OpenWorldGames Server ONE

I write to you today seriously sleep-drepived, thanks to Civilization V which I picked up yesterday afternoon and consequently spent the next 10 hours trying to tear myself away from. I recall that there were one or two fans of the Civ games at OWG, so if anyone's interested I'll do a bit of a write-up on it, but I'll just say here that as a long time fan of the Civ franchise, I was far more impressed with V than I thought I would be. Sid Meier himself really takes no part in the dev process anymore, despite the last two iterations of this game still proudly bearing his name (including this one), which is a pity because the hallmarks of Meier's involvement always included elegant, user-friendly design and flawless playability. After Civ IV, which I put up with for about twenty minutes before returning to the shelf for use as a dust-collector, I didn't hold out much hope for V. But I'm very happily disappointed – V is terrific and addictive fun if you're into turn-based, empire-building strategy games.

Many aspects of the game are familiar, so if you're a seasoned Civ player you'll have no trouble getting the hang. However some of the changes are quite revolutionary, the biggest ones being: a hexagonal grid instead of a square one; no more unit stacking (in general, one unit per hex only, so it's no longer a case of "he who has the biggest stack wins the battle"); and the way in which cities and your empire as a whole are managed. This takes some getting used to if you're a Civ veteran, but once you do it all works very well. Brand-new Civ players may pick this up more readily than old hands with their ways set.

I was going to post a couple of screenies but they're saved in .tga format and for some reason I'm having trouble converting them to .jpg. Never had a prob with that before – odd. It's a pity, because it's a great-looking game, possibly the prettiest one in Civ history. If I can get the conversion hassle sorted out I'll post some shots.

Civ V requires Steam activation, so be aware of that. Once you've installed and activated the game though, you no longer need to be online to play (whew). System requirements are relatively low:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8GHZ or AMD Athlon X2 64 2.0GHZ (1.8GHZ Quad recommended)
RAM: 2 GB (4 GB recommended)
HD: 8GB free
Video: 256Mb ATI HD2600 or better, 256Mb NVIDIA 7900 GS or better, or Core i3 or better integrated graphics (512Mb ATI 4800 or better, 512Mb NVIDIA 9800 or better recommended)
Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card
DirectX version 9.0c (10 and 11 included on disk)
Internet connection for activation

There are too many innovations in Civ V to go into here. Suffice to say that the game as a whole has had a major makeover, in terms of concept, graphics and gameplay, and if you're a Civ fan, I think you'd really enjoy V once you get to grips with all the new stuff. I can't wait to get back into it 8)

Hehe, nice to see you've got something new that has you hooked  :) Enjoy the game, matey  :-X

As to tga conversion: have you tried IrfanView yet?

Indeed, I for one am looking forward to your reports on the game.  Although I tried a Civil War strategy game (on a large paper map) when I was younger - before the IBM PC made it's debut  :-() ), I never did get into them.  Perhaps Civilization V will be the one.  ;)

Download irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com/main_download_engl.htm)

Yes, fragger... do post some images and give us another impressions about the game. It looks like one I might like.

Is it turn based or real time?

I played simcity since the beginning and also Age of Empires series, Age of Mythology and Star Wars Galactic Battleground... all very addictive. Never picked any RTS game since those, don`t know why, maybe shooter blood!  ;D

I loved SimCity - the last version I played was Rush Hour IV.  The music was great and I enjoyed the city sounds.,

Last I played was SimCity 4, which was re-launched recently with better graphics and a few more models I guess... it`s the same game though with make-up!

I spent countless hours building, destroying and rebuilding cities!!!  8)

It was like when I was a kid and was setting the base for my G.I. Joe or whatever... making the whole thing was much more fun than playing, specially because a nuclear bomb, meteor or giant mutant spider always showed up to wreck the whole world in five seconds!  ;D

Interesting, I didn't know that there was a re-release with updated models.  The game is lots of fun, and works well even on relatively low powered machines - was on a trip last year and took my netbook along.  I became bored in the hotel at night and regretted not bring along a few movies to watch when I thought about SimCity - the old version is now freeware so I installed and played for quite a while - until I returned home to FC2 that is  >:D

