Civilization V Impressions

Exodor · Post by **Exodor** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 12:25 pm

Kraken wrote:It might be time to kick the difficulty up a notch from King to whatever's next (Emperor?). Has anyone else noticed that this expansion made the game easier?

I'm not sure if the game is easier overall but I think the diplomatic victory condition is kind of broken. I've been turning it off to make the end-game more interesting. I've also been reducing the number of city-states from the default number to reduce the amount of World Congress influence a civ can get from buying them off.

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 12:39 pm

That's the easiest way to win......buying off as many city states as you can. You always control the UN too.

Tampa_Gamer · Post by **Tampa_Gamer** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 1:44 pm

Are there any good sci-fi mods for Civ 5? Cannot wait until Pandora comes out and don't want to play SMAC yet again.

Bakhtosh · Post by **Bakhtosh** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 2:30 pm

Must resist buying the expansion until I finish my Fundamentals of Engineering exam...

JonathanStrange · Post by **JonathanStrange** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 3:09 pm

Bakhtosh it be wise to leave the thread before you end up in a all-or-nothing war with little time for the real world.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Mon Sep 30, 2013 5:16 pm

Kraken wrote:It might be time to kick the difficulty up a notch from King to whatever's next (Emperor?). Has anyone else noticed that this expansion made the game easier?

I did that, but I had a rash of very bad starting locations and kept having to abort at some point. One was a 3-hex island! I needed to get some success back, so I'm back to King, playing as Babylon. So far, Siam appears to be the main competition with by far the most cities and alliances with most of the city-states. My economy is slowly improving and I've coaxed a few into my fold. I was too late in the religion grab, though, so I've been ignoring faith buildings thus far but eventually will build them to buy more great people.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Mon Sep 30, 2013 7:16 pm

Jeff V wrote:
Kraken wrote:It might be time to kick the difficulty up a notch from King to whatever's next (Emperor?). Has anyone else noticed that this expansion made the game easier?
I did that, but I had a rash of very bad starting locations and kept having to abort at some point. One was a 3-hex island! I needed to get some success back, so I'm back to King, playing as Babylon. So far, Siam appears to be the main competition with by far the most cities and alliances with most of the city-states. My economy is slowly improving and I've coaxed a few into my fold. I was too late in the religion grab, though, so I've been ignoring faith buildings thus far but eventually will build them to buy more great people.

I'm near the end of my second game now and I'm ahead on all fronts. Score is double the next runner-up, everybody's friendly except the guy I just extinguished, I've got nearly all of the wonders. I can choose whatever victory I want at this point.

I think BNW made Civ easier across the board unless my first two games were both flukes. Definitely have to kick it up a notch and see what happens.

Jolor · Post by **Jolor** » Fri Oct 04, 2013 12:54 pm

Confession.

I played a two-civilization game on Settler just so I could wipe them out and play in sandbox mode.

Torfish · Post by **Torfish** » Fri Oct 04, 2013 2:27 pm

FYI, they have a beta patch available to play with. It will come out this fall. Lots of new goodies, fixes, and balance changes.

If you happen to enjoy playing Japan or Germany, they got a nice boost.

Exodor · Post by **Exodor** » Tue Oct 15, 2013 9:28 pm

New Patch is live

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Tue Oct 15, 2013 10:11 pm

Oh bullocks, I assume this breaks my save.

Looks like a good patch, though. Reckon I'll be starting over tonight.

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Wed Oct 16, 2013 4:16 am

Limits the number of aircraft/missiles that can be stationed in a city.

Landsknechts available to everyone even late in the game?

Saves work fine.

ChuckB · Post by **ChuckB** » Wed Oct 16, 2013 12:01 pm

I read the patch notes and saw a lot of promising things (and a lot of things that were apparently an issue/broken before that I never noticed

)

I sounds like the diplomatic win might be more difficult, which sounds good, as I found it too easy before. Better deal mechanics are also appreciated.

Will fire up my new Razer Blade tonight and see how it works.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Wed Oct 16, 2013 12:07 pm

Dedicated server added via SDK.

I haven't really been following Civ 5 news... is this the long awaited dedicated pitboss server?

I had a game with my friends all organized until I realized I would have had to leave Civ 5 running 24/7 in order to host it.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Thu Nov 07, 2013 12:23 am

Has anybody else experienced "render error" black-screen crashes since BNW came out? They were infrequent until the last patch made the game nearly unplayable.

The 6-page thread over at Civ Fanatics concludes that some graphics are pushing the GPU to overheat. Advice was all over the place. I finally turned leader backgrounds down to minimum quality, turned off one of the three general graphics settings (I don't remember what it was called), and gave my case a thorough cleaning, removing some caked-on dust from the fins under my fans. I also use Catalyst Control to manually kick my GPU fan up to 80% before I play.

