Civ 5 + Nobu 13 thoughts

[Don]

First some rant on strategy games in general. The discussion for strategy games is probably the worst out of any game genre, because you have a ton of people who have no idea what they're talking about thinking they know what they're talking about. This isn't like 'Hunters are overpowered' where there might at least be some basis in reality that's measureable. Strategy games, if it is a well designed one, tends to be very hard to win in the 'bad' scenarios. There's a reason why nobody will actually waste time to prove that a 5-star difficulty player in ROTK 11 is indeed unwinnable. Even if you were able to win you'll have to resort to some very degenerate playing (manipulating RNG seeds until every move comes out with the exact outcome you need). If you know anything about the game, or even the genre, you'll know that winning these impossible scenarios is no feat of skill, but rather either manipulation of game mechanics or outright cheating, and sometimes both.

Yet Civilization 5 has a ton of people who are probably not even average strategy game players who certainly think they are good. After all that's why people even talk about playing on the Deity difficulty, which according to Steam has been won 1.1% of the time. I played Deity once on Civ 2 and it's pretty clear this difficulty is not tested for any sense of balance. I can win it but it basically requires abusing game mechanics to wipe out the computer's impossibly huge advantages, or I can play the game legitmately on a lower difficulty setting. There's a manga called Buzzer Beater that's about earthlings training super hard for the galactic league where you got aliens that can dunk on the 20 foot rim. However in the end, it turns out no matter how hard earthlings tried they still got swept by the LA Clippers of the galactic league, and earthlings end up joining the D-League. The Deity difficulty in Civ games is the galactic league. It doesn't matter how good you are, it's never supposed to be beatable with any kind of play that resembles legitmate playing. Now the AI in Civ games is atrociously bad, so you might still be able to win because the AI might forget that it can say, upgrade its units, or how to attack, but that's not because you're awesome at this game. Really I have a hard time seeing any good strategy game player even take Deity mode seriously. You simply cannot win it if you have any respect to the genre, and if you want to abuse game mechanics to win, might as well use an editor and give you infinite money or whatever. Civilization series isn't even a very complicated game. With nukes being completely uncounterable in Civ 5, a very simple strategy for the AI to win would be to simply crank out units and fortify them on every hex on the map until it has nukes, and then just nuke you to death. Yet I see people congratulate themselves for being good players when you see the AI attack positions that even an amateur should not attack, especially given open terrain = suicide prior to the last patch.

At any rate the hotseat mode finally allow me to control all the players so I don't have to deal with the sorely lacking AI. One thing that's immediately obvious is that the cost of units in this game is out of whack. If you're doing anything remotely resembling progress on the tech tree, you'll barely have enough time to build all the buildings you can build let alone units, so unless you just stop your research progress you won't even have time to build units. Unless I play as Germany, I have never had a game where I got anywhere close to my supply limit, and of course the unit maintenance cost means you'll be bankrupt if you're ever close to your supply limit. The biggest army I ever fielded was 5 units, and anything bigger would bring your economy to ruins. I guess you can just ignore your economy since the game apparently doesn't actually disband your units for going into a deficit despite claiming to, but again one should not be taking advantage of obvious game errors just because you can.

Now you can have a wargame with relatively few units. ROTK11 has maybe 10 units on each side per battlefield and that'd be a very massive battle, but units in ROTK11 are very complex entities with many options per unit. In Civ 5 you're talkingt about 3 pikeman versus 4 pikeman or something equally boring, and generally speaking whoever is fortified on the hills is going to win anyway unless there's an unbelieveable difference in tech/xp. Now having simple game mechanics is fine, as long as you have enough units. Super Daisenryaku has a pretty simple combat system (the numbers are complicated but the results are obvious) but it's where you move these unist that matter, but in Civ 5 you'll never be able to afford them unless you mod the game, and for that matter you'd never need those units to begin with since cities are virtually unassassilable by less than 4 units as long as you have Oligarchy, and whoever has 4 more units than you need to give up a ton of building potential if he was a human.

Thankfully Civ 5 is easily moddable, though I still don't understand how they can just hand out a bunch of variable with no comments and expect people to figure out. Sure, 'ResearchModifier' is easier to deduce what it does, but UNIT_MAINTAINENCE_MULTIPLIER doesn't tell you much when the unit maintenance cost is something like (TURN_ELASPED * INFLATION_FACTOR^(FOOBAR+UNIT_MAINTENANCE_MULTIPLIER/UNIT_MAINTENCE_DIVISOR). Sure you can figure out lowering this variable probably makes the unit maintenance cost lower, but that's about it. You certainly have no idea how much lower it will be other than that it'll be lower. It seems to me most American strategy games aren't actually tested. If someone tried to play Deity legitmately as a play tester he might notice that losing basically as soon as you start the game isn't exactly the kind of gameplay that's a challenge, and that winning clearly involves playing in a way that no designer ever intended.

