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Civilization V |OT| of Losing My Religion, And I Feel Fine...

Tonza said:
First game complete. Won by building the Apollo project. I think it was aroun 490 turns on third difficulty level.

This is my first Civ game ever so I messed up and thought I couldn't win but I guess the difficulty was pretty low.

Took me 9.2 hours. :lol

Was it consecutive play by any chance? Civ can really do that to you. :D
 

Tonza

Member
Lé Blade Runner said:
Was it consecutive play by any chance? Civ can really do that to you. :D

Nah... Started the game on friday but went to see parents on the weekend so had to take a break there. But yesterday I got back to my place and stayed up until 3 am playing Civ. :D
 

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
jonnyp said:
Anyone else playing on huge map with marathon time and experiencing extremely slow end of turn times?

My laptop is 2 years old but it's got a new 120gb G.Skill Phoenix Pro SSD, which there's nothing wrong with according to the Atto benchmarking app (reaching max potential reads and writes), 4GB ram, a 9800M GTS 1GB card and a Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8500 @ 3.16GHz Extreme Edition .

Putting the graphics settings to low on everything helps nothing, so it's not GPU limited. Seems to be a processor thing, since the SSD is more than fast enough.

I can't understand that the game is THAT taxing on the CPU either though and the game load times even with the SSD are ridiculous. Is this a really badly optimized game or what?

I don't think I'll be able to finish my current game, it's that bad. :(
The game takes advantage of multiple cores. If anything will improve performance, it's not really faster clock speeds or read times that will help, it's more efficient cores. They're not kidding when they recommend a quad-core or higher, I believe the engine scales up to take advantage of 8 at least.
 

LCfiner

Member
XiaNaphryz said:
The game takes advantage of multiple cores. If anything will improve performance, it's not really faster clock speeds or read times that will help, it's more efficient cores. They're not kidding when they recommend a quad-core or higher, I believe the engine scales up to take advantage of 8 at least.


Time to buy that 12 core power monster.
 

Hari Seldon

Member
Since I'm going for all the achievements, I did a one-city challenge with Siam on Warlord + cultural victory. I didn't know there was a specific achievement for doing this with Ghandi so maybe I'll try it with Ghandi on prince.

It was really easy with Siam. I did a small island map (needed map achievements). No one attacked me the entire game since I traded with everyone. Basically I built trading posts everywhere, allied with two Maritime civs for food, and allied with all of the cultural civs on the map for the culture. Sold off all of my resources for tons of money. This was a fairly boring game but I learned a lot about diplomacy.
 

Haeleos

Member
Is there anyway (like an ini file switch or something) to enable animation in multiplayer? Nice that they are catering to people that want to get through turns quick, but when it's switching the camera away from units after fights and there aren't even any sound effects when you're attacked, you tend to miss a lot of the combat stuff, especially when it scrolls through the combat notifications so quickly.

This all feels like a heavily focus tested version of Civ. I steamrolled the AI in singleplayer with my military and I wasn't even concentrating on my military. I guess it would help if the AI had built something other than Warriors the entire game.
 

bistromathics

facing a bright new dawn
so whats the word on MP in general? I played a couple games last night and it was laggy as all hell, people kept quitting (or dropping?), and there were only a handful of games going. The poster above me mentioned the no-animations, which did diminish the experience for me, being just a casual civ player.

Has there been any response like 'yea we know it's a bit messed up and we're working on it' or is this just how it is?
 

Altazor

Member
i'm still playing my "first" random game. Got the Songhai civilization against Aztec (in the same continent), and, across the sea, India, Egypt and America (which, funnily enough, was the shittiest civ on the map :p). Currently at the modern era, I completely wiped out the aztecs after they betrayed me and started to attack my cities (we had a pact of cooperation, dammit! Nobody betrays me!)... I had a kinda small army back then, but I was able to resist the aztec's invasion, even after losing 2 of my cities, and I actually turned the tables and began overtaking their cities one by one, until I controlled most of the continent soil (except for the city-states, which I liberated from the aztecs and are now my allies). I'm currently planning to invade India but I tried it on a previous save and failed miserably since they had a more modern army than me (especially mechanized infantry). I already conquered what used to be the american's base (actually just Washington, a couple of farms and trading posts, a mine and the Great Wall), and I don't want to destroy Egypt since they only have one city remaining. So yeah, India it is.

tl;dr this game's fucking addictive and I can't stop playing it.
 

