Civilization 5

[CaptainFish]

It certainly does make combat really interesting in terms of layout. Early on by properly using mountains, coasts and rivers, you can really get a big advantage against larger numbers.

I've played 2 campaigns so far. One on easy with the number of city states jacked up. I eventually just defeated the other civilizations on my continent and then the remaining city states, and then india. Then I made a space ship.

On my second run, I tried to go for a cultural win and I did so by not expanding at all. All the while Greece was running amok and killing all my allies. In the end he just strolled up to my borders with all his units, while all I had was 2 soldiers. He kept asking for open borders for an easy attack, but I refused. He completely steam rolled me though. The only real strategic terrain I had was a river and mountain square. Not enough to overcome his numbers and technical superiority.

It seems like if you want to win using culture, you have to expand really early in a few choice spots, and just leave it at that. I waited far too long and was constantly low on money. I had actually sold a bunch of my units to stop myself from going into debt.

[brkl]

I still suck at Civ: I think I'm about to get pounded before AD at Chieftain.

[brkl]

Oh God, the addiction!

[Nappi]

I guess this game is for the holidays then..

[bakka bakka bakka]

so brothers, are we going to try and get a game going tomorrow?

[Orv]

I'm up for it. I'm not sure how many others we have, but I know this.

- I can't host with my comp.

- I know how to extract autosaves, so I can instruct the host on how to do so in order that we may continue at a later date. (Not that hard to figure out, but don't want to lose the autosave.)

[CaptainFish]

I'd play, how much of a time committment are we talking? Are we doing a full normal game, a short game, or just a set number of hours before continuing at a later date?

[Orv]

I'd play, how much of a time committment are we talking? Are we doing a full normal game, a short game, or just a set number of hours before continuing at a later date?

Presumably the latter, but possible the middle option if we have a low number of participants.

[CaptainFish]

Well I can play until around 8 pm EST tomorrow, which would mean stopping around 7/7:30, but I'm completely free on sunday.

[bakka bakka bakka]

i have no time constraints on saturday and anytime after 2pm EST on sunday i'm good to go. hopefully we can get something together for saturday. i really want to conquer the world with three longsword nobunaga.

[Orv]

Me and my cherry limeade require countries to crush!

Where my Civs at?

[Gwardinen]

There is, in the bar that has the name of the city on top of it, if you click the right part you can change production.

Thank you, life saver!

I'd probably be up for some Idle Thumbs Civ 5 depending on the day and time.

[CaptainFish]

Well didn't get any Civ 5 multi going today, but if anyone wants in I'll be hanging around tomorrow. CptFish on steam. I would prefer to have enough to fill a world, but if we only have a few again, maybe we could team up against pcs, I've never done that before.

[dpp]

This game is pure crack... I might have to uninstall it to have my life back.

[juv3nal]

Finished my tutorial game.

AI seemed not very concerned with self preservation but that's probably down to the low difficulty level.

I guess it's time to move up a notch and get my ass whupped.

[brkl]

Loving it so far. The combat is improved so that I won't rage-quit as soon as someone declares war, which is terrific. Also, seeing most hexes of a large area filled with troops is far more terrifying than one stack of units.

But why can't these games allow non-combat moves and decisions to be canceled if you do it before ending your turn? I totally adopted a different policy I was going to and that's that.

[circadianwolf]

I expected science and cultural victories to have the same approach, but they're actually very different, since the cost of social policies increases with each city (encouraging small #s) while cost of technologies (AFAIK) does not. I didn't realize this until after putting much time into a science victory attempt with a small civ.. oops. (Meanwhile, Napoleon conquered the entire planet while I squatted on a great defensive position and hid behind citadels, infantry, and artillery.)

[Thompson]

I really, really, really want to buy this but...

Click to enlarge (and admire my censorship skills).

Plus multiple iTunes and Steam purchases have left me out of pocket.

If I could get the demo to work that would be something.

[Forbin]

subtract black-ops, and add Civ 5

[CaptainFish]

So I just got crushed by the game setup.

I started a match, mostly random settings and got placed on a medium sized continent with 3 other civs (China, Rome and Greece) and 5 city states. I proceeded slowly, not really rushing to expand because I wanted to explore a cultural or perhaps diplomatic win.

I built a total of 5 cities, the 4th of which incurred the wrath of Greece. Dude just never forgave me for taking "his" iron. Anyhoo soon after I built that city, China and Greece take arms against a sea of me, and tried, by opposing me, to end me. They failed because I had made Samurai by that point, and Greece didn't actually have an army. I make peace with China after enduring a large attack, and then a few turns later a couple Grecian units get owned and I make peace with him too. Soon after that I make my last city and start to focus on getting culture and teching up to exploring the seas.

