^ Great story. That's my problem with the medium difficulty, the AI just doesn't seem to "get" war. The empire to the next of me will build tons of units but doesn't really understand how to use them efficiently to stop me. At worst I have to forge a peace treaty but at best I can wipe out a whole civilization within 20 turns or so.

I also think the AI uses the "Heal Completely" way too much as an upgrade and doesn't value the tactical upgrades as much as we do, especially when the troop is in open--but friendly--territory... though I'm not 100% sold on this viewpoint yet, just an observation. I don't know.

I need a sick day or something to get fully involved.

10/29/2010 5:04:19 PM

I wiped the floor with them. Now its pretty much no competition to beat the game whichever way I want. The continent is mine, and I'm slowly annexing the puppet cities and allied with all the cultural/maritime city-states to maximize growth and the cultural output of my empire. I also dominate scientifically, so its extremely easy to attain any of the victories, although it would take some time to do the military conquest of a neighboring continent.

11/6/2010 7:31:54 PM

If you wanna do something fun setup a game on an earth map and make the only possible victory choice domination. There is always one or two computer players that find a way to build a MASSIVE army and out tech you by a long shot not really sure how they are pulling it off.

11/7/2010 4:58:46 PM

anyone (3-4 people) want to play a multilayer game on a weeknight every week (e.g. every wednesday night for 2 or 3 hours)? we can define the terms of the game, of course. pm me.

11/13/2010 9:41:32 AM

sounds like fun.

Interesting discovery, don't know how it happened. On a small map with continents I finally made my way over and discovered a continent that had apparently contained two nations and one city state. One of the nations, China, had been conquered completely by the city-state. On a map with very little territory, each civ had 3 cities, there was a city-state called Florence with 4 cities.

11/13/2010 10:42:44 AM

New patch up. Here is the changelog:

Quote :

