do to get those stupid barbarians to convert to me. I've adopted Heathen Conversion and have a missionary parked right next to a barbarian archer and axe dude and nothing is happening. They aren't capturing him and they aren't converting. What else do I need to do?
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Jul 30, 2013 05:47
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Jastiger posted:What do I have to do to get those stupid barbarians to convert to me. I've adopted Heathen Conversion and have a missionary parked right next to a barbarian archer and axe dude and nothing is happening. They aren't capturing him and they aren't converting. What else do I need to do? I think you might be the first person who has ever taken Heathen Conversion so you're in uncharted territory here.
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Jul 30, 2013 05:51
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:I think you might be the first person who has ever taken Heathen Conversion so you're in uncharted territory here. I think it was mentioned a few pages back to recruit rebels in revolting nations.
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Jul 30, 2013 05:53
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That's a better use than converting barbs, but it still seems like the least useful reformation belief.
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Jul 30, 2013 05:57
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Heathen Coversion looks really lackluster when you compare it to the really powerful ones like jesuit education, glory of god, sacred sites, etc. Religion in general needs a balance pass on a good portion of the beliefs.
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Jul 30, 2013 06:20
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Flython posted:Could I get a link to that thread? Their forums might be down right now but I think this is the one: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=501378 Initial post is messy, somewhere down the line on page 3 or 4 someone posts a cleaned up version. The gist of it is that you open Tradition, take the left side of Liberty, settle 2 or 3 cities, finish up Tradition taking the wonder production bonus early, start up food caravans, complete the Oracle, then finish your science infrastructure with the NC letting you blaze into the Renaissance and those sweet sweet Rationalism policies. A high risk high reward strategy...if your neighbors are willing to be aggressive, and they probably aren't. This strategy needs some tweaking but it might be one of the most effective ways to play BNW. Babylon, Poland, and the Maya are the definite winners of the expansion. Shoshone have a lot going for them too but they just don't have the raw power that the other 3 have. Assyria would have been utterly dominant in vanilla or G&K but now with war often being more trouble than it's worth they're just good. And now more than ever some older civs are just inferior (America, Denmark, Japan, and more!) edit: before I forget, a secret bonus to Poland is that they have a great start bias. Plains and rivers everywhere - and I get salt very very often, which is objectively the best resource. starfish prime fucked around with this message at 06:33 on Jul 30, 2013 |
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Jul 30, 2013 06:30
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Remember that image of the cleaned-up versions of all the icons I made a week back? Well, I wasn't fully happy with it (Translation: I have selective OCD), so I "fixed" what I saw were some mistakes and here's a new version: More versions of the image: http://imgur.com/a/OuY68 I slightly fixed the German, Japanese, Mayan, French, Ottoman, and Persian icons. If you previously saved an old version, I kindly ask you to delete the old one and save this instead. Now, hopefully, I won't force myself to go through this annoying process again until they decide to release a new expansion. Edit: Fixed image again. OCD. Echo Chamber fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Aug 6, 2013 |
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Jul 30, 2013 06:30
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Just tested out Heathen Conversion a few minutes ago. My one missionary has converted five or six barbarians in five turns, including one galley, just by bumping into them. It seems like a good way to get a cheap army really quickly and a no-hassle way of killing barbarians at the same time. Early-game you could use it to make your forces swell. It also immediately destroys a barb camp. Late-game, though, I can see this ability becoming obsolete. You'd need to play with a heavy military-religion focus to get the most out of it. The only problem was, I needed to neglect both Tradition and Liberty to get Piety this far unlocked this fast. Probably should have taken just the Tradition opener first. Some other civs like to prioritize going full piety as soon as they can, and that takes away reformation beliefs.
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Jul 30, 2013 06:39
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Echo Chamber posted:Remember that image of the cleaned-up versions of all the icons I made a week back? Well, I wasn't fully happy with it (Translation: I have selective OCD), so I "fixed" what I saw were some mistakes and here's a new version: You must hate the Zulu icon. Seriously love this, though. Thanks for the update. E: Is there any way you could satisfy my little OCD complex and rotate the icons for the prime iPhone portrait look? Jedi Knight Luigi fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Jul 30, 2013 |
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Jul 30, 2013 06:44
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Speedball posted:Just tested out Heathen Conversion a few minutes ago. My one missionary has converted five or six barbarians in five turns, including one galley, just by bumping into them. It seems like a good way to get a cheap army really quickly and a no-hassle way of killing barbarians at the same time. Early-game you could use it to make your forces swell. It also immediately destroys a barb camp. Late-game, though, I can see this ability becoming obsolete. You'd need to play with a heavy military-religion focus to get the most out of it. Are the missionaries effectively invulnerable to barbarian's then, or is it only a chance of conversion like the Germany/Ottoman abilities? Seems like a fun idea for a quirk game where you put on raging barbarians and amass an early game legion.
