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

If anyone was looking to pick this up on Steam, I have a spare Steam key (100% legal. I got two copies) that I'm willing to trade for something of equal value (hint hint New Vegas).
 

jepense

Member
Najaf said:
Here are some shots from my latest game using the ICS. (Infinite city strategy) Sulla over on realms beyond gave me the idea in a recent playthrough he typed up. He does an infinitely better job describing the how-to in this strategy, so if you are interested, read up on his site.

The basic idea is to use filler cities and cap their growth. You take advantage of the order social policy tree and net the invaluable +5 hammer. When combined with magical maritime food and a few wonders and other social policies, your simple filler cities look like the ones bellow; very capable of turning 25+ beakers per turn.

That is 1031 beakers per turn, and 305 gold per turn while not in a golden age. If anyone wants to poke around in the save, PM me and I can email it to you so you can see how I got to be in this state.

At an average population of 8 (?) I wouldn't call them just fillers. That is already a decent size for a city. You don't need to specifically pick their locations since you only work a couple of tiles, but that's pretty much the case for big cities as well as long as you have Maritime food. Do you also run Freedom to cut the unhappiness from specialists? Since just a colosseum alone won't support the population of 8. I bet you also built the Statue of liberty?

After playing around with this approach myself, I also think it is currently the easiest way build a commanding lead. It's not overpowered in the sense that you can quite easily pull 1000 beakers from just a dozen cities with proper specialization, but this kind of an empire is simpler to set up. It just takes so long to grow cities beyond 15-20, that it is more difficult to develop super cities than lots of small ones. I don't really mind that one can go either way, though.

Maritime states should be toned down, or the AI should really try to prevent the player from allying with them. It would be more reasonable if maritime states provided a set number of apples which was then split equally to all your cities (capital could still get double). Communism should give 5 hammers per city since it isn't that easy to get, but maritime food is just so easy to obtain and stacks so well that it can easily give the player an obscene advantage, especially with large empires.
 

Najaf

Member
jepense said:
At an average population of 8 (?) I wouldn't call them just fillers. That is already a decent size for a city. You don't need to specifically pick their locations since you only work a couple of tiles, but that's pretty much the case for big cities as well as long as you have Maritime food. Do you also run Freedom to cut the unhappiness from specialists? Since just a colosseum alone won't support the population of 8. I bet you also built the Statue of liberty?

After playing around with this approach myself, I also think it is currently the easiest way build a commanding lead. It's not overpowered in the sense that you can quite easily pull 1000 beakers from just a dozen cities with proper specialization, but this kind of an empire is simpler to set up. It just takes so long to grow cities beyond 15-20, that it is more difficult to develop super cities than lots of small ones. I don't really mind that one can go either way, though.

Maritime states should be toned down, or the AI should really try to prevent the player from allying with them. It would be more reasonable if maritime states provided a set number of apples which was then split equally to all your cities (capital could still get double). Communism should give 5 hammers per city since it isn't that easy to get, but maritime food is just so easy to obtain and stacks so well that it can easily give the player an obscene advantage, especially with large empires.

The maritime food caused the population to get that high. Read the playthrough I linked above regarding the wonders/policies. As people are playing more with this, it is just getting worse. Here is a screengrab off of civfanatics of a spacerace victory in less than 200 turns. He is putting out +2000 beakers per turn and built the entire spaceship in 11 turns. The maritime food and ICS are truly broken elements in the game as it stands. He did that without communism or any of the advanced social policies.

EDIT: And regarding war, he used the cities to crossfire attackers and would simply rushbuy units when the AI came at him.

scs.jpg
 

Chris R

Member
Anyone know what the ETA is on the patch? Waiting to start a new game until then (still have games with saves to play if I want)
 

Totakeke

Member
Najaf said:
The maritime food caused the population to get that high. Read the playthrough I linked above regarding the wonders/policies. As people are playing more with this, it is just getting worse. Here is a screengrab off of civfanatics of a spacerace victory in less than 200 turns. He is putting out +2000 beakers per turn and built the entire spaceship in 11 turns. The maritime food and ICS are truly broken elements in the game as it stands. He did that without communism or any of the advanced social policies.