My machine is running 10 degrees cooler now and I haven't had a render error crash since. I count myself as lucky; nothing worked for a lot of the people at CivFanatics.

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Thu Nov 07, 2013 9:00 am

Is the CPU or the graphics the most important device in Civ V?

Freyland · Post by **Freyland** » Thu Nov 07, 2013 1:07 pm

dbt1949 wrote:Is the CPU or the graphics the most important device in Civ V?

I doubt its the CPU considering how each game is a giant peace-fest. I think my CPU actually gets *cooler* playing this game. At first I thought the extra whrrrr-ing noise I was hearing was a new fan kicking in, but it turned out to be just my extra cores snoring.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Thu Nov 07, 2013 4:25 pm

The render error crash is definitely graphics-related.

Bakhtosh · Post by **Bakhtosh** » Fri Nov 29, 2013 4:18 am

I have CiV - Vanilla.
I plan on upgrading to BNW soon, and the Steam Autumn sale has the Upgrade to Gold pack for $10 and BNW for $15.

I believe I need both if I want all of the content from Gods & Kings and the extra civs and maps.
but do I NEED the gold upgrade?

JetFred · Post by **JetFred** » Fri Nov 29, 2013 5:11 am

Do you get religion and spies if you only add BNW? Is that what you mean?

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Fri Nov 29, 2013 12:38 pm

Current game, I'm Gandhi, looking to win by building a peaceful, commercial empire based on tourism and greed. Everything was moving happily towards this end, when the Romans started revolting; apparently with the hopes of landing some coveted call center jobs rather than working as ski instructors or something. This occurred on a continent north of my core cities (my empire stretches across 5 islands). When the second Roman city was annexed, Caesar was getting all pissy with me so I decided to go violently anti-Gandhi on his purple-robed ass, and took Rome as well as two other continental possessions before allowing him to beg for peace.

Now I find myself with 5 cities separated from the rest of my empire by an increasingly beligerent Incan Empire. I tweaked him more by establishing a couple of forts along the border, but he is engaged in other wars and could manage a blustering complaint. Meanwhile, I've been building up along the borders, preparing for a blitzkreig assimilation of the Incan empire. I'm ready to rock now, but I didn't want to start it before work this morning so he gets a little reprieve.

Stuie · Post by **Stuie** » Mon Jan 06, 2014 10:26 am

I felt like playing a grindy wargame, and thought "I'll give Civ V another go - it's been a few months."

So I load up a game using the Antarctic land mass (get that new Srambled Continents map pack if you haven't - it is awesome), pick Songhai as my warmonger du jour, and off I go...

5900 years later, I have not fought a single war. Instead I'm blissfully playing along spreading Hinduism to the world (and forcing it through as the world religion) and buying off or rigging elections in city-states left and right. I *think* I'll manage the World Leader victory next time the vote comes up, but China is threatening a science victory, Carthage is slowly gobbling up other civs, and Denmark is attacking some of my city-state allies (threatening my vote total)....

Good times as always.

Bakhtosh · Post by **Bakhtosh** » Mon Jan 13, 2014 1:34 pm

Help me with the UN vote: My first vote is coming up. I have a LOT of votes, but can't vote for myself or abstain. How does this work? This is a Gods & Kings game. IIRC, I need 10 votes to win, and I'll have 28 votes.

Vorret · Post by **Vorret** » Mon Jan 13, 2014 1:55 pm

Bakhtosh wrote:Help me with the UN vote: My first vote is coming up. I have a LOT of votes, but can't vote for myself or abstain. How does this work? This is a Gods & Kings game. IIRC, I need 10 votes to win, and I'll have 28 votes.

Then you'll win, that's all

It's actually very straightforward, just vote for a random friend and that's it.

Bakhtosh · Post by **Bakhtosh** » Mon Jan 13, 2014 3:47 pm

I don't want to accidentally elect my "friend".

Remus West · Post by **Remus West** » Mon Jan 13, 2014 4:19 pm

Bakhtosh wrote:I don't want to accidentally elect my "friend".

Why can you not vote for yourself?

Bakhtosh · Post by **Bakhtosh** » Mon Jan 13, 2014 9:04 pm

I thought it said you can't vote for yourself...
I'll have to check it out in a bit.

wonderpug · Post by **wonderpug** » Mon Jan 13, 2014 11:37 pm

I'm playing this again (with expansions) for the first time since the launch, and I'm enjoying it way more than I did the first time around. I don't know if it's the patches or the expansions, but this now feels like an upgrade to Civ IV instead of a step backward.

