|
nessin posted:In light of the optimal strategy talk, I've always stuck to the lower difficulties (generally Prince) and just did whatever I wanted. Usually results in some reasonably fun games in the early part until I play on the AI weaknesses enough to steam roll or there is one AI that has got obscenely big and I'm not enough of a micro manager to even attempt to catch up. My problem is I can never stand to play until the late game (usually stop with the first tier of gunpowder units) because one of those two things happen. I'm kind of interested in going up a step and trying to play a longer game but, as stupid as it sounds, I've got no idea how to really be competitive with the AI once they start getting real bonuses. Part of the problem is I'm so used to focusing on building up my cities instead of balancing out units to stop (or start) aggression and just grabbing each column of tech as I hit them rather than advancing as needed or rushing for something. Any ideas on how I can setup a game, or enforce some house rules on myself, to make it fun to go into the late game or at least force myself to focus on a strategy rather than just playing haphazardly? You should try a one-city challenge on Prince with Babylon or Korea. Having only one city means that you'll have comparatively more time to devote to units, and the end game will seem less daunting.
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2015 17:41
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 28, 2024 09:38 |
|
|
What's the multiplayer like? How easy is it to get an online game running?
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2015 18:01
|
|
|
Baron Bifford posted:What's the multiplayer like? How easy is it to get an online game running? I don't think too much of it. * The game is too long to pick up and play with random pubbies - even on quick difficulty. Someone dropping two hours into a four hour game sucks. * The AI is lobotomised. If you choose to fill out your game world with AIs, they won't be able to propose deals to human players. * Combat is a "he who clicks first moves first" affair, so don't expect to be able to think much about your moves. It also leads to problems like your great general being sniped by a fast unit because there's no way to move him and an escorting unit at the same time. * It's not the most stable affair. People will drop and the game will resync a fair bit. * The poor balance of the game gets really obvious in multiplayer. Expect massive attacks of the most overpowered units in the game. The moment someone gets Artillery, expect to get hit by eight of them and six Foreign Legion units. THAT SAID: * It's a blast to play on a LAN with a few other players that you know and can rely on to continue games. * JaiiDerHerr released a mod to unlobotomise the AI in multiplayer.
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2015 18:15
|
|
|
nessin posted:In light of the optimal strategy talk, I've always stuck to the lower difficulties (generally Prince) and just did whatever I wanted. Usually results in some reasonably fun games in the early part until I play on the AI weaknesses enough to steam roll or there is one AI that has got obscenely big and I'm not enough of a micro manager to even attempt to catch up. My problem is I can never stand to play until the late game (usually stop with the first tier of gunpowder units) because one of those two things happen. I'm kind of interested in going up a step and trying to play a longer game but, as stupid as it sounds, I've got no idea how to really be competitive with the AI once they start getting real bonuses. Part of the problem is I'm so used to focusing on building up my cities instead of balancing out units to stop (or start) aggression and just grabbing each column of tech as I hit them rather than advancing as needed or rushing for something. Any ideas on how I can setup a game, or enforce some house rules on myself, to make it fun to go into the late game or at least force myself to focus on a strategy rather than just playing haphazardly? Tech: Basically and very hand-wavily, beeline things that give you science, with reasonable detours to things that help your population grow and/or help with happiness issues. You'll want to adjust somewhat depending on nearby threats (early-game Archery -> Construction is a lot more important if you're between Shaka and Attila than it is if you're on an island by yourself) and your overall goals (culture tends to favor some top/center techs, naval stuff is top, ground military is bottom), but always keep science as a pretty high priority even if you're not pursuing a science victory per se. The science beeline route in a vacuum is: Writing (Library, maaaaaybe Great Library) Philosophy (National College, time it around city building so you can get it right away) Education (University) Astronomy (Observatory, if adjacent to mountain) - If observatories aren't appealing, still get into renaissance quickly somehow, however meets your victory goal best, to unlock rationalism. Scientific Theory (Public School) Electricity (set up for Radio slingshot) Oxford College timed to finish just as or just after you learn Electricity (NOT BEFORE) to get you Radio (modern era => ideology, and likely the bonuses for first pick) - Yeah, that part's not science in a vacuum but it's really good anyway. Plastics (Research Labs) Satellites (Hubble and reveal any missing parts of world map) - While Hubble's a world wonder, if you're beelining science this hard your only competition will be other humans in multiplayer. Single player, you'll generally either be ahead or dead (or have won the game) by this time, regardless of difficulty. Military: If you don't like building units, consider getting some nice gold income set up somehow (so do build cargo ships or if necessary, caravans) and ally with militaristic city-states. They'll keep you stocked with enough new units to deter the AI on most difficulties, and your gold income can also go to keeping them upgraded. Alternatively, just set yourself a rule of thumb that you need to have a military unit near a city for each X population there, and pause the infrastructure to build something when needed. If going for domination victory this will be trivial since you'll be focusing more on units and less on infrastructure anyway. Otherwise, you generally don't need that many units to deter the AI from attacking you, so long as you keep them upgraded and don't over-expand.
