Octopus Overlords

I just finished a game with the new expansion. I played the Shoshone on a standard continents-plus map at king difficulty. I won a culture victory in 2024!

I like the new systems that Brave New World has added, and I think they dovetail nicely with the systems that were added in Gods and Kings. I'll reserve final judgment until I play a game at higher difficulties.

A few points:
- The Shoshone are by far the best civ for the early game. Their early game bonuses are somewhat "unbalancing". I wouldn't be surprised to see them toned down in a future patch.

- Trade almost creates a glut of gold. I had more gold than I could spend... that's a first in a Civ game for me. I'll reserve judgement for more difficult games because I can see where the excess gold could be handy in a three front war!

- Do not fear "open borders" agreements!!! In the first iterations of vanilla Civ 5, "open borders" was an invitation for a sneak attack. The AI would use open borders to scout your area and then attack. A general rule was to refuse open borders agreements in order to stop or delay an attack. "Open Borders" now operates as you'd expect, and the agreements generally build good will. In fact if you intend to go for a culture victory, you need open borders with as many civs as possible. Tourists don't generally like to sneak across your borders.

- Don't neglect your military!! I used to neglect my military unless I was planning to conduct an offensive. The reason is that I didn't want to waste production on military units that were destined for obsolescence. I used to end up deleting and rebuilding armies as they became obsolete... or, I'd get caught trying to fight off a sneak attack with old units. Now with trade providing ample income, it is more economical to upgrade your military instead of rebuilding it. In my last game I very rarely deleted military units, and I'd upgrade all affected units every time I researched a new military tech.

Time to bump the difficulty up a notch. I think I'll go with a military civ this time. I want to have reason to use those new XCOM squads!!

King difficulty. I just get pissed above Warlord.

Freezer-TPF- wrote:I may cave and just buy this today. Apparently, the flash Steam deal a few days ago was a mistake, so I doubt this will go on much of a discount any time soon. I've checked out the preview videos on youtube and the game looks great. With the culture/tourism/artifacts/works and trade routes, there is a lot of stuff there.

Yes it was a mistake by Steam and I got CIV IV out of the it. It was in my Steam inventory as a gift on Saturday morning.

Finished my first game with the new expansion. I was Poland, standard map, KINGS, and standard time. I usually play on Emperor, but I wanted to play around with the new features and learn. Poland has a very strong start if you focus on getting into the first couple of era's quickly. Their special is getting a free social policy when you reach a new era. Which is pretty cool. But the coolest new addition, at least from my first game, is the new social policy ideology. This unlocks around mid-game. Once you pick one, there are three levels of bonuses. Kinda like the bonuses you get from religion. Each square is locked and you have to unlock them from getting new policies. I did unlock level 2's and wow some of them were pretty darn cool and powerful. For example one level 2 bonus gave me 6 free military units with no maintenance fee. Perfect timing, it gave me enough to attack and take a city from England. Unfortunately, I didn't survive long enough to see any level 3 bonuses. I was killed off around year 1980 from India and England who collaborated on waging war on me at the same time. Oh well, just a fun first game to try things out.

There are two features that I'm going to have to learn. I didn't understand tourism and the new great persons (writers/musicians). Definitely need to understand those more before my next game. Off to read the manual...

Really enjoying it overall. I have nothing to say negative about it at this point. Will probably spend a few hundred hours on it in the next few months!

Like RLMullen, I played the Shoshone. Difficulty level Emperor. After a slightly rocky start - due to some aggressive neighbors, I eventually managed to establish (among other things) what I'd set out for: trade routes. It's my impression that once you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the woman Cultural Victory. It was not to be, alas, for the turn of the great wheel brought more aggressive neighbors. Still, gold seemed more plentiful for a time. But you play often enough, you find out how so much depends on other factors, that it's too soon to say if trades that awesome. Maybe next time it'll be...

(Lot of fun, amusing turnabouts, interesting stuff to learn, a definite thumbs up)

Completed my first gamer with expansion at King difficulty. Did Shoshone and won via space race 2025. Let's just call the combined God and Kings and Brave New World as Civ 5.5. I really like the additions. I am glad to see the airport with air lift back.

I have a rule of gaming entertainment value of at least $1/hr. This will not be a problem.

I had one bug where I selected the volunteer army tenet and the foreign legion popped down next to my capitol. I was able to upgrade all 6 of them, but then I couldn't do anything with 3 of them for several turns. Something broke the logic trap and I was finally able to use them.

