Sleepdance

Civilization 5

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Oh man, I'm SCREWED. In order to play this I need to come up with 60 bucks and borrow someones intel Mac. For now I have to live vicariously through all of your stories of being crushed. I put many many hours into civ 1, 3, 4, and Colonization and I'm really excited about the more advanced relationships between civs (and awesome thrown room scenes). I'm not much of a fighter, and I see there's a lot more work involved when it comes to non-combat play, but is there anything to truly love about the diplomatic/cultural wins this time around?

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I just had a thought last night while my civ was out tech-ing the other civilizations. Now that the stacks of doom are gone, I'm actually interested in playing scenarios.

I hadn't thought about this before. You are so right!!!

**edit**

3/4 games under my belt so far. All on epic, large map, and all on prince save for the first game.

1st as Russians just learning the ropes on easier difficulty. Was a cake walk. Quit about 280 turns in because there was no challenge, and I learned what I wanted.

2nd as Russians playing on prince. I won with score, and wasn't focused at all. The Russian unique ability and the building are seriously powerful. I was in the modern era around 1800. Went Liberty + Patronage + Order, which is a great combination for a sprawling unfocused empire.

3rd as Greece playing for cultural victory (prince). I lost with only 12 turns to go to get my final social policy. I spent most of the game keeping Hiawatha and Washington off my butt. I hedged a bet and allied with Rome early, but they were wiped out by Hiawatha and Ramses about halfway through the game. Having to spend that many resources on units really limited my ability to go full bore. I really liked the Patronage synergy with their ability. I had all the city states in my pockets, except my military/wars kept my ability to purchase more city states down.

4th I'm about 170 turns in playing as Rome on the earth map. My capital is basically Korea, and I started out right next to marble. I added the civic which increases my wonder build rate by 30%, which has allowed me to build a ton of wonders. My goal starting it was to be a military powerhouse, but I don't really have any civs on my borders, alexander is as close as it gets, and he's basically in India/Pakistan, Siam is in the Balkans, and the Arabs are in Northeastern Europe. I do already have the Great Lighthouse, and a bunch of island chains. I'm thinking about going hard core naval with an expansive civ, and doing combat when it suits me. Just go for a score victory.

Edited by Michalius

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Fuck this game, I'm done. Since it's been out, I've finished 6 games and I haven't been able to sleep before 4am...

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Fuck this game, I'm done. Since it's been out, I've finished 6 games and I haven't been able to sleep before 4am...

You need to pace yourself, I've learnt to with Minecraft after accidentally hitting 10am. I haven't finished one game, I set a rough goal for me to do: say kill Gandhi, kill Germany, kill 2 city states. The game itself is great, milatary is a lot more viable and as you can probably tell I like killing things. Units being less plentiful along with the progression (leveling) makes you more attached to those you have at one point, in a similar way to DoW II compared to SC II.

Also there is a big problem at this time, there are too many new great games to play: Halo Reach, SC II, Minecraft and Civ V; which coupled with my 3rd year of uni is not great. It's not like I'm going to stop other activities to free up time: Juggling, Board games, Drinking, etc.

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Luckily for me, I work M-F and my wife was out of town all last weekend. I woke up around 9am to make her some french press before she left, then sat down and played from 10:30am-1:30am. It was glorious.

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milatary is a lot more viable

At least in the demo I find that apart from killing the barbarians the military option is far harder then turtling and researching like crazy.

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At least in the demo I find that apart from killing the barbarians the military option is far harder then turtling and researching like crazy.

2 archers, some warriors and a spearman.

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In fact, military is much more approachable than I had thought, even in games with 8 players. The key is to take out whoever is next to you when you get musket men (you should be the 1st to get it). Wait for other AI to take over the players next to him, then by the time you get mechanized infantry, take his capital. The condition for military victory is: be the only player to keep his own capital. So even if the AI captured 6 other capitals, you just need to take his to finish the game.

And damn the Japanese are tough, their civ trait is ridiculously powerful...