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2015 20:42
|
|
|
Unfortunately team games with AI buddies are apparently unplayable. I'm 2 turns from taking a capital (with the great wall no less) and my AI teammate peaces out for both of us. Kinda reminds me of civ4 with vassals where you finally crush their entire army and take 1 city and suddenly they vassal to some other civ.
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2015 22:37
|
|
|
Sanctum posted:Kinda reminds me of civ4 with vassals where you finally crush their entire army and take 1 city and suddenly they vassal to some other civ. That's a feature actually. You pulverize an enemy so much, they may consider joining one of your enemies instead of joining you. This gives another AI (usually much bigger than the one you just beat up) extra resources to play with, and denies them to you. It's pure spite by the AI.
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2015 22:44
|
|
|
berryjon posted:It's pure spite by the AI. And totally something I could see a human player who's losing doing.
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2015 22:55
|
|
|
Yeah no vassaling just made mid-game wars pointless and turned the late-game into even more of a slog. Getting instantly ejected from enemy territory and given a forced peace treaty was annoying bullshit. The way war weariness worked in civ4 going to war with a civ & their vassal would bring your economy to a crawl. And you couldn't peace out once you commit, they wont take peace until their war weariness got high enough. The only thing you could do once a civ turned vassal was wait until you had police state + mt. rushmore to negate war weariness entirely. And taking on vassals was worthless because it meant not taking those cities for yourself. More than worthless because having a vassal increased all your maintenance. Combined with inflation that meant slowing your science more and more as time goes by.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2015 02:04
|
|
|
I wonder if it would be possible to mod in war alliances as part of diplomacy. In World War II the Allies all agreed not to create individual peace deals with the Axis, Civ should really have a similar feature.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2015 05:53
|
|
|
Baron Bifford posted:What's the multiplayer like? How easy is it to get an online game running? When it's stable MP is pretty great at this point. The NQ steam group provides players who will stick out a game, the NQ mod and NQ map fix the biggest issues for multiplayer in terms of balance and general pain. Don't play with AI - 6 man FFAs fire off pretty regularly. Click-war combat is actually super fun once you get a bit of practice at it, though when there is a significant first-move advantage it sucks (it's not too rare for one player to be able to get off 10 moves at the start of the turn before the other player can get off 1, even if they are clicking the same amount of orders. This can be mitigated with experience, but it's still painful.). MP opens up a lot of options that don't matter on the lower difficulties and get out-competed by the AI bonuses. Early wonders are viable - someone will get them. Religion becomes a much more important and interesting mechanic. With the NQ mod there are a lot more viable social policy routes. Diplomacy is with and against players so it's got a lot more depth.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2015 07:24
|
|
|
Baron Bifford posted:What's the multiplayer like? How easy is it to get an online game running? First, actual multiplayer in Civ (public games do not count) is typically divided into two categories: GMR (short for Giant Multiplayer Robot) and Live "No Quitters" games. GMR is a website and client that works as a stand-in for Civ's more or less utter lack of a proper "Play by Email" or "PBEM" system. Essentially, GMR works as a slow method of playing Civ, wherein you take a turn once a day or so and games are completed over months. This has the advantage of giving you the time to think through your turns and your strategies, and it also means combat works "as intended" and isn't a fast paced kludge like in a live game. It can also allow for more advanced diplomacy, as you can talk with and plan with other players in a more conducive manner than in a live game with just the chat. With that said, there is also disadvantages with this format, the obvious one is that games take forever. As part of this, you can run into the problem of skill disparity, not with other players, but your past self. It is a somewhat uniquely