Civilization V

Finally got around to trying gods and kings. I like it. I got the Koreans as my random race and so far I haven't lost with them. Just min maxing wonder/science and out tech-ing people while using their early hwacha artillery unit to hold off invasion has been able to win me every game by the industrial era. I even had the three other countries on my continent declare war at the same time, but by then I had the hwacha killing everything before they could do any real damage. Then I was able to hold on like this till I had infantry that could destroy their horseback units. Not to mention all the benefits I was getting from piling on wonders. It seems almost overpowered to give an additional science boost for every built wonder and science building, plus bonus science from great person structures considering these all already come with pretty good benefits. Their bonus unit also comes right at the time you're trying to pull away from everyone else so the slight advantage is enough.

 

Looks pretty neat.

FYI, Brave New World is 10% off on Steam for pre-order until it is released.

 

Heh, I've now gotten Civ5 for free just for voting on the golden josticks, and both expansions together for £10. I should probably get into this.

 

For full enjoyment, make sure to play Civs 1-4 first.

Nah, just jump in some time. The worst that can possibly happen is the genocide of your people.

 

Especially 4, because Nimoy.

 

I got Brave New World during the recent Steam sale and just finished my first game, playing as Morocco as they seemed well-placed to try the new trade routes and culture system. Thought I'd post my impressions.

Trade routes: I really like the way this was implemented, which surprises me as when I first saw that it was unit-based I feared it would similar to Civ2's basic implementation. I had imagined an abstract system like espionage would be better. But the fact that trade routes can be lost so easily, which is effectively wasted production, encouraged me to build up a navy earlier in the game than I typically would in order to defend from pirates. The way that trade routes also transmit religion, science, and culture makes them a subtly powerful mechanic.

World Congress: I liked the UN stuff in Civs 3 and 4, but it always came so late in the game that it barely had any impact. It's good that they put it earlier in the game this time to fix that, and this is probably the best implementation they had for such a mechanic so far. As someone that normally only half-engages with city-states, this gave me a new reason to focus on them and get more alliances.

Tourism: I love this idea of offensive and defensive culture. I aimed for a culture victory, and nearly won with 6 of 8 civilizations under my influence and 2 more above 80% when time ran out, so I won a score victory instead. I might actually have won a culture victory had I known about the tourism bonuses for arranging types of great work in specific buildings, I guess I'll know better next time. But it was fun to attack the other civs with something other than my armies and watching as they slowly fell further under my influence.

Ideologies: This was probably my favourite part of the game. I've always been a little disappointed in the geopolitical aspect of the Civ games, so I really liked the way that ideologies forced me to rethink old relationships. I chose Freedom as that seemed well-suited for a cultural victory, which put me in the same faction as Siam, Venice, and Babylon. The Ottomans, who had original picked Order, quickly rebelled due to cultural pressure from Siam and myself, joining the Freedom fold. All five civs, who used to be at odds with one another to a certain extent, suddenly found ourselves in a very stable pact of mutual friendship.

Mongolia, the Celts, and Assyria were Autocratic states, while the Mayans managed to resist cultural pressure to remain the sole Order nation. When Mongolia conquered several city-states, I denounced them, which led to the Celts and Assyria denouncing me. But as my cultural pressure on Mongolia grew, rebels began to attack their capital (which I could see due to my spy in the city). A Mongolian city eventually flipped to my civilization, and a few turns later Mongolia revolted and adopted Freedom. This angered the Celts, who soon turned on Mongolia and invaded.

This is the sort of stuff I always wanted in Civilization, and it's finally here. I've only played one game so I'm not able to tell if they've balanced all these mechanics right, but I'm really pleased with what I've seen so far.

 

I do believe that Brave New World has made the game better, but I can't shake the thought that trade routes have made making money far to easy. In the original game, you hade to actively try to make money to have the large amount of money nedded to spend on city states and emergency units. With BNW, getting really rich is easy, you can easily buy all city states without building a single "cottage" (I forget the name, but the money making upgrades on the map).

Otherwise, I think you make solid points.

