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Shockeh posted:Okay, something about the Culture Victory I don't get - I want to generate Tourism in excess of their Culture, simple enough. I build structures that give options for Great Works, increase the chance of Great Persons, etc. But getting Great Works off of other players for Set bonuses - 1. Any building with two or more slots have a bonus associated with them. Mouse over them to see what gives what; for instance, I think most regular buildings give you a plus two bonus for being the same era or the same civilization, and plus four if you meet both requirements. The wonders usually have things like different eras and different civilizations. Also, although artifacts can be placed like they are great works of art, they are not the same thing. Some bonuses are for great art, some for artifacts, but you can't get a bonus that requires art by using artifacts. 2.Economics 101 would teach you that people are better off trading so long as both parties are doing it willingly. Human players would do this, but a.i. at this point isn't at human level, it's more like a complicated flow-chart.
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Sep 25, 2013 13:29
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Jastiger posted:What speed do most of you play on? I see these epic maps and epic games and all this cool stuff in the stories, but I never get to that extent in my games until the very very end. I always play on standard. Am I missing out on something? When you play on the Epic/Marathon speeds with larger maps, Liberty becomes a much more viable tree. Getting that free settler and wonder from a great engineer really helps out.
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Sep 25, 2013 13:57
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natetimm posted:When you play on the Epic/Marathon speeds with larger maps, Liberty becomes a much more viable tree. Getting that free settler and wonder from a great engineer really helps out. My usual pick when going Liberty is using it to pop an early Great Prophet - I can either found or enhance my religion early without focusing on faith or using the Piety tree. It's a nice jump ahead.
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Sep 25, 2013 15:44
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Liberty is the tree I take when I want to pretend its old school civ. So I crank the difficulty down a peg or two, and build cities like a motherfucker.
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Sep 25, 2013 15:48
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Tempest_56 posted:My usual pick when going Liberty is using it to pop an early Great Prophet - I can either found or enhance my religion early without focusing on faith or using the Piety tree. It's a nice jump ahead. Though rarely as useful, I like the idea of using it to get a great admiral and sailing the oceans a few centuries before Astronomy. Good for picking up trade partners early on and gold from city states. Just gotta keep well clear of those barbarian galleys when approaching the coast.
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Sep 25, 2013 15:56
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So after ~1.5 years, close to 1,000 hours of game time, and many failed/aborted games I finally achieved my Civ V goal of beating the game with every leader available. It was surprisingly fun, and forced me to adapt my playstyle often which was something I with in Civ 3 & 4. Where I often played as the same 3 or 4 Civs all the time, and always used the same strategies. Anyway to celebrate here are some lists of the Civs as I see them (keep in mind I generally play on King difficulty, standard sized maps, and epic speed): The Cream of the Crop - My votes for the top 5 Civs in the game. Babylon - UB/UA combo make it trivial sit back and out-tech everone to victory China - Chu-Ko-Nu + Super libraries... Egypt - Maybe not top 5 on very high difficulties, but on King their UA/UB are very powerful England - UUs allow them to give a serious beat-down on land or sea Rome - UA great through the whole game, and the UUs mean at least one of your neighbors is out of the game The All-rounders - Civs you can drop into pretty much any game/situation and still do pretty well. Arabia Austria Ethiopia France - Pre BNW was top 5, not quite there now, but still the best Civ for a culture victory Greece - Diplomacy easy mode India Japan Korea - Possibly top 5, but UUs are worthless, and UA isn't as useful early on like Babylons Poland Maya Ottomans - Janissaries are arguably the best unit in the game, UA = free navy