I can't recall exactly what turned me off so much originally, but I seem to remember being really annoyed with gold issues and the ability to build as many cities as I wanted to.

Remind me again, what's the highest difficulty without any AI cheating?

Butterknife · Post by **Butterknife** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 12:14 am

wonderpug wrote:I'm playing this again (with expansions) for the first time since the launch, and I'm enjoying it way more than I did the first time around. I don't know if it's the patches or the expansions, but this now feels like an upgrade to Civ IV instead of a step backward.

I can't recall exactly what turned me off so much originally, but I seem to remember being really annoyed with gold issues and the ability to build as many cities as I wanted to.

Remind me again, what's the highest difficulty without any AI cheating?

"Prince" is the fair difficulty level with no bonuses to either side. I always play on King, if that motivates you -- but now that I've beaten the game with every civ (even the expansion civs!) I intend to crank it up another notch.

JetFred · Post by **JetFred** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 12:15 am

That scares me.

Butterknife · Post by **Butterknife** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 12:25 am

JetFred wrote:That scares me.

Don't be afraid! Fear is the little death.

With 610 hours, Civ 5 is by far my mostest favoritest game. About time I cranked up the difficulty a little bit.

JetFred · Post by **JetFred** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 12:34 am

The difficulty scares me and you scare me. Whether it's because you play Civ that much or because you're that good, I won't say.

With only 100 or so hours in the Civ series, I would not ever win on Prince. I like to play so that I will win fairly easily, and I've played it like that ever since Civ 2.

EzeKieL · Post by **EzeKieL** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 5:00 am

JetFred wrote: With only 100 or so hours in the Civ series, I would not ever win on Prince. I like to play so that I will win fairly easily, and I've played it like that ever since Civ 2.

Ditto ^^

Vorret · Post by **Vorret** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 8:13 am

I used to only play on prince too, then I started reading a bit more on how stuff works then moved up to King, it's actually quite easy once you "get it", I suggest reading the strategy forum on civfanatics it's a good starting point.

Jag · Post by **Jag** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 10:06 am

Been listening to the Wrath of the Khans on Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast (amazing btw) and I have the urge to conquer the world as the Mongols. Has anyone tried the Mongol scenario? Is it any good?

Carpet_pissr · Post by **Carpet_pissr** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 10:46 am

Vorret wrote:I used to only play on prince too, then I started reading a bit more on how stuff works then moved up to King, it's actually quite easy once you "get it", I suggest reading the strategy forum on civfanatics it's a good starting point.

Can you give us a brief summary as to why King is preferable to Prince? I tend to go wayyy down the rabbit hole anytime I go to Civfanatics.

Vorret · Post by **Vorret** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 11:00 am

Carpet_pissr wrote:
Vorret wrote:I used to only play on prince too, then I started reading a bit more on how stuff works then moved up to King, it's actually quite easy once you "get it", I suggest reading the strategy forum on civfanatics it's a good starting point.
Can you give us a brief summary as to why King is preferable to Prince? I tend to go wayyy down the rabbit hole anytime I go to Civfanatics.

Oh I'm not saying it is, I played prince for so long and it was just fine. What I'm saying is once I started reading a bit more on the deeper strategy of Civilization V I found prince to be too easy and unless I got a thundra start there was no way I could lose, that's why I moved up to King.

And I agree, there's ALOT of info on civfanatics! I also watched a bunch of LP, I'm always amazed at people who can play on Immortal and win.

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 2:28 pm

Try Deity. Piss off all your neighbors and see if you can survive with a single city (only). It used to be more challenging before they toned down the aggressiveness of the AI.
I lose a few and win a few.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 10:09 pm

Butterknife wrote:
wonderpug wrote:I'm playing this again (with expansions) for the first time since the launch, and I'm enjoying it way more than I did the first time around. I don't know if it's the patches or the expansions, but this now feels like an upgrade to Civ IV instead of a step backward.

I can't recall exactly what turned me off so much originally, but I seem to remember being really annoyed with gold issues and the ability to build as many cities as I wanted to.

Remind me again, what's the highest difficulty without any AI cheating?
"Prince" is the fair difficulty level with no bonuses to either side. I always play on King, if that motivates you -- but now that I've beaten the game with every civ (even the expansion civs!) I intend to crank it up another notch.

That's me...except that as long as they keep releasing expansions and mods I never quite reach the end of the civilizations. And I have >3000 hours into this game...but I always play on Marathon, so a game lasts a very long while.

Been taking a lengthy and much-needed time-out from it lately though.

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 11:21 pm

So, you've played over three thousand games mostly on marathon, that makes what seven games you've played so far?
Those times I've played marathon games I think my save list is longer than the number of bots banned here.