"[AI] [TACTICAL AI] - Proper evaluation of which enemy units can reach my units next turn. - Sorting enemy targets (within a class) by damage. - Combine bombardment fire from cities with other ranged fire where possible. - Never target a city for a ranged attack when they are already at (or going to be at) 1 health. - Have the tactical AI be more aggressive about fortifying units that aren't moving anyways. - Make all forms of guarding improvements the lowest priority tactical AI moves. - Don't mark tiles adjacent to enemy at sea as good for flank attacks -- there is no flanking at sea. - Update to tactical AI pillaging code - now prioritize enemy land resources and trade routes (never regular mines or farms). Always uses the check to make sure AI is not trying to pillage in an enemy dominance zone. Barbarians will still target everything. - Never use ranged units to provide flank bonuses. - Reduce chance of AI civs making "suicide" attacks. - Changes to better protect the capital or any city with an enemy within 5 tiles. [VICTORY] - AI will be more aggressive about pursuing Diplo victory (bribing City States) if they are wealthy. - AI will be more aggressive about building Spaceship parts when going for Science victory. [CIVS] - Tweak a few leader settings to be more likely to use their traits. - Adjust Napoleon to make more likely to go for culture. [COMBAT/UNITS] - AI will not use Horse as defenders on hills as much. - AI will often build more defensive troops. - AI will more aggressively hunt barbs in the early game. - Slightly more naval units. - AI will now build ranged and mobile units more in line with the flavor settings for the team - in general, this means more mobile units. - AI now builds, deploys, and uses air units more effectively. - Allow AI to build more units if above Prince. - AI will be more likely to build and bring siege units in a city attack. - Better nuke targeting by AI. - Won't build AA if no air threat. - Allow AI or automated human explorers to move to edge of sight range and then explore again. [EXPLORATION/EXPANSION] - AI will emphasize getting an Ocean going explorer unit when the time comes. - AI slightly more likely to settle off home continent. - AI should colonize other continents regularly. - AI second wave expansion more aggressive. - Improve the AI's chances of setting up protected bombard attacks. - Settlers: should handle watery maps better. - AI will grab goody huts on other land masses. - AI will grab empty barb camps more often. [WORKERS/CITY AI] - Large Cities should be more willing to build happiness and gold buildings. - Workers prioritize repair builds higher than other builds. - AI will be more likely to build a wall on any city that was an original capital. - Builder tasking now calculates yields appropriately during golden ages and weighs tiles according to how much stuff they provide overall as well as their maximum yield of a certain type. - More likely to build up economy early. - Multiple worker AI improvements. [MISC] - Factor GS into flavors more. - Disband obsolete units even if not losing money. - Upgrade units a bit more. - Tweak flavors of policies a bit. - Have AI factor Grand Strategy into picking policies. - AI will factor grand strategy into tech choices a bit more. - AI don't send a barb expedition if defenses are critical. - AI less likely to pick a city on an inland sea for serious naval production. - Additional pathfinder optimization. [GAMEPLAY] [CITY/BUILDINGS] - Added "National Treasury" national wonder, which requires Markets in all cities. Provides +8 Gold per turn to the city in which it's built. - Added "Circus Maximus" national wonder, which requires Colosseums in all cities.. Provides 5 Happiness. - Library now has no specialist slots. - Wat now has two specialist slots. - Public school now has 1 Science per pop, +1 free Great Scientist point, +1 Culture for 3 gold maintenance. - Observatory now has 1 specialist slot. - Research Lab has two specialist slots. - Public school now provides 1 beaker per pop for 3 gold maintenance. - Watermill now provides +2 good and +1 production for 2 gold maintenance. - Paper Maker now has no specialist slots. - Circus now has +2 happiness and no maintenance. - Theatre now has +5 happiness. - Stadium now has +5 happiness. - Reduced production cost and maintenance for the Courthouse. - Courthouse can now be purchased in a city (although it is expensive). - Removed maintenance from city defense buildings (Walls, Castle, Military Base). - City defense buildings now help cities heal. - Increased city strength ramp-up based on technology. - Reduced effects of Forbidden Palace and Meritocracy (Happiness per city). - Reduced amount of food needed for cities to grow at larger sizes. - Buildings can now no longer provide more Happiness than there is population in a city (wonders are excluded from this). - Ironworks now gives 10 hammers instead of a % bonus. - National College now gives +5 science in addition to the % bonus. - Hermitage gives 5 culture in addition to its previous bonus. - Raze/Unraze exploit fixed. - Cities being razed are unhappy about it (only during the razing process). - Cities heal more quickly."

12/16/2010 10:39:24 AM

Quote :

