View Full Version : Strategery Thoughts
killercane
20-09-2010, 22:26
Ive got to say Im a bit worried about this game being a buildfest. Archers are pretty powerful combined with city bombard ability from the capitals so early rush is really out in comparison to 89 shield settlers (2.2 warriors!). So the cost/benefit analysis would be to build settlers not units. However you are limited to maybe 4-5 cities before the happy cap really kicks in to hurt you. So what the hell do you do? Build. And build. And build.
Also, it looks like the Great Library->CS slingshot is so powerful that it will put everyone else in the game behind at very little risk. Great Library->Civil Service: Judging from http://well-of-souls.com/civ/images/tech_tree3.jpg, Writing is 7 turns, Philo is 13 and CS is 37. By the time you get writing and can build the TGL, it should complete in just about perfect time for CS (150 hammers/13 turns/for Egypt only 120 hammers). CS is triple the cost of Philo, and will take ages for another player to get since science is largely limited to pop growth and lots o building libraries and trading posts and such. CS increases farm yield (growth) and gives you a resourceless unit that is almost as strong as the strongest AA unit (100 hammers/10strength vs. sword's 80/11).
And its not like you can early rush to prevent this. If you take the time to research to IW AND take the time to hook up iron that is hopefully in your borders both units would come out at the same time. I assume you can upgrade spears to pikes as well. With the capitals bombard ability I dont see how you cannot get away with just using warriors and scouts to defend or even adding a short detour to grab archery to really insure an early building/farming gambit.
grahamiam
20-09-2010, 22:48
My guess is that you've spent the last hour or so reading the manual instead of working [nono]
The real question is, do I go into work tomorrow or does this cold suddenly get worse :confused:
Hi KC :)
I am almost done reading the manual, haven't gotten into the details and numbers yet.
Regarding combat, what I saw on previews is that the idea is to have few, powerful units that are tied in great part to your amount of resources/cities and when they attack or defend, they won't always completely die off - you'd get an incomplete fight with both sides taking unequal damage. So you can send troops forward, have them take a beating, rotate the front, etc. It sounds a lot more tactical and less production-oriented.
As for TGL-CS, I simply have no idea but it doesn't sound so bad, tech costs used to increase 2-3 fold in Civ3 and Civ4 from one level to the next as well.
killercane
21-09-2010, 00:46
My guess is that you've spent the last hour or so reading the manual instead of working [nono]
The real question is, do I go into work tomorrow or does this cold suddenly get worse :confused:
No working tomorrow. I figure a new civ only comes out every 5 years so might as well have a holiday.
I have to wait until 24th! [cry]
killercane
21-09-2010, 01:56
Hi KC :)
I am almost done reading the manual, haven't gotten into the details and numbers yet.
Regarding combat, what I saw on previews is that the idea is to have few, powerful units that are tied in great part to your amount of resources/cities and when they attack or defend, they won't always completely die off - you'd get an incomplete fight with both sides taking unequal damage. So you can send troops forward, have them take a beating, rotate the front, etc. It sounds a lot more tactical and less production-oriented.
As for TGL-CS, I simply have no idea but it doesn't sound so bad, tech costs used to increase 2-3 fold in Civ3 and Civ4 from one level to the next as well.
Yeah but TGL is like the Oracle and you can take CS for free and TGL gives great scientist points towards another tech. If it only takes 10 GPPs for your great person you can be more than halfway to chivalry in 60 turns, at very little risk.
grahamiam
21-09-2010, 02:17
As I understand it, you get 3 beakers for the capitol and 1 beaker per pop. To do Writing (requires 55 beakers) in 7 turns, you need to be doing 55/7 = 7.8 bpt, or have 5 pop. I have no idea how long it takes to grow in Civ5, so perhaps it is easy to get to 5 pop. Dunno. If it's easy, then the double-slingshot you are describing sounds a bit too powerful.
Luckily we only get civ the 24th. Which is good in my particular case, I have a training to prepare for tomorrow and thursday and a childrens party on friday. When that's all done, I can relax with Civ :)
killercane
23-09-2010, 17:19
Well balls. Immortal kicked my ass. Taking on 2 AIs is very difficult with 1upt and mountains around.
-Tech speed FAR outpaces building speed on standard. If scaled somewhat correctly this is probably true for all speeds. This makes AA UUs and units pretty worthless.