EDIT: And regarding war, he used the cities to crossfire attackers and would simply rushbuy units when the AI came at him.

scs.jpg


The point of every civ gameplay design was always to limit ICS and the game is broken whenever someone makes it work. Though there's less of a reason to do it this time because the AI sucks anyway.

But your and his screenshot doesn't really tell the whole picture since he already won the game by having that much land (and he's also Gandhi) in the screenshot anyway and you seem to have started on an isolated big landmass that you're free to do whatever you want.
 

Aselith

Member
Is there a bug that giving money to city-states will start reducing standing or is it part of a game mechanic that I don't understand?

In my last game in which I also got hit with the infinite peace bullshit, later in the game the city states started generating negative standing when I gave them gold instead of positive.

I tried giving money to one to make sure it wasn't just a display bug and it went from neutral to hostile then the next turn bounced back to neutral. I'm not sure if it rebounded because of bugginess or if it was because I had patronage maxed out. I assume bug but I ran roughshod over Rome for a long time before it started happening so maybe they were responding to hostility through some mechanic? I had previously been allies with these nations though. :(

The worst part was the inifinite peace though because I had 4 giant death robots just raging on Rome and Russia. Two of them were pretty much fully upgraded. I made the mistake of making peace with Russia and got fucked. Had to space race it to win that one.
 

jepense

Member
Najaf said:
The maritime food caused the population to get that high. Read the playthrough I linked above regarding the wonders/policies. As people are playing more with this, it is just getting worse. Here is a screengrab of a spacerace victory in less than 200 turns. He is putting out +2000 beakers per turn and built the entire spaceship in 11 turns. The maritime food and ICS are truly broken elements in the game as it stands. He did that without communism or any of the advanced social policies.

EDIT: And regarding war, he used the cities to crossfire attackers and would simply rushbuy units when the AI came at him.

scs.jpg
I thought ICS usually meant a strategy where you build as many very small cities you can and don't even try to make the cities grow. This is because the city tile is automatically worked and thus you get free food, production, and gold. The screen you posted is not ICS in that sense since all the cities are big. I don't think past civ games have put a cap on the number of cities you can have, but they have made having big cities a stronger strategy than lots of small ones. Having lots of big cities should be ok in principle, since it's not about exploiting ICS, but a sign of a strong economy. However, I fully agree that being able to produce that many big cities so quickly due to exploiting maritimes shows that maritime food is overpowered. It is ICS in the sense that the cities are as close as possible. That again is a result of maritime food, since the cities need not work any land to prosper.

I haven't read what was going on with regarding happiness here, so I won't comment on whether happiness is broken as well. If it is, a simple fix could be a progressively increasing happiness penalty from new cities?
 

Totakeke

Member
jepense said:
I thought ICS usually meant a strategy where you build as many very small cities you can and don't even try to make the cities grow. This is because the city tile is automatically worked and thus you get free food, production, and gold. The screen you posted is not ICS in that sense since all the cities are big. I don't think past civ games have put a cap on the number of cities you can have, but they have made having big cities a stronger strategy than lots of small ones. Having lots of big cities should be ok in principle, since it's not about exploiting ICS, but a sign of a strong economy. However, I fully agree that being able to produce that many big cities so quickly due to exploiting maritimes shows that maritime food is overpowered. It is ICS in the sense that the cities are as close as possible. That again is a result of maritime food, since the cities need not work any land to prosper.

I haven't read what was going on with regarding happiness here, so I won't comment on whether happiness is broken as well. If it is, a simple fix could be a progressively increasing happiness penalty from new cities?

2 unhappiness for each city and 1 unhappiness per population. Gandhi UA makes 4 unhappiness for each city but only 1 unhappiness per 2 population. So cities break even at 4 pop and Gandhi's UA takes over and unhappiness is significantly reduced.
 

Blizzard

Banned
Yay update!

* Research treaties that end because you declare war will no longer grant the free tech
Aww, I think that helped me out once or twice. :lol
 

Najaf

Member
The biggest and best changes IMO:

Balance - Engineers +1 hammer

Economy - Can now sell Buildings in a city (to help lower maintenance for obsolete buildings later in the game).

