Sid Meier's Civilization 5 released today

[Julius Seeker]

From what I am understanding, this game is as addictive and fun as Civilization 2, but without losing any of the depth of Civilization 4. Reviews for the game so far are incredibly positive, placing it above Starcraft 2.

The game involves some of the largest changes to the series to date including:
-No more unit stacking
-Cities defend themselves via upgrades (rather than a huge unit stack)
-When cities are conquered, there are options. Currently: Raze, establish a puppet state, and annex, are the options.
-City States, minor civilizations which are not trying to win the game, have been implemented; by default, these civs will be 2-3 times more numerous than other civs. Relations can be established with them.
-Ranged units actually have range, no longer does a phalanx have the same range as a howitzer.
-Culture system has been reworked, now it functions as a method of gathering points for upgrading civics. There are 12 different civic development trees, the first three are learned in the ancient era, and they are discovered up to the Industrial era in default games.
-Religion and random events have been removed; while interesting concepts on paper, in practice they made the game very unfun (Religion: as your friends and enemies were determined by what religion you were, and it limited the game in that respect; it was WAY too powerful of a force for a fun strategy game; and not at all times did cultures of different faiths hate all other cultures of different faith - mostly just the Mediterranean ones. Random events: made it seem like the computer was cheating.).
-World is on a hexagonal grid, rather than squares.

[Shrinweck]

I'm ready to get Steam to start decrypting it - it should be unlocking an hour-ish before I have to leave for class. I read the PC Gamer review (93%) which was almost entirely complimentary except that since you can't stack units any more, massive armies require even more babysitting

[Shrinweck]

Well it's already done decrypting and I have twenty more minutes before I have to leave for class... dontbeamistakedontbeamistakedontbeamistake

Ooo - you get to choose one of four charitable organizations for them to donate money to (and based on voting they disperse the $250,000 proportionately)... I'm going with Scholarship America because I'm a xenophobic asshole.

[Julius Seeker]

Had a huge headache getting the game installed. It pulled up all this Steam BS which caused some headaches. Now to play =)

EDIT,

I am reminded why I hate PCs as a gaming platform.

I do have above the minimum specs, but after all the trouble it took to get it installed; it comes up with this error as soon as I try to load the game:

"Sid Meier's Civilization V has stopped working".

Starcraft 2 runs fine.

I would hope that I don't have to wait until I get my next computer to play, this is the first time my current one has had any real issues.

[Eric]

That's weird, it doesn't have harsh min requirements, and it's not a graphical power house.

Minimum:

OS: Windows® XP SP3/ Windows® Vista SP2/ Windows® 7
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz or AMD Athlon X2 64 2.0 GHz
Memory: 2GB RAM
Graphics:256 MB ATI HD2600 XT or better, 256 MB nVidia 7900 GS or better, or Core i3 or better integrated graphics
DirectX®: DirectX® version 9.0c
Hard Drive: 8 GB Free
Sound: DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card

[Julius Seeker]

I'll get a get a new graphics card; and maybe pop it into my new computer when I get it. I want to get something with 6 cores when I get my next system; but more cheaply =)

[Eric]

The AMD Phenom II X6 1090T is probably the best deal I've seen for a CPU in a long time.

Intel's Six-Core series has more raw power, but you're paying less then 1/3 for the 1090T, it's kind of a no-brainer unless you're trying to create a real powerhouse rig.

[Julius Seeker]

I think I'll go with an AMD cpu ATI GPU, seems to make sense. Price is more important to me than power, but I would like the power to be capable to run games at max settings for at least a couple of years.

Thanks for the heads up Eric, especially when I was suggested to go with Intel.

[Eric]

Check out the GeForce GTX 465 before you make that decision.

[Julius Seeker]

Will do, thanks again Eric =)

[Shrinweck]

Well if anyone was wondering - the game is amazing.

[Eric]

Well if anyone was wondering - the game is amazing.

We are wondering, more details darn you!

[Anarky]

Well if anyone was wondering - the game is amazing.

Oh it is, but dang does the game slowdown the further you get into it and the more map you reveal. Might be time to upgrade my 9600 to something like the 460-480 Nvidia card.

Also upset they took out animations in Multiplayer

[SineSwiper]

Why on earth does Civilization of all games require a mega video card?

[Shrinweck]

Highly detailed textures. And that's hardly a mega video card. I purchased a video card just a tad better than that about 3-4 years ago. A three year old video card can't even cost someone $50 any more.

Edit: 3 second google search yielded one of the minimum requirement nVidia cards at $46

[Julius Seeker]

OK, I now have my new beast of a machine; just waiting for the install to finish...... Oh, and after a 3 and a half hour update (ugghh)

[Don]

I picked it up today. I haven't enjoyed the Civilization series very much since about Civ 2. All the Civs after Civ 2 seems to be strictly worse in every way compared to ROTK 11 which is about 5 years old (granted that's later than some of the Civs). I think the problem is actually the fog of war. Civilization games takes a LONG time to develop just like ROTK games, but in ROTK games there's no fog of war and it is done on purpose because then you can tell if the setup you've to been doing for the last 20 hours is about to get bowled over by someone with 10 times your army size. You can just go to the game screen and read info like... okay your opponent has an army of 1 million versus 350K on you. They have 30 catapults and they got elite cavalry researched and you don't. In other words you're already dead and this case you know it so it'd be a good time to start a new game and try something else. In Civilization you don't really know that. You can't see their units very easily, and even if you have some pretty good scouting all it's difficult to add all the units together, and the general military indicators when they existed just aren't very good approximation. So you might just play a game where you already cannot win without even knowing.