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Jul 30, 2013 06:45
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joeburz posted:Are the missionaries effectively invulnerable to barbarian's then, or is it only a chance of conversion like the Germany/Ottoman abilities? Seems like a fun idea for a quirk game where you put on raging barbarians and amass an early game legion. As far as I can tell, this means they're invincible to barbarians. It might only trigger during your turn when you move your missionary, I need to test that. If you've also got your missionary parked in a location two tiles away and there's a barb that spawns in from a camp next to him, I think that might not trigger conversion as it slips between the radar. I also need to test that.
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Jul 30, 2013 06:51
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Jedi Knight Luigi posted:You must hate the Zulu icon. It took me a while just to arrange the icons in a matter where too many similar colors weren't adjacent to each other. Unless you're willing to break IMMERSION and pretend the hex grid goes North/South rather than East/West. Edit: Just spotted an mistake in the circle version. Gonna fix now. 
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Jul 30, 2013 06:54
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Can I deploy a concert tour in anyone's territory or do I have to have a certain relationship with them first (eg not at war, open borders etc)?
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Jul 30, 2013 09:16
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Open Borders is required to get in without starting a war. I haven't noticed any hostile reactions to a concert tour, however, assuming I already had Open Borders.
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Jul 30, 2013 09:18
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Hmm that's going to be tricky then. My tourism is coming along nicely but Japan is holding out, and we've been arch enemies ever since the Sweden Incident. Maybe I'll just have to suck it up and pay him a poo poo load of gold for open borders.
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Jul 30, 2013 09:21
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KKKlean Energy posted:Can I deploy a concert tour in anyone's territory or do I have to have a certain relationship with them first (eg not at war, open borders etc)?
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Jul 30, 2013 09:25
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I've posted screenshots of my barbarian fountains with heathen conversion several pages back. If a missionary is adjacent to any number of barbarians, they should be instantly converted to your faction. It is an extremely powerful reformation belief, parking missionaries next to 2 or 3 barbarian camps will produce far more military than you will be able to support without army upkeep reduction policies and a commerce focus. The easiest way to setup fountains is to place military units on every possible barbarian camp spawn tile save one, then place a missionary adjacent to that spare tile. Any new barbarians that spawn will be converted. Do not move missionaries directly adjacent to barbarian camps, as this will instantly convert the unit and clear the camp. Yes, this works with rebels too. Sit at -10 unhappiness with a missionary in all of your cities, and watch the free units flow and your science and gold/turn drop.
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Jul 30, 2013 09:28
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Matrim posted:Sit at -10 unhappiness with a missionary in all of your cities, and watch the free units flow and your science and gold/turn drop. 
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Jul 30, 2013 09:34
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Echo Chamber posted:Remember that image of the cleaned-up versions of all the icons I made a week back? Well, I wasn't fully happy with it (Translation: I have selective OCD), so I "fixed" what I saw were some mistakes and here's a new version Is it possible to get this in 16:9? I love it, but I can't seem to make it look good on my computer.
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Jul 30, 2013 09:40
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So what happend here? Immortal/Siam/Continents: Polynesia declares on me on turn 165 or so; continues to be inept for approx. 10 turns while I kill off all the shits he sends after me. Then, he suddenly gives me his second best city (pictured) -It has the Great Wall! I'm new to immortal - does this happen often? Can the AI factor in that I'm close to cannons/rich? I'm about to go on the offensive and murder the poo poo out of him. Going up a difficulty I'm having a hard time believing my luck 
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Jul 30, 2013 12:50
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For anyone else interested in the game's music, Michael Curran posted notes on his website detailing the BNW menu music. The lyrics are apparently taken from Revelations 21. http://www.michaelcurran.net/Civ5BraveNewWorld_notes.html Appropriate considering how many of the descriptions from that biblical passage are surprisingly similar to how one might describe a modern city.
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Jul 30, 2013 12:50
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Bloodplay it again posted:My problem was that the artillery cannons that had been pounding on the city were on the front lines and I couldn't get my infantry between the cannons and the elephants, so the elephants just ravaged the artillery units. Your problem was that you put your melee units behind the ranged units. You want the melee to be next to the target so they can hit it when the time comes.
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Jul 30, 2013 13:18
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Daktari posted:So what happend here? It could be that you murdered so many shits (and spat out such a crapload of military) that the balance of power shifted well into your favour and the AI went into "oh god i gotta do anything to end this war!!" mode. Not sure how the AI calculates the "value" of its cities but it seems his second best city fit the amount he was willing to part with to end it. If he was embroiled in a war with others that almost certainly would have contributed. Sometimes if I'm sick of a war but the belligerent won't take peace, I'll pay someone else to join the war and then the belligerent will suddenly think peace with me is a good idea (and sometimes I make a profit). When the AI calculates the overall strength of an opponent for any given attack/defense plan, this is the list of factors it takes into consideration: * size of army * distribution/location of armies * technology level * economic/production output * treasury * terrain of battlefield Hahaha just kidding, the actual list is as follows: * size of army
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Jul 30, 2013 13:18
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Sometimes they're weird about cities. I went up against Poland earlier and tried to negotiate peace while I consolidated, but he would never give me the city I was surrounding - he'd only offer this one random city way to the north, which was better in practically every way compared to the one I wanted.
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Jul 30, 2013 13:41
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