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Gort posted:Drown them in elephants, that's what Siam always does to me. Yeah, from my experiences with AI Siam they really should rename the UA to "Elephants Stomp Children"
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Mar 22, 2014 22:48
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Gort posted:There's definitely something to be said for playing the Aztecs and taking the Honour opener to double the culture output of barbarians. Where are you getting thousands of gold from, though? Camps only give like 25 gold, don't they? Yeah, that's only forty camps. 80-90 turns per grand on Normal speed, then? When the AI isn't around to keep an eye out, if you just keep your guys in your borders and only scout to explore rather than keep barbarians down, they spawn surprisingly frequently.
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Mar 22, 2014 22:50
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The White Dragon posted:Yeah, that's only forty camps. Eighty camps  , but that seems like a lot more than I ever see or want to see. Clearing barbarians is pretty necessary if you don't want your caravans to die. Or are you playing on a vast map with tons of space or something, or using Raging Barbarians to game it?With your "80-90 turns on normal speed to kill 40 camps" comment, are you saying you kill a barbarian camp every other turn? Cause that sounds insane compared to my experience. I might kill a dozen camps in an entire game.
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Mar 22, 2014 22:56
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Someone on civfanatics posted a guide to playing with piety: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=521674 . I've tried it a few times and it's definitely an interesting way to go; you pretty much struggle to grow until the renaissance, where the bonuses to religion really kick in. Using the accumulated bonuses to go on a massive war spree, or city-state buying, or tech boost rather than the steady progression of tradition creates an interesting world stage. For some civs (Celts, Ethopia, Songhai) it almost seems the gameplay it was meant for. The main problem is lack of culture growth, really, but if I roll a map with silk/incense and grab the pantheon belief for culture/faith from plantations it's my now go-to.
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Mar 22, 2014 23:12
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Gort posted:With your "80-90 turns on normal speed to kill 40 camps" comment, are you saying you kill a barbarian camp every other turn? Cause that sounds insane compared to my experience. I might kill a dozen camps in an entire game. Yeah that's my experience as well. To beat the 3 culture per turn from tradition you'd have to kill a barbarian warrior every other turn for the rest of the game. I don't get near that many kills and I'll only clear a few camps usually before the whole place is getting fog busted.
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Mar 22, 2014 23:18
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Bashez posted:Yeah that's my experience as well. To beat the 3 culture per turn from tradition you'd have to kill a barbarian warrior every other turn for the rest of the game. I don't get near that many kills and I'll only clear a few camps usually before the whole place is getting fog busted. You don't ignore Tradition in favor of Honor; you grab the Honor opener either immediately after or immediately before the Tradition opener. It only takes a few kills at +8 culture per to make up the cost of the extra social policy, and then you can proceed as normal except that you can murderize barbarians with ease and get notified when their camps pop up.
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Mar 22, 2014 23:43
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Bashez posted:Yeah that's my experience as well. To beat the 3 culture per turn from tradition you'd have to kill a barbarian warrior every other turn for the rest of the game. I don't get near that many kills and I'll only clear a few camps usually before the whole place is getting fog busted. He's talking about gold income from camp clearing. But even talking about pure culture output, as anyone but the Aztecs it's pretty much impossible to make up for the cost of taking the policy. And as the Aztecs, you only take it because it supplements a strategy you're probably already employing. If all you're taking the honor opener for is to generate extra culture, you're being really inefficient and should definitely reconsider. TooMuchAbstraction posted:You don't ignore Tradition in favor of Honor; you grab the Honor opener either immediately after or immediately before the Tradition opener. It only takes a few kills at +8 culture per to make up the cost of the extra social policy, and then you can proceed as normal except that you can murderize barbarians with ease and get notified when their camps pop up. You're calculating the cost wrong, and aren't considering the escalating SP costs. You should consider your short-term goal (finishing tradition, for example), and consider how many extra culture points you now need to generate because you took an extra policy first. It's a lot more than the initial cost of that policy. Taking honor immediately doesn't speed up finishing Tradition or any other tree, it almost always slows it down, unless you play on raging barbs. edit: To put it in a simpler way, you're going from needing 6 policies to 7 policies to finish that tree, thanks to your detour. That extra 7th policy should cost over 500 culture, if I remember right. At +8 culture per barb, that's over 60 barb you'll need to kill before you finish that first tree in order to speed up its completion. I rarely kill that many barbs in an entire game. Honor's opener is not meant to help you speed up the completion of other trees, it pretty much cannot do that under almost any circumstance. It's meant to make it so you're not completely culture starved while filling out the rest of its own tree. Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Mar 23, 2014 |
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Mar 22, 2014 23:45
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I dunno. What's the 7th policy cost? Like ~400 culture on standard? That's 50 barbarian brutes... kind of a stretch, but not too bad. One of the perks of honor if you're not warmongering is that it lets you get by with fewer units due to the strength bonus and auto scouting, which can be worth a little delay. But in a crowded map the AIs are going to keep barbarians away and leave you unable to make up much culture.
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Mar 22, 2014 23:58
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Gabriel Pope posted:I dunno. What's the 7th policy cost? Like ~400 culture on standard? That's 50 barbarian brutes... kind of a stretch, but not too bad. One of the perks of honor if you're not warmongering is that it lets you get by with fewer units due to the strength bonus and auto scouting, which can be worth a little delay. But in a crowded map the AIs are going to keep barbarians away and leave you unable to make up much culture. 50 brutes is not "kind of a stretch" but drat near impossible. Keep in mind you'll be wanting to kill these 50 brutes before you finish your 7th policy in order to at least break even. But also, I believe the cost of the 7th policy is much higher than that, and even higher if you have more than one city.
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Mar 23, 2014 00:04
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Gort posted:With your "80-90 turns on normal speed to kill 40 camps" comment, are you saying you kill a barbarian camp every other turn? Cause that sounds insane compared to my experience. I might kill a dozen camps in an entire game. I've noticed the spawn rate of camps themselves (not units from camps) tends to get kind of bottlenecked if you don't take care of them immediately. The faster you clear them out, the faster a new one will pop up to take its place. Under normal conditions--let's assume you have your capital and two other cities blocking off a corner of your continent and then the AI doing its thing on the rest of the landmass--if you hunted barbarians as soon as they spawned (and they'll only ever spawn in your isolated corner because the AI is good at keeping them from appearing, so you'd rarely see them on the AI's part of the continent), you'd probably see the one camp come back every ten to twenty turns or so. But if you took over your entire continent and didn't set up like Scouts or +1 Sight Horsemen to keep them from showing up, yeah, you'd definitely see a camp popping up every 10-20 turns per city. It's not unbelievable when you break it up like that. I know the way I'm saying it makes it sound like it respawns in the same place every other turn, but that's totally not what's happening here. Fur20 fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Mar 23, 2014 |
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Mar 23, 2014 00:29
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The White Dragon posted:It's not unbelievable when you break it up like that. Possibly the least accurate part of this post. So your strategy is to take over your entire continent and then purposefully not fog bust to farm culture? This scheme is always sunny.
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Mar 23, 2014 00:42
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Well it's actually an unintended (but nevertheless welcome) side-effect of taking over my continent. When I first did it, I didn't mean for it to work so cleanly and I was just looking for a good way to keep the barbarians under control. The culture I get from the Honor opener is a nice bonus, but now it's mostly so I always get notified about "a donation to the Build Universities Everywhere fund has appeared." Basically you're thinking of it backwards: I started out looking for a way to avoid the problem of too many barbarians once the AI isn't around to babysit them, but I ended up with a really good way to get very nice income bonuses until the Renaissance era 
Fur20 fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Mar 23, 2014 |
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Mar 23, 2014 00:58
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I take honor because I am bad at videogames and they will pillage the hell out of my stuff if I can't genocide them fast enough. (It's me, I'm the one who was sieged by the 12-strong barbarian horde) Speaking of, what are some tips for dealing with barbs in general? The always annoy the hell out of me. Last game I found myself under attack by a Barbarian destroyer.
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Mar 23, 2014 10:53
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HellCopter posted:Speaking of, what are some tips for dealing with barbs in general? The always annoy the hell out of me. Last game I found myself under attack by a Barbarian destroyer. Keep cavalry around to respond swiftly. You should also send them to areas where the barbs are likely to spawn. Position cheap units on hills so that there are no areas close to your borders for barbs to spawn. I play on marathon huge with raging barbs and doing the above prevents barbs from ever being a problem.
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Mar 23, 2014 11:11
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Barbarians naturally follow the general tech rate of the world, though they get a malus. This malus is adjustable by looking in the files. I'm weird and run them at 99% of the world's tech. I also run Raging Hordes. They are however odd, in that they'll spawn ANYTHING they're capable of 'building'. Assuming the camp spawns a water unit three times(You can modify the odds of a coastal camp spawning a water unit vs a land unit also), you might get 1 Destroyer then 2 Galleys, 3 galleys, a galley, a frigate, and a destroyer, 3 destroyers, or something like that. Barbs have distance restrictions on where their camps can spawn relative to each other and relative to where cities are. The more people settle, the less space there is for them. Normal barbs don't spawn 'wild'. If there are barbarians, there is a camp. Of course if other civs or you have lots of unhappiness, you could also be seeing Rebels-they are under the barbarian faction too and can spawn wherever. Bloodly fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Mar 23, 2014 |
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Mar 23, 2014 11:14
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I wonder how the game would be if barbs got access to the unique units that aren't used by civs or military city states. But being hit by a barbarian legionary might suck.
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Mar 23, 2014 11:38
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Poil posted:I wonder how the game would be if barbs got access to the unique units that aren't used by civs or military city states. But being hit by a barbarian legionary might suck. Barbarian sea beggars. That is a scary prospect.
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Mar 23, 2014 11:53
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Playing Warlock 2, there's a mechanic I wish they would port over or mod into Civ 5. (or maybe Civ 6) In Warlock 2, you have an "optimal number of cities" which starts at 5 and goes up with technology to 11. You can exceed the number, but it costs you gold and unhappiness, so it's not really worth going more than one over the limit. Thing is, though, you can still build cities - you just convert them to "special cities" that you don't have direct control over. You can't build units or buildings in these cities, and they don't count towards your city limit, but they're still yours and you can still do things like garrison them and they can still shoot enemy units. There are three types of "special city": Free city: Gives you a small amount of gold every turn Fortress: Has a powerful ranged attack and a ton of hitpoints, doesn't do much else Temple city: Makes a god like you and gives you mana, not really something to put in Civ For civ, maybe dump the temple city and put in centres of art and culture, holy cities, centres of learning... They should only produce a small amount of their resource.
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Mar 23, 2014 12:21
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You could keep temple cities and have them produce faith.
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Mar 23, 2014 12:42
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The other thing I really like is that cities have a fair few hitpoints, but melee units barely get damaged when they attack them, which means melee units aren't utterly worthless at their main job.
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Mar 23, 2014 15:15
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After watching most of Maddjinns preview lp of it, melee units are even more worthless than in CiV. Ranged units will support nearby units who are attacked in melee and that means ranged units doesn't even need melee units in front to absorb damage.
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Mar 23, 2014 15:22
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:edit: To put it in a simpler way, you're going from needing 6 policies to 7 policies to finish that tree, thanks to your detour. That extra 7th policy should cost over 500 culture, if I remember right. At +8 culture per barb, that's over 60 barb you'll need to kill before you finish that first tree in order to speed up its completion. I rarely kill that many barbs in an entire game. Honor's opener is not meant to help you speed up the completion of other trees, it pretty much cannot do that under almost any circumstance. It's meant to make it so you're not completely culture starved while filling out the rest of its own tree. It's a good point - you have to kill a lot of barbarians to make up for the deficit, and unless you have raging barbarians on, it's likely not going to happen. That being said, Barbarians do produce more modern units which are worth greater cultural points for eliminating them. If you can carefully farm a few barbarian camps for the rest of the game you may end up with barbarian infantry, which are something along the lines of 70 culture each, it really starts to add up enough. As the game progresses, that extra culture you've been amassing from massacring barbarians in an almost perverse fashion since the start of the game goes towards your cultural total, which makes it harder for other civ's to push their tourism modifiers onto you. Another reason I pick the Honour opener as my 2nd policy after Tradition's opener, is to get started by upgrading my units through experience. You can't get +1 Range just by farming barbarians (unless you modify civ5globaldefines.xml) but you can get your units really close to level 4 - and many here will attest, an early pair of composite bowmen with 3 range against an AI Civ is pretty much an instant win against cities. Farming Barbarians can also grant you a great general. Lastly, if you play as Sweden, you can go 1 policy deeper to take warrior code, and donate the great general warrior code gives you to donate that to a city state for immediate ally status - which can be a boon if you happen to find a maritime (+3 food in capital) or a faith-based city state. * * * * Also, if you modify civ5globaldefines.xml to increase barbarian spawn rates to x4 that of raging barbarians status, you strangely get a lot more "peaceful" game amongst the other civ's, since the AI is bad at assessing the threat level the barbarians pose to the game. The AI has less money (even on Deity) as Barbarians attack new AI cities and empty AI gold coffers, or capture their workers-settlers-missionaries-great prophets (giving you positive influence for rescuing them). Barbarians help to preserve cultural ruins (since scouts get demolished by 4+ axemen), they create giant "dead zones" where borders don't touch (creating less animosity), and you can ally up easily with city states just by clearing out barbarians for them (like the MSF mod). Of course, it makes for trade with other civ's a huge challenge, since you constantly have to protect your routes nonstop. Destroying a barbarian camp pretty much takes a 3+ unit army just to overcome the sheer amount of units they create.
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Mar 23, 2014 16:45
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Poil posted:After watching most of Maddjinns preview lp of it, melee units are even more worthless than in CiV. Ranged units will support nearby units who are attacked in melee and that means ranged units doesn't even need melee units in front to absorb damage. I hadn't seen the support stuff yet, that does sound pretty bad. I saw it was going to happen once, so I hit the offender with a shadow bolt and a few arrows of my own then my melee ate the survivor alive. I'd still like Civ 5 melee units to take a lot less damage from attacking cities. Edit: Thinking about this a little further, perhaps the obvious solution would be for melee units to just take zero damage when attacking, same as ranged units. One nice thing Warlock has going for it as well is the fact that ranged units can conquer cities that have 0 HP, so you never get the weird thing where the AI surrounds your city with archers but can't take it because they've blocked off their melee units from approaching the city. Guigui posted:That being said, Barbarians do produce more modern units which are worth greater cultural points for eliminating them. If you can carefully farm a few barbarian camps for the rest of the game you may end up with barbarian infantry, which are something along the lines of 70 culture each, it really starts to add up enough. By that point you'll be producing hundreds if not thousands of culture a turn, though. There's a good reason people emphasise the floating garden side of the Aztecs as being the thing that makes them good, rather than the UA. Culture from unit death is pretty much always just a drop in the bucket, and the micromanagement you have to go through to achieve even a reasonable return just seems tiresome to me. Gort fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Mar 23, 2014 |
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Mar 23, 2014 16:47
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Tegan and Sankara posted:I think you have to raze a city immediately. I have a vague idea that there is a 'grace period' up to 5 turns, but if you don't do it immediately then you're stuck with the city forever. Not true. I checked - I could still raze Nimrud ages later. Gort posted:You can't raze holy cities.
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Mar 23, 2014 18:58
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Jimbozig posted:Not true. I checked - I could still raze Nimrud ages later.
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Mar 23, 2014 20:44
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Quick goon game about to start for anyone interested.
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Mar 23, 2014 23:56
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I have never ever done anything with city states. Should I? Am I missing out?
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Mar 24, 2014 17:09
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ManOfTheYear posted:I have never ever done anything with city states. Should I? Am I missing out? Having city-state allies will give you additional votes in the world congress if you want to pass resolutions or win a diplomatic victory. Even if you don't care about diplomacy you're going to want votes to prevent other players from getting their way in the world congress and you'll get free luxuries, strategic resources and the occasional military unit for your trouble.
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Mar 24, 2014 17:22
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ManOfTheYear posted:I have never ever done anything with city states. Should I? Am I missing out? Depends. You get an extra vote in the world congress per allied city state, so it's always fun to embargo a friend or make your crappy religion a world religion due to a vote. It's also smart to keep city states liking you if you have Sweden, Austria, Venice, or Greece in your game.
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Mar 24, 2014 17:23
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It's worth at least checking for easy-to-satisfy quests. Like, if a city-state wants a trade route, then it can be worth tossing one to them instead of to whatever normal city you were going to send that caravan to. If they want your religion and you're spreading it anyway, might as well toss a missionary their way. Sometimes you'll get setups where city-state A wants you to get a resource, city-state B will give you that resource if you ally with them, and city-state A also gives a resource that city-state C wants you to get! City-state benefits can be subtle, but they're a valid way to smooth out your economy. Like, if you have good gold income but bad happiness, then you can bribe mercantile city-states and effectively turn that gold into happiness. The extra food from...whatever that city-state category is...can boost your growth. And militaristic city-states can practically build your entire army for you, assuming you don't mind not having much choice in what kind of units you get (if nothing else, you can convert the unit into cash as soon as you get it).
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Mar 24, 2014 17:24
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Doltos posted:Depends. You get an extra vote in the world congress per allied city state, so it's always fun to embargo a friend or make your crappy religion a world religion due to a vote. It's also smart to keep city states liking you if you have Sweden, Austria, Venice, or Greece in your game. Venice's ability to appropriate city-states gives zero shits about whether that city-state likes them or not. However, Venice also makes a hell of a lot of cash if played correctly, which makes them extremely capable of allying any city-states they don't outright buy. Siam's another example of a civ which benefits more from city-state alliances and should therefore be prevented from having very many. (Also a civ which should be killed early on, because gently caress elephants.)
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Mar 24, 2014 17:28
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City States are super powerful and their bonuses will go a long way to helping you climb to a higher difficulty. Completing an easy quest or two for a CS early on can net you enough extra happiness to drop an extra city early or keep your existing cities growing, or you could use your excess happiness to sell off luxuries to the AI to float your economy until you've got time to throw up a trade route. Cultural/religious CS are also great for getting up your religion a little earlier or getting an extra policy or two going in the early game. Later on their bonuses become enormous and their votes are invaluable. They've gone from nearly useless at release to a really neat and valuable mechanic, don't ignore them!
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Mar 24, 2014 17:30
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Vil posted:Venice's ability to appropriate city-states gives zero shits about whether that city-state likes them or not. However, Venice also makes a hell of a lot of cash if played correctly, which makes them extremely capable of allying any city-states they don't outright buy. Yeah I was thinking more of the bribe votes than the city-states you take over. Although, I do love camping right outside of Venice's boundaries and killing their great merchants whenever they venture out.
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Mar 24, 2014 17:31
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Anyone have suggestions for some fun fan-made civs to mod in? I'm getting a little tired of the standard cast of characters but there are so many mods to choose from in the steam workshop I don't know where to start.
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Mar 24, 2014 18:06
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Loads of people recommend the MSF civ, and it's actually mechanically interesting rather than just being blandly overpowered. Venice is possibly the most powerful civ there is for a Diplomatic victory. Vast stacks of cash for bribery plus double trade routes for the +4 influence per turn on 12 cities from Freedom and they're tough to beat.
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Mar 24, 2014 19:23
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Gort posted:Loads of people recommend the MSF civ, and it's actually mechanically interesting rather than just being blandly overpowered. Double trade routes also applies to Petra and Colossus. And if you don't get to build them yourself, remember that while Venice can't found cities, it's perfectly capable of conquering them.
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Mar 24, 2014 20:03
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:And militaristic city-states can practically build your entire army for you, assuming you don't mind not having much choice in what kind of units you get (if nothing else, you can convert the unit into cash as soon as you get it). Militaristic are bottom of my list for benefits, but I always make sure I have a lock on any city-state between me and a rival, whether it's an active war or just covering my flank while I'm attacking someone else. They seldom range very far from their borders but the AI will happily walk lone units towards a city-state to grind down its army for you. And you benefit from not having to waste time killing off the city state army en passant. Probably not a strictly necessary advantage but an excellent and sometimes borderline exploitative perk.
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Mar 24, 2014 23:37
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I wouldn't necessarily call it exploitative. I'd think that's just common diplomacy sense to surround yourself with allies if you can.
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Mar 24, 2014 23:58
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Came across an odd thing yesterday. A full strength unit of... Warriors iirc, belonging to the AI, in a hex next to a barbarian unit that was reduced to a single warrior. Each turn the barbarian unit did exactly 10 damage to the AI, and each turn, even though they could have easily stomped the barbarian, the AI just rested up and healed all ten back. They just stood there fighting an eternal war. Not seen that before.
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Mar 25, 2014 00:16
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Jedi Knight Luigi posted:I wouldn't necessarily call it exploitative. I'd think that's just common diplomacy sense to surround yourself with allies if you can. Oh it's totally sensible, intuitive strategy but the way the AI blunders about makes it a lot more beneficial than the power of the CS would predict.
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Mar 25, 2014 01:01
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