-The AI can certainly tech quickly and accumulate gold. They must have massive unit support on higher levels since they keep all their old units around forever. Ex., fighting japan with warriors and spearmen vs. longbows, catapults and knights. Killed 20+ at a chokepoint and they just kept coming until they showed up with samurais and called in Siam on my other front with similar archers, warriors and even scouts. Your units dont heal quickly enough for such hordes, especially when you have to be careful of movement per 1 upt.
-Multiplayer will take a long time to play until the patch it.
what is UPT? Unit per tile?
grahamiam
23-09-2010, 18:54
Yeah, 1 unit per tile. Makes it more like superchess than Civ, but I am coming around to liking it.
KC, cats should be killing those low level units with 1 shot. I've not played immortal to experience that sort of volume though. Also, the heal promotion seems to be one of the key skills to focus on since metals and horses can be limited, thus limiting swordsman, cats, and knights. Also, you can spam Archery and gunpowder units since they don't require a resource. Interestingly enough, cannons don't require a resource either. I'm thinking, at higher levels, it may be required that the focus be on the lower half of the tech tree to aim for gunpowder and chemistry. Haven't played enough to see what that would require giving up, though.
killercane
23-09-2010, 20:00
Yeah, 1 unit per tile. Makes it more like superchess than Civ, but I am coming around to liking it.
KC, cats should be killing those low level units with 1 shot. I've not played immortal to experience that sort of volume though. Also, the heal promotion seems to be one of the key skills to focus on since metals and horses can be limited, thus limiting swordsman, cats, and knights. Also, you can spam Archery and gunpowder units since they don't require a resource. Interestingly enough, cannons don't require a resource either. I'm thinking, at higher levels, it may be required that the focus be on the lower half of the tech tree to aim for gunpowder and chemistry. Haven't played enough to see what that would require giving up, though.
Yep killing em with 1 shot. Its hard to move your horses in with all the mountain terrain and such. Lower half seems like an interesting idea :). I'll give it a try!
Playing babylon and using their bowmen is a great civ for an early rush for domination. 4 to 5 bowman plus a melee unit results in quick kills. I send in the archers 1 tile ahead of the melee unit. They start bombing the city. They bomb it twice while the other unit walks in. Usually 2 rounds of bombing is all thats needed.
I have only two capitals left and I dont know where those bastards are. So I will most likely have to adjust that plan. I can see it being powerful on a small tight map with a few AI probably won't work on humans.
Rik Meleet
24-09-2010, 17:47
From another (not THE other) site:
Well, I decided to bite the bullet and purchase the game last night. Even if the game is a dud, I figure it's still worth my $50 to try it and see how things go. I bumped things up to King difficult this time around, and set out to conquer the world as Rome.
Just over 100 turns later...
Oh my. Errr... Umm, how can I put this. Let's come right out with it: Civ5 is a fundamentally broken game in its basic game mechanics.
I will probably try to do a longer post on this later, but here are a quick list of the problems with the game as I see them currently:
- Opening difficulty extremely dependent on starting location. A poor starting location makes the game massively tougher. [OK, maybe this isn't new to Civ5, but it's not good.]
- Related: game is too dependent on having the right resources near the start. If you lack strategic resources, you are really screwed. Having the good luck to start near multiple luxuries makes the game enormously easier.
- Exploration yields ridiculous rewards. The goody huts are already extremely strong, then you can pull hundreds of free gold from the ether just by meeting city states. Ridiculous.
- Different civs are horrendously unbalanced. Some of them are all but useless (poor Ottomans...) Companion cav is as bad as the Civ3 Immortal, brokenly powerful, since the AI is too dumb to build spears.
- No feedback from diplomacy. No tooltip help explaining wtf a Secrecy Pact actually does. I have no idea how any of these AIs actually feel. Firaxis, I am not interested in trying to read Wu Zetian's "body language" as she speaks to me in Mandarin Chinese!
- The AI is abysmally dumb when it comes to combat. I watched the big, bad Persian Empire walk one unit at a time into the killing fire of a city-state, losing about six units over the course of two dozen turns while achieving absolutely nothing. It was... painful to watch, given how expensive units are in this game. When I went to war, the AI mindlessly walked archer units right up next to me to be killed (just stand 3 tiles away and counter-attack), and continued to bombard *BARBARIANS* with their cities while my units were at the gates ready to attack. My Roman ballistas, the units doing all the city-killing, were never targeted even once. Oh... my... God.
- Production is now the key economic indicator. Yes, precisely backwards from Civ4! You can easily get more food from other sources, but you can't get more production. If you have no hills at the start, you are REALLY screwed now. This would make for an interesting game mechanic, except for two things:
- You can't choose where your cultural borders expand, and the game always gives hills a very low priority. Argh, those are now some of the best tiles in the game!
