Strategery Thoughts
 

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.

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.

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]

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.

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 :)

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?