Shoshone Zulus The Specialists - Civs that vary from amazing to poo poo based on start location/getting the right combination of resources. Aztecs - Without decent nearby lakes they lose much of their luster Brazil - Rainforest starts can be equal parts great, and crippling Celts - Very dependent on faith generation Mongolia - Best UUs in the game, but so much is riding on the "Keshik Happy Hour" that any kind of hiccup may spell your doom Morocco - Needs a desert start/Petra Spain - If the RNG likes you hands down the best Civ in the game (borderline brokenly so), UUs are pretty useless Inca - Inca on a "highlands" map = game over Netherlands - If you can get your polders up they are very powerful Venice - Ability to poo poo out gold is something to behold, but very dependent on not losing trade routes The "Meh" - Civs that are not outright bad, but not particularly good at anything either. Asyria Persia Polynesia Portugal Russia Siam Songhai Sweden Huns Iroquois The poo poo - The bottom 5 Civs. I found this to be the hardest category because even the worst Civs have very good qualities too them, but nevertheless here we go. America - I'm higher on them than most people, but with the Shoshone in BNW what's the point Byzantium - A religious Civ with no inherant faith generation... Carthage - +2 science pantheon + free harbors + archipelego map is interesting, but I find them lackluster overall Germany - UA as much a hinderance as a benefit when it starts bankrupting you Indonesia - UB is mostly useless, UU too dependent on RNG, and UA requires island map which renders UU useless because navies are better HappyHelmet fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Sep 27, 2013 |
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Sep 27, 2013 03:13
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HappyHelmet posted:So after ~1.5 years, close to 1,000 hours of game time, and many failed/aborted games I finally achieved my Civ V goal of beating the game with every leader available.
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Sep 27, 2013 03:47
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Oh boy a power level discussion this never ends well! Gonna push Rome downwards, buildings are important but not so important that +25% really matters that much. And sword/cat replacements don't mean that much when warfare is all about Compbows and Xbows. Push Poland upwards, free Oracle every era means you can completely many, many more trees than anyone else. They're one of the few people who can take advantage of Liberty. Not to mention they have easy access to Consulates (meaning easier culture and more "natural" social policies), meaning the effect snowballs. And then there is easy access to the Rationalism opener, which is free science. Aztecs go higher, because the real bonus of Floating Gardens is the +15% to food, not the lakes that effectively turn into civil service grass farms. I'd move Sweden even lower, and Zulu into the specialist warmonger's slot. Inca can move up, even without any peaks to boost your terrace farms, you can effectively get 2/2 tiles on every single hill even without irrigation. And you forget Arabia, which is like a slightly nerfed Mongolia that also gets some really useful economic boosts, from both trade routes and selling luxuries.
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Sep 27, 2013 04:07
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Phobophilia posted:Oh boy a power level discussion this never ends well! Yeah, I was too serious about that list. Just how things worked out for me. I always think it's interesting too see what other people think though. Rome: I'm one of those people who compulsively builds every building (it's why I haven't moved up from King difficulty), and Rome is really good for that. Poland: I actually really struggled with Poland when I played them. I kept losing because nearby warmongers would overrun me in the Medieval Era. The free policies are nice, but I think people over-rate how good the UA is. Aztecs: If you really wanna go tall have a few lakes around is what you want. I had Sweden lower, but bumped them up because Caroleans are pretty awesome. Zulu would probably be specialists yeah. Inca are good, but when you get the right RNG are up there with Spain in brokenness. Arabia: Oops accidentally deleted them. I had them in the top 5, but bumped them down in favor of Rome. Forgot to re-add them. Edit: Kly posted:I've been trying to do the same thing, I only had 4 Civs to go then BNW was released. Yeah, I'm glad I did it that way. Otherwise I'd just be playing the same 5-6 Civs every game and never experimenting much.