City - Cities that are Avoiding Growth will not grow while that option is selected

City - Make sure Puppets don't construct buildings that require Resources.

City - Add a Puppet city strategy that turns off training buildings and emphasizes gold.
 

Najaf

Member
alske said:
Any word on if the patch addresses some of the performance issues the game can have?

Full patch notes:

UI
Fix for production prompt that sometimes appears with newly created puppet states that could stop the player from being able to end the turn.
Aircraft banner corrections – now when you rebase an aircraft, the number will move with it.
Resource icons now come up with Ctrl-R again, instead of sharing the same button with Build Roads.
Selecting a great general will no longer cause yield icons to appear.
Added option to disable auto-unit cycling.
Fix for full-screen game when running dual monitors. Previously, the curser could scroll off the "open" side, and not be able to scroll the map in that direction.
Misc additional fixes to mouse controls, and other interface issues.
Rounded out financial information in the Economic Overview screen. Details now provided on the amount of gold provided by each city, the cost of buildings in each city, etc.
Auto-populate save menu with save file name
Allow selection of other cities by hex from within the city screen
Added detailed trade route info to Economic Overview screen

Modding
Category list now displays correctly

Gameplay
Workers - Added option to force workers to ignore manually made improvements (so they don't change what you decide was best for a plot).
Workers - Fixed bug where number of turns to complete were incorrect in build action button tool-tip.
Economy - Fixed bug where players could disband a single unit, and not see the economic return until disbanding 1 more.
Economy – Increased city wealth setting to 25%
Economy – Multiple fixes to the way trade-routes are tabulated and recognized.
Economy - Can now sell Buildings in a city (to help lower maintenance for obsolete buildings later in the game).
Trade – Found and corrected a Trade problem that could cause your Resource inventory to multiply.
City States - Fixed a bug where you could not gift aircraft to city states.
Military - Medic promotion now only provides healing bonus for adjacent units.
Military – Fix for Minuteman movement.
Military – Correct promotions for "archer-like" units (horse archers, chariots).
Military - Embarked units will no longer slow enemy land units
Military - Improved unit cycling logic. Camera will jump around much less.
Balance - Engineers +1 hammer

AI
Military – Better handling of unit need (navy vs land, etc.) .
Military - AI will tend to build ships to deal with blockaded cities more often
Military – Corrected an issue hampering movement of AI armies, especially when in close proximity to enemy forces
Diplomacy – AI will be more reluctant to offer or accept open border agreements with more powerful opponents.
Diplomacy – Fix for never ending deals (peace, research agreements, etc).
City – City specialization and city focus improvements.
City - Cities that are Avoiding Growth will not grow while that option is selected
Workers – Priority of trading posts reduced, and rebalanced priorities on other improvements
Workers – Improved the path-finding mechanic when building route-to roads improved, including a large performance increase when evaluating road-pathing.

Multiplayer
Exploit – Fix for gifting unit exploit
Chat – Color-coding, sound alerts, etc., added for in-game chat system, including a larger window.
Deals – Additional deal validation put in place to verify deals before they are committed

Misc
Research treaties that end because you declare war will no longer grant the free tech
Save/Load – Fix for corrupted saves being experienced by some players in late-game.
Map - Huge map crash-during-load fix that were reported on some specific systems.
Map – Terrain caching fix that could cause problems for certain video cards (the "glowing red orbs" seen on the map are an indicator of this).
Map – Fix for the low res terrain that appears the first time the game is run (terrain tiles would not load in anything but low-res the first time you play on some computer configurations)
Strategic View – Crash fix for units rendering in background.
Strategic View – Fix for selecting units either standing on a city plot, or garrisoned in the city plot.
Eyefinity – Better handling of leader scenes when using Eyefinity displays.
Tutorials – Many tutorial tweaks and adjustments.
Multiple crash fixes.
 

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Totakeke said:
Does steam update the game automatically?
If you didn't disable it for a particular game, it will check for updates each time you try to launch the game (if the update hadn't already started) and download the update.
 