- The city-states are broken in this game. Horribly, horribly broken. They are free mana from heaven, easily exploitable tools to let you dance past the AI civs. The cultured and militaristic ones are nice and all, but the maritime ones are the real culprit. I disliked the corporations in Civ4 because they broke one of the fundamental rules of the game: that cities have to provide their own food, shields, and commerce. Maritime city states in Civ5 are the new corporations, just like running Sid's Sushi, only now you can do it right from the start of the game. Benefits from befriending maritime city states:
Friend: +2 food/turn in the capital, +1 food/turn in all other cities
Ally: +4 food/turn in the capital, +2 food/turn in all other cities
Free food, raining down from the sky! I was able to befriend two maritime city states, and got a disgusting +8 food/turn in my capital. Why even bother building a granary? I get QUADRUPLE the benefit for free without doing anything! So the new "One Right Strategy" (TM) is to emphasize as many mines as possible in your capital, and let the city feed itself with magical maritime food. Of course, if you don't have any maritime city states near you, you're out of luck, but it's not like this is a "strategy" game or something... http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Smilies/rolleyes.gif
Oh wait, you might say, "the city states are still OK because you have to pay them gold for influence!" Well - sometimes. Not always. I had a request to kill a barb encampment for a city state, so I did, and boom! Instant "friendship" status. Gimme gimme gimme all that free food for pure dumb luck. Then the city state happened to have wines, which my capital wanted, so I received another +33% growth bonus on top of everything else. Sheesh! The We Love the King Day thing is purely random, and the benefit (33% growth benefit for 20 turns) is not at all trivial. The whole thing is completely absurd.
Giving out free *FOOD* in the early game?! Did they test this thing at all?!?
Yeah, I could go on. I've played this game for maybe 5-10 hours total, and I am once again annihilating all of the AIs in the Demographics on King, more than double anyone else in every relevant category after ~110 turns. There's no point in playing on, this game is already finished. Do I have to go on to Immortal to get any kind of challenge?!
This ain't looking good folks. http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Smilies/frown.gif Believe me, I paid my money, I want this game to last for years and years. There might be a good game here somewhere, but Civ5 is very badly broken at present. The AI code, the diplomacy, and the city-state mechanics all need a total rewrite. I... am not optimistic that that will happen. They screwed the pooch badly on this one.
IMO Sullla is a great civ player, I've always read his walkthroughs with high interest. When someone like him has comments like this that worries me.
Shabbaman
24-09-2010, 19:31
It sounds like we are embarking on an epic betatest. But then again, that's business as usual with Firaxis.
Lt. Killer M
24-09-2010, 19:36
IMO Sullla is a great civ player, I've always read his walkthroughs with high interest. When someone like him has comments like this that worries me.
it don't worry me, it makes me not buy Civ V. end of story.
grahamiam
24-09-2010, 20:11
I agree with some, but I'm still having fun. Maybe I just enjoy annihilating AI too much [dunno]
Opening start location has always effected game difficulty. That's civ, no? How many starts without copper have caused heartache over the years? How can that really be a complaint?
I don't understand the border expansion gripe because you can buy any border tile?
It costs 250g to be a friend (30 influence points), and then that decays at 1.5 ppt, so gone in 20 turns. Translates to 12.5gpt for +2 food. That part is unbalanced as long as you are making enough gold or if you get a barb quest.
Anyways, good post by Sullla for thought.
Socrates
24-09-2010, 21:03
IMO Sullla is a great civ player, I've always read his walkthroughs with high interest. When someone like him has comments like this that worries me.
I garee. A few years ago I read his tales with attention. Probably not the best player around but one of the best writers for sure. Some of his games really are epic. His rant about so-called broken features surely stands some truth. What I can relate to without even bothering playing the game is the amount of luck he describes in Civ5 : I.just.hate.luck in strategy games.
Shabbaman
24-09-2010, 22:58
Firaxis showed they like big swings with civrev (pyramids out of goody huts...) so I'm not surprised they're pushing it in civ5. But randomness was always a great factor in civ5.
Socrates
25-09-2010, 00:13
Firaxis showed they like big swings with civrev (pyramids out of goody huts...)
Is this a joke to emphasize things or was this for real ? [:O]
As for luck/randomness, it seems it got a boost with Civ5. Even if I reckon it was there and annoying in previous versions of the series.
So the combination of randomness and swings makes for really unbalanced games, I suppose...
just read on another site...