I see that they're trying to add more tactical combat instead of just the side with more Armor wins, but honestly I think what was good about the older Civilization (1 and 2) was that it's an empire building game not a military simulation, because it really sucks as the latter. It seems to just keep on take longer and longer until you have enough units to have some kind of meaningful fight, and the stuff you got to micromanage seems to just keep on get more and more. I guess you can leave it to the AI, but it's really hard to trust them. And I still don't get why it takes more than one second after I ended my turn before it's my turn again. I know this AI isn't exactly doing anything cutting edge! It should be just done the moment I hit end turn, but no each turn it seems to take longer and longer for the AI to do stuff that should be done nearly instantly. I mean yes, you can just turn on the later eras where at least you start with some stuff, but then without the empire building part Civilization is just a bad version of Panzer General 1.

I think that's the problem I run into with all the original Microprose branded strategy games. They're really empire building game and not tactical combat simulators since the combat tactics involved is nonexistent in them. Now there's nothing wrong with having combat on an abstract level even if it's as abstract as Civilization 1, but then the empire-building part cannot take so long that it detracts from what's left of the game, and when it starts to take an hour for a turn like it does in Master of Orion for example, it's really hard to still call it a game.

Sid Meier should look at the guys who made Master of Magic. That's the only Microprose branded game where gameplay does not get lost in the research tree or empire building. The combat system, while simple, is quite a bit more complicated than any other of the Microprose branded games, and while it's still nowhere like even Panzer General it's something you can argue that is gameplay as opposed to just sending your 10 Howitzers against their 9 Armors. The research tree is pretty small but has very significant impact (the ultra rare spells can be pretty game changing), and empire building is present but it doesn't distract you since you only need a relatively small number of cities and each city have relatively small number of buildings that can be built. I find that Civilization in general plays like how a computer plays Chess to create difficluty, where the computer will purposely screw up and then try to win because if it didn't do that there's no way it'd ever lose. You almost always find yourself in some kind of hopeless odds numerically and then have to figure out a way to get out of that, and while that kind of gameplay can be interesting too, it's not very exciting if you got to wait a very long time before it's even obvious that you're against hopeless odds let alone trying to get out of it.

[Julius Seeker]

The problems of Civilization were a little more simple, I think.

The first two were flawed, but also very very fun and addictive, an element lost in the later games that eliminated the flaws of the originals. I think the big problem with the early games was too many units... Although with that flaw, the games were still hugely fun and addictive.

Civilization 3 and 4 are less fun because you can't take an army of cavalry and sweep across the plains, conquering every city in your path. On paper, that sounds like a much required change.... In reality, it removed one of the most rewarding experiences of the game.

Civilization 3: The game was WAY too defensive; Especially once the user got to the Renaissance; the best units were the defensive ones. It was required to build even more massive armies (including 20-30 artillery-type units) than the above-described-cavalry-charge in Civilization 2. There is good reason why not many WWI simulators exist, but Civilization 3 would be the best game for it; massive slaughter and no movement. Also the territory system was broken.

Civilization 4: RELIGION - while religion sounded like an excellent idea on paper, in practice, it screwed up the game. It polarized relations - typically, those who were close to you were your friends, and those distant your enemies. If you really wanted to expand effectively, it was through the only ones who were willing to be your friends at the time; all of this because religion is usually locked to region (IE, North America all Hindu, Europe all Buddhist, Eastern Asia all Jewish, and then the loser religions of Confucianism, Christianity, and Islam would be scattered or non-existant throughout the rest of the world); effectively, if you were in Europe, you'd have to sail to North America, or trek all the way to China in order to meet an enemy. Don is right, in Civilization 4, by the time you get to the era where war is most reasonable, the game is already 75% over (luckily Civ 5 effectively seems to have removed this).

Civ 4, you also need to get all the way to catapults to really do anything, these come in the late antiquity; right before the middle ages. The first units you can really sweep the map with are in the modern era, and even then, it really isn't until you get tanks; so much for attempting to emulate Genghis Kahn or Alexander, Hitler's tank push is the only effective way to go.

Civilization 2, your great conquests would begin with horsemen and archers, before moving onto legions, and the middle ages would also be a major time for conquest with Crusaders (which they removed because they deemed them inappropriate units). By the time you got to the late industrial age, it is possible that most battles would be in the past - not so in Civ 3 and 4, this is the era where your major conquests begin. Civ 2, the Industrial-Nuclear age is where the more peaceful strategies begin to prosper (tech racing to the spaceship), wars would be much larger and more violent, but they were for the purpose of preventing another player from winning via science/production and spaceship, rather than because the time was finally ripe for conquest.