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Sep 27, 2013 04:19
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Phobophilia posted:Oh boy a power level discussion this never ends well! • You can destroy any civs you want at your earliest convenience • You can settle anywhere you want and aren't restricted to your starting landmass' resources • You can use early embarkation to retreat units you wouldn't otherwise be able to • You can get ALL the loving goody huts • You can meet every CS in the game as soon as you start, jumpstarting your economy toward any end • You can meet civs on other landmasses at your leisure and game diplomacy on your own terms • If you're that concerned about it, you can micromanage your coastal tiles to be either standard production stuff or massive culture producers It's hardly "meh" at all, but it's certainly a "take advantage of weaknesses in the game's ruleset" civ rather than an outright powerful one, which is one of the reasons I like playing as them so much. being illegitimately related to kamehameha i is also one but cut me some slack Fur20 fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Sep 27, 2013 |
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Sep 27, 2013 04:30
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It seems kind of crazy to me that someone could play the game for 1000 hours and not move beyond King difficulty. It's like the Easy Mode of Civ V. I mean, I guess whatever floats your boat, it's probably appealing to be able to have a completely open sandbox to do whatever the hell you want with no real competition. Also I find it hilarious that you classify the Huns and Assyria as "not particularly good at anything" when they're the best city attackers in the game for the first half. Also Morocco absolutely does not need a desert to be good (although they do get desert start bias). Morocco can make mad cash which makes them an excellent all-round civ non-dependent on terrain. Portugal makes the most money per trade route in the game and their feitorias make sure that they're able to grow/expand without reliance on trade or CSes. Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Sep 27, 2013 |
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Sep 27, 2013 04:41
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HappyHelmet posted:France - Pre BNW was top 5, not quite there now, but still the best Civ for a culture victory Goddamn I miss pre-BNW France. Their old UA was amazing for getting those early social policies and helping with your expansion. Now it's just so boring and passive and you're left focusing on your capital for most of the game and playing defensively, which is totally not in the spirit of Napoleon loving Bonaparte. And yeah, Poland can easily hang with the Science bros and Arabia in god tier. Playing them is almost cheating. Korea, too, even if both their units are beyond useless and they're pretty much just a mini Babylon, you never have to worry about tech. Top five for me is China, Arabia, Poland, Babylon and Korea. I am Reverend fucked around with this message at 05:05 on Sep 27, 2013 |
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Sep 27, 2013 04:50
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Poland's UA is crazy powerful for allowing you to do split openers without lagging behind and grabbing at least one full SP tree more than usual.
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Sep 27, 2013 04:53
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Is there any point to the AI's "Give us this luxury for no reason" requests? I don't think I've seen the diplomatic minus "Failed to help us in our time of need" that used to exist in Civ4. I want an "ignore useless AI fluff" option; it just wastes time between turns. Or at least give me the "disconnect the comm channel, I don't want to speak to that rear end in a top hat" option from Alpha Centauri, so I can feel better.
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Sep 27, 2013 05:12
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I distinctly remember "They asked for help, and we turned them down!" or something along those lines, but maybe BNW softened or removed that effect? Civ5 teaches us that friends are expensive, and ready to put a knife in your back the moment someone else asks them to.
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Sep 27, 2013 05:15
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There isn't a penalty for denying but there is a bonus for accepting. It's not super strong though, so yeah, it's mostly just added pointless fluff to make turns take even longer to process. No, I won't give you freebies. I don't give a poo poo that we're friends with the same person. You probably shouldn't brag about your army when you're a total idiot who will lose a 4:1 fight in your favor. The constant fluff messages really slow the pace of the game down and everyone really just tries to mash the button to skip through it as fast as possible after they see the messages once, it's so pointless.
Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Sep 27, 2013 |
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Sep 27, 2013 05:33
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Geight posted:I distinctly remember "They asked for help, and we turned them down!" or something along those lines, but maybe BNW softened or removed that effect? I think that's been gone since before G&K. I picked up Civ 5 with G&K and never saw that modifier; you get a huge and long-lasting positive modifier for giving them the free luxury/money, but no penalty if you decline. e: Also I'm still on G&K so I don't know if anything changed with BNW, but Persia is definitely my favorite civ to play that is mostly overlooked. It's pretty fun working your plans around golden ages. Eric the Mauve fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Sep 27, 2013 |
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Sep 27, 2013 05:51
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:It seems kind of crazy to me that someone could play the game for 1000 hours and not move beyond King difficulty. It's like the Easy Mode of Civ V. I mean, I guess whatever floats your boat, it's probably appealing to be able to have a completely open sandbox to do whatever the hell you want with no real competition. From what I keep hearing about Emperor+ it's more about gaming the system than using the mechanics naturally or flavorfully. Notably it only makes things easier for the a.i. not harder for you. If I'm not regularly ahead of the tech dates by ~100 years I'm not moving up. Baron Porkface fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Sep 27, 2013 |
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Sep 27, 2013 06:16
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And good riddance. That was the most irritating thing in Civ4, and was effectively a way for your friends to extort you while under the umbrella of "begging". I don't mind having a method to extort stuff out of opponents, but it has to be labelled as such.