On the insufficient resource issue, are you sure a city state didn't gift you a unit?

Montag wrote:
On the insufficient resource issue, are you sure a city state didn't gift you a unit?

In my (non-expansion) game, I had not discovered coal yet (although a CS ally was supposedly giving me coal that I couldn't use). One of my privateers captured an ironclad and the coal shortage message began. It persisted after I got the ironclad killed a couple of turns later and didn't go away until I started mining coal, even though I had no coal-using units and was supposedly still getting CS coal. My resource display showed 3 coal available and 0 used.

So I am inclined to think that it was a feedback error, but I didn't run it down.

I've run into the first serious AI oddity. It's 1020 AD, and the demographics screen tells me that Indonesia has an army size of 0. That's right, 0. Checking further I see that the A.I. has never founded any cities beyond the capitol or developed any resources. This is at the normal (Prince?) difficulty level.

I'm on the fence as to whether I should start over and hope the bug doesn't replicate, or just put Indonesia out of her misery and move on with the current game.

I'm really enjoying some of the new mechanics but I'm out for a while. BNW is crashing pretty regularly for me late game, which vanilla and G&K never did. It's happened mostly on my moves/attacks, but I've seen it go in the middle of the CPUs movements too.

AI appears the same. Anyone feel the same? Wonder if the AI will us the new gameplay stuff any better.

JonathanStrange wrote:AI appears the same. Anyone feel the same? Wonder if the AI will us the new gameplay stuff any better.

According to TotalBiscuit, the AI is much more peaceful this time around.

TiLT wrote:

JonathanStrange wrote:AI appears the same. Anyone feel the same? Wonder if the AI will us the new gameplay stuff any better.

According to TotalBiscuit, the AI is much more peaceful this time around.

I'm finding the AI's "peacefulness" is tied strongly (perhaps too strongly) to the risk of losing trade routes. In my current game I have a very aggressive Poland crammed up against my entire border, with a huge army and they've already attacked every other player in the game... except me. I made sure their economy is dependent on me. They get 40+gp/turn via routes and several resources from me.

So far with BnW the AI that I don't have trade routes with are always the first to attack me. Just an observation.

Check for updated video drivers if you are crashing.

I had 5 very lucrative trade routes with a powerful Rome on my border and they eventually attacked me out of the blue, destroying all the trade routes.

Sepiche wrote:I had 5 very lucrative trade routes with a powerful Rome on my border and they eventually attacked me out of the blue, destroying all the trade routes.

Sneaky buggers, those Romans

Well I could be wrong. I think it will take more than a few play-throughs for me to get a handle on all the changes.

Sepiche wrote:I had 5 very lucrative trade routes with a powerful Rome on my border and they eventually attacked me out of the blue, destroying all the trade routes.

Evidently the range for the trade routes is calculated "as the camel walks," rather than "as the crow flies." My empire is (conveniently) surrounded entirely by mountain ridges, with only 1 pass out, and that contains two lakes. I had to build a city on the other side of it in order to make range to the nearest city states.

It's a small price to pay for being impossible to assault.

Fretmute wrote:

Sepiche wrote:I had 5 very lucrative trade routes with a powerful Rome on my border and they eventually attacked me out of the blue, destroying all the trade routes.

Evidently the range for the trade routes is calculated "as the camel walks," rather than "as the crow flies." My empire is (conveniently) surrounded entirely by mountain ridges, with only 1 pass out, and that contains two lakes. I had to build a city on the other side of it in order to make range to the nearest city states.

It's a small price to pay for being impossible to assault.

Says the guy who is blissfully oblivious of the civilization that can cross mountains as their special ability.

TiLT wrote:

JonathanStrange wrote:AI appears the same. Anyone feel the same? Wonder if the AI will us the new gameplay stuff any better.

According to TotalBiscuit, the AI is much more peaceful this time around.

I concur with this, the AI is (for good or bad) a lot more peaceful. I had a game where I never entered a war until the modern age, which was slightly odd. I think other places had been warring, but not me. Like Orgus said, I think it is heavily tied to trade route money generation.

The fastest way, from my experience, to get the AI to DoW you is to start getting high tourism. Man, the AI gets very ticked off when you start overcoming their culture.