BigJonsson said:
It doesn't seem to be updating =/
It may have already updated if you've had Steam running in the background.

Click the Downloads tab in your Library and there should be a list of recently downloaded patches. It updated for me at 10 this morning.
 

fallout

Member
BigJonsson said:
Still says version 1.0.0.2 =/

And nothing in the downloads
Weird. Steam won't usually even let you launch a game without allowing it to update first. Maybe try restarting Steam?
 

coopolon

Member
Najaf said:
Full patch notes:

Did you delete stuff? I'm a little confused. In those notes there's no mention of puppet cities not building resource requiring buildings, but in the patch notes I read earlier it was included.

Edit: Here's the actual full patch notes. I guess maybe they added some stuff to it?

UI

* Fix for production prompt that sometimes appears with newly created puppet states that could stop the player from being able to end the turn.
* Aircraft banner corrections - now when you rebase an aircraft, the number will move with it.
* Resource icons now come up with Ctrl-R again, instead of sharing the same button with Build Roads.
* Selecting a great general will no longer cause yield icons to appear.
* Added option to disable auto-unit cycling.
* Fix for full-screen game when running dual monitors. Previously, the curser could scroll off the "open" side, and not be able to scroll the map in that direction.
* Misc additional fixes to mouse controls, and other interface issues.
* Rounded out financial information in the Economic Overview screen. Details now provided on the amount of gold provided by each city, the cost of buildings in each city, etc.
* Auto-populate save menu with save file name
* Allow selection of other cities by hex from within the city screen
* Added detailed trade route info to Economic Overview screen
* Added new tab to the Economic Overview Screen: "Resources & Happiness."
* Added option to activate the mp score list in single player (for "always up" score similar to Civ IV.)
* The Annex/Puppet/Raze popup now indicates how much extra Unhappiness will be assumed with each action.
* If there are less than 5 buildings still needed to construct a National Wonder, the production popup tool-tip now lists which cities lack them.
* Added Yield & Culture tool-tip info to the production popup.
* Tweak information on the Global Politics tab in the Diplomacy Overview screen.

MODDING

* Category list now displays correctly
* "Installed" panel now displays ALL versions of a mod but prevents the user from enabling multiple versions.

GAMEPLAY

* Workers - Added option to force workers to ignore manually made improvements (so they don't change what you decide was best for a plot).
* Workers - Fixed bug where number of turns to complete were incorrect in build action button tool-tip.
* Economy - Fixed bug where players could disband a single unit, and not see the economic return until disbanding 1 more.
* Economy - Increased city wealth setting to 25%
* Economy - Multiple fixes to the way trade-routes are tabulated and recognized.
* Economy - Can now sell Buildings in a city (to help lower maintenance for obsolete buildings later in the game).
* Trade - Found and corrected a Trade problem that could cause your Resource inventory to multiply.
* City States - Fixed a bug where you could not gift aircraft to city states.
* Military - Medic promotion now only provides healing bonus for adjacent units.
* Military - Fix for Minuteman movement.
* Military - Correct promotions for "archer-like" units (horse archers, chariots).
* Military - Embarked units will no longer slow enemy land units
* Military - Improved unit cycling logic. Camera will jump around much less.
* Balance - Engineers +1 hammer
* Balance - Disbanding units now provides only 10% of their production cost in gold.
* Request - Enable "one more turn" button if you lose, but are still alive.

AI

* Military - Better handling of unit need (navy vs land, etc.).
* Military - AI will tend to build ships to deal with blockaded cities more often
* Military - Corrected an issue hampering movement of AI armies, especially when in close proximity to enemy forces
* Diplomacy - AI will be more reluctant to offer or accept open border agreements with more powerful opponents.
* Diplomacy - Fix for never ending deals (peace, research agreements, etc).
* City - City specialization and city focus improvements.
* City - Cities that are Avoiding Growth will not grow while that option is selected
* Workers - Priority of trading posts reduced, and rebalanced priorities on other improvements
* Workers - Improved the path-finding mechanic when building route-to roads improved, including a large performance increase when evaluating road-pathing.
* City - Make sure Puppets don't construct buildings that require Resources.
* City - Add a Puppet city strategy that turns off training buildings and emphasizes gold.
* Military - Defensive tactical AI update. When you are at war and threatening an enemy city, the AI will better utilize the garrison, as well as the surrounding terrain in defense of the target city.