What Civilization 3 and 4 did was prevent player's from doing too well in the harder difficulties until the late game. You could make your game winning moves in Civ 2 during the middle ages on Deity.

To conclude:
-ON PAPER, Civilization 3 and 4 sounded A LOT better than the earlier Civilization games.
-IN REALITY, The more primitive Civilization 1 and 2 were much better games despite looking very flawed on paper.

Pick up Civ 1 and 2, and play them each for 8 hours, and you'll come back for more and more, and you'll be up until 5:30 AM playing.
Civ 3 and 4 for 8 hours, and you will be thinking about how to modify the game to make the game more fun; I personally prefer the single city challenge with a computer player as a teammate; so I live vicariously through them (since their victory = your victory in the end) while I focus on building the greatest city in the world.

[Shrinweck]

Alpha Centauri was better than all of them.

[Julius Seeker]

Alpha Centauri was awesome, but felt more like a civilization mod than an independent game. It's appeal was linked to more linear gameflow with all the scripted events and such.

[Don]

Well it's no secret that the AI cheats like crazy on the higher difficulty of Civ. The problem is that in the first 2 version it'd be say your 50 (whatevers) versus 250 of their units, and due to quirky game designs you can still overcome this, and I think the real fun part in Civilization is when your 50 guys eventually defeat those 250 guys and then you go on an unstoppable rampage. Sure on the higher difficulties all the guys magically ally against you but there's a point where you can fight the entire world and win and that, to me, is reward for toughing out a game where the AI cheats like crazy. On the higher difficulty you're obviously the underdog for a pretty long portion of the game, and that's why it's exciting when you finally crush your enemies and knowing they can't possibly stop you!

I think they try really hard to stop you from just bulldozing down your opponent once you've managed to withstand all the unfair advantage they start with. Problem is that is just stupid. You worked all game to overcome the computer's resource/diplomacy advantages and now you can't just beat them down to submission when you're finally able to take on the whole world? If you're going to make a game where there's a lot of back and forth action then DO NOT give computer some kind of ridicluous advantage in units.

That said I'm sure someone will come up with a good mod of Civilization 5. I like Seeker's idea of just ally with one computer while you build the world's greatest city. From reading the manual it looks like once I start winning on the war front there's a lot of stuff that's designed to slow me down (unhappiness and whatever) so what's the point to wage war and capturing cities if it doesn't give you a decisive advantage?

[Don]

Another problem with Civ I have is that technology completely changes the game way too often. The best example is probably the Civ 1/2 Tank/Armor, which pretty much has no counters besides itself. So you're playing game building some kind of balanced army, and then boom you researched Tank and now all your army is 100% tanks. It's okay to have some shakeups in unit structure but this happens way too often in Civilization. Here the length of the game is huge too. Obviously the largest variety of units show up toward the end game, but the end game takes a VERY LONG TIME to get there. Beyond the fact that there's usually 1 or 2 units that stand out even when you got so many choices, you're often limited by time once you get to the modern era (someone's going to be launching a spaceship soon) so there's really no point to try some kind of combined arms tactics. It's just either making as many offensive units as you can to sack their capital to stop a spaceship launch, or build as many defensive units as you can to protect your own while you try to launch a spaceship.

Again I think ROTK11 and Master of Magic has the right idea. The technology tree supplements the combat system but it is never the combat system. You're never going to say I researched this ultra rare spell/tech (unless it's Incarnation, perhaps) so now I can completely abandon my old combat plan. Elite cavalry and Catapults are almost the game-winner technology in ROTK 11 but their presence doesn't change the overall flow of the game. You still counter cavalry with spearman + archers even if they're elite, it's just that counter won't be very effective anymore, but it's still a counter. Catapults are still countered like their weaker counterparts (Arrow Towers), namely by killing them before they can get into siege range. It's just now your margin of error goes from around 5-10 turns to 2 so you better not screw up.

Obviously most strategy game have some kind of rock-paper-scissor model, but in Civilization there's a lot of 'bomb' choices that just counters everything besides itself. While that in itself isn't bad (elite cavalry is the equivalent of that in ROTK 11) but you can't have too many of those, or it feels like I'm building this army for a while and then suddenly I researched Gunpowder and now everything I was building is obselete.

[Shrinweck]

Alpha Centauri was awesome, but felt more like a civilization mod than an independent game. It's appeal was linked to more linear gameflow with all the scripted events and such.

For me it did what Counter-Strike did for Half-Life.

As for technology being a game changer... upgrade your units? And gunpowder hardly makes everything else obsolete. Enough dudes with swords with strategic advantages can wipe the floor with muskets.

Although I had a game of Civ 5 last night where my scouts kept finding the ruins with weapons upgrades... Scouts -> Archers -> Crossbowmen -> Muskets -> Riflemen -> Infantry -> Mechanized Infantry... Mechanized Infantry and it wasn't even 1000AD yet. I found a city state where my mechanized infantry would be surrounded during the siege and of course it just tore through them.