I think it is highly tied to AI personality as well. Shaka DoW'ed against me fairly early in the game (the early middle ages) and we had a war that lasted for 400 years+! I find that Attila can be hard to live near as well.

TiLT wrote:

Fretmute wrote:It's a small price to pay for being impossible to assault.

Says the guy who is blissfully oblivious of the civilization that can cross mountains as their special ability.

They can try all they want. The Great Wall might have something to say about it.

TiLT wrote:

JonathanStrange wrote:AI appears the same. Anyone feel the same? Wonder if the AI will us the new gameplay stuff any better.

According to TotalBiscuit, the AI is much more peaceful this time around.

I'm still fairly early in my first game (still considering aborting it). Carthage has been massing units along my southern border, but so far just posturing and it's been going on quite sometime. My spy told me they were planning a sneak attack. I was able to stage a sizable army in response, but still no attack. My one caravan that was trading with them got eaten by barbarians and there are so many Carthagian units on my border, I can't dispatch a force to no-mans land to eliminate the camp. So maybe they are a little more docile.

My issues appear to be tied to the DX11 functionality. Running it in DX9 mode works just fine.

Are you running Windows XP? If so DX9 is all you can get.

I played through my little war with the Romans last night. It seems like there were probably a few factors in them attacking when they did. First is I'm massing up a pretty good lead in tourism... I think I have twice the tourism of the next closest civ. Second is the Romans and I just recently picked ideologies and he went autocracy while I went freedom. Lastly, the turn he attacked me was the turn our defensive pact and open borders treaties expired. So he was probably planning on doing that for a while, but the treaties were keeping him from acting.

Things did look pretty grim for a bit when a couple big forces of Roman cannons, muskets, lancers, and gatling guns advanced on a couple of my cities, but just as the war was beginning I got to pick a level 2 trait for my ideology and I took one that immediately gave me 6 units of foreign legionaries (special riflemen) that cost no upkeep. I was able to rush them to the front lines and they massively outgunned most of the Roman troops.

So after fending off their attacks, I made peace with them and built a solid line of troops on our border. I'm just starting to get archaeologists out into the field now, so my plan is to try and get as much new tourism coming in as possible and keep fortifying the Roman border to discourage them attacking. They are (by a pretty good margin) the most powerful military next to me, but they've got considerable resources and a massive navy over me. I just need to hang on until my tourism kicks into high gear.

The Carthaginian threat seems to have withered away, only one lone troop now mans the border, and I'm getting ready to lay down another line of cities in the open land between us. India, content with just a few cities and apparently going for the culture win, is the only other major occupying the continent. At some point, if they no longer are useful to me, I'll assimilate them.

It's odd that I'm playing a single city (Ethiopia) and no one has even gotten angry with me late in the game. They have been giving my city-state allies hell and I give them money and units all the time.
I like to play this mode a lot. I play on the deity level and see how long I can last. I play domination only.
I actually won once.

Lorini wrote:Are you running Windows XP? If so DX9 is all you can get.

Nope. Win7x64, 16GB RAM and an EVGA GTX 570 that's never given me problems. I was playing just fine before the expansion dropped. I'm good with DX9 for now. Not as pretty (or as fast to update the screen) but at least I'm able to get my Civ fix. I really like the new trade route stuff. It's gone a long way in financing my world domination.

I picked this up and started playing yesterday, but I have a question for the Civ Experts here. I played Civ II for hundreds or even thousands of hours and got good enough that I could win while maxing out my population on Deity level. Since then, I haven't really played the games enough to really get a grasp on all the available strategies. So, my question is about specialists. In Civ II it was easy for me to decide when to turn a citizen into a specialist: I simply waited until the population grew large enough for me to have workers working every square. Every additional citizen simply became a specialist.

However, the dynamics of this game have really changed with Civ IV and Civ V. I usually don't end up with any "maxed out" cities and so I'm not really sure when and where I should use specialists. I'm very reluctant to pull a citizen that's producing gold, food, or hammers to become a specialist, as it doesn't seem like a good trade-off to me. What do those of you with a great deal of experience with Civ V think about specialists and when do you use them?

Apollo wrote:I picked this up and started playing yesterday, but I have a question for the Civ Experts here. I played Civ II for hundreds or even thousands of hours and got good enough that I could win while maxing out my population on Deity level. Since then, I haven't really played the games enough to really get a grasp on all the available strategies. So, my question is about specialists. In Civ II it was easy for me to decide when to turn a citizen into a specialist: I simply waited until the population grew large enough for me to have workers working every square. Every additional citizen simply became a specialist.