You can download the demo from steam, it contains rougly 3 hours of gameplay. I did and it was the quickest 3 hours in my life, so I totally understand fraggers lack of sleep  :-()

I played something from MS, Roman Empire or so, I believe it was RTS. Someone made  me play it, that is. Online. I was enjoying my Bronze Age village when my mate invaded me with nukes and lasers (sort of).  :o

RBS games, I think the only one I ever played (and remember) was Dune2 (Dune1 being more of an RPG, then called "adventure"). I think Dune2 was on a 386 processor computer  ;D

Quote from: deadman on September 29, 2010, 01:00:08 PM
You can download the demo from steam, it contains rougly 3 hours of gameplay. I did and it was the quickest 3 hours in my life, so I totally understand fraggers lack of sleep  :-()

True, deadman, this game is a major time sink. Three hours seem to go by in a ludicrously short period. If only time at **** would move like that (expletive deleted).

Well, I'm officially hooked on Civilization V. To answer JRD's question: It's turn-based as opposed to real-time. I always preferred turn-based strategy games to real-time ones pure and simply because I like to have time to study, think and plan, especially in a "deep" strategy game like Civ. I always loved the depth of the Civ games – by that I mean there's a lot there, but it never feels overwhelming (well, except for Civ IV, but that game just blew all round IMHO). I generally find real-time games of the Command & Conquer variety a tad too much of a handful, i.e. they keep you so flipping busy that there's never any time to plan anything, and they all too often culminate in a scraggy-looking, all-in tank rush where you often can't tell who's units are doing what to whose. I've never seen much strategic acumen in mouse-dragging a box around a host of units and then throwing them all at your opponent like a handful of gravel, hoping that your chaotic swarm of Tanks or Knights or Fremen Warriors or whatever will wear down your opponent's forces by sheer attrition. Whoever builds the fastest and the mostest usually ends up winning in those types of games, so the primary skill factor is not how well one can plan, but how fast one can move and click a mouse. But then, I too got into SimCity (3000, I think?), Dune and Dune II in a big way (thanks for the memories all, those were fun games 8) ).

Incidentally, Civilization is NOTHING like SimCity! They're like chalk and cheese.

For those who haven't ever played a Civ game, or even for those that have, here's a little on what the new one's all about (and this is a very little – there's tons about this game to cover). Broadly, it follows what has become the standard Civ methodology. You start off in the year 4,000 BC with just two units: a Settler (used to found your first city) and a Worker (who builds stuff like roads, farms, and a plethora of other things). There's a Fog of War in effect, so except for what your initial units can "see", the unexplored land looks like it's covered by moving cloud layers which disappear as you move into them. It's a really cool looking and (AFAIK) original form of FoW. Graphically, this Civ is far and away the best looking one yet. The map is displayed in a species of 3D in that it doesn't rotate, but it's a bit like looking down and forwards at a tabletop relief map, so that as you scroll up – or rather, "move forward" - the map moves toward you with a kind of perspective effect. There's a smooth in-out zoom function which has a good range of focus, and everything becomes more beautifully detailed the closer in you zoom (got to get screenies sorted out – thanks for the link to Irfanview, PZ, will defo look at that :-X ). So anyway, you move your Settler to the space where you want your first city to go, order it to deploy, and your first city is created. Once you have a city up, a line in your colour appears around it at a distance of one hex (CV uses hexagons for map tiles, all earlier versions used squares). This denotes your initial "territorial border", and all hexes within that border are said to be your territory. Cities grow in size over time (which you can control – too much to go into here), and each time they do, your border expands by one or two hexes. The rule regarding borders is that no player can enter another player's territory unless both players have agreed to a time-limited "open borders" treaty. In a CV innovation, you can now purchase additional tiles around a city if you don't want to wait for your borders to expand "naturally", and this is a very useful land-grabbing move if you've got the dough. Cities are your cultural, economic and production centres. They can produce a variety of things: new units (including, of course, new Settlers, but various gameplay factors prevent you from spitting them out like melon seeds), Improvements (which are basically individual buildings within that city, such as Temple, Library, Barracks, and so on, that enhance that city in some way – there's heaps of them), and Wonders of the World. These last cost a great deal more to build, and are one-offs – once one player has built a particular Wonder, it can't be built a second time, not even by the player who built it originally. Wonders tend to benefit your empire as a whole, whereas Improvements will largely benefit only the cities they're built in. This is an extremely broad run-down, as Wonders and Improvements have a huge variety of effects. There's lots of Wonders throughout the game, not just the original seven ancient ones, although those are there too. Later Wonders include things like Hoover Dam, the Apollo Program, even Sydney Opera House.