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
Haeleos said:
Is there anyway (like an ini file switch or something) to enable animation in multiplayer? Nice that they are catering to people that want to get through turns quick, but when it's switching the camera away from units after fights and there aren't even any sound effects when you're attacked, you tend to miss a lot of the combat stuff, especially when it scrolls through the combat notifications so quickly.

This all feels like a heavily focus tested version of Civ. I steamrolled the AI in singleplayer with my military and I wasn't even concentrating on my military. I guess it would help if the AI had built something other than Warriors the entire game.
What difficulty did you play on? The lower ones are basically like sandbox mode.
 

Archie

Second-rate Anihawk
Hari Seldon said:
Dunno if this was posted yet, Troy Goodfellow's review. (Troy does the Three Moves Ahead Podcast and is an extreme strategy game vet)

http://www.gameshark.com/reviews/3627/p_0/Sid-Meiers-Civilization-V-Review.htm

with more comments on his blog:

http://flashofsteel.com/index.php/2010/09/22/civilization-5-ai-and-scoring-games/


He gave it a B+. He loves the game but hates diplomacy and the AI smarts. Those things are easily patchable, imo.

I can't disagree with that review. The game is already excellent, but an improved AI and a few expansion packs will make it something really special.
 

Spl1nter

Member
Hari Seldon said:
He gave it a B+. He loves the game but hates diplomacy and the AI smarts. Those things are easily patchable, imo.

The diplomacy needs major changes which can not be addressed by a patch unless the patch is a mini expansion. The number of areas for AI improvement is substantial as well. From unit placement, to city production choice.
 
I messed up when I said Charles Napier did the voice work, it's actually the guy who plays Lane's dad on Mad Men. He really does sound like Napier though.

He's bad ass though.
http://imgur.com/9A38T.gif
 

Shambles

Member
Has anyone figured out how to fix the UI so it doesn't go out of its way to hide buttons that you actually want to use such as auto-explore? I guess that might be useful for someone playing on a 12" laptop but on my 15" laptop or 24" monitor it's a pain in the ass.
 

Hari Seldon

Member
Spl1nter said:
The diplomacy needs major changes which can not be addressed by a patch unless the patch is a mini expansion. The number of areas for AI improvement is substantial as well. From unit placement, to city production choice.

I think they could make diplomacy smarter via patches, like for example offering peace treaties sooner or allowing things like breaking trade agreements and whatnot. That would help a ton.

But you are right, what the game needs for expansion #1 is an expansion focusing on all of the non-combat stuff, namely making diplomacy really awesome.
 
jonnyp said:
Anyone else playing on huge map with marathon time and experiencing extremely slow end of turn times?

My laptop is 2 years old but it's got a new 120gb G.Skill Phoenix Pro SSD, which there's nothing wrong with according to the Atto benchmarking app (reaching max potential reads and writes), 4GB ram, a 9800M GTS 1GB card and a Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8500 @ 3.16GHz Extreme Edition .

Putting the graphics settings to low on everything helps nothing, so it's not GPU limited. Seems to be a processor thing, since the SSD is more than fast enough.

I can't understand that the game is THAT taxing on the CPU either though and the game load times even with the SSD are ridiculous. Is this a really badly optimized game or what?

I don't think I'll be able to finish my current game, it's that bad. :(

Could it be a memory leak? I recall either Alpha Centuari or Civ4 had a nasty one when it first came out. I've had no real problems on medium with my crappy laptop.
 
Man, Marathon really is a marathon this time. :lol

I finished my first game on a standard Earth map (pretty big though compared to IV!), got to turn 811 and took Berlin with a couple of Frigates, a Knight (could use Cossacks), Artillery (ruin upgrade from cannon), and a Rifleman that stuck with me for most of the game (got him around 400AD from ruin upgrades). Just got access to destroyers and planes the turn before (used a scientist as my research finished). On Prince difficulty. Pretty damn crazy.