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Sep 27, 2013 06:17
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Baron Porkface posted:From what I keep hearing about Emperor+ it's more about gaming the system than using the mechanics naturally or flavorfully. Not necessarily. I took courses on realpolitik and macroeconomics in university and that pushed me up by 2 difficulty levels. There are many different approaches to doing well at Emperor, whether it's good knowledge about gaming the system, military strategy, or geopolitics. Deity is the point where you'll need to exploit quirks of the game mechanics even if you're good at the actual game to win every time.
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Sep 27, 2013 06:22
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:It seems kind of crazy to me that someone could play the game for 1000 hours and not move beyond King difficulty. It's like the Easy Mode of Civ V. I mean, I guess whatever floats your boat, it's probably appealing to be able to have a completely open sandbox to do whatever the hell you want with no real competition. There is lots of competition for me actually! I quit because I'm horribly outmatched about 40% of the time. Like I said before I can't stand not building all the buildings in all my cities. It's why I enjoy playing as Rome. Also I don't enjoy following "optimized strategies" just because that is the only way to win on Immortal/Deity. To flip things around, I don't see how people can still have fun on the higher difficulties. Like the people who say to only take a "Tradition" opener. Sometimes I want to start with Liberty, or *gasp* Piety. Though with all that said I'll probably bump the difficulty up to Emperor next time I play because King is pretty easy when you are familiar with the Civ your playing.
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Sep 27, 2013 06:26
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:There isn't a penalty for denying but there is a bonus for accepting. It's not super strong though, so yeah, it's mostly just added pointless fluff to make turns take even longer to process. No, I won't give you freebies. I don't give a poo poo that we're friends with the same person. You probably shouldn't brag about your army when you're a total idiot who will lose a 4:1 fight in your favor. The constant fluff messages really slow the pace of the game down and everyone really just tries to mash the button to skip through it as fast as possible after they see the messages once, it's so pointless. I don't know, I think that this adds flavor to the game and assists in helping the player develop a personal relationship with their neighbours. Admit it; it feels good to wipe out a civilization that had been smack talking you for 250 turns.
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Sep 27, 2013 06:44
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HappyHelmet posted:There is lots of competition for me actually! I quit because I'm horribly outmatched about 40% of the time. Like I said before I can't stand not building all the buildings in all my cities. It's why I enjoy playing as Rome. Also I don't enjoy following "optimized strategies" just because that is the only way to win on Immortal/Deity. I dunno, I found myself creating the most outlandish strategies in Emperor and still winning. I mean, I can kind of sort of see what you're saying, but that aspect is really overblown. Some people have this attitude where they consider simply playing well to be "spergy optimization." Stuff like Tradition's dominance is also overblown. You can definitely win on Emperor by starting Liberty or Honor. Probably Piety too. What's more important is that you know how to fight the AI in combat (not hard, I think I've lost 2 wars in my entire time playing Civ V  ), knowing how manipulate the AI in diplomacy, and just having the basics down like improvement and building priorities, when to expand and city placement, etc. You single out building every building as a big flaw in your play and that's somewhat of an issue but not really, you just have to build them in the right order. Most buildings are useful in most cities (something I don't actually like about V). If you actually step up the difficulty and give Emperor a shot, eventually it will feel like King does to you now, where you can experiment and do unusual stuff and still win easily.