frustrating experience with GMR that often your biggest enemy isn't another player but yourself doing something stupid two months ago. As well, mods are a bit harder to get running and keep running on GMR, but not entirely impossible. The other option is Live "No Quitters" games. The moniker of "No Quitters" is the important point here, as these games are designed with certain rulesets that make it so no player can quit unless they lose their capital, are voted as irrelevant to the game, or can justify some sort of scenario for quitting (don't count on this, you'll probably get blacklisted from a group more than likely). The idea is to address the problem of public games and people just quitting and making it impossible to actually complete a game. The obvious downside here is that once you're in a game, you're in that game for the longhaul. You need at least 6 to 7 hours of time to play a game of Civ if it makes it to the end of the tech tree, and you need the mental fortitude to do this without any real breaks. As for mods, live Civ works better here, and there is a No Quitters balance mod which changes the game to work a lot better in a multiplayer environment. One other point on multiplayer. It is not single player, not at all. In fact, playing single player Civ can actively make you worse at multiplayer Civ because you get into bad habits which will cost you. As well, multiplayer is extremely tough in a competitive environment, more than likely you are going to be curb-stomped repeatedly until you understand the game better in multiplayer. Civ is a game ruled by skill disparity, if you do not know what you are doing, you have zero hope of ever coming close to winning a multiplayer game. With that said, if you are still interested after that, look into Filthy Robot's channel, which is focused on multiplayer Civ and teaching you how it works.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2015 07:29
|
|
|
I've assembled all the spaceship parts at my capital but cannot launch. I may have already won a Time Victory - is this the reason?
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2015 12:26
|
|
|
Baron Bifford posted:I've assembled all the spaceship parts at my capital but cannot launch. I may have already won a Time Victory - is this the reason? Yes. You can't launch spaceship parts if a player has already won the game.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2015 12:36
|
|
|
Probably that. I resumed playing an old save file and must have forgotten. On another topic, can anybody explain me the nuances of Ideologies, Public Opinion, and Influence? I know Tourism is a big element but I find that even why I have high (if not the highest) Tourism rating I still get dissatisfaction form my people. Also, for some reason the Freedom ideology is not popular with the AI. Baron Bifford fucked around with this message at 12:47 on Oct 19, 2015 |
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2015 12:45
|
|
|
Baron Bifford posted:Probably that. I resumed playing an old save file and must have forgotten. In the AI's opinion, Freedom is best for small, tall empires. Given their happiness boosts, most AIs tend to go for either big, sprawling empires (and Order is better) or giant military conquest empires (in which case Autocracy is better). So in any 10-civ game, only 1 or 2 will be naturally pushed towards a Freedom ideology. On top of that, usually the second and third AIs to get an Ideology will go for one that wasn't chosen yet so as to get the bonuses for being the first to choose it, and so really in your 10-civ game only 7 get a choice, and now only 1 of them is likely to go Freedom. Two things matter in public opinion: Tourism and Culture. Consider Tourism as "offensive" opinion, and Culture as "defensive" opinion. You can have a sky-high Tourism rating, which will give dissatisfaction to your opponents, but if you have a mediocre-to-low Culture production compared to their Tourism factor, you'll get dissatisfaction as well. Remember that you can end up boosting their Tourism on you by having Open Borders or the same religion as them.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2015 13:18
|
|
|