"[UNITS/PROMOTIONS] - Cavalry can now go obsolete with Combustion. - Stealth bombers cannot use carriers. - Only allow one upgrade per unit from a goody hut. - Add second embarkation promotion ("Defensive Embarkation"). - Amount of damage done during naval combat increased. - All melee horse units get penalty attacking cities. - Increased city attack penalty for mounted and armor units to 50% (from 40%). - Lancers (and Lancer UUs) upgrade to helicopter. - Lowered combat value of Horseman and Companion Cavalry. - Promotions must be picked the turn they're earned. - Can no longer promote a unit that has fought during the turn (instead, the promotion comes up the beginning of the following turn). - Catapults and Trebuchets now weaker against units but stronger VS cities. - Reduced effectiveness of Archers & Crossbowmen (and their UUs) VS cities. - Reduced some combat bonuses: flanking (15 to 10), Great Generals (25 to 20), Discipline (15 to 10), Military Tradition (2x to 1.5x). - Remove requirement for aluminum on Mobile SAM. - Lower open terrain penalty to 10% . - Marsh is now 3 moves to enter (Chariots do not move quickly through it anymore). - Cavalry now upgrade to tanks. [CITY STATES] - Reduced bonuses from Maritime city-states - Friends: +2 food in capital, +0 food in other cities - Allies: +3 food in capital, +1 food in other cities - Only the first 3 units gifted to a city-state will earn Influence now. - Killing a barb inside a city-state's territory now gives a 5-turn buffer where there is no Influence intrusion penalty. [HAPPINESS] - If an empire reaches -20 Happiness, it goes into revolt, and rebels start appearing throughout the empire, based on the number of cities. - Amount of Happiness needed to trigger a Golden Age reduced. - Amount of Happiness needed to trigger a Golden Age now increases as the number of cities in the empire goes up. [POLICIES] - Landed Elite (Tradition Branch) now reduces culture cost of border growth by 2/3. - Monarchy (Tradition Branch) now provides +1 Gold per 2 pop in the Capital.. - Liberty now provides a Settler training bonus to only the capital, and not every city. - Tradition now provides +50% growth in the capital. - Theocracy now reduces Unhappiness by 25% . - Reformation now gives a 10-turn GA. - Adopting Rationalism now gives a 4-turn GA. [TECH TREE] - Add link between Military Science and Dynamite. - Add link between Civil Service and Education. - Add link between Economics and Scientific Theory. - Add link between Chivalry and Acoustics. - Research overflow now works correctly (extra beakers after completing a tech will rollover to the next tech). [GENERAL] - Fixed bug where clicking on a city plot wouldn't select the garrison. - Natural wonders now award culture (if worked) and happiness (if in border) if that trait is assigned to a wonder in XML. - Players must now always adopt Policies immediately, and cannot defer picking until later. - Have culture cost for policies never go down (trading away cities to reduce culture cost exploit). Razing cities will not raise your policy cost ceiling. - Reduced culture needed for first plot acquisition from 20 to 15. - 3 new Natural Wonders and rarity code for both base game and New World scenario. - Reduced points from Wonders (40 to 25) & Cities (10 to 8), increased points for pop by 1 (3 to 4). [DIPLOMACY] - AI's attitude towards you is now visible in the diplo screen and diplo drop-down. - Added info tooltip for an AI leader's mood. Lists things that are making an AI player happy/upset. - New diplo system: Declaration of Friendship (public declaration with diplomatic repercussions). - New diplo system: Denounce (public declaration with diplomatic repercussions). - New custom leader responses (Serious Expansion Warning, Aggressive Military, Luxury Exchange, Borders Exchange, Gift Request, etc.). - Not agreeing to a friend's request now results in a relations hit. - Third party AIs can now respond when a player makes a DoF or denounces someone. What they say is based on the situation - e.g. if you make friends with someone they don't like, they'll scold you. - AI leaders will now sometimes ask their friends to denounce one of their enemies as a show of support, and refusing to denounce someone when an AI asks can now make them very upset. - AI is now capable of denouncing friends (aka, backstabbing) and added backstabbing info to diplo overview screen. [UI] - Add XP bar for air units, do not allow XP for air units attacking a city that is already down to its last hit-point. - Change ActivePlayer's name to "You" in single player in score list. - Added game option to disable automated workers from removing features. - Fixed bug where Happiness from garrisoned units wasn't being listed in Happiness info tooltip. - Load Map function will now display correct size and type of saved map. - New "Angry Genghis" loading screen (replaces the "fluffy-bunny Genghis" loading screen). - Added setup options to allow players to defer choosing Policies and Promotions right away. - Show the river penalty when attacking city across river (the penalty was there but was not being shown in the preview). - Global politics screen updated to reflect new diplo system. - Can no longer Force End Turn (shift-enter) through blocking notifications. CAN now use it to skip over units which need orders. - Multiple tweaks and bug fixes. [MISC] - Fix small bugs with adding long roads around existing features. - Fixed bombard arrow across world wrap. [MODDING] - Parent category counts now include counts of child categories. - Selecting/deselecting a category now automatically selects/deselects it's children and its parent. - Tweaked category name truncation to better fit names. - Hide categories w/ no children and a count of 0. - Added support for fallback languages (if mod is not translated, fall-back to English so text keys are not showing). - The pager for the installed mods tab of the mods browser is now displayed in the correct location. - Long values for properties such as "Special Thanks" will no longer extend past the edge browser frame. - Categories refresh much faster now in the mods browser. - Multiple additional tweaks and fixes to the mod browser. - Support for mods that perform major restructuring of the tech tree including adding, deleting, and updating techs, buildings, and units. - Added GameEvents system for overriding Gameplay DLL specific functionality. - Fixed "Reload Landmark System" mod flag to now refresh landmarks defined in "ArtDefine_Landmarks". - Multiple SDK updates (new version to go live shortly). [SERIALIZATION/SAVES] - Fixed save format which causes saves to increase the memory footprint of the game drastically when loading frequently over the course of the game. This heightened the risk of late-game out of memory crashes significantly."