 

I did notice in my game that I was earning a lot of money, but I thought that might have been down to Morocco's unique ability (+3 gold per trade route) combined with the fact I was playing one difficulty lower than I normally do. I'll have to play more games before I get a full picture, I guess.

 

After completing a second game, I'm definitely coming around to the idea that excess money might be a problem. By the end of this game I had a huge upgraded army, most improvements constructed in all my cities, yet I was still earning roughly 250 GPT and had a stockpile of 16,000 gold. I have never done that well economically before. But at the same time, I was pursuing a strategy I've never tried before, so that might be the reason why. I had heavy reliance on city state allies (I had around 10 for much of the game) which caused me to experience happiness levels I'm not used to, resulting relatively frequent golden ages. On top of that, I was playing as Portugal, another Civ that gets boosts for trade routes, and I maxed out the Commerce tree, which isn't something I usually do.

This game was fun because it showed me the opposite side of the ideology mechanic. Instead of being part of the dominant ideological faction like in my first game, this time I was the lone adopter of Freedom while 7 other civs adopted Order. I went from being a small, influential trading civ with good relations with my neighbours to a political pariah that was desperately trying to placate my neighbours to avoid a war. I built up a huge army to deter the communist hoards, which means I finally understand the US. Thankfully, the other civs focused on Zulu, the sole Autocratic state, and he managed to hold out even with Gandhi nuking his cities. I avoided war long enough to reach the first vote for world leader, and used most of that 16,000 gold I mentioned to buy off the remaining city states and win a diplomatic victory.

 

In my second to last game, I played Venice, and also tried for the diplomatic victory. Unfortunately, there was a sort of city state carnage, and in the end there were to few to get a diplomatic victory relatively early, so I just tried to keep the game going until I had accumulated enough delegates via getting the most votes. I fell a few turns short, as Russia won a cultural victory five turns before I would have won. But during this time, being Venice, who has the double amount of trade routes, I was making a vast amount of cash. I had a large fleet, a decent upgraded army, and purchased buildings I didn't even need. Still, I couldn't really get below 30k gold in the bank. Money which couldn't buy me anything. Sort of annoying.

 

If you go down the freedom tree, yopu can actually buy space ship parts.

 

In case anyone is interested, there's a Humble Sid Meier Bundle on sale right now. You can get Civ III Complete, Civ IV Complete, Civ V and the two expansions, Railroads!, and the two Ace Patrol games all for $15. It doesn't include the small Civ V DLC such as the additional civilisations, but it's still an amazing deal.

Since I already have the Civ V stuff, I just paid a dollar for the basic deal, mainly so that Civs 3&4 would be added to my Steam account, but Ace Patrol and Railroads! seem like fun.

 

Four different times I've played Civ V since it came out, and I've had four different experiences. The current expansion is the only one I've found enjoyable. There is now an actually strategy game here, woot! I was able to plan and carry out stratagems and such! Granted no matter what victory path I chose, the strategy was always murder my strongest rival, but hey,... progress.

 

^^^ The previous war deterrence, boredom, was pretty effective.

The new one made for interesting situations. In my pursuit of a culture victory, I shared a border with Songhai and my chief rival Egypt. Songhai tried to conquer Egypt first, but lost bad and was swallowed whole. So later on, when I couldn't stand the sighs of happiness and contentment coming from the Egyptian people any longer, I launched an invasion, razing their cities to improve happiness, and taking their capital in Thebes.
Then I swung back, 'liberated' Gao, and all my brutality and genocide was justified to the world. Even the to few Egyptian cities I left standing! "Thank you for freeing the monster that tried to enslave us, Casimir!" they practically shouted

 

I got the humble bundle and while there is a great game hiding in there somewhere, currently it is only good. The AI is designed to start a war no matter what at some point.

I played a game the other night with absolute and total peace until the 20th century. It was basically just a cycle of renewing vows of friendship and having 6 other leaders pop up to tell me how great it is that we all get along, when out of nowhere Bismark declares war on Songhai. My mutual defense pact meant I had to attack him, but because I hadn't denounced him I got a ding with all the other nations and when I took the cities between him and Songhai in order to calm them both down I was suddenly a warmonger with everyone else, who then started denouncing me and everyone else and the entire world devolved into a war-torn mess.