However, the dynamics of this game have really changed with Civ IV and Civ V. I usually don't end up with any "maxed out" cities and so I'm not really sure when and where I should use specialists. I'm very reluctant to pull a citizen that's producing gold, food, or hammers to become a specialist, as it doesn't seem like a good trade-off to me. What do those of you with a great deal of experience with Civ V think about specialists and when do you use them?

The key use of a specialist is to generate great people. They will generate resources as well, but the primary use of specialists is for generating great people. If you need a great person use specialists, otherwise they aren't necessary except for the occasional boost to production, science, etc.

Unless I'm going for a cultural victory and want to generate as many writers/musicians/artists as I can as quickly as possible, I don't bother with them.

Science specialists can be useful if you are going for a Space Victory and it turns into a race to the last tech. When every turn counts as your opponent is building the spaceship those extra beakers make a huge difference.

Thanks for the advice, guys. I've barely used specialists in Civ V and wanted to know if I was missing something.

I guess I need to fire this up... Too many games from Steam

My second game didn't go too well with the Shoshone. Super fun civ to play with the expanded city borders and pick your own goodies. But Japan decided to DOW me pretty early (Kings lvl) and I couldn't hold them back with only three military units. They stomped me. I wasn't expecting to be attacked so early. I was concentrating on a culture build.

Third game I decided to play the Assyrian civ. Oh this game is going much better! Their unique unit is sweet, the Siege Tower. I went straight for that unit and iron in the tech tree. Concentrated on the Honor policy tree and got the Zeus wonder. I focused on nothing else. Then I set out to conqueror with three Siege Towers and two Swordsmen. Whoa, they easily sliced through the enemy cities. Three siege towers can take down a city in one turn. I completely removed two civs in about 30 turns with that army. This is my new favorite domination civ!

I am trying a game with Venice, King difficulty, normal earth sized map with 8 civs and 16 city-states. Interesting concept of not being able to build/found your own cities and buying city states with great merchants. The purchased city states have slightly more control features than the standard puppets from earlier Civ 5 builds, and when you take them over, you get their already built units.

All the wonders that say "must have built a ^^^ in all your cities", mean that you only need one, in Venice. Its somewhat liberating to not have to build settlers, and I have never received an angry diplomatic message "dont settle cities near us", even if I take over a city state near a rival civ. No rival has even been close to declaring war on me.

I am voting on the second World Congress resolution now, I am hosting, have a total of 5 purchased city states plus Venice, and I am tied for the lead in victory points with Russia and lead all other civs in technology (trade routes do not give me any more science bonuses with other civs).

I have been focusing on trade and happiness and have not really started the artist/music/writer guild/tourism stuff yet, but that will now be my focus since I am now researching archaeology.

As another person pointed out, gold seems to not be as much a problem as earlier Civ 5 games. Once the trade routes get established, most of the monetary worries are over. I expect this to get changed a bit, maybe by increasing army or building maintenance costs or halving revenue.

I'll be surprised if I win this game. I'm currently dispatching archaeologists all over the world to plunder sites and bring back riches to England. How this affects things in the late game I still have no idea. Since these sites pop up where barbarian camps used to be, perhaps the seemingly-heavy barbarian pressure early in the game was by design and not by unfortunate chance.

Carthage is still posturing, now denouncing me. I'm way ahead of her in size and technology; nothing else is going on right now, so perhaps I will oil up the war machine and assimilate her. Is in the early 19th century right now.

A question for those of you playing Venice:

Normally I establish my first city within a turn or two of the starting location figuring I can make up for any deficiencies down the road. With only one city, how much time do you spend searching for the "perfect" tile on which to settle?

With Venice, I lucked out in that my starting location was a great place to start, ...or so I thought. As the game opened up, I found myself in a mediterranean sea-like "trap" and all the city states near me were non ocean port access. To make matters worse, rival civs that were not inclined to be friendly with open borders or friendship treaties had their spheres of influence block me in. I couldnt get fishing boats or exploratory ships out into the ocean waters for quite some time.

Since you will only have one city (Venice) building wonders, its important to have stone/marble or other mining resources nearby so that you have a robust production. Only one or two luxury items nearby are necessary for Venice because you dont start any other cities, and, when you acquire city-states with luxury items, you immediately get their happiness bonus. I have not had a happiness problem so far, and after completing the trade/merchant social policy, you get +2 for every luxury resource. Mighty fine indeed!