12/16/2010 10:39:46 AM

just got the port to Mac for "Christmas". accidentally played it for 4 hours straight yesterday. forgot how much fun a game it is. entirely skipped over civ IV and the last time i played III was probably 5-6 years ago.

12/16/2010 10:42:36 AM

I'm in a late game against about 8 cpus (left) on a big map in the 19th century and my computer is about to shit a brick. It crashed after about 25 turns the last time I played and before that the game locked up when I tried to load my saved game. All that hard work and I don't even have the foreign legion yet!

12/16/2010 2:53:40 PM

I used to have some serious stability issues, but when I ratcheted down the graphics just slightly, the game completely stabilized. Maybe you can tweak down some of the graphics settings?

12/16/2010 3:47:57 PM

Any idea when they will drop the price on this? I want to get it, but not for 50 bucks plus all the content packs.

12/16/2010 3:49:32 PM

a good while from now...

12/16/2010 4:21:37 PM

^^^ I'll try that, thanks. Hopefully the patch makes the AI a little bit smarter about going to war. Everyone who goes to war with me fizzles out after their first attack and gets a godsmacking once I am able to retaliate. Sometimes I'm on the war path for so long I stop just because it's boring.

12/16/2010 5:26:02 PM

Thank god about the saving thing hopefully it helps with the random crashes late game which really suck when I forget to save for about 20 turns haha

12/16/2010 6:31:28 PM

^^ I haven't tested the AI post-patch yet, but I agree that before this latest patch at least, the AI was incredibly easy to beat in combat even when they had superior numbers of technologically equivalent units.

12/17/2010 11:15:07 AM

I like to wait until someone on my border starts a war with someone else on another border. Then I give it a few turns so all their troops have moved far away then take a few cities easily and wait for them to offer peace. Rinse and repeat

12/17/2010 11:22:13 AM

^Even better, I enjoy starting wars with my neighbors by paying off one so that I can weaken them both.

The thing that got me in my last major game was that I was squeezing out other players on my continent (1 of 2) but I could constantly pay them off against each other. They wanted my money and could not figure out that I was using this as a tactic to destroy them. I wish they could have seen and signed an alliance against me or something to that effect.

12/17/2010 2:45:02 PM

What do you mean by "pay them off each other"?

12/17/2010 3:05:39 PM

I would pay one civ to go to war with the other. Basically ask them to declare war in exchange for money.

What got me was that several civs would go to war against a far larger civ, effectively wiping themselves out. You would figure the reverse would be true and the larger power would take the money first. Maybe they fixed that in the update. About to play now.

12/19/2010 9:41:31 AM

PM ME FOR OFFICIAL TWW CIV V LADDER

1/4/2011 12:50:12 PM

AW SHIT PM SENT!

1/4/2011 1:32:50 PM

THIS IS GOING TO BE THE ILLEST SHIT SINCE CASE'S LADDER WARCRAFT II USING KALI Y'ALL

1/4/2011 1:53:35 PM

KHAAAAANNN!!!