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So 3 games in, I'm finding it way easier to make gold in this version than prior ones. I think it may be because I'm relying on the "suggested improvement" for workers too much and they end up putting in too many trading posts at the expense of other things. It's kind of uncanny. I can annex a city and as soon as the unrest settles down, bootstrap it by buying up a ton of happiness buildings at once.

As for the military, I always thought that the instant heal was a waste of an upgrade, but when you're actively pushing an attack, it's a huge godsend. Thought you'd bombarded my attacking force down to a single dude, China? Surprise! He cloned himself. Take that! :clap:

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So 3 games in, I'm finding it way easier to make gold in this version than prior ones. I think it may be because I'm relying on the "suggested improvement" for workers too much and they end up putting in too many trading posts at the expense of other things. It's kind of uncanny. I can annex a city and as soon as the unrest settles down, bootstrap it by buying up a ton of happiness buildings at once.

As for the military, I always thought that the instant heal was a waste of an upgrade, but when you're actively pushing an attack, it's a huge godsend. Thought you'd bombarded my attacking force down to a single dude, China? Surprise! He cloned himself. Take that! :clap:

Gold is also far more useful and pivotal in this game than in previous Civs. I find it to be something of a bottleneck during rapid expansion, combined with happiness. I kind of like it though, it means you have to consider new cities pretty carefully.

And yeah especially in this stackless world, the instant heal is huge. I find myself using it all the time, especially before you start getting the more interesting upgrades like +20% ranged defense. It's also really useful quite early on when you're taking on barbarians. In the early game, not having to sit around for five turns while you heal up between barbarian attacks makes a huge difference.

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I've come to the conclusion that Japan is the faction to be. Their 'racial' combined with the promotion heal is absolutely rediculous.

"One samurai left! Kill it!" *Samurai kills 5, survives, promoted, healed* "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck."

As Patters said, too much stuff to play. :violin:

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So i've been playing the game and although I have to run it on low settings it does run decently except for two things.

1. I can only run it in DX9 (My system supports DX11), in 10/11 mode it CTDs.

2. When I hit the next turn button the game comes to a grinding halt for about 30 seconds then restarts just fine when my turn begins.

Anybody know what might be causing this? I'm getting to my wits end with this computer anyway.

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When I hit the next turn button the game comes to a grinding halt for about 30 seconds then restarts just fine when my turn begins.

I get this too (maybe not 40 seconds, though,) and I wouldn't be surprised if it's supposed to be like that.

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So i've been playing the game and although I have to run it on low settings it does run decently except for two things.

1. I can only run it in DX9 (My system supports DX11), in 10/11 mode it CTDs.

2. When I hit the next turn button the game comes to a grinding halt for about 30 seconds then restarts just fine when my turn begins.

Anybody know what might be causing this? I'm getting to my wits end with this computer anyway.

What map size are you playing on and what processor? The game is very processor heavy. Even with a 5870, I can barely play on the Huge map size because my AM2+ 9850 is bottlenecking my performance. From what I understand, if your proc isn't more or less brand new then the huge map size is right out as an option.

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If you haven't updated your video card drivers, I'd highly suggest you to do so, nVidia particularly are notorious for Civ5 bugs with older drivers.

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Driver update didn't help, I suppose i'm stuck like this until I get a new computer. (So forever)

Comp specs:

Intel Core2 Duo CPU E6850 3.00GHz

Memory: 4GB 1066MHz DDR2 Corsair DOMINATOR RAM

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT

Monitors: BenQ FP72E and IBM ThinkVision

Sound Card: Sound Blaster X-Fi Audio Card (Not being used)

Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6

Ever since I switched from Windows XP Professional to Windows 7 i've noticed a marked decrease in game performance, but i've noticed an increase in video rendering speeds in AE.

This computer was brand new for CoD4 but now... PC gaming.

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Driver update didn't help, I suppose i'm stuck like this until I get a new computer. (So forever)

Comp specs:

Intel Core2 Duo CPU E6850 3.00GHz

Memory: 4GB 1066MHz DDR2 Corsair DOMINATOR RAM

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT

Monitors: BenQ FP72E and IBM ThinkVision

Sound Card: Sound Blaster X-Fi Audio Card (Not being used)

Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6

Ever since I switched from Windows XP Professional to Windows 7 i've noticed a marked decrease in game performance, but i've noticed an increase in video rendering speeds in AE.