Baron Bifford posted:Probably that. I resumed playing an old save file and must have forgotten. You know how if you go on the screen where it shows turns-to-culture-victory there are all these descriptors of levels of influence? Like, if you don't have any tourism, you are "Unknown" in them, or if you have total tourism > 50% of their total culture you are "Familiar" or whatever. Those are important to public opinion. First, look at any one other civilization. You get ideology pressure based on their influence with you compared to your influence on them. I think this is done so that whoever has the higher rank generates pressure points in the other civ equal to the number of levels higher - if they are Exotic in your civ and you are Exotic+1 (Known?) in theirs, they get +1 pressure towards your ideology - but there might be some base rate of pressure which is not canceled out by being more influential. Do this with every single other civ to figure out how much total ideology pressure you are getting. Then, Public Opinion is based on how many pressure points you are getting. Pressure from people with your ideology lowers it, pressure from anybody else increases it. Having lower than content public opinion gives you a happiness penalty based on number of cities or amount of population, whichever gives you the bigger penalty. If one or two civs with particularly high tourism+culture go to the same ideology, they may cause a cascade where someone else gets forced to change ideology to avoid revolution, which amps up the pressure on everyone else, until there's only one or two holdouts. Glidergun fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Oct 19, 2015 |
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2015 16:31
|
|
|
Playing with the Community patch, does anyone know how the game evaluates vassalization? I managed to kick Montezuma's rear end in the classical era before it was an option (Legions are great), and for whatever reason he decided to try it again in the early industrial. No matter what I offered him though, he would not accept vassalization as an offer, even when I put his capital and other occupied cities on the table. Actually, he wouldn't take back his single-tile island city either even when I asked for nothing in return. Was that just Monty being a dick, or are there some under the hood calculations there?
|
|
#
?
Oct 20, 2015 16:31
|
|
|
Triskelli posted:Playing with the Community patch, does anyone know how the game evaluates vassalization? I managed to kick Montezuma's rear end in the classical era before it was an option (Legions are great), and for whatever reason he decided to try it again in the early industrial. No matter what I offered him though, he would not accept vassalization as an offer, even when I put his capital and other occupied cities on the table. Actually, he wouldn't take back his single-tile island city either even when I asked for nothing in return. Uh, dunno if this is some Civ5 patch that adds vassalization or what, but I wouldn't expect a civ to accept vassalization from the civ that's actively trying to wipe it out. Generally you become the vassal of someone who protects you, so Monty should be looking for a "white knight" civ to come in and protect it from you. You aren't asking for a vassal; you're asking for Monty to surrender (more or less). Why would he surrender to you?
|
|
#
?
Oct 20, 2015 16:59
|
|
|
TooMuchAbstraction posted:Uh, dunno if this is some Civ5 patch that adds vassalization or what, but I wouldn't expect a civ to accept vassalization from the civ that's actively trying to wipe it out. Generally you become the vassal of someone who protects you, so Monty should be looking for a "white knight" civ to come in and protect it from you. Sorry, should have said I was referring to the Community Balance Patch. One of the things it adds is vassalization as well as "warscore". There is an option to add "Capitulation" to the terms of surrender, which is forces the loser to become the vassal of the winner. The documentation on how this stuff actually works is spotty though, and I was wondering if anyone had experience with this part of the mod.
|
|
#
?
Oct 20, 2015 18:58
|
|
|
TooMuchAbstraction posted:Uh, dunno if this is some Civ5 patch that adds vassalization or what, but I wouldn't expect a civ to accept vassalization from the civ that's actively trying to wipe it out. Generally you become the vassal of someone who protects you, so Monty should be looking for a "white knight" civ to come in and protect it from you. In Europa Universalis 4 it's quite common to demand that someone become your vassal as a result of you beating the crap out of them. "Yes, I promise to give you half my profits and fight with you in any wars you get into, just stop hitting me!" is a perfectly reasonable end to armed conflict. Unfortunately I can't answer the guy's actual question yet. I think I read somewhere that nobody ever accepts vassalisation requests in the current CBP build and the creator is looking at fixing that.
|
|
#
?