Who was this ancient, dead race with rubber and combustion that died out before my people had even discovered agriculture?

[Tessian]

Here's the real question -- do I want this game? I'm not as big a fan of TBS as Shrin but I've enjoyed Civ games in the past for a little, and the Total War series.

[Don]

If you're not big into turn based game then none of the concerns Seeker or I brought up would impact your enjoyment of the game. Are you going to play this for multiplayer or single player? The game appears to be more streamlined for multiplayer compared to the older Civs in the sense that there might be some kind of meta game that involves combat that isn't just dependent on who attacked first or had more (advanced) units. For single player, the usual precaution of Civilization games taking way too long, though it looks like there's more action early too compared to the averag Civilization.

[Shrinweck]

There are shorter game modes if you think the games last too long. I honestly prefer the epic and marathon length games.

[Julius Seeker]

Playing my first game with the following settings:
• World size: Huge World
• Difficulty: King
• Pace: Epic
• Tribe: Germans

The German tribal skill (Furor Teutonicus) seemed kind of useless to me at first, gold and an occasional free unit from defeating Barbarian encampments. Although after playing, I have only built two warriors as military units, and yet I have the largest and most powerful military in the world now; I was able to dedicate my cities to building wokers and buildings; so I am in the top 5 (of 12) of every demograph, and number 1 for land size, food production, military size, GNP, and manufactured goods. I also got wonders; this early bonus, while seemingly a poor investment, actually gave me the ability to make good immediately apparent investments very early in the game.

When armies reach a certain size I dispand barbarian brutes captured for extra money.
Destroying the barbarians hasn't just made me rich, but it has also given me strong relations with the City States. Barbarian encampments are also always spawning.

[Julius Seeker]

War in Civ 5 is fun. I just sent an army of two archers and 6 Legions West and conquered half of the Roman Empire, we are at the gates of Rome herself now, but I gotta get to work. Funny how it is the Germans smashing up the Romans with Legions =P
I am also about to get Germany's first special unit class.

King Difficulty seems about right for beginners of Civ 5 that have played previous games. Although my next try will be on Emperor if I managed to win this one decisively; right now I am down to ~5th on all demographics except military (1st) and GNP (2nd) where I excell.

For the record, unless a unit is significantly more powerful, most units will require 2-3 attacks to kill.

One thing is for certain, Civilization 5 marks the return of ancient and classical combat =)

[Don]

Is there no way to control more than one civilization at all? I don't know why this feature is always missing in the Civ games. Are they afraid of people running up the score if they could control more than one civilization?

[Don]

Grr, found out there's no hot seat option (what are they thinking???) but will be patched in.

I think I'll just put off this game until it's in. I have no real interest to play against the AI in just about any of the Civs. I know they're dumb and cheat like crazy and sure that's interesting in its own way but it also limits what you can do.

One thing I noticed is that you can't escort embarked units? So that means any unit with a range attack can instant kill your units in transit regardless of how much naval power you have? Assuming that you can't clog up the whole map so that they've nowhere to fire, even a lowly Trimeme can make a suicide run to take one shot at your transports and sink it 100% of the time?

[SineSwiper]

I miss Magic. Do they have something similar to that game? Nothing I've seen really combined strategy, RTS, and RPG like that game did.

[Eric]

Isn't there a new Magic game coming out? I heard it would be WC3ish with heroes and unique races or something.

[SineSwiper]

Sorry, I meant Masters of Magic.

[Julius Seeker]

Suffered my first major setback; I extended my borders into the middle of the continent; and that set me up for a three front attack; I pulled my best units back to protect my core cities (on a peninsula in the East) and my lesser units fought to protect my other cities. A major battle was fought and I ended up razing several cities. In the end, I lost my advantage as having the largest army, and most of my new empire of Roman and American cities (lost 5 or 6 cities).

My enemies fell against my citadels (Great General consumed to build these), which I built in a wall across the front of the peninsula where my core cities were located. I killed dozens of enemy invaders as they tried to break the line. After which I was able to launch a counter assault and was able to fight them back into agreeing to peace. I have now begun focussing heavily on happiness and culture.

[Don]

I fail to see how you can possibly keep any Great Generals alive against anyone who is smarter than the AI (i.e. anybody), though I guess given its considerable bonuses maybe you're not supposed to be able to keep it alive for very long if you deploy it for battle.

I'm still waiting for the hotseat version to come out. I think I'll do like 20 civs in teams of 2 on a huge map on the marathon setting and see how that goes.

I really don't like how stuff like happiness is not explained at all. Besides not making sense to begin with, you don't even know how much unhappiness you're expected to get. I realize they don't want people just steamroll a civilization once you start winning but I think tha can be handled by things like upkeep. For example say units outside of your territory has increased upkeep or something like that (if this is already done I sure can't tell). In ROTK 11 it's pretty trivial to amass a huge army. The problem is having enough food to actually move them across the map and do war with them, so the guy who is constantly on the offensive is expanding far more resources on the attack than the defender so that the guy making the offensive push might back off just because it's too costly to continue pushing. In Civilization games it appears the constrains to be offensive is totally arbitrary all the way back to Civ 1 (units cause unhappy citizens in most advanced governments if not in city) and doesn't really work that well anyway.