XP harvesting. Basically you and another player control civ go to war and never kill a troop. You fight, gain XP then heal. They termed it war games which in a way it is. No real way to control this.
I'm pretty discouraged by Sullla's comments. I think I'll continue to wait this one out. It may not matter because I doubt my machine will handle it.
It's strange, I thought they were advertising this one as being easier on low end systems than Civ 4. Their idea of low end is obviously different from the rest of us, particularluy on the graphics side of thisngs.
Shabbaman
25-09-2010, 11:26
Is this a joke to emphasize things or was this for real ? [:O]
I guess you haven't read my civrev rant. It's no joke, it's "an entertaining factiod" (just a check to see if anyone saw TBBT yesterday)
I'm pretty discouraged by Sullla's comments. I think I'll continue to wait this one out. It may not matter because I doubt my machine will handle it.
Why don't you just try the demo? There are several people with low end systems that are surprised the game is working at all. But the minimum requirements appear to be lower than stated.
It's strange, I thought they were advertising this one as being easier on low end systems than Civ 4. Their idea of low end is obviously different from the rest of us, particularluy on the graphics side of thisngs.
This is an interesting discussion that can only happen on a civ fansite. Most civver's perception on graphics cards are archaic. With all other games it's very apparent that you need to spend money on a graphics card, while we are still stuck with the idea that civ works best as a 2d game. Which is basically true, but that way you don't sell new games ;)
And by "easier on low end systems than Civ 4" I think they mean a low end system you'd buy today, not one you have bought last year.
killercane
25-09-2010, 19:43
I think this game is more like Civ 3 and Im starting to like that. AI accumulates gold like no tomorrow, Monty had 2K+ in his treasury so I borrowed it all with luxes and gpt and bought every city state I could which replaced my luxes and gave me all the boost I need. I havent tested if you can break the gpt somehow but this is definitely the way to go.
I put his comments to the test: went for city-state exploitation with Rhamkan (he gets +50% food and culture from juniors) for an easy deity victory on a duel map. Gonna have to try it on a larger scale pangea, but it sure looks like the fun with this game will be multiplayer.
I do have to agree with KC about how it's a bit more like civ3 with more/easier expansion for ressources. I also love that chess-y quality. It's just a shame about the AI and crashes.
killercane
26-09-2010, 02:16
I put his comments to the test: went for city-state exploitation with Rhamkan (he gets +50% food and culture from juniors) for an easy deity victory on a duel map. Gonna have to try it on a larger scale pangea, but it sure looks like the fun with this game will be multiplayer.
I do have to agree with KC about how it's a bit more like civ3 with more/easier expansion for ressources. I also love that chess-y quality. It's just a shame about the AI and crashes.
MP is nerfed from what I read with the science going so fast and no blazing fast timer. But I dont know I havent played yet.
RE: AI gold farming- Save your policies for the citystate tree, they give half their science produced on the third one or so, and will give you a massive boost. Once you get the +2 science from trading posts, you are unstoppable. Easily beat deity standard I think since they are so bad at war and there are so many chokepoints.
After a few hours of mucking about in civ V:
city states
A lot of abuse seems possible, in my first game I had 3 maritime states as allies getting me +9 food in cities and +15 in capital. Appears imba to me.
1 upt/army size
Generally the whole game seems to lean towards smaller army sizes. ie xpect research to be of more importance then because better units will perform better which can easily tip the balance with small armies. With research being scaled with pop, the maritime city advantage seems even more overpowered.
Randomness
The carry over from huge randomness from CivRev is a big mistake imo. City state has a random request (kill a few units, find a world wonder, build a wonder) and you get a hefty bonus for fulfilling that request. This will severely hurt MP play as someone who's lucky enough to have a few maritime neigbours with easy requests suddenly gets a great pop (and thus research) boost.
Same for the WLtKD/resource mechanic. Citizens wants a rnd resource, if you can trade for it/connect it you get WltKD
Embarking
Huge improvement, firaxis should have come up with this years ago.
All things considering I think the game is ok, but not the civ I knew and love. It feels they extended the CivRev down-dumbing without thinking much about the balance issues. As a result the game seems aimed for the SP, casual players. For MP or competitive play like GOtM these random factors will be detremental.
domination victory
Totally forgot to mention the domination vic carry over form CivRev. Haven't tested yet but duel map, 1 AI should become easy wins. At least good for getting the achievements quickly.
domination victory
Totally forgot to mention the domination vic carry over form CivRev. Haven't tested yet but duel map, 1 AI should become easy wins. At least good for getting the achievements quickly.