Oct 20, 2015 19:53
|
|
|
Gort posted:In Europa Universalis 4 it's quite common to demand that someone become your vassal as a result of you beating the crap out of them. "Yes, I promise to give you half my profits and fight with you in any wars you get into, just stop hitting me!" is a perfectly reasonable end to armed conflict. Well, those are basically the two ways conquests happen: "We own you now, we're executing all your nobility and the peasants can either adopt our culture and religion or die," and "we don't give a poo poo what you do so long as you pay our taxes and give us your armies" (basically the Roman system). See also the Genghis-era Mongols, who as a matter of policy offered conquerees-to-be the chance to accept Option B peaceably, or else have Option A forced on them. Violently.
|
|
#
?
Oct 20, 2015 21:07
|
|
|
Played this game a bit after not touching it for a long time. I decided to try the higher levels and I breezed through Emperor and Immortal after playing on King way back when. How big is the skill gap between Immortal and Deity? I kind of want to use a civ I've never tried before and Pachacuti looks good but I'd feel like it would sort of be cheating using a mountain map. I've used all the really good civs before except poland, but I can't figure out culture since they changed everything. Is inland sea a decent map? getting tired of pangea.
|
|
#
?
Oct 20, 2015 22:59
|
|
|
This is a win.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2015 02:25
|
|
|
Seltzer posted:Played this game a bit after not touching it for a long time. I decided to try the higher levels and I breezed through Emperor and Immortal after playing on King way back when. How big is the skill gap between Immortal and Deity? I kind of want to use a civ I've never tried before and Pachacuti looks good but I'd feel like it would sort of be cheating using a mountain map. I've used all the really good civs before except poland, but I can't figure out culture since they changed everything. Is inland sea a decent map? getting tired of pangea. Pretty huge; Deity gives the AIs a free extra settler on top of all their other bonuses getting ratcheted up another notch.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2015 02:26
|
|
|
Uziduke posted:This is a win. What am I looking at? Seems like a fairly ordinary diplomatic win. What Earth map is that?
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2015 08:59
|
|
|
Chamale posted:What am I looking at? Seems like a fairly ordinary diplomatic win. What Earth map is that? Random Huge Earth. Yeah it was a Diplo win. I had to drop some nukes at the end for fun.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2015 15:29
|
|
|
Baron Bifford posted:What's the multiplayer like? How easy is it to get an online game running? I have a crew of 4 and we play almost every night for the last couple years. It's *always* stable, single player is a boring chore in comparison now, and there are so many civs and setup combinations that it will never get old. Play with friends though. The last thing anyone should do is pit the endless quirks of civ 5 against a competitive nerd community.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2015 19:11
|
|
|
Has anyone noticed loading a multiplayer save game that a turn is lost? For example save on turn 100, load the game, and it's still turn 100, which the banner for comes up, then the AI turns process, the turn ends with no input, and then turn 101 starts. I've also seen THAT turn process and then finally get control on turn 102.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2015 04:36
|
|
|
Is there a way to get mods to work in multiplayer? I would love to play the white walkers mod with some friends
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2015 06:25
|
|
|
420 Gank Mid posted:Is there a way to get mods to work in multiplayer? I would love to play the white walkers mod with some friends MPMPM fake DLC creator It's a bit involved but follow the instructions carefully and it should work. Note, depending on how sloppy a modded is or whether they cared about multiplayer, this can be glitchy such as causing resyncs every turn. There is also the JdH multiplayer mod manager.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2015 15:44
|
|
|
^Interesting. I found this method before, and it worked with some mods: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...s/?id=233428613 Note that he didn't capitalize "Data" in some of the screenshots. Something to try if the other method doesn't work.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2015 16:12
|
|
|
Earlier someone was saying that the difficulty levels with the Community Patch are actually harder than the respective level in vanilla, and . . . I'm just not seeing it? I've been playing on Prince (which is supposedly equivalent to Immortal) and the AI has been about what I would expect on Prince, perhaps a bit better on the economic side of things, but absolutely woeful at fighting. I'm talking like, withdrawing units away from their capital as you approach, not attempting to put up any kind of resistance, not making invasion attempts themselves during a war etc. The age-old problem of "board a transport in full view of your ranged units" is still as apparent as ever too. The CBP is supposed to have AI improvements baked into it, right? Or should I be using something like Smart AI alongside it?
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2015 06:14
|
|
|
Yeah I have played a fair few games with CBP throughout its various iterations and I honestly don't find it to be much harder than vanilla - it honestly might be easier, maybe? I think a lot of it has to do with familiarity, since I pretty frequently gently caress up turns or moves due to "oh wait poo poo this works differently now" and I still generally find myself doing pretty well. For what its worth, the latest CBP version apparently massively improved the military AI, so that might do it. I haven't tested it myself yet since I started a LP on a prior version, but it seemed to be, like, the entire point of the patch so I'm willing to believe it helps. Regardless, other AI mods are probably a bad idea since I can't imagine they'd know what the gently caress to do with CBP's unique stuff.
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2015 07:29
|
|
|
I think I'm using the version just before that (looks like I downloaded it on the 21st just hours before that new patch dropped lol), so I'll try out the new version and see if those improvement are indeed in place. I hope so because the reason I went off the game when I last played it about a year ago was how frustratingly bad the AI was at war and its general inability to capture cities at all. Given how much weaker cities seem to be in CBP, I was hoping it would lead to more interesting and dynamic maps, but that's definitely not been the case in the version I've been playing.
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2015 09:24
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2015 02:38
|
|
|
So true. In my current game, Gandhi managed to build Porcelain Tower one turn before me and Taj Mahal two turns before. I've been his ally for millennia but I'm still tempted to nuke the bastard.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2015 18:18
|
|
|
Chamale posted:So true. In my current game, Gandhi managed to build Porcelain Tower one turn before me and Taj Mahal two turns before. I've been his ally for millennia but I'm still tempted to nuke the bastard. You have to teach him that your works are backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2015 20:11
|
|
|
 I got fed up with Deity-level AI, so I decided to have a little fun. I started a game on Prince to see what's the earliest I could get Theology as the Maya. I managed to get Great Library for Theology by turn 51 on Standard, which is the Mayan date of 2.18.something. I didn't get a Great Person when it rolled over, I think because the programmers assumed it was impossible to get Theology that early. Now I'm going to try on Settler, Marathon pace, and see what's the earliest it's theoretically possible to get Theology. My goal is to get there before b'ak'tun 2. edit: Too easy.  Strangely, it gave me a Great Person on the next turn, even though it wasn't the end of a b'ak'tun. I'll see if I can improve my time to b'ak'tun 0 and see how the game reacts. I think the best plan is to try to actually finish Liberty while building good stuff in the capital, and then use the free Great Engineer to build the Great Library. Chamale fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Oct 28, 2015 |
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 20:32
|
|
|
I love the Inca - one of the best civs for sure - but their UU has to be the most aggressively worthless UU in the game. A straight downgrade in terms of combat stats and a negative ability that is listed as a positive for some bizarre reason. Worst thing is their ability carries over when you upgrade so they will forever be a tainted ranged unit that will withdraw from combat and leave your great general to die if you forget which unit they are. The Inca 'slinger' is not even historically accurate. The slingers they refer to were an adaptation to deal with mounted troops which the Inca had never encountered before. But their ayllo (bolas) were never brought in great enough numbers to make a difference, they might have knocked a horse down here and there but to no great effect. How many horses did Pizarro even bring, 20 I think? And obviously the Inca had much bigger problems than spaniards on horses.
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2015 09:03
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 28, 2024 09:38 |
|
|
Sanctum posted:I love the Inca - one of the best civs for sure - but their UU has to be the most aggressively worthless UU in the game. A straight downgrade in terms of combat stats and a negative ability that is listed as a positive for some bizarre reason. Worst thing is their ability carries over when you upgrade so they will forever be a tainted ranged unit that will withdraw from combat and leave your great general to die if you forget which unit they are. Or just skip a UU altogether and give them a Tambo, either as a UB or a second UI.
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2015 09:55
|
|