[Julius Seeker]

Unhappiness can be a huge problem if your trading partners turn against you; I ended up spending something like 4000 on Coliseums in order to fix the problems early in my major war. Luckily, money is fairly easy to come by in Civ 5. Golden Ages can be very helpful in the game; as they pump the player full of cash. Trading unused resources for cash can be very helpful as well.

Great Generals and other non-combat units can be stacked, so it is easier than you might think. Though I have found them most useful as expendable units for the Citadel improvement; it is a VERY helpful tile improvement - particularly how damages all enemies around it every turn.

[Don]

Maybe the AI doesn't care about taking out your great general but clearly a human player will be going for whatever unit you stacked your Great General with, and if you put him on the front line that means the unit he is with can never die. I suppose you can use his range and put him as far back as possible but then that'd mean the other side was never able to attack your ranged units too. You'd have to have a pretty significant army size advantage to pull that off. It might be easy to keep him alive on defense when you're in a fortified position with a fort but if you're not moving him you might as well use him to make a Citadel.

Speaking of which, the Civipedia is pretty lacking in this game. For example you can't tell how much defense bonus a Citadel gives. Some of the unit trait just says like "increase damage against X" but doesn't say how much. Stealth Bomber has an Evasion (100) so does that mean it can always evade interception or is it twice as likely? It probably won't matter very much in the actual game since it's pretty clear what you're supposed to do with the units but I feel they leave out a lot of the stuff you might really care about even when you look it up in the Civipedia. There was no mention of how extra cities slow down your cultural research either in Civipedia as far as I can tell. You only see that as a warning when you try to annex a city.

[Julius Seeker]

Yeah, the Civilopedia seems like it is lacking a lot of information that would be very useful. I think this is more of an oversight.

Also, I wish you could sell buildings, I built a harbour I don't need.

[Julius Seeker]

Wow, after sailing out to see what the rest of the world has to offer, I discovered Persia, and they are number 1 in all categories except approval rating (I have loads of happiness now, and am at 100%). Their army is about double the size of mine, and their score about three times that size.

I immediately began pushing for very positive relations with them, getting some exotic imports in the process, pushing the happiness of my empire to obscene levels. I figure that when I am ready to take my whole continent, I can achieve even greater success than Darius. I am preparing to launch a campaign against my enemies on my home continent (who are currently stronger than me combined, but I don't have to worry about them as a source of happiness any longer); I want the whole continent.

[Don]

I decided to put up with the boredom of wiping out cities slowly and finally beat it as Japan on Chieftain. Yes I know that's like super easy but once you seen one difficulty on Civ you seen them all. It's not like computer ever gets any smarter, they just cheat more and more. The lack of documentation really makes it hard to have a coherent strategy with capturing. I ended up looking into the raw XML included for Civ 5 to figure out that each population = 1 unhappiness and each occuiped city population = 1.34 unhappiness, and each city = 1 (or maybe 2) unhappiness and occuiped cities count double. Given the massive penalties to annexing you're often better off just burn a city to the ground once you take it unless you need the border for either defensive purposes (Oligarchy/Nationalism) or some resource. Since courthouse cannot be rushed this means most city you get contributes negative impact to your empire until like 30-50 turns (depending on how productive it is). Honestly it'd be easier to just raze every city you see and found a new one in its place since in the time it takes you to build a courthouse you could have a pretty decent city running, and your own cities don't need a courthouse which is very expensive to upkeep.

Upgraded units retain their old bonuses so a Pikeman upgraded to Rifleman still has +100% versus mounted. There might be some nasty combos with cultural units that have pretty devastating specials. The different pacing for the games seems to just extend or decrease everything by the exact same %, so in a marathon game each phase takes 4 times as long but you still only have 3 units to work with since their production speed goes up by 4 times as well. It's not clear to me if Firaxis really thought about what all this means since marathon shouldn't be a marathon in the sense you've to hit 'end turn' 4 times as much. Reserach/buildings should take proportionally longer but units should not, otherwise what's the point? If you lose your 3 units you might have to wait 80 turns before another one comes out? Thankfully this part is moddable too so I think once Hotseat gets working I'll just go with 4Xturns but normal unit production.

I think they overdid the part on stopping rampant expansion. Oligarchy is already at least a +33% advantage for the defender (really a lot more than that, a 20 strength unit can kill 2X10 strength unit easily) and just because the computer is too stupid to figure out these things doesn't mean you should be penalized. I think it'll be okay if a captured city contributes nothing until a courthouse is built but right now a captured city is contributing a lot worse than nothing until a courthouse is built.

Finally the cultural tree seems to unnecessary hold back large empires. There's just no way the rate you produce culture keeps pace with the rate the cost goes up and yet there are quite a few cultural tabs that are clearly designed for large empires. It's like saying having more cities increase the cost of research. The cultural buildings already have a pretty significant cost and if they're supposed to help the smaller civs then you can make the cost even greater so that it'd be prohibitive to build temples/whatevers in all your cities.