However on the opposite spectrum you got games like Koei's Nobunaga's Ambition or ROTK, where they are pretty faithful simulators of reality. That means if you're not supposed to win you don't win at all, and if you ever jump out to a lead you will definitely win. It's kind of ironic that because the AI in Koei's games are challenging that actually makes the game very unsatisfying. You know that once you achieve some kind of even minor dominance you can win by playing defensively because the AI will never suddenly get way more troops than you just because you're winning. But you also know at this point the AI will play very conservatively which means you can win but you have keep buliding until you have an absolutely overwhelming advantage, otherwise the AI is quite capable of turning things around. Therefore although victory is assured, it can take forever to actually win because the AI correctly defends against what is basically an unwinnable situation for it. So if you want fun what you have to do is just randomly give AI Civilization Deity's like bonuses via the editor, and then they will actually attack and you can test your skills against these odds. But you can't give them those advantage at the begining, since the AI is designed to be challenging even with equal resources, so anything that remotely favors it means you'll probably die as soon as your grace period of 3 month ends because the AI will crush you ruthlessly. Koei's games are better as strategy games, but ironically they're less enjoyable to play against the computer since the computer either totally crushes you, or you can totally crush them, as it doesn't hold back when it can win, and it never receives any significant bonus for being the computer.

[Shrinweck]

Been playing a lot of Civ 5 in the past couple months but mostly just epic length games on prince difficulty for the beating the game with all civs achievement. I've found prince to be a good difficulty to settle on since the computer doesn't consistently try to rape me with twenty units to my three before I've even discovered how to mine iron. Also only had a city nuked to oblivion by the AI once on prince which made for a frustrating last twenty turns while I finished the tech victory. I've found king a bit too challenging since the AI gets a boost and if they even have a slightly more advantageous starting position then they're discovering how to shoot me while I'm discovering medieval long swords. However when strategic balance actually works it makes for a fun game. When I was winning with the last 5 or so civilizations I was getting above the threshold for the top leader in the scoring model is, so maybe I should give king another go.

These new patches have really changed things, though.

[Don]

Prince is the last difficulty level where the AI doesn't get a bonus to its empire, and I think it's something like 50% per level above Prince on virtually everything. From what I understand the AI makes a roll to use nukes or not, and if they don't make the roll they'll pretty much never use nukes even though they can effortlessly built them much faster than you can. Ghandi is the only person who will ALWAYS build nukes (don't ask why) if given the chance. But that's really artifical because there's no drawback to nuking someone in this game. I mean you don't even have the 'global warming' stuff, and there isn't a SDI like Civ 2 to counter it, and nukes are actually pretty cheap compared to other modern units.

Each AI seems to make a roll on how it's going to win the game, so if it's not a 'domination victory' AI it will actually not use its units very aggressively even if it has an army that can wipe you off the face of the earth. Likewise if the AI didn't roll 'diplomatic victory' it will not try to win via the UN, even though every AI player above Prince can trivially bribe every city-state to their side for an easy UN win since they have an absolutely insane amount of money. In fact it's pretty hilarious when I see someone say "I won a diplomatic victory on Deity" because all that means is no AI in that game rolled 'diplomatic victory' as a condition, since everyone can use the UN once it's built and bribing is purely a function of how much money you have. These guys will even note that computer have a treasury measured in multiple of 100Ks but clearly it must be their superior playing that got them the diplomatic victory.

While the production bonus might be overcomeable even if the AI was good at manuevering (it has a tendency to move its unit to deathtraps) since attacking a fortified position in this game is actually very difficult, there is no way you can beat the AI's research capability by just playing good. I put the game on Deity once and allied with 17 other Deity AIs against 1 remaining guy, and tech is shared in a team game and I noticed I have everything up to the classical period researched by turn 10, including 3 techs by turn 2! Now people can still manage to win these games because the AI apparently doesn't upgrade its units, so even if it has mechanized infantry it will still attack you with the 50 warriors it has built before, and if you ever get a few units up to the double attack range that is enough to overcome a significant technology deficit. For example Drill 3/Shock 3 + Logistics + March Infantries have no problem defeating Mechanized Infantry and even on Deity it's not hard to be merely an era behind the computer, less if you exploit Research Agreements (it was actually possible to be ahead of AI by exploiting RAs prior to this patch).