Each round of turns represents a number of years, depending on where you are in history. At first, each turn represents 50 years, so you move through the first few millennia quite quickly (it was a boring time in history anyway, so you don't miss much). When a certain date is reached, the number of years per turn lessens to say, 25. I'm not sure of the exact numbers in CV, I'm going by CIII – still works the same way. As certain later dates are reached this year count shortens more, so that by 1950 AD it has dropped to, and stabilizes at, a rate of one year per turn, until the end of the game in 2050 AD. I don't know about this new version, but in CIII that translated to about 540 turns per game. Sounds like a lot, but it passes quicker than you'd think. I haven't finished a game yet in CV, but in CIII if I tried to rip through it as fast as possible, I could complete a game in about 12-14 hours. When I was new to it or if I'm taking my time, it could be more like 18-20 hours. So far in this one I've put in around 16 hours and I appear to be only about halfway through, but that included a LOT of experimentation, looking around, trying to find out stuff, etc. So: How to Win. The idea is to score a decisive victory and win the game outright before the year 2050 is reached, i.e. before the turns run out. You can win a Military victory (capture and/or trash everybody else's cities), a Scientific victory (be the first civilization to build a humongous spaceship and launch it as a colonization attempt to reach Alpha Centauri), a Diplomatic victory (get yourself elected Chairman of the United Nations), a Territorial victory (get more than a certain percentage of the map to end up being inside your territorial borders) or a Cultural victory (I'm not sure how this works in CV, but in CIII you had to score more than a certain number of Culture points). Should the turns run out with no decisive victory being scored, the winner is the player with the highest point score - still a way to win, but not as satisfying unless you deliberately want to play for points. Along the way you have a research establishment of some sort working in the background, and these faceless delvers are always pursuing the Next Big Thing. The more money you can give them, the quicker they'll find it. There's a "tech tree" – with the boxed game, you get a high-quality poster-style one, but there's a very detailed in-game one as well. Each new discovery on the tree may unlock new units and/or Improvements, give your Workers new abilities, allow some new Wonder to be built and much more, as well as leading to further discoveries. There are over 70 discoveries in the game, which will take you from the Stone Age to the near future.

Combat is the most fun ever in a Civ game! When you build a unit (let's say, a "Swordsman") it appears as a squad of a dozen little Swordsmen in three ranks that runs around the map as a single unit. When ordered to attack, the dozen little men will go running into the target hex, yelling and wielding their weapons, and proceed to have cool-looking one-on-one fights with the little enemy men in the hex. It's highly amusing to watch, especially when you zoom in nice and close. Interestingly, and unlike in previous Civ games, it's not always a fight to the death, not even mostly. Often there'll still be at least one or two little men still standing on each side after a battle. If you can get a damaged unit out of the fight and somewhere quiet, you can order the unit to heal itself, and over time little replacement men appear in the company until it's back up to 12 men, or whatever it may have been before. The animation is superb, and the way units move around the map is smooth, flowing and natural looking, i.e. not zigzagging sharply from one hex to another.

The whole presentation of the game is quite stylish, done in an attractive art-deco manner. The user interface is very accessible and logical, and by default there are concise and informative pop-ups for just about everything. I recommend leaving these on, at least until you've got a good handle on it all.

A couple of gripes. One is not being able to choose how many opponents I want in my world. The number of players now seems to be irrevocably tied to the map size, of which there are five. I'm not crazy about that as I like to try having different numbers of players with the same map size and see what kind of game eventuates. Another thing that's changed is that the map no longer wraps smoothly around from side to side, meaning no circumnavigation is possible. Earlier Civ games gave you the option of having the map fixed or wