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[LCfiner]

I've never played it, but some people have been saying civ v is easier to pick up than civ iv. If you're not into it enough to pick up 5, I don't think 4 will be a good starting place. I'd maybe get the civ 5 demo and see if it draws you in.

yeah, I'll just add to this that i thought Civ IV was damn near impossible to get into and understand all the systems as a newbie. Civ V is much easier to grasp.

And I'm not streamlining shit like automating workers or ignoring production focus in cities. but it's just sooo much easier in Civ V to see a) how to change those things and b) how they affect city output.

Oh, and on a personal note, the idea of military unit stacking seems completely backwards and inelegant.

 

[Cheech]

I've never played it, but some people have been saying civ v is easier to pick up than civ iv. If you're not into it enough to pick up 5, I don't think 4 will be a good starting place. I'd maybe get the civ 5 demo and see if it draws you in.

Personally, I think Civ V is much more fun than IV. It has a touch of Civ Rev in it, just enough to smooth over the tedious parts of gameplay. I can't think of the last time I paid full price for a game and got this kind of value out of it.

 

[MmmSkyscraper]

Is there a list of hornets anywhere in the game? Some have them in brackets when you go to choose them, but some don't.

Spoiler

Don't ask me what the fisting is about, I have no idea...

Not sure what you mean by hornets?

 

[Deleted member 30609]

iphone autocorrect is the best

I meant hotkeys!

 

[MmmSkyscraper]

iphone autocorrect is the best

I meant hotkeys!

:lol - thought it might be auto-correct fucking you over.

You can download the manual from here. A list of hotkeys is on page 207, for the English manual at least. Other languages are available.

http://www.2kgames.com/manual/civ5/

 

[JayDubya]

I second the AI issues mentioned above.

I beat back Alexander's attacks twice with good positioning and chokepoints (my stolen Arabian puppets - teehee), so he switched to diplomatic victory as his goal...
And yet, he never recruited a single city state or went at war to free the ones on the other continent. Because Alex was between Bismarck and me, Otto never declared and kept asking me to join him against Alex.

The two of them had a cold war until the end of time after the BC brawls went nowhere... So Otto went for science vic (and nearly got it), Alex built the UN and only ever got two votes, and Monty was content being the undisputed ruler of his starting continent, and for whatever reason Monty loved me but could have roflstomped me so hard.

For that matter, once Alex could embark, my little chokepoint should have been irrelevant to him - he could have just sailed around... And he had the navy to do it safely too, as I discovered when I finally had carriers and jets. He just had tons of caravels sitting around wasting money.

Long story short, I won cultural on deity w/ Egypt, but I don't feel satisfied because the AI had enough power to wipe me out and had no reason to quit...

 

[Najaf]

Sulla has a new play-by-play. Its been up for a few days but I did not see it posted here.

Immortal Egypt

As usual, Sulla proves to be a savant with Civ. This is what, his third game? He is already finding holes I did not think about despite my 60+ hours. Its a good read, and he brings up valid concerns. They should have kept him on the payroll as a tester/adviser.

 

[Pacman2k]

Everything is just so easy with the ability to outright buy military units. I'm bringing in around 350 gold per turn (even more if it's a golden age) and throughout the game I have been able to just purchase military units in cities closest to the front lines and send them in.

This is pretty much how I win military victories. Build up a bunch of gold then send a "trojan horse" over to the other land masses that consists of a settler, one land military unit, one naval unit.

Then just use gold to create and instant army and go on a rampage.

 

[sparky2112]

yeah, I'll just add to this that i thought Civ IV was damn near impossible to get into and understand all the systems as a newbie. Civ V is much easier to grasp.

And I'm not streamlining shit like automating workers or ignoring production focus in cities. but it's just sooo much easier in Civ V to see a) how to change those things and b) how they affect city output.

I know people will disagree, but I think the CiV UI is an absolute masterpiece. The series has always struggled with how to best present the player with A LOT of information AND make it sensible. This time, they actually did it. Genius.

 

[crispyben]

Got a Cradle of Civilization Scenario Pack: The Americas I have no use for... Anyone?

 

[JoeMartin]

The more I play the more I'm disappointed by the completely witless AI. The only way the game is remotely challenging is to play on high difficulty so they get free food/gold/hammers/beakers to compensate for their complete lack of anything resembling intelligence.

 

[drhankmccoyphd]

MacRumors report Civ 5 to Mac in coming weeks. Yay!

http://www.macrumors.com/2010/10/07/civilization-v-coming-to-mac-very-soon/

 

[Luixfern]

I fought it off, I really tried. Broke yesterday. Started playing at 8 p.m. just to "check it out".... looked at my phone, it was 3 a.m.... damn you Sid!!!!

 

[Infinity]

I fought it off, I really tried. Broke yesterday. Started playing at 8 p.m. just to "check it out".... looked at my phone, it was 3 a.m.... damn you Sid!!!!

This game has a horrible way of robbing time from you. I remember last week I started a new game playing America, figured I'd put in an hour or so building up a basic foundation for my nation, and then ... many hours later...

 

[LCfiner]

MacRumors report Civ 5 to Mac in coming weeks. Yay!

http://www.macrumors.com/2010/10/07/civilization-v-coming-to-mac-very-soon/

Fingers crossed for Valve like Steamplay so I can get the Mac version since I already bought the PC one. it would save me a few reboots each day.

 

[MmmSkyscraper]

Got a Cradle of Civilization Scenario Pack: The Americas I have no use for... Anyone?

If it's unclaimed, I'll wave my arm around violently in the air.

Going on holiday in a month, realised today I wouldn't be able to play Civ for a week cos of that :lol There's always Rev on the phone...

 

[FlyinJ]

How do you get destroyers to attack submarines?

 

[JayDubya]

Sulla has a new play-by-play. Its been up for a few days but I did not see it posted here.

Immortal Egypt

As usual, Sulla proves to be a savant with Civ. This is what, his third game? He is already finding holes I did not think about despite my 60+ hours. Its a good read, and he brings up valid concerns. They should have kept him on the payroll as a tester/adviser.

This is a pretty great read; I have been using weaker troops to bait but I hadn't thought to use workers to bait, yet... that's much smarter... absolutely no harm comes to them, whereas your scouts might die.

One thing I've noticed myself is that the AI is very persistent... not very adaptive. If you set up a terrible, terrible choke point where you can rain death upon any attackers, they will happily make their otherwise mighty army into lemmings rather than hold off, sail them around, or scout out your other locations for a better point of attack. They will eventually sue for peace if you give them enough of a black eye long enough, but you can keep bleeding them down to no troops with a good enough location, and then just waltz right in to undefended cities. They don't really use force multipliers like sea or air support very well, either.

Also, if you don't share a continent with another civ, they seem to be friendly by default and don't really care about what you do. They rarely cross oceans; they will only do so if they run out of other things to do.

If all the available land is blocked off, then they'll take some settlers on over the ocean and they'll go after city states elsewhere (usually because they declared on too many and now they're all at permanent war, so the AI wants to go after them and end that flagged state, I suppose. Otherwise, they can't be arsed.

When they DO expand outward to your continent or take a city-state there, though? Well, of course, now they need breathing room and will be reminding you how poor your troop status is.

The only way to give yourself a decent challenge is to let them cheat by playing on a higher difficulty such that they have more, albeit still poorly controlled, troops, and that they never have to worry about happiness or for paying for those troops and can expand at will.

 

[Deleted member 30609]

Fingers crossed for Valve like Steamplay so I can get the Mac version since I already bought the PC one. it would save me a few reboots each day.

if I get access to Civ V on my Macbook...

I don't even want to think about it.

 

[JayDubya]

Also - one more do and don't.

DO steal at least one worker from a city state in the early game - try to steal two if you can swing it, but do it quickly - like declare war, move in for one turn and seize all the workers you can, then make peace THAT SAME TURN, and all you've lost are some numbers saying how much that state likes you, which recovers over time anyway. Whether they have -60 opinion of you or 0 makes no difference if you're not at war, especially since that -60 will just go back to 0 if you leave them alone.

DON'T try to do it again just a few years later or you can expect permanent war with all the city states you've met. :lol

This is one trick to exploit in harder difficulty levels; multiple maritime city state allies is another; selling all your early luxury resources to buy city-state favor (and thus get their luxury resources) is another.


I encountered one exploit that was practically cheating... in one huge map, I had something like 300 horses. I had advanced well past the stage where cavalry were useful units. The esteemed gentlemen on the other continent had not. They were willing to give me 600 gold for 5 horses for 90 turns... They never STOPPED giving me this money when they had more horses then they could have realistically used, either Oh, the things they agreed to...

I bought all their GPT from them, then traded them horses for my money back.

 

[Zzoram]

How do you get destroyers to attack submarines?

I don't think they can. Submarines are anti-Destroyers.

 

[JayDubya]

No, submarines are anti-battleships and anti-carriers and can sail through the northern / southern icy areas (and the advanced ones can carry nukes). Subs cannot attack land units or cities, either.

So you have it backwards. Destroyers are sub-killers. Destroyers can see them, and get a +100% bonus to attack strength versus subs.

Not that I've ever seen these advanced combats play out yet... The AI doesn't seem to be as good at air or sea as it was in IV. Of course, it can't stack now, so the logistics and tactical positioning is probably a big chunk of the scripting difficulty.

How do you get destroyers to attack submarines?

So I'm kind of wondering what you're asking here. Are you sure there's a sub near one of your destroyers, but for some reason when you hit B a red circle doesn't pop up around the sub? The destroyer should be able to see it, and should be able to attack it.

 

[Sober]

Would you have to move your destroyer onto the tile with the sub? I'm thinking logically anyways that you would have to drop depth charges instead of trying to fire your batteries at the water, right? I dunno, never ever encountered an enemy sub...

 

[JayDubya]

I've only built subs myself, but found them largely useless so far - the AI's I've played against haven't built much in the way of a navy beyond a few scattered destroyers, so building that which is weak to destroyers is what we would call "a bad idea."

I once saw a city state with a sub, so they do happen, but I probably saw the sub because they were my allies, not because I had a destroyer in the area (didn't build a destroyer in that entire game).

 

[platypotamus]

Not that I've ever seen these advanced combats play out yet... The AI doesn't seem to be as good at air or sea as it was in IV. Of course, it can't stack now, so the logistics and tactical positioning is probably a big chunk of the scripting difficulty.

As I recall, the AI was really weak at both at release on Civ IV too. Maybe it was the Warlords expansion, with the seafaring civs, that improved it?

 

[JayDubya]

His next game, The Art of Wu is better and contains some interesting economic strategies: filler cities, chief among them.

Basically he identifies that the best way to handle this game by all of its metrics is to build small self-sufficient cities everywhere such that you can limit their maintenance costs and their growth (and thus unhappiness). Puppets pretty much suck, but palaces kind of make up for courthouses in the capitals...

My first game was crippled with costs... puppets ruined my footing; I still won by popping great generals that appeared before the last golden age ended (like 6 or 7 times), but otherwise I would have been out of cash... and cash is king in Civ V in a big, big way.


It's important to remember that the AI is not playing the same game you are. They don't have to worry about happiness very much as all, so they will puppet entire empires. On higher difficulties, this is not very smart or viable for a player. It is best to take over the most crucial cities, and burn the rest... however, razing cities also seems to make all other civs hate you. So that's... fun...

In Civ IV I would just hold anything I could keep militarily; razing was only a scorched earth tactic. Here, it's just not economically smart / viable to keep these cities, and it's not tactically sound to let an enemy city continue to exist.

I suppose you can also sell the puppets for a decent price to a civ that isn't militarily dangerous...

 

[platypotamus]

I suppose you can also sell the puppets for a decent price to a civ that isn't militarily dangerous...

It works really well. Also selling it back to the civ you just conquered it from, if you can't continue the war for whatever reason (another invader, low on units) can net you all sorts of goodies. I once did a "what would you give me for this" offer with a city, and he gave me all his resources (luxury and strategic), all his gold, and all his gpt.

I declared war again before that deal ended, and all his good troops had the -40% penalty for not having enough iron

 

[Sober]

That was a weird bug I encountered where I was opening up info windows during the AI's turn so when one of them came to bug me there were no options to leave the window. All I could do was alt+f4 out. =\

 

[Guardian Bob]

Fingers crossed for Valve like Steamplay so I can get the Mac version since I already bought the PC one. it would save me a few reboots each day.

Ditto.

 

[BigJonsson]

Managed a spaceship win using the Songhai on a small Earth map..........no one declared war on me the entire game.......you guys aren't kidding when you say that other civs won't travel across the ocean to pick a fight........

I had all of North America to myself and only one city-state was near me and the next closest was in South America with no other civs

England had conquered all of Africa, Asia, Europe etc.... Ghandi and Raamses finished with 1 city each but everything else was wiped out except a few city-states that were on other islands

 

[Corky]

bugtime :

Dropping nukes on civs is all fine and dandy and everything looks great. But after the explosion ( i.e there's nothing left on the screen ) the game freezes for 4-6 seconds before resuming. Wtf?

 

[Cday]

In the last game I played the AI had a city that bordered a 1 tile big lake and it built a battleship in that city. When I attacked they didn't even use it to bombard. I'm not sure how effective Artillery is against Battleships but I think if they had used it to bombard it would have single handedly repelled my attack.

Managed a spaceship win using the Songhai on a small Earth map..........no one declared war on me the entire game.......you guys aren't kidding when you say that other civs won't travel across the ocean to pick a fight.....

Yeah it's really a shame. I play Pangaea mostly because of this.

 

[Danne-Danger]

bugtime :

Dropping nukes on civs is all fine and dandy and everything looks great. But after the explosion ( i.e there's nothing left on the screen ) the game freezes for 4-6 seconds before resuming. Wtf?

Civ 4 was also like that from what I remember, you drop the nuke then it's -=calculation time for a while. 4-6 seconds sounds like a lot though.

 

[FutureZombie]

I finally decided to go for a diplomatic victory, and I'm enjoying it. I chose the Greeks for obvious reasons. If you ally with a couple militaristic city-states, they practically build your army for you!

 

[JayDubya]

Otto Bizzy is a BEAST.

Free archers / spearmen / warriors for doing what you normally do anyway...

I'm playing on Deity, Large, Earth, starting in the China area, and I've just rolled over Alex (Russia area) and Napoleon (India area). Now I'm going to go sack Africa and Europe if they can't stop me. If they can, I'll just defend and tech. :lol

 

[Ysiadmihi]

I liberate Askia, bring him back to life and he immediately hates me. Wtf :lol

 

[Instro]

Im getting sick of being contacted by other civs just so they can tell me that they mistook me for a barbarian, various shit talking, etc. Damn man I only destroyed one civ, leave me alone.:lol

 

[r1chard]

So there I was wondering why I was running out of gold... and looked at the breakdown and 1/3 of the gold was being spent on tile improvements. Most of which weren't being used.

I'll be turning off worker automation in the future...

 

[Ysiadmihi]

Yeah worker automation blows until real, real lategame when it just ends up taking too long to manage them yourself.

 

[zoku88]

Huh, I've never really done worker automation before. I never really trusted them...

 

[AstroLad]

Is there a breakdown somewhere of the upkeep on tile improvements and specific units?

 

[jepense]

Is there a breakdown somewhere of the upkeep on tile improvements and specific units?

I believe that of all tile improvements, only roads (1gpt) and railroads (2gpt) require upkeep.


After 6 games (5 victories, all types), I think culture is the most difficult win, and the one I like the most. On a map where a lot of the city states are safe from warmongers, diplomatic victory is really easy. I just finished a small earth map king level diplo win at around 1800 AD with Siam, where almost all of the city states were my allies through most of the game.

Many of the traits seem to be really powerful if you focus on exploiting them. So far I've noticed that at least Germany with barb farming, Siam with city states, and Persia with Golden Age buffs + great people focus are very powerful.

 

[Revolutionary]

Im getting sick of being contacted by other civs just so they can tell me that they mistook me for a barbarian, various shit talking, etc. Damn man I only destroyed one civ, leave me alone.:lol

Yeah, they're fucking stupid. One time, the entire world declared war on me because I retaliated against Ghandi using a Culture bomb in my territory. I mean, really?? You guys want me dead because I fought back?

I really don't like the Civ's AI for diplomacy.

 

[Zzoram]

Im getting sick of being contacted by other civs just so they can tell me that they mistook me for a barbarian, various shit talking, etc. Damn man I only destroyed one civ, leave me alone.:lol

Those are supposed to be prompts indicating souring relations towards you. Consider it a warning that they are preparing for war.

 

[BigJonsson]

Cultural victory with Ghandi! w00t

Monty declared war on me, so I bribed Napoleon to go to war with him and after a few turns Monty gave up

30ish turns later Monty does it again, I call up Napoleon who hates me and bribe him again, same result lol

Then Napoleon goes and conquers America and Aztec and the city-states on the continent but then a strange bug happened..........I now had a permanent peace treaty with Napoleon lol

I don't think I had a defensive pact or anything with him so I assume it was a bug?


Fully defended Indian cities are crazy powerful when you have all the friendly territory and city-defending social policies active lol

 

[Cfh123]

I've put 54 hours in to this game and have barely scratched the surface.

 

[jepense]

His next game, The Art of Wu is better and contains some interesting economic strategies: filler cities, chief among them.

He has very good analytic eye, but he sounds like such a whiner in those articles. Some of his points are accurate and some maybe not. He goes on about the AI, which I think we can agree on, is not that great. But then he also whines about slow production which is obviously like that by design. Interesting to read, anyway.

 

[DEO3]

I really don't like the Civ's AI for diplomacy.

Yeah it's shit. The fact that the leader AI is completely insane really kills what they were going for with this new diplomatic system. Civ V has made me miss Civ IV's diplomatic modifiers like never before - so good job, Firaxis?

When you liberate a civilization they should practically become your vassal, not hit you up the very next to tell you you're a piece of shit. When you declare war on someone you have a pact of secrecy against, the civilization you have a pact with shouldn't then break it due to your 'warmongering ways'. If you get attacked and then fight back, you shouldn't have to spend the rest of your game being hated by every other civilization in the fucking game.

I love Civ V, but the current diplomatic system is easily the game's biggest disappointment for me. I guess they felt that with City States in the game there was no longer any reason for other civilizations to ever be friendly with the player - since you had city states to ally with. I wish I could edit the game so the only thing that ever came out of the other leader's mouths was FUCK YOU.

Fuck you,

Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you. Fuck you fuck you fuck you, fuck you. Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you? Fuck you:

Ramesses II Offers:
[1] Fuck You

You Offer:
[5] Gold Per Turn

 

[Sober]

Is it just me, or is spamming trade posts on grasslands the only real option prince and above? (when there aren't any bonuses on maintainance, etc.). I just finished a game and I basically only put farms on river tiles (exception is forested), mines on hills (exception forested) then trading posts pretty much everywhere else. I don't believe I ever had a gold deficit for more than 5 turns at a time and I could pretty much deal with anything if I had the gold. Of course, it sorta helped that my starting position and first 3 cities had 2 gold/silver nodes, but most of the work was TPs at that point.

Plus, when you pop a golden age, your gold output quadruples. I don't see any other reason to build anything else on inland grassland or plains. I had maybe once city I devoted to just putting farms down every tile around it just for kicks.

 

[DEO3]

Is it just me, or is spamming trade posts on grasslands the only real option prince and above? (when there aren't any bonuses on maintainance, etc.). I just finished a game and I basically only put farms on river tiles (exception is forested), mines on hills (exception forested) then trading posts pretty much everywhere else. I don't believe I ever had a gold deficit for more than 5 turns at a time and I could pretty much deal with anything if I had the gold. Of course, it sorta helped that my starting position and first 3 cities had 2 gold/silver nodes, but most of the work was TPs at that point.

Plus, when you pop a golden age, your gold output quadruples. I don't see any other reason to build anything else on inland grassland or plains. I had maybe once city I devoted to just putting farms down every tile around it just for kicks.

There is currently no reason to build farms.