I am about 200 points ahead of my closest rival, Russia, and am about to discover Railroad. We are running a little late tech-wise in this game as its around early 1800's now. We have had three world congress votes and I am now no-longer the host.

(Cross-posted from Civfanatics)

Emperor, Continents, all settings standard.

I'm playing as Sweden, got a really nice tract of land that I quickly settle. I decide to not go warmongering this time, but instead try a cultural win.

Now, to the northeast I meet Assyria. That's fine, they're warmongers but I can handle as much.

To the northwest, I meet Shaka Zulu. Uh-oh.

To the north (between Zulu and Assyria) I meet Attila the Hun. Holy Carp! I get ready for some skirmishing and fortify my borders.

To the west, finally, I meet Austria, the only non-warmonger civ in our happy bunch. We're five civs, of which three are warmongers, crowded together on a smallish, snaky continent with lots of coastline and an inland sea.

NOTHING HAPPENS FOR FIVE THOUSAND YEARS.

Sure, the Warmonger civs build big armies, but all those armies do is sort of shuffle around each others borders, gazing longingly across to the other side.

Finally, around the middle ages (turn 140 I think it was) Shaka takes a neighbor city-state and then declares war on Austria. Makes sense, she's militarily the weakest and built some juicy wonders. I declare war on her as well, sensing her impending doom and hoping to curry favor with Shaka. I take her capital and sue for peace for another city. I get some minor warmonger penalties with Assyria and the Huns but as they "tolerate warmongers" they didn't care very much (though the penalty stayed for about 80 turns which I thought was a bit excessive).

IT TAKES SHAKA 100 TURNS TO WIPE OUT THE FINAL AUSTRIAN CITY.

Now, Maria of Austria is down to one city. It's not a very well-defended city either, and Shaka has tons of impis. But for some reason, he can't seem to... just... DO IT.

Now, turn 250 and onwards there are lots of war declaring and denouncements going on between the AI civs. The Zulus and Assyria agree to kick the Huns out of the game, but never manages to, even though he is weaker than both of them. Granted, Shaka manages to take a single border city from Attila, but with two warmongers flanking him like that, more should have happened.

On the other continent, I meet Siam, Babylon and Japan (another warmonger). I remain neutral, keeping friends with everyone and building up my tourism. There is some war declaring going on here and there, at some point Japan takes a city-state and a small Babylonian city but that's about it.

...

The AI seems cowardly in BNW, too cautious. No way should a game with four strong warmongers result in so little. Shaka should have run away with my continent, sharing the Hunnic lands with Assyria and then finally taken Assyria for himself. Japan, on his continent, should have invaded Babylon with much more gusto.

Something needs tweaking.

Other than that, great expansion! Lost countless of hours of sleep!

I agree the AI is too pacifist. They attack other every once in awhile but in the five games I've played so far (at deity level) they have never attacked me.
Right now I'm a single city state on an island between two continents and it's 1890 and nobody has even gotten angry with me. It's like they're all trying for some kind of victory other than domination. (the only victory condition)

(no, I don't stand a chance of winning but like to see how long I can last)

Yeah, although in the first game I played, the AI seemed just as aggressive. Several games later - I'm just testing the waters with different civs - the AI is very passive. You know something's up when the Zulus and Huns peacefully share a continent with you and each other, then somebody's been spiking everyone's drinks.

I've been down this road before. I played several dozen (at least) Armada Supernova sandbox games at the hardest level - and although the AI would occasionally declare war it rarely attacked in force (actually in only one game did it do much and in that game I was a genocidal warmonger). It preferred to aimlessly shifts its space fleets back and forth.

I've played countless games of Civ over the years and this is one of the most docile Civ AIs I've seen yet. The AI may, out of sight, be warring but not with me. It's too soon to pass definitive judgement but a peaceful Shaka breaks my heart.

(In other forums, I've heard rationalizations that the peacefulness demonstrates the AI's intelligence - winning without war or avoiding conflicts that can drag on for centuries - but ... are we playing a game or not?)

Peace out.

I wonder whether they dialed down the AI aggression slightly so as to better showcase the new trade route and tourism/culture systems introduced in BNW. I've only just started a game on a Small Continents map, so I don't have much experience to add yet.