No other game makes you rage and yell "fuck you Genghis Khan" while playing in the middle of class.


120 hours this week along. Fuck this game. lol

1/25/2011 8:45:20 AM

Just finished that map. Total Domination was my flavor of victory today

1/25/2011 9:24:13 PM

I've been doing a huge random continent map as Washington. On turn 450ish currently, beyond 2050. I set it to just domination as the win requirement. Pretty entertaining, except for the fact that it takes 2-3 mins for the computer to calculate all AI moves and takes me like 10-15 mins to move all my pieces. Apparently everyone hates me so I'm at war with the rest of the 8 surviving empires. I got 90% of the world's supply of uranium so tons of death robots and nukes. :p

I mean I have a pretty powerful machine, kinda crazy for it to take so long to calculate.

1/27/2011 3:19:52 PM

ttt

10/12/2012 10:56:32 AM

Well thanks for that. Just got Gods & Kings for my birthday. Really enjoying it. Playing as the Germans and have built an army out of just barbarians joining my forces. Ironically I started a religion not even thinking about it. So my German Civilization is spreading Judaism.

10/12/2012 11:17:00 AM

lol, that's funny. Been thinking about picking up G&K pack, but I'll wait till it goes on sale for a few bucks or something. Steam's fall/thanksgiving sale isn't that far away so I best be saving up some funds before my wallet goes "WTF dude! You're not going to play that for at least 6 months!" again...

10/12/2012 1:19:02 PM

thanks for the bump, Jeep. Yeah, I wanted to ask what people think of G&K. haven't had time to really play games recently, but still

10/12/2012 1:32:59 PM

I've only had the time to play through a couple games of G&K. I enjoyed it. Can't say that it really made a huge impact (I personally wasn't overly impressed with the espionage), but it is entertaining starting one's own religion. ;P

10/12/2012 4:19:27 PM

bttt holy shit this game is still fun

7/1/2013 7:15:34 AM

I can't wait for Brave New World. Shit looks like a great addition to V.

7/1/2013 7:49:18 AM

yup yup, been playing the shit out of it for the last month again. Some of the guys that I regularly play Planetside 2 with play G&K with me so we play a game every day over the course of a week. Its funny because I have something like 1100-1500 hours (steam doesn't count offline play) and pretty good; the kids who play PS2 with maybe only have 30-50 hours each; so we've been doing it 2-4 vs just me. And I'll still surpass them by an era after 100 turns.

By the time they gather enough forces to attack me, I'd have cannons and musketmen to counter their spear and lancers. Best thing about these guys, they don't rage quit. They'll take the beating all the to the last man or city standing.

7/1/2013 9:49:23 AM

I hadn't played Civ V til last week. It's easily the best one since Civ 2.

I've played 4-5 games exploring all the mechanics and win conditions, as well as some of the easier difficulty levels. About to start in on some more serious games with bigger maps and more epic time scales.

I'll probably get killed

7/1/2013 11:32:10 AM

really gotta play with other people, that's where this game becomes something else entirely. Its funny when you try to go for a culture or science win and other players try to gang up on you only to realize they were too late to do anything.

7/4/2013 11:56:01 AM

I bought this game quite a while ago, but I just can't get into it.

7/4/2013 11:57:08 AM

new expansion does look awesome, I like V a lot but I do think civ IV beyond the sword was the best version of civ to date

7/4/2013 2:17:04 PM

Most likely civ5 & g&k dlc would go on sale for cheap this sale period. Really should get some tdub ppl online for weekly games.

7/12/2013 12:08:03 AM

I'll be down for that, in August.

7/12/2013 10:34:24 PM

Ended up getting the new world expansion yesterday during steam's flash sale... was not expecting them to give 33% off for a game that only came out 3 days prior... And my god... its super in depth and really immersive. Early game choices have huge repercussions later in the game if you don't know what you are doing. AI seems even less neurotic yet still challenging on mid to high level difficulties, really seems like they did a good job overhauling the AI system to play more like humans.