But about those ruins upgrading units, where's the logic in having a single rifleman before you invent gunpowder? Are these alien ruins? Why can't I copy the tech of this one guy? It's the second game in a row where I can just hog all small island ruins before the AI gets embark (and I'm not sure it would take them even if he had embark) and get a rifleman out when everyone else is on spearmen. It's a pretty significant balance issue IMO, and it doesn't make a lick of sense.

Anyway, yeah, the AI definitely needs work. It just can't cope with the combat. I conquered all of Europe and Africa using the same ~3-4 land units. There was a civ that was pretty much on equal footing with me as far as army size went (and he even had a few more advanced units), but with a few ships off the coast I could whittle down his numbers since he continuously sent them into bombard range. Not saying I didn’t enjoy doing that though, because I did, very much. But some challenge would be nice.

Oh and navies are pooooooooowerful, once you get +1 range it's pretty much game over for the AI.

Speaking of which, has anyone had a game where the AI uses a big, powerful navy? Because I think I killed maybe 4-5 triremes and maybe 2-3 caravels before the game ended.
 

Rad-

Member
I doubt Firaxis will do much to change the AI. The mod community however will definitely fix that. Just like they did with Civ 4's AI.
 

erpg

GAF parliamentarian
I still don't understand the game at all, but I really, really enjoy the leader screens. Far as I can tell, they did a great job with them.
 

Borgnine

MBA in pussy licensing and rights management
Danne-Danger said:
It's the second game in a row where I can just hog all small island ruins before the AI gets embark (and I'm not sure it would take them even if he had embark)

In the game I just played I finally got to astronomy which allowed me to travel to the next continent at about turn 280 or so. Rome basically had the entire continent but when I landed on their shores my scouts still discovered 3 ruins. I was like what the hell is this doing here, this fool's been here for 2000 years and he never saw them? It was like wow great thanks for the 30 gold just throw it on the pile of 6000 that I have.
 

Hari Seldon

Member
Borgnine said:
In the game I just played I finally got to astronomy which allowed me to travel to the next continent at about turn 280 or so. Rome basically had the entire continent but when I landed on their shores my scouts still discovered 3 ruins. I was like what the hell is this doing here, this fool's been here for 2000 years and he never saw them? It was like wow great thanks for the 30 gold just throw it on the pile of 6000 that I have.

Yeah in my game on Warlord the AI ignored the ruins but when I went up to Prince I saw the AI race me to a ruin once, but that was on land. I don't think the AI likes to land explore over continents that much.
 

moojito

Member
I'm still playng the demo here, but one of the city states put out a message asking for help clearing out a bandit camp nearby. I got a soldier and some horse chariot thing all the way up there and spent ages trying to figure out why I couldn't attack it. After a while I accidentally moved my horse dudes onto the tile and got the credit and gold for clearing them out. Turns out one of the other empires killed the bandits then just left waiting for it to be claimed! Good times. I think I'm going to buy it.
 

Jasconius

Member
So I did manage to beat the game with a cultural victory on emperor, but it didn't really feel like much of a victory when Siam and Greece could have crushed me at any moment had they so desired. ;p

songhailarge1.png


I figured out early on that the two looked like they were going to be the superpowers, so I befriended both of them and tried to do anything they asked, declaring war on other states that I was never going to see, etc etc. The only thing I denied was Greece's repeated attempts at the end to get me to go to war with Siam (suicide!). This worked out really well this time, but I think next time I try something like this I might try supporting some of the weaker countries early on so that they actually survive and I don't have these massive empires to compete against.

songhailarge2.png


I did my cultural game as the Songhai just to try out something different. My strategy was to use their special ability, getting triple money from barbarian encampments, to stay caught up militarily in the early game by just buying units whenever I could so that it didn't take away from my wonder-building. This actually worked out pretty well because I had the military to compete with most of the other countries until much later in the game but I was still able to get all of the important wonders. I did have two failed attempts before this - the first I just didn't get enough military fast enough and got run over by the Ottomans' early army, while the second I was beaten to Stonehenge and gave up. Songhai also offered the mud pyramid mosque building, which replaces the temple and gives +5 culture instead of +3, with no maintenance.

songhailarge3.png


I think the Songhai worked out pretty well overall as I just camped out the uninhabited reaches of the world waiting for barbarian encampments to spawn. I was able to do this well into the modern era until after defeating one encampment, I rushed over to the next, only to find that it was guarded by an infantry unit instead of the brute that the last one had... I learned that cultural city-states are actually a great source of culture in the early game - I shunned city-states this game because I was using all of my gold to keep my military up, but +12 culture per turn is nothing to sneeze at in the early going. Later, once you have all the multipliers in your cities, it's not as good, but I'm interested in trying this again as Siam for the culture multiplier for city-states. I think it would work really well.
 