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Sep 27, 2013 07:35
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:I dunno, I found myself creating the most outlandish strategies in Emperor and still winning. I mean, I can kind of sort of see what you're saying, but that aspect is really overblown. Some people have this attitude where they consider simply playing well to be "spergy optimization." Stuff like Tradition's dominance is also overblown. You can definitely win on Emperor by starting Liberty or Honor. Probably Piety too. What's more important is that you know how to fight the AI in combat (not hard, I think I've lost 2 wars in my entire time playing Civ V Oh, I totally agree. Like I said I plan to bump up the difficulty to Emperor now that I'm done dicking around playing all the Civs. I was talking more about Immortal and Deity. Guess I wasn't very clear on that. It's my understanding that Emperor isn't much of a step up from King, but from Emperor to Immortal is pretty steep. I don't know. Maybe one of the goons can clarify that for me.
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Sep 27, 2013 07:47
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I don't really play on Deity much, mostly Immortal and Emperor, but when I watch youtube LPers play Deity, most actually dislike being gamey and avoid exploits. Exploits are absolutely not necessary. Gamiest thing LPer MadDjinn does, for example, is worker steal from city states. Declare war, capture a worker, and make peace on the same turn. But that's actually an intentionally designed feature that has pros and cons so even that's not too bad. Overall, that guy just gets by on being extremely good at the game. He's won on Diety pretty much with every leader using every strategy out there, totally winging it along the way. I say this to illustrate that Deity and especially Immortal are not as restrictive as people think. Immortal is a bigger jump than the one to Emperor but you still have a good deal of freedom to do what you want, as long as you do that well. The one thing that probably upped my game more than any other strategy was selling resources. For whatever reason, during my first dozen or so games a while back I never even considered doing so. I just traded them resource for resource or sat on them. Instead, trade them when you need more happiness and sell the rest to whoever will be your friend. Sell them at every single opportunity you can. If you don't have any friends, then just sell them for GPT instead. The extra gold you get, especially early on, is extremely important.
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Sep 27, 2013 09:07
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HappyHelmet posted:It's my understanding that Emperor isn't much of a step up from King, but from Emperor to Immortal is pretty steep. I don't know. Maybe one of the goons can clarify that for me. I found the leap to Immortal much greater than any other spike. I play on Marathon so the difficulty is lessened. Immortal required me to plan and think ahead. Usually I walk around beating people with sticks until I win. The fantastic thing about Civ 5 is that you can play it in such a wide variety of ways. Don't feel bad if you find a way you enjoy playing. I love reading about people's different styles and wins; I love the diversity.
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Sep 27, 2013 09:32
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Eh? There aren't any cons to stealing a worker from a city state early on. You get a temporary hit to your standing with that CS, which will wear off by the time you actually care about such things. With the game as it stands, you should always steal a worker.
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Sep 27, 2013 09:38
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For me, at the moment, the Thing I'm Aware Of But Never Do Because Reasons is pillaging during an invasion. I just plum forget most of the time, or I have what seems like a more important move in mind. But I've recently taken it on board and it really makes a big difference. Before, the Thing was flanking, then it was Zone of Control, then it was Cover promotions, then it was politics (Into the Renaissance helped me with that) then it was growth management (which Conquest of the New World helped me realise) What will the Thing be next? probably demanding tribute from city-states, because at the moment i just can't be arsed
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Sep 27, 2013 09:57
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Gort posted:Eh? There aren't any cons to stealing a worker from a city state early on. You get a temporary hit to your standing with that CS, which will wear off by the time you actually care about such things. There's a diplomacy hit. Other civs will see you as a warmonger. If you do it to one city, the warmonger penalty won't be too bad and will wear off. Do it two a second and the other civs will really start liking you less by quite a bit and it will take longer to wear off.
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Sep 27, 2013 09:59
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I've got my first multiplayer game coming up and I'm looking for some fun, stupid and not-entirely-terrible gimmicks to do. Some ones I were thinking of for example were ICS with Egypt, friends-with-all-the-cs-from-the-start Siam and the like.