7/12/2013 11:06:28 PM

haha, the details in the new world expansion are great. Just got this as a message from the Iroquois once I had culture influence over them and looks kinda pissed with a tear in his eye.

"Our people are now buying your blue jeans and listening to your pop music."

Reminds me of the crying indian meme's.

7/13/2013 7:26:55 PM

Just picked up Civ 5 on steam.

7/13/2013 8:01:04 PM

2nd play through as venice with the one city challenge and won by culture before I even hit the info age. Was a lot easier than I expected.

7/14/2013 8:44:12 AM

Yeah, I won a Venice diplomatic play through on King and it was extremely easy. I think they toned down the aggressiveness of the AI, as now one ever declared war on me and I never had close to the strongest military.

7/14/2013 9:37:15 AM

shit I got me, nighthawk, WHO ELSE FOR THE TWW MULTIPLAYER SQUAD???????

we can play on saturday mornings while our wives are still sleeping

7/14/2013 10:36:18 AM

Yeah, AI is way more tonned down and they really play more diplomatically. I was attacked the 2nd play through but I had like the best possible city plant on a coast line where I was surrounded by mountains and the only two chock points had walls of hills. So even when the hunns tried to attack my city with 40 guys against my 6, they were bottle necked and died instantly, specially when I had my range ships on the coast.

I never done a one city challenge before and thought my 2nd play through would be hard as balls, was not expecting any city attacked would actually just instantly be razed.


Three things I'd point out that are badass in this game, not sure if you guys read the reviews or not, but top 3 coolest things IMHO.

1. Airports: Late game item, allows you to air transport ground units anywhere on the globe in one turn. You can transport up to 7 units one time provided the two cities connecting both have an airport.

2. Collectible Art and Artifacts: Part of the new tourism/culture dynamic, Art pieces and artifacts can be found or made, almost feels like a crafting part of the game; you can also trade art with other civs to create collections for bonuses.

Artifacts can be found in the game through dig sites when using an archaeologist (consumable unit, can't buy them, must build). Funniest thing is that you can steal other civ's artifacts if you are the first one to make archaeologists. Another dynamic I think that could lead to war, just like other civs sending over missionaries to fuck with you.

The other cool aspect about artifacts is that its a continuous thing and can be influenced by past events in the game. So if you had a big battle in the Ancient era between barbarians outside your capital, later down the road, the chance of finding an artifact site next to your capital is more than likely. Not only that, but goes all the way up to atomic and info era's; still use archaeologists to even pick up late era stuff for more tourism.

3. Trade Routes: Player controlled trade routes is another dynamic shift in the game. You make caravans or cargo ships and link two cities for more gold and science generation for both cities. Not only that but it increases religion influence, but it works both ways so you have to be careful if a civ is sending 10 trade routes to one city (10x +6 religion influence), they could easily turn over time.

The other cool thing about trade routes is trading within your own empire. Provided you have the proper buildings made, you can export production or food to a city; it does not take away food or production abilities from the source city either. So expect to use your cities to boost or pad your capital. This feature in the game really makes Venice so capable, late in the game, each trade route can boost 10-11 food or production; have 18 of those suckers and you can see how your capital can build shit fast.

7/14/2013 7:47:52 PM

Quote :

"1. Airports: Late game item, allows you to air transport ground units anywhere on the globe in one turn. You can transport up to 7 units one time provided the two cities connecting both have an airport. "

No offense but I think air lifts between two cities with airports dates back to Civ 2.

7/14/2013 10:57:48 PM

Your point is moot because this is something they've added in civ V with the expansion... and this isn't the civ 2 thread...

7/15/2013 1:21:21 AM

just tryna validate two decades lost to this game

7/21/2013 9:30:15 AM