[Shrinweck]

Without stacking that amount of units you could control with a 4X unit building speed change is going to make controlling all of them at once fucking MADDENING.

[Don]

I'd think the unit maintenance cost would stop you from building crazy armies. There's also a supply limit as a function of your population/cities. Anyway what I mean is build units at normal speed but have 4X longer eras, so if normal took 20 turns to build a Rifleman it still takes 20 turns, but the Rifleman era is expected to last 4 times longer since all research/building/wonder cost is increased by 4X. Right now let's say you can build 2 Rifleman before they become obselete because it took 20 turns to research the upgrade, on Marathon it'd take 80 turns to research the upgrade but each Rifleman would take 4 times longer to build so you still only have 2 of them before they become obselete (but you can move them a lot further). Yes you could just keep on build them but an army that isn't put to use is a huge waste of money and most likely will set you back if you didn't put the army to the war soon.

Of course this makes building buildings and especially wonders a huge opportunity risk compared to cranking out units. I'm waiting for mod tools + hotseat come out to experiment with how to change this since trying this computer will almost certainly result you getting overwhelmed by hundreds of units on the higher difficulty with such settings without seeing if it's feasible for multiplayer.

[Don]

Decided to get the India 3 city achievement for the cultural victory on Settler with only one computer. By the time I finished constructing the Utopia Project it was already like 1940 or so. I built two cities, one next to the enemy so I can make sure he never expanded. Unlike most other victory conditions even on Settler you can be sure you cannot possibly play any better than this since cultural accumulation rate slows down the more cities you have, so you can't do better than one city having almost every Wonder of the world, and even then it looks like there's only about 100 turns to spare before the time limit. Now that sounds like a lot but keep in mind that I could've won the game already around turn 30 or so and just let the opponent live, and made only one computer AI opponent. Obviously on any non gimmick situation the AI will typically be ahead of you militarily, and is likely to beat you to a good number of the Wonders as well. Again I question if they actually tested some of this stuff because some of conditions needed to pull off the victory is just very unlikely.

As a side note going with a ton of culture gets you a considerable edge once you have Nationalism + Oligarchy, but you can never leave your border either since your military is obviously going to be weak overall. I think on a marathon game, the border culture gain should be at normal pace (instead of 4X cost) because I've never seen a game where the borders expand to anything that remotely resemble a national border. Sure you can do that if you just found a bunch of cities but then you'll get killed on the happiness rating. If you assume both nations have Nationalism + Oligarchy researched, then moving out of your border is basically going against a 100% deficit (going from +50% to you 0% them to 0% you +50% them) so any time you spend in the opponent's border is very dangerous, because at a 100% bonus you can easily beat units a tier above you let alone equal tier. After some contemplating if it is too easy to keep new cities then that destroys the value of having a large border (you can just operate from the city you conquered), so maybe the system does make sense, but being limited on your own cities suck. I'm thinking maybe the unhappiness from your own cities (# and population) should be halved, and cities occupied give double unhappiness of what they currently do, and make courthouse cost a bit more.

I still haven't figured out how unit upkeep cost works. You can see the total cost but not the indivdual breakdown. According to the social policies it'd appear units outside your border cost more, but there's no way to tell how much.

[Shrinweck]

I've never seen my upkeep go down when I move military units back inside my border - unit upkeep is fairly confusing. I've liked straddling culture and technology and managed to finish a game with a scientific victory on king today with 50ish turns left.

[Don]

One time I had an upkeep of 28 gold and then I disbanded a scout and it went to 22 gold for upkeep. I had like a 10 unit army and most of them Rifleman. Incidentally disbanding the scout refunded 6 gold but apparently it was costing 6 gold/turn to keep the unit around. I really have no idea what the heck is going on with those cost. According to Civpedia the unit costs varies depending on the difficulty but I mean come on, 6 gold/turn for a scout on Settler? And yeah I've never noticed upkeep going down moving units from in or out of border but that's what the social policies say (one of them says cost to maintain units outside of border is cheaper).

According to the supply I could have way more units than what I'm already using but I'm already short on gold, which makes me think even with 4X unit production speed (relative to everything else) you'll simply never be able to build 100 units or whatever since you can't afford it.

Cultural victory is the only one where winning criteria is pretty different from the normal. Conquest, Diplomacy, Scientific, and Time based victory pretty much all requires you're already the dominant player in the game. I suppose it's possible to pull off a Diplomacy victory without being #1 with City States, but even there you'd have to be pretty strong in military/science to just survive long enough for the UN to be built. On the other hand Cultural victory pretty much requires you to be one of the weaker players on any reasonable difficulty. For some reason the AIs will not all declare war on you while you're building the Utopia Project, so I guess it's possible on the higher difficulties if they just forgot about you long enough for you to finish the Utopia Project...

[Julius Seeker]

I've noticed a lot of little bugs, and some woppers.