Yes that caught me out when I took an AI capital.
Shabbaman
26-09-2010, 22:00
As a result the game seems aimed for the SP, casual players. For MP or competitive play like GOtM these random factors will be detremental.
You're right. This randomness has no place in a multiplayer game. But it's fun in single player.
Socrates
26-09-2010, 22:27
Seems like Civ5 is kind of an arcade game then ? :confused: [xx(]
There are some boxes which can be clicked at the start of a game to make the map more balanced but they do not work and obviously need a patch. It actually seems that clicking these boxes makes the game even more unbalanced because cluster of the same resources are then separated even by larger distance. City States though always get something tasty, resource and luxury and some food bonuses. Moreover, typical city state would get probably twice the number of resources the human player start is getting. Which IMO needs to be patched.
Shabbaman
03-10-2010, 15:14
I just pulled off a Great Library into Civil Service. Coupled with an allied maritime city-state this seems a bit unbalanced.
At emperor+ I can never seem to get GLib, I can't even research writing most of the time: I saw it fall on turn 27 once (immortal pangea).
Shabbaman
07-11-2010, 10:34
Yesterday I finished a game on Emperor. I had won a cultural victory on king/archipelago (with Egypt, basically that's cheating), so I thought I'd perfect that skill on a smaller but more difficult map with Siam. And a difficult game it was! Unfortunately not because of the AI. The AI was a bit more aggressive, but that might've been because I started on a small continent (yes, on archipelago there are small continents...) with Askia.
Eventually I settled two more cities, one to grab luxuries (iron and incense, plus two fish and a sheep on a hill (which looks exactly like New Zealand in real life!)) and one (on a more than decent spot, next to 1 fish, 1 cow and 1 marble) to grab a spot between my second city and the capital. I could keep up in research with just these three cities, and because of a marble next to my capital I could build all the wonders I wanted. Most importantly I got Stonehenge, even before I connected the marble. Everything went okay, but I had two major problems:
1. Gold income was lacking. I only build the culture and gold buildings, yet I don't earn enough money. At first I identified that this problem had to do with the terrain: not enough gold bonuses, not enough food bonuses to use a lot of specialists either. In the end it proved to be a lack of puppets (read: trade network).
2. No resources. A small map means a small number of city states, archipelago means city states with few resources. Even if I had had all the money to buy all the city states, I would've lacked a lot of resources. For instance: there were no city states with either oil or coal. But I didn't have any money, and the single cultural city state that I bound to me by building a wonder was captured by Caesar. The city state continued to give me culture every turn, yet not in the amount I appreciated: -4.
So Askia attacked me eventually. I had two frigates by then (and he didn't), but I had very little land units. As it turns out I just slaughter his army, build a cannon and two infantry and grab his capital. I make peace and get his second largest city, cutting his empire in half. 10 turns later I mob up the remaining cities). By now I'm getting over 50 gpt again (nearing 100 at the end), but I'm running out of turns: it's 1940 already.
Caesar had captured the american capital, so I had a feeling he'd be coming for me. As I had little faith in a cultural victory (would've easily been possible if I had had the gold income to buy some city states) I had figured out that I had a shot at domination victory if I could get Rome. Impossible, but 1 unit per tile makes everything possible. So, with 1 oil I build a battleship, which wiped out his invading army (with the help of 3 destroyers), I allied a city state next to his coast, captured Antium on the island next to it, got a bomber with the other half of my 1 oil, and beat the crap out of Rome. When I embarked my mechanized infantry out of Antium, he embarked his mech. inf. out of Rome. Epic fail on his part, win in 2048.
Basically I think that if I focus on Maritime instead of Cultural city states I can win on immortal or deity easily. Maritime pays for itself (if you convert the food to gold specialists). I need to be more aggressive to get some puppets. And two cities might be enough for a cultural victory. But the AI is retarded, the difficulty in this game was the terrain (not much luck there), the map size and type and my play style.
been playing a bit less due to some more random crashes with Civ V lately but I agree the AI has no clue where 1 UPT warfare is concerned.
As long as you make sure you a few decent ranged attack units you'll be fine. The AI will march it's troop within shooting range one by one without any concerns and you just pick em off. Even if the AI wouldn't be this naive and would send in an army on multiple tiles consistently the whole 1 UPT makes ranged units imba anyway. It assures you won't have to deal with a SoD so ranged will save your ass in most situations. Maybe removing city bombard would make things a bit better.
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