This computer was brand new for CoD4 but now... PC gaming.

That's not a Direct X 11 GPU, from what I've heard the DX 10 support is lacking, thus if you have a DX 10 card play on DX 9 mode. I read something along the lines of DX 10 cards run the game in DX 11, with the excess passed to the CPU.

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So I just finished my third game of Civ 5 here is my experiences with it so far.

My first game was as Ramesses II. This was on the 4th difficulty because I was just learning how to play the game after not playing a Civ in a long time. It went well with a conquest of my continent then killing off half of China on the next. The only major opponent left were the Russians, and boy was it an epic battle. It started off with the classic both sides fueling up for war and stationing all their troops near the border and waiting for the word to rush in. I built at least 8 defensive fortifications and had 3-4 artillery waiting to fire on attackers. Once it started it became my artillery doing the brunt of the work and my troops taking weakened cities and enemy units. This was an effective strategy and I came out on top thanks to tactics and technical superiority.

My second game I was going to a cultural victory with Gandhi. I haven't actually completed this one because I went the one city max culture buildings with it. I feel if you gave me two hours and something to listen to(cast?). I could click on the "next" button enough times and win the game. Rough math says it would take 90 turns for all the cultural policies and them some time for the utopia project and I would finish the game with 25-30 turns left. I however do not feel like clicking the "next" button then waiting one minute (I timed it) on average to click it again. Its not fun, but then its not really how you play.

My third game which I just finished tonight was an epic last stand around my capital as the Japanese. The French and Germans expanded early right next to me so I bought land, to secure it, and expanded around their cities. They however did not like this so I waited till I had a fairly decent amount of Samurai and went at them. I ended up finishing off about half of each of them and all of China who I had also expanded near their land which got them pissed, but they weren't very hard. With the help of a HUGE Russia we finished the rest of France and Russia went on to take Germany. Once she was done, I again went full military with Samurai to hit Russia hard and fast. At this point all the other Civs on the second continent were taken over by a mysterious figure meaning it was the three of us left. I however miscalculated the technical superiority Russia had over my dudes with swords using their dudes with guns. In a way it was kinda like a lot of battles Japan fought, they weren't always willing to adopt new weapons and put down their swords. So once I realized my empire was going down the drain I said fuck it' and turtled like a mofo. This ended in a fairly epic battle with artillery and guns verses Samurai running down mountains to meet their enemy, and their death.

08civ5jlsj

Over all I am really enjoying my time with Civ 5 and feel I have picked up and addiction, its what I have been playing at least a few hours a day since I bought it on launch. Cool beans!

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That entire third game does sound truly epic. A lot of the time in Civ 5 so far I've enjoyed it more when things haven't been going truly my way. That's why at the moment I'm often starting without a defined victory condition in mind, I'm finding if I just sort of try to make a balanced empire and make decisions based on the needs of the moment it tends to play out in a less proscribed way... usually a less efficient way, but often also a more entertaining way.

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I've finished three games so far, all on small maps. I fucking love this. There's a few niggles, such as annoying automatic workers, but all in all it's far improved from the earlier games, where I would quit when someone attacked me. Just too annoying to deal with war.

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So, would anyone be interested in a screenshot filled (Links, mind you. What I have in mind would explode the page), semi-in character write up of a massive Civ 5 game?

I'd like to see this. I find Civ very interesting but don't have the hardware or the ambition to play Civ 5 so I'd enjoy having a vicarious experience through your writeup.

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I tried to win a cultural victory with 3 cities as france yesterday, and I lost at 2050 with 13 turns left on the Utopia project. I was playing on quick settings, so I'm not sure if that scales with time, but it felt pretty frustrating.

I was on a Spain-shaped peninsula which was bottlenecked by a city state and 2 mountain ranges. Germany spent almost the entire game trying to break through to me, but I had 3 frigates in the bay between the mainland and my land and they couldn't push through on land single file. It was a bit of a 300 moment as a single fortified unit kept pushing back units that were softened up by the frigates.

I feel like the tech tree is bottlenecked at Steam Power.

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