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
Am I getting mixed up on specialists? For some reason when I assign one I noticed it doesn't affect the science or culture readouts on top (i.e. the + stays the same).
 

Buttchin

Member
i so want to play this game but ive never been a PC gamer so i dont have the rig for it... gonna give Civ 4 a try first for cheap as my current computer can run that it seems. If i find out i enjoy the general style of gameplay i just may be getting myself a new desktop solely for CIV5 LOL... part me hopes i don't like it.... for my wallets sake
 

Danj

Member
Totakeke said:
You're probably playing your game too unfocused. It's simple, at the settler difficulty, try to build nothing but things that would increase your culture and it'll come naturally. Don't try to do everything like conquering, teching, expanding all at once. Plus for culture you want to have few cities to not have your policy costs go far too high. 3-4 is a good number for standard size maps but you could probably go more at that difficulty.

Things that you want to emphasize on.

Buildings - Monument, Temple, Museum, Opera House, Radio Tower.
Wonders- Stonehenge, Oracle, Cristo Redentor, Sydney Opera House. Hermitage. Also wonders that give you more than one culture could be worth building.
Social Policies - Tradition for the Wonder building bonus, Piety for the Mandate of Heaven, Patronage if there's a good number of Cultural city states around, Freedom for the 100% cultural bonus with wonder in the city, also Free Speech for cheaper social policies. The last one is pretty much up to you. You could also get Rationalism instead of Piety if you are in the middle of a lot of grassland since you can get a lot of specialists running.
Techs - Calendar, Writing, Philosophy, Acoustics, Archeology, Telegraph, Radio, Globalization

Thanks for the tips, it worked out great! I started a Settler difficulty game at Quick speed (since I don't have ~6 hours to spare on weekdays) and got myself a Cultural victory. You really do have to concentrate on it at the expense of almost everything else though, I definitely had the feeling I was behind in tech. Took about 3 hours.
 

zoku88

Member
Does anyone have cultural victory tips for King?

I just beat a game of King using cultural victory, but it wasnt a very good game. Not only did the win come late (like 2020), but I was also a pretty weak country, financially and militarily.

What's the best way to not be poor?
weekend_warrior said:
:lol

I'm impressed you won.
Meh, I was last place in a lot of those stats too with my culture victory. Probably not a coincidence. (I was clearly the weakest of the 3 surviving states.)
 
Zeliard said:
Did A.I. tweaks from the community for Civ 4 improve things a great deal in that regard?

If I'm not mistaken, two A.I. modders were hired by Firaxis and their mod was built into BtS. I think opinions on the BtS A.I. were mixed, but I think it was almost universally preferred to vanilla. Someone correct me if I'm off in my details...
 
Just looking at those screens make me want to go home and play...

So far I've held off on buying Civ V (although I went back and played Civ IV for 8 hours straight after playing the Civ V demo). That was bad, I just don't have the time to be doing that, which is why I haven't bought Civ V. :\
 

Ferrio

Banned
Also i saw it mentioned earlier... but what are those red dots on tiles? Some ATI issue? It's like someone is shining a laser pointer at each tile.
 

owlbeak

Member
Ferrio said:
Also i saw it mentioned earlier... but what are those red dots on tiles? Some ATI issue? It's like someone is shining a laser pointer at each tile.
Not ATI specific...I get them on my GeForce 8800GTS.
 
Horsebite said:
Found an interesting landmass while playing my second game:

http://i52.tinypic.com/331lmc6.jpg[/IMG

So much for hexes. :lol[/QUOTE]
Yeah I've seen my fair share of those as well, seems to happen on tiny islands with hills a lot.
 
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