Some are obvious

* when the "enemy is near the city" warning comes up, and you click on it, the screen will scroll to the position where the enemy was when the message popped up, but the enemy might be past that location; regardless, the unit flashing animation will play on an empty tile.

* Pathing is all messed up, auto-controlled units will go into borders of non-allied city states; for manual control, if a unit is in the way, and you want to travel 3 tiles, the recommendation will sometimes be to travel around a large mountain range that will take 26 turns. It would be nice to have some better flip mechanics for units.

* Big one, since I trade a lot, I am always sending out my excess resources for gold and other resources; I got a bug where the same treaty-ended messages would pop up every turn. These messages included trade agreements for strategic resources - this may seem like a big annoyance, BUT, each time those messages popped up, I had extra resource income added, so I ended up with literally thousands of iron as an income (I should have been about 25, and I was already the world's largest producer of iron).

* Automated workers, if you hit a golden age, they will start building farms over all your trading posts. Speaking of automated workers, the options offered are too simple, there should be options to have them focus on economy/growth/production/roads, etc... Right now it is a bad idea to automate workers, they will destroy your economy.

* Speaking of economy; it's fairly messed up that jungle tiles with a trade post are the most productive tiles in the game. On my King save, I founded some colonies in a jungle area, and these colonies quickly became more productive than most of my core-cities. With Universities and a trade post (no other modifiers), jungle tiles have +2 Gold, +2 Food, + 2 Science, and are an excellent place to fortify troops. Of course, these bonuses can easily be bumped up higher as more buildings get built and new policies get established. On an Earth map, with jungle tiles next to rivers all over the place, South America instantly becomes the most powerful continent in the world.

* When I hit scientific theory, no coal appeared on the map; I figured this was perhaps I was on a continent that mysteriously had no coal, despite the fact that it was a large continent; Darius, who owns the largest continent has no coal either, and none of the other locations I have discovered have coal. That means no one in the game can construct a factory, which is a crucial building for the rest of the game.

* Big big one; AI seems to be worthless on any difficulty below King. On Prince difficulty (which I tried for a short time), the AI is really dumb. Essentially, if you are not playing King or higher in difficulty, you are playing with a bunch of civilizations who do not know how to fight, balance an economy, or really do anything effectively. Also, other civilizations seemed to build only a small number of cities, and that was that. AI needs a lot of tweaking. On Prince, the enemy ran his troops right into my three catapults, and I defeated his entire army with ease - he then surrendered and gave me all off his cities the moment my first volley of fire hit his first city - I switched back to my King game right there.

* One thing I wish - courthouses required for getting rid of unhappiness in occupied cities was a dumb idea. They are a required building, otherwise the occupied-city will remain unhappy eternally. It should be that every X-turns with a unit in the city, that the city will decline 1 point of unhappiness. Either that, or establish multiple levels of control (besides puppet state and annexed), and have them deplete 1 point of unhappiness every X-turns, the more freedom a city has, the less the unhappiness - and the user can choose to later increase authority over the city: (ie. Level 1 - 20% unhappiness, territory is used by the user, the user gains no penalties or benefits from the city's economy. Level 2 - 40% unhappiness, city acts as current puppet state. Level 3 - 75% unhappiness, user can access the city and ask for specific focuses (ie, focus on military, focus on production, focus on science, focus on wealth), Level 5 - 100%, annexed.


They really should have put another 5-6 months into the game rather than rush it out for fall. A Civilization game will sell roughly the same amount in the Spring as it would in the holiday season; it's a PC game where most people buying it will be longtime franchise fans downloading it, not a holiday season gift game.

[Don]

I'm pretty sure the AI is the same on all levels of difficulty but on the higher difficulty it has enough extra advantages that some of its stupidity is hidden. There are plenty of reports of where AI on deity will still suicide to your units but on Deity they get a lot more units to suicide before you can mount a successful counterattack. The AI simply has no idea what the heck you're supposed to do with concepts like flanking, sieging, combined arms, or building a navy. Unlike say Civ 1 & 2 it's much harder to overwhelm you by sending 100 Armors due to stuff like flanking and defensive civics, so while in old Civ his Armor would each have about 25% chance of doing damage to your units in a city wall or higher anywhere else, in Civ 5 the chance of the AI doing damage is more like 0, but again you cannot easily leave your border since they have a much bigger army. It seems like cultural bomb will actually be a very powerful military weapon.

Pretty sure the AI just hands you over everything the moment you're sieging their capital.

There's a setting that prevents automated workers from overriding your existing improvements in the config (same place where you can set to skip intro). It's not going to tell them what to focus on but it's better than nothing. I found that automated workers seem to be always chopping trees down and making terrain good for food/economy but not production, but it's way too much hassle to control them all manually (would add way too much playing time).

The trade bug occurs if you're trading anything that's not the standard amount of resources. What happens is you'll end up with a trade like 5 iron for 20 turns for his 1 luxury good for 40 turns, but after the 20 turns ended you get 5 iron back each turn so pretty soon you've basically unlimited resources. On another note every time I tried to trade luxury resource with AI 1 to 1 they always say no, yet those things are exactly equal.