MULTIPLAYER

* Exploit - Fix for gifting unit exploit
* Chat - Color-coding, sound alerts, etc., added for in-game chat system, including a larger window.
* Deals - Additional deal validation put in place to verify deals before they are committed

MISC

* Research treaties that end because you declare war will no longer grant the free tech
* Save/Load - Fix for corrupted saves being experienced by some players in late-game.
* Map - Huge map crash-during-load fix that were reported on some specific systems.
* Map - Terrain caching fix that could cause problems for certain video cards (the "glowing red orbs" seen on the map are an indicator of this).
* Map - Fix for the low res terrain that appears the first time the game is run (terrain tiles would not load in anything but low-res the first time you play on some computer configurations)
* Strategic View - Crash fix for units rendering in background.
* Strategic View - Fix for selecting units either standing on a city plot, or garrisoned in the city plot.
* Eyefinity - Better handling of leader scenes when using Eyefinity displays.
* Tutorials - Many tutorial tweaks and adjustments.
* Multiple crash fixes.
* Taller than wide map crash fix.
 

coopolon

Member
Najaf said:
Whoops. Must have copy and pasted an older list somehow.

Yah, I actually just saw the same list on Joystiq. It appears they added a few things to the patch after they released the original notes. I'm happy they did, there are actually quite a few significant things like the city state buildings.
 

Totakeke

Member
coopolon said:
Yah, I actually just saw the same list on Joystiq. It appears they added a few things to the patch after they released the original notes. I'm happy they did, there are actually quite a few significant things like the city state buildings.

Instead of increasing the production -> wealth setting in cities to 25%, they decreased the gold amount you get from disbanding units. So they are now equal in value.
 

Sober

Member
Good news is I think the AI finally figured out how to fight a war. I was playing on prince, so you expect the AI to still be acting like they had brain damage but they actually gave me a run for my money, considering most of the time they have a much larger army than mine and just let it get steamrolled by 3 or 4 of my units.
 

Boss Doggie

all my loli wolf companions are so moe
Just a question - in order to get that All Victories achievement, do you need to do it in a single game or in different games? Because I realized that some victories are disabled when you obtain another victory (e.g. you can't do Science Victory once you've done other victories).
 

aidan

Hugo Award Winning Author and Editor
Ookami-kun said:
Just a question - in order to get that All Victories achievement, do you need to do it in a single game or in different games? Because I realized that some victories are disabled when you obtain another victory (e.g. you can't do Science Victory once you've done other victories).

Different games.
 

Sblargh

Banned
Sober said:
Good news is I think the AI finally figured out how to fight a war. I was playing on prince, so you expect the AI to still be acting like they had brain damage but they actually gave me a run for my money, considering most of the time they have a much larger army than mine and just let it get steamrolled by 3 or 4 of my units.

There goes my strategy. :lol
(this game I'm playing, I actually spent 150 turns with my whole army being one warrior)
 

Sober

Member
Also I forgot to mention when you capture a city you can view it to see what buildings remain before you decide what to do with it. If you puppet, there is also always the option to view the city anytime if you click on it to decide it's worth annexing, etc.
 
I've never played a multiplayer game of Civ, but I am eager to try it out. I've been playing on King difficulty, so I'm not a super advanced player yet. Since this will be my first time playing, I want to do it right and set aside a time to play. Maybe in two weeks once I get past the busy season of my work. Anyone interested?
 

Sober

Member
sdornan said:
Any impressions of the new patch?
Might as well. Doing Pangaea on Prince, so contact is required with the AI, but they are still slightly dumb.

