Rob Zacny

Episode 225: Brave New World

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I think so because I absolutely hate how all the city states can be purchased at any time. I think the game needs a way to make that more difficult. It seems a natural way to reward a player for building a relationship early on. It shouldn't be insurmountable to topple an ally of a city-state.

 

Another option would be to have payment to a city state be long term (like xx gold over 30 turns). Each turn your relationship grows based on how much gold per turn you give them. That way players can't just buy the city states away in a single turn, it takes a longer term commitment.

You see it as rewarding a player for building a relationship early on, I see it as punishing a player for not building a relationship early on. Civilisation is already too weighted, mechanically, towards decisions made in the early game. Moving a game system that should be relevant in the late game turns it into just one more thing to juggle in the early game (where the player has a lot to deal with already), and one whose consequence is unclear for many turns. I don't think that's a good design decision.

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You see it as rewarding a player for building a relationship early on, I see it as punishing a player for not building a relationship early on. Civilisation is already too weighted, mechanically, towards decisions made in the early game. Moving a game system that should be relevant in the late game turns it into just one more thing to juggle in the early game (where the player has a lot to deal with already), and one whose consequence is unclear for many turns. I don't think that's a good design decision.

 

I never said it would take 100 turns to build a relationship or that it is impossible to become allies late in the game.

 

In retrospect I like the option I introduced in my last comment - that you give XX gold per turn to get incremental changes in relationship each turn instead of 1 lump sum. That way buying friendship right before a vote isn't so cheesey. In any case, we could agree to disagree on this one. I just hate the way it currently works.

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So I'm pretty new to Civ games (played a bit of Civ 4 but didn't finish a single game) and decided to buy BNW after trying the demo. It's pretty good, but the game I played seemed overly long -- took me almost 2 days to complete (15 hours). I played with Venice, so it was quite weird that I grew into the biggest empire. Having puppet cities instead of annexed doesn't seem like that much of a disadvantage. I started next to the annoying Zulus and decided to go to war with them when I was asked to do so by another Civ. I didn't pay much attention to the city states in the beginning, but when I started getting the Merchant's of Venice, I used them all to buy up any city states. I bought all of them except one by the time I won. I don't think any of the AI bought any. I won a cultural victory, but by battle as I decided to eliminate the Romans I had only left with one city. I already had influence over all of the other civs. I pretty much got to most things earlier than others. I had spread by religion almost everywhere before any other religions were founded.

 

Since I was new to this game, I played on the easiest difficulty -- if I decide to play again how much should I turn it up to have a challenging game?

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I would suggest bumping the difficulty up to Prince, and see how that goes.

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Yep. While I am not sure if the values are correct for BNW you might want to take a look at this list:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ5/difficulties

 

It basically means that below Prince you are cheating. And from prince on you play the game as it is "intended" for you. And while your skills might improve you can "learn" how stuff works and should work. And even if you play on higher difficulties later on you can use most of your knowledge.

 

The higher difficulties are to make the game more challenging because if you have the same "rules" as your opponent a human player will always be better than the AI in most cases. So the AI starts cheating.

I'd recommend to play a game on prince to adapt to the "correct" game rules and then go further, maybe even go straight for immortal for a challenge. The reason I'd not go for deity is mostly because of the free additional settler the AI gets right at the start. On immortal you can still go and finish world wonders like hanging gardens or chichen itza, you can expand at the same time as the AI and you get them technology wise maybe in the renessance era. So basically it "feels" fair. This is not really the case on deity when the AI plants a second city right ahead.

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Do people play Standard game speed mostly? I am thinking of starting a Quick game (probably Prince) since I'd really prefer if I could get one game done with during an evening or two.

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I think the standard game speed is probably the most popular. On multiplayer matches you might also get matches on quick though.

Just be aware that while all the economic sysems are adjusted to the speed, the movement isnt. That means that on quick it's easiest to react on attack and on marathon it's the hardest. They need the same amount of turns to move to your cities but it becomes easier for you to build counter measures as the production time is decreased.

But in the end it's a matter of taste I guess. Personally I prefer playing on normal. In Civ 4 however I prefered playing on Marathon. But Civ 4 created an immersion of a "real world" in which I wanted to dive into. Civ 5 is more like a board game im comparison if you ask me. Has it's advantages and disadvantages.

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Yeah, as Kordanor said, adjusting the game speed does result in some odd results as far as how the game balance gets recalibrated, so I usually play at the normal setting, but enjoy the occasional quick speed game.

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I tried playing with Prince level, but got beaten pretty bad -- hadn't figured out all of the systems and what affects what. Then I tried easy (forgot name, second lowest) and it was again almost as easy as with the lowest. I guess I'll move up one level at a time.

 

I found that on the easy levels, war seems to be a good way to ensure victory. Looking at the post-game graphs, I was only somewhat ahead until I decided to reduce main competitor to a smaller empire, and from that moment I was exponentially ahead of everyone else.

 

I played Quick games, but they still seem way too long. When it becomes obvious that you are going to win/lose, there may still be hours of game ahead.

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