[Julius Seeker]

I have found Civ 5 a little easier myself. Deity is probably what Emperor used to be, Immortal is like King, and Emperor is like Prince. In that, each time I play I don't have to rely on any resets and such to win. The best strategy in Civ 5, right now, is staying at 1 city in the ancient era, head straight for Writing, build a Monolith, then a Library and National College before building city #2. Befriend city states, have 1 or 2 military states, and then seek out all the merchant cities (weakened back in February/March, but still very powerful). Sell luxuries you don't need - Golden Ages are not worth the gold you'd lose. Anyway, playing this way, just upgrade military and focus on economy, science, and happiness.

I think the problem with civ 5 is that the good strategies in it are not incredibly obvious to people who don't number crunch or play a lot; but a few paragraphs of information can make the game much easier with not really any additional effort. Emperor is a cake-walk with the strategy I have above; if you keep your science up, you can have an army of longswordsmen while your rivals are just starting to get their first swordsmen and horsemen.

The same deal goes with diplomacy; it is very easily abused when you isolate civs and get everyone to gang up on them; essentially, don't befriend anyone - see who you can pay off to fight who- and then there's not really any requirement in denouncing people; denouncing those with no friends means you can essentially declare war on them for free once you have already caused war to happen elsewhere. Not that it will matter later since, if science is right, there'll be no need to be afraid of anybody (or even everyo e else combined) when the renaisance era rolls around, and you're building tanks.

I like Civ 5; it's constantly improving, but it needs some real interesting scenarios. Right now for scenarios and mods, Civ 2 remains boss.

On Nukes, it depends on how much Uranium you can get your hands on. I personally prefer to use all of it on GDRs rather than Nukes. The no-stacked-units makes them less valuable since you can't wipe out 70% of Mongolia's 90 unit army by hitting a single border city where they are all stacked. With GDRs, you can sweep across the world and flatten everything in your path.

[Shrinweck]

Interesting... I played Civ 4 on King and routinely did about as well as I do on 5's Prince. I've never really liked nukes and have never had a scenario where I've needed/had the time to build a GDR. My favorite thing to do is strategically place artillery/whatever and bombard the city and while my land units buffer for them and move in for the take over. Still, I basically only play to win with a technology/culture victory.

[Julius Seeker]

Do you use specialists at all?

Each specialist gives a bonus a production of 3 of whatever they specialize in (scientists for science, artists for culture, etc...). That is a fairly good deal, and fairly useful in adding to the usefulness of a city, the loss of food production is actually not really that important in almost all cases; it is usually a much better tradeoff if food production is 2 or less. Add in that specialists also contribute +3 points to their equivalent Great Person.

BUT also consider....

The buildings that give specialists usually compliment them as well, IE. you gain the first two slots for scientists with the University (+50% science output), the University requires a Library (1 science per 2 citizens), if you have 2 scientists, their raw output is 6, but since you would also have a Library and a University, that would be 2*(3) + 1 (Library) = 7*50% for a total of 10.5 extra science points.

AND

The social Policy tree Freedom gives the following social policies: Freedom (specialists consume 1 food instead of 2) and Civil Service (Specialists only consime 1/2 a happiness point). Essentially that 10.5 science for two citizens becomes the equivalent of 10.5 bonus science points for 1 citizen. Then add on Secularism (+2 science points per specialist), that will give the equivalent of 13.5 science points for the equivalent of 1 citizen... but also add in Democracy which gives a free 50% bonus to great person production, and the points scored to Great Person production from the Scientists, and you're on your way to some easy free techs... Although if early enough in the game, plant Great Scientists down in the city radius for another extra 6 science points... So now you have an extra 9 science points from that tile due to the University present; suddenly, it is science output of 22.5 for the new terrain and single population value dedicated to the 2 scientists.

Specialists are VERY good; they give a LOT of extra science, production, and culture.

[Don]

Specialists are a lot of micromanagement and I almost always just let the computer handle it. I know leaving it on computer isn't really a great idea but it's really tiring to say okay this city needs to go to production focus for 5 turns and then switch back to that focus. I realize the game is more empire building than a wargame but this amount of micromanagement I think is just unneeded. When you consider the effect of Great Person it's probably almost always worth it to have specialists unless you'll end up starving (and even then you can usually afford to starve for a while) but it's not as if the game already isn't long enough.