-If the AI declares war on you, they will actually march troops towards your cities. I had a few close calls and I even lost a city or two (we wrestled it back two or three times so now I have a really shitty used-to-be-good city that I left defenseless)
-basically, you can't just roll around with a couple of military units and expect to be safe. I was lazy in positioning at the AI caught me on it. I had maybe an army of 15-20 units and it wasn't enough. Also I was overextended by expanding too far and when the wars were declared on me, most of my troops were 6,7 turns away from the other half. This happened twice, once with Germany, and again with a two-front war (luckily close enough together) with Germany and England.
-Also yelling at England cause longbowmen will fuck you up. Even with the cover promotions, when they have 3 or 4 of them, oh boy...
-I almost saw the AI flank some of my arty but they might not actually remember the dead zone/zone of control exists so they parked right outside and I scared them off.
-Germany really loves those Landskrechkt. THE SPAM OH GOD during one war. At least the AI is making good use of their UAs and stuff.
-I think the AI builds naval units and uses them now. I saw an CS that was at war and it was being blockaded.

Unfortunately, I've only seen the AI really fight offensively once or twice to try to take a city. I think they're still working it out cause I haven't seen them really effectively bring even 2 or 3 artillery pieces to siege a city with. Or GGs (they usually seem to keep them garrisoned). But at least it's an improvement since they actually walk melee units towards cities and ahead of ranged units. Plus they don't surround cities with ranged units anymore with them taking turns firing on it.
 

JayDubya

Banned
Deity is harder post patch, I can confirm.

On standard pace, AIs will only buy resources from you at 150 gold max... ouch. Used to be 300 on Standard, 900 on Marathon...
No combat bonuses vs. barbarians makes the early game hurt more, too. Scouts and archers on open terrain will likely die against brutes in the first attack now.
 

Palmer_v1

Member
sdornan said:
Any impressions of the new patch?

AI definitely seems better about defending a city now. No more moving garrisoned archers out for no apparent reason. They still never seem to use catapults, trebs, or other artillery units though. I also haven't seen them screen their cities with units to fight invaders before they're at the city walls.

They also seem to have devalued luxury resources. Used to be able to sell them to the Ai for 300 gold easily, but now I can barely get 130 gold. They're also still complete assholes about 1:1 trading of surplus luxuries. One Ai had 3 whales, and wouldn't trade to me for less than 3 of my luxuries. This was while I had been relatively peaceful. It was this kind of bullshit that led to me testing out their new combat AI.

Now who has all the whales mothafucker!?
 

Fitz

Member
JayDubya said:
AIs will only buy resources from you at 150 gold max... ouch.

This, it seems in general much harder to get money out of the AI now, my last game and during the late game modern era I was trying to sell off my vast surplus of Luxury Goods and all the AI would constantly just offer me crap like Iron and Horses.
 

JayDubya

Banned
Palmer_v1 said:
AI definitely seems better about defending a city now. No more moving garrisoned archers out for no apparent reason. They still never seem to use catapults, trebs, or other artillery units though. I also haven't seen them screen their cities with units to fight invaders before they're at the city walls.

They also seem to have devalued luxury resources. Used to be able to sell them to the Ai for 300 gold easily, but now I can barely get 130 gold. They're also still complete assholes about 1:1 trading of surplus luxuries. One Ai had 3 whales, and wouldn't trade to me for less than 3 of my luxuries. This was while I had been relatively peaceful. It was this kind of bullshit that led to me testing out their new combat AI.

Now who has all the whales mothafucker!?

Indeed. It's not like the AIs needed to be patched to be even bigger assholes, but it seems as though they have.
 
I love the ridiculous terms for a peace treaty they offer now:

Askia
Peace Treaty

Ghandi(Me)
Peace treaty
Gold 500
Iron 5
Horses 5
City #1
City #2

Note: I've beaten back his invading army, and taken three of his cities (including his capital). I don't know if the AI got smarter, but it sure knows how to annoy the shit out of me every ten turns.
 

Tabris

Member
The AI is still off. They had surrounded one of my cities with archers and while I was taking it's cities, I just left those units as they never moved out 1 archer with a spearman/swordsman to take my city which was at 0 defense for like 10 turns.
 
Tabris said:
The AI is still off. They had surrounded one of my cities with archers and while I was taking it's cities, I just left those units as they never moved out 1 archer with a spearman/swordsman to take my city which was at 0 defense for like 10 turns.
The major AI patch is supposed to be coming later in the year.
 
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