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Sep 27, 2013 10:41
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:There's a diplomacy hit. Other civs will see you as a warmonger. If you do it to one city, the warmonger penalty won't be too bad and will wear off. Do it two a second and the other civs will really start liking you less by quite a bit and it will take longer to wear off. Eh, many times you won't even have met a civ by the time you're stealing a worker. You do get noticeable downsides for stealing multiple workers, but that's why you only steal one.
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Sep 27, 2013 11:27
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Speaking of multiplayer. One of my friends was a big Civ4 fan back in the day, and I convinced him to get Civ5 after it (with GnK) hit £6 at some point (thanks Thread). He's played one game so far, so understandably he's a bit poo poo at it at the moment. But we did a multiplayer game last night and lol, I did not realise how hilariously poo poo he is. For a substantial portion of the game he was generating no science. This was a combination of running a deficit (how much I'm unsure) and having no libraries. I was breaking into the Renaissance with 100+ science by the time he got his house in order, but he was still getting only 25 science. This was with 10 cities to my 2. Well, it turned out that every time the game asked for a new tech, he just picked whatever looked best from the sidebar list. So he had managed to reach the medieval era without even getting pottery, let alone writing  Also when I finally discovered his capital at around 1500AD it had a population of 3
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Sep 27, 2013 11:30
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To be fair, Civ5 growth is extremely different to Civ4 growth. Civ4 covers the map in food resources, and those are the things you settle and compete for to drive your economy. Civ5 is much flatter, you work basic farms from the start, and you're supposed to use things besides tile improvements to grow. He probably had no idea you could build farms on non-freshwater tiles. AlsoD posted:I've got my first multiplayer game coming up and I'm looking for some fun, stupid and not-entirely-terrible gimmicks to do. Some ones I were thinking of for example were ICS with Egypt, friends-with-all-the-cs-from-the-start Siam and the like. I'd be wary of ICS Egypt, 10 cities means you need to build 10 burial tombs, and that means 10 delicious gold-laden prizes to whomever behaves proactively towards ICS Egypt.
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Sep 27, 2013 11:35
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Why the hell are all my puppets building Workshops instead of colosseums when I'm at -9 happiness?  I distinctly remember that they're supposed to prioritize happiness and gold-production above all else.
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Sep 27, 2013 21:27
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Geight posted:Why the hell are all my puppets building Workshops instead of colosseums when I'm at -9 happiness? I've noticed they generally will build happiness if your empire is unhappy, but they won't switch mid-project, so maybe your empire was at positive happiness when they started the workshop?
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Sep 27, 2013 21:41
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Puppets never change what they are building, and they are kinda dumb. I've had a puppet build wealth for several turns despite having a lot of building options left. Other puppets were building those buildings fine and I wasn't anywhere near losing money per turn.
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Sep 27, 2013 21:44
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So I figure this might be the best place to ask a question regarding Civ4 and FFH. Does anyone know of any submods that are decent for FFH besides Rise from Erebus? We're doing a lan party and FFH2 came up as the strategy game of choice, but we're looking to spice it up and Rise from Erebus desyncs constantly, at least the versions we've found.
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Sep 27, 2013 21:47
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Another weird thing about puppets: they would work on World Congress stuff like the World's Fair when I played as Venice, but not with any other civ. Also Poland is indeed insanely good. I got a space victory around 1905 on standard speed when the other civs were still somewhere mid-Modern era in tech. I would have gotten it even sooner if I hadn't wasted social policies filling out all my ideology slots. There was no achievement. 
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Sep 27, 2013 22:56
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Star Platinum posted:Another weird thing about puppets: they would work on World Congress stuff like the World's Fair when I played as Venice, but not with any other civ.
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Sep 27, 2013 23:01
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Star Platinum posted:Another weird thing about puppets: they would work on World Congress stuff like the World's Fair when I played as Venice, but not with any other civ. That makes sense, and is likely intentional. Since projects like that can't be bought, Venice would have no possible way of competing with just one city otherwise.
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Sep 27, 2013 23:01
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