I noticed early on that another civilization got killed, and found out why, when I saw that the twice as large other continent was entirely under the control of France. I literally circled the entire continent and there was a solid ring of cities on the shore, so who knows how many were in the interior. Napoleon's score was huge and so was his army, so I decided I would just put my nose to the grindstone and try to out culture and diplomacy them.

China was still causing wars and took out most of Greece and 2 city states, so I fought back a bit and liberated the cities to help my diplomatic standing. By the end of the game I had made the UN and was going to get one vote before 2050. I hatched a plan to focus on wealth and just try to win over the remaining city states with money. I got some lucky golden ages and thought I might actually pull it off. on the last turn before the vote, I buy off all the city states to friend status, and...

...the fuckers abstain! I didn't even know that was a choice. The information says they vote for liberators if possible, and if not then whoever has the highest standing, so I'm not sure how an abstain would occur since someone always has a higher standing numerically. Anyway, I ended up losing because of the score, with two social policies to go.

Has anyone had any luck with a cultural win? The wonders that help it are super useful, but I end up being constantly broke because of how expensive cultural buildings are to maintain. Maybe I built too many cities...

I find that some information is just completely missing. Some stuff from the civilopedia is incomplete, and I can't find the maintenance costs for units at all. It was a huge bummer to sell a unit, only to find that my per turn economy was still the same.

Sorry for the long post.

[Thompson]

That story was pretty hardcore, I love that you sort of sat there building your mountains of money and living in a culturally advanced utopia while every other country on Earth annihilates each other except for the French who build an enormous army and impenetrable ocean defenses only to sit around and do nothing.

and Forbin:

Not going to happen, Black Ops will be visceral.

[dpp]

I finished 2 cultural victory games, one being on prince with India. Stick to 3-4 cities, social policy costs increase with the number of cities. Invest heavily on cultural buildings, cultural city states, have a high happiness rate and get the social policy that spills the extra happiness on culture, make monuments with great artists to get the +5 culture tiles, get the +2 free policies policy and the +1 free policy wonder... cultural win is the easiest one by far IMO.

Following that, I'd say diplomatic is the second easiest, but it definitely involves a mix of science to get globalization, gold to constantly be allies with as many city-states and some military to liberate some cities once in a while. Other civs will always vote for themselves, I don't know if it's true when you liberate conquered capitals though.

I still didn't get a military victory because I'm always playing on normal size 8 civs and it's a bitch to find all capitals. And I didn't get a scientific victory because that's boring to me and it was always the way I won on previous Civ games.

[Gwardinen]

That story scares the crap out of me because I'm trying for a cultural/diplomatic win at the moment with the Arabians. It's on an archipelagos map, so I think my chances of not being attacked constantly are better than usual.

I actually tried for a cultural/diplomatic victory with the Egyptians in my last game, but England and Japan kept starting wars and eventually I ended up fighting back and not stopping out of sheer frustration with their bloody-minded ways. So once Nobunaga had convinced me to help him conquer England, I just rolled right into Japan as well.

So there you have it, it is possible to accidentally score a domination victory.

[Orv]

Cultural victory requires you to not go over 3 cities, more or less. It's a bit unfortunate, but anything more than that and you're going to have serious problems. Money for upkeep and the like, defense when you're primarily a cultural civ, etc.

As for France. . .gods, Fuck Napoleon. He and Bismark have been my two main opponents through the three or so games I've played. They're just gigantic expansionist assholes, which, ya know, makes sense, but argh. Such a PITA, both of them.

I have yet to finish a game in full, even the one where Bismark came back and murdered me. The one I started yesterday just was poor in all sides of the equation. I'm going to start one later today and just play until I finish it. I suspect sleep will elude me tonight.

Edit at 11:48PM MST: Starting the game now. AAR to come.

Edit at 12:52PM MST: That ended well. Going to ratchet it down and play tomorrow. (Played on Immortal.)

Edited September 27, 2010 by Orvidos

[juv3nal]

Oh man. This game is dangerous. I seem incapable of sitting down and playing for anything less than 3.5 hours. It's like if I have something to do in that time span, I'm better off not even getting on the computer because once I'm sat down in front of the machine, the launcher thingy is right there.

edit:

Edit at 11:48PM MST: Starting the game now. AAR to come.

Edit at 12:52PM MST: That ended well. Going to ratchet it down and play tomorrow. (Played on Immortal.)

Well, that's one way to get in shorter games, I guess, but I prefer to play on difficulties where I have a prayer of winning.