There's definitely a lack of polish in Civ 5. If you go to the game's directory you can see there's supposed to be a PBEM and Hotseat mode because there are directories to save such games, but clearly you can't play them. Civpedia has a lot of missing entries and is sometimes flat out wrong. For example the tips say do not let people surround your city and get a huge flanking bonus, but I've never got a flanking bonus against cities period. But for me I usually play strategy games against myself with modified rules anyway so it's not a huge concern. Right now I'm just getting the achievements out of the way (though it's tempting to get Deity beaten before they fix the AI).

[Don]

Finished another game on an island map. Apparently the entire world has no alumnium, uranium, or oil except in one city-state somewhere so I cannot build anything besides mechanized infantry despite having the whole tech tree researched. It is also very difficult to figure out where the strategic resources are since there's no easy way to locate them. It shouldn't be a big deal if the national borders expanded at a reasonable rate but they never do. After all you can't possibly know where the 3 end game resources are ahead of time so it seems like it'd make sense the guys with the biggest culture has the best chance of finding them, as opposed to being able to find them on a random corner of the map somewhere and plop down a city to claim it.

Diplomatic victory actually seems pretty easy if you have a ton of gold. Just pay all the city states and their vote is as good as any other civilization's (besides the builder of UN). The Patronage civics seem to be overpowerd in general since the city-states are really, really strong.

Space victory is pretty straightforward, and is probably easier than trying to hunt down all the capitals and deal with the unhappiness issue.

I noticed if you play on Marathon mode, just find a city and then resign and you'll end up with a ridiculous score like 3000 for doing absolutely nothing. I guess it adds a bonus to your point for the number of turn remaining without accounting for the fact that Marathon games are supposed to have 4X the turns. In fact now I got some scores where it looks like it'd be absolutely impossible to beat while playing legitmately.

[Don]

The SDK was released today and it's one of the worst tool I've ever seen. I felt I accomplished less in about an hour than what I could have done with Notepad. There's no documentation and no obvious structure to how anything works. It took me less time to figure out how to make my ship invinciible in the Danmukufu (SDK for side scrolling shooters) than it took to figure out how to er... change the value from 1 to 2 with this SDK and the instruction to Danmufuku is in Japanese!

That said I'm sure it's actually pretty powerful and there are guys with a lot more time than I have that can figure out how to make good mods out of it. There's already quite a lot of them out there. So it's all good as long as you don't plan on actually trying to mod the game yourself! Actually most of the modding seems to be straight up SQL syntax so it's just a lot of grunt work. It'd be nice if there was actually documentation on the SDK on the fields that are not self-explanatory as to what they actually do. For example what the heck does 'AIBonusPoints' do on difficulty? You can easily figure out more means more advantage but it's really not obvious what kind of advantage they get when you crank the number up or down.

[Don]

So far it looks relatively straightforward (only takes hours) to update basic stuff like combat values and whatnot, and once you figured out the convoluted way it takes to change 1 to a 2 it's actually not that bad, but some tables seem to be difficult to update. There's a SQL back-end but and a compiler but basically it'll silently fail commands that you entered wrong until you run the game, and since it is not compatiable with saved games (don't know why, says it should be) that means if you want to test like say which field changes the time it takes to construct a farm you'd have to start the game and then play until you have a Worker (which actually takes a while) and then see if it worked. I am having a hard time updating the Defines table where most of the interesting stuff is at.

I'm noticing a lot of people are just overwriting the XML files themselves rather than calling a bunch of update statement that has a high probability of failing because the SDK sucks, so instead of say UPDATE GlobalDefines SET VALUE = 5 WHERE NAME = 'FOOD_PER_PERSON' which will silently fail if you misspell any of the 5 possible things they just overwrite GlobalDefines.XML to say <ROW><Name='FOOD_PER_PERSON><VALUE='5'></ROW> which is pretty foolproof unless you misplaced a quote somewhere, but better than having the game silently fail on you or even crash because you didn't conform to its exact method of updating. Of course that means you got to backup your Civ 5 XML files if you ever want to go back to the original way. At this point, I'm thinking it'd be a lot easier if a mod simply creates a new copy of every XML document and then you just edit the one you want and call that a mod, rather than having a mod that consists of something that's like a diff between your idea of Civ 5 and what it currently is, since the SDK sucks and updating/adding even the simplest stuff is often an exercise in frustration.

Looking at the XML also reveals a ton of undocumented features. For example it looks like the difficulty determines how many units you get that does not cost gold per city, and it seems like excess units also cost production from the host city. There's absolutely nowhere in the game where unless you count 'unit maintenance depends on difficulty' as an explanation. Thankfully someone with a lot more time than you or I will eventually figure out what all those settings mean and fix the game before Firaxis is likely to. I don't necessarily think all the mods there add anything to the game (like the stuff that makes Academy worth 15 science... I think they forgot that those numbers stack with +science modifiers) but some stuff like the luxury resource indicator (shows how many you actually have and how many is used) is quite useful addition to the game.