I made some modifications and made units have 20 HP (city with 50) and unit cost 1/2 so I was actually able to build some. The unit cost in this game is simply way out of whack. You can put it on Settlers and absolutely dominate the world and still never make more than about 10 units because they take forever to build and are probably obselete by the time you finish building them. The combat system in Civ 5 is really, really simple. Basically if you have Shock 3 or Drill 3 and you're in a hex where your bonus applies then you're pretty much never going to die unless the enemy is 2 eras ahead of you. The whole game is just about getting on the right terrain and even with 20 HP it's not unusual to see 20 to 1 estimate fight between equal era units when one of them is on the wrong terrain. At the default 10 HP units simply die too fast when on the wrong terrain that you don't have any intriacies besides 'fortify on rough terrain with Drill 3'.

[Shrinweck]

Yeah I let the computer handle specialists and my major cities (pop over 12) tend to have a ton of them. I definitely go for the policies with specialist bonuses and the Statue of Liberty since specialists became automated. The problem is the drop off in production until I can get the Statue of Liberty built and if the computer beats me it definitely hurts. I tend to basically rush to the technologies that let me build the Statue of Liberty and that other statue that gives a deduction in culture required for policy accumulation.

[Julius Seeker]

I do wish there was a focus on specialists setting. I'm of the opinion they are always worth it except in the rare cases of starvation... Particularly since engineers are the earliest available; so in my experience, production has never been an issue. I always find the computer never does specialists right. I trust the computer less with specialists than I do with building production in puppet states.

Economy I usually only have issues with in the classical era; as I always go for the 4 cities with 4 temples very shortly after building the National College; and that costs 12 gold, but it is easily offset by selling luxuries - happiness is not really a big deal at this state of the game; even though Coliseums were nerfed in the last major patch (dropped from 4 to 3). By the time happiness becomes an issue, I usually find all resources are easily traded for, or in capitals that can easily be taken. Once you take a civilization's capital, they are effectively defeated, and you usually get some good buildings/wonders from them.

Anyway

Deity is easily winnable when using the Greeks. Just focus on boosting economy and grabbing all city states as allies. I foun that even though I did slip behind in tech on this level, that the extra allied cities and bonuses were enough to keep me on top of the game in terms of power. I don't like playing Deity because I don't like playing this strategy... But it works for me.

[Don]

The city-states gets the same bonuses the computer do and they can crank units out like it's out of style, so if you can get them on your side of course they're going to be a significant deterrent especially if you've one near you to make use of its units defensively. That said since city-state relationship is just a matter of how much money you have and the computer always have more, there's clearly nothing stopping the computer from just outbribing you on every city-state even as Alexander, especially since it actually takes the same money for the computer to bribe despite the trait (they just have to get to your faction+1 and then declare war and at that point faction will be locked at neg 60 and your civ trait wouldn't do any good).

City defense in this game is ridiculous easy. Most likely there's only 3 hexes for the attacking army to approach. If you defend with your best ranged guy + Oligarchy, there's a good chance the weakest unit out of the 3 trying to surround your city will die immediately. In this case unless you literally have an endless stream of units, your city isn't going to fall unless you're severely outteched because two melee units cannot form an effective blockade on the city, and even if they get into fortified position it's just a matter of time before you kill the weaker of the 2 units and then your own melee can come out and clean up (presumably they're hiding behind the city prior to this point). There's really no sense of holding or losing territory. Beyond cultural borders take too long to expand, let's say you drop the culture requirement significantly (which is what I did) so each city spans about a 5X5 or more area before Gunpowder era. However all the hexes besides the one the city is on basically don't matter unless there's a hex that, if pillaged, will cause some kind of strategic resource penalty. However as soon as you get into Gunpowder era you can make decent units that do not require a resource. As an aside, if you pillaged their iron/horse then Swordsman have no counter in their era unless your opponent is the Iroquis. Archer/Spearman simply cannot put a dent on Swordsman and everything else requires a strategic resource. Beyond the fact that it's easier for you to move your units within your territory and aforementioned strategic resources, there's literally no difference between fighting the enemy on the edge of your border or 1 hex away from city bombardment range. You can't really do any damage to the enemy's economy if you can't take their city. There's no sense of softening up the oppositon. If you failed to take the city the attack is a complete failure because almost every meaningful resource comes from the city itself assuming you're not able to amass so much units that the city can no longer work on tiles since we're talking about 20+ units here. I guess this is why in the late game you got a bunch of broken units (Stealth Bomber/Nukes/GDR) to break open the stalemate but it's really a bad game design. City defense should not function at an all-or-nothing model. There should be ways to weaken the effectiveness of a city so that you can still achieve some kind of tactical victory. Right now if you fail to take a city and have to retreat, all the damage you've done will be erased in about 5-6 turns on normal pace, including whatever you managed to pillage, and given a failed attack is very costly, there's got to be something to show more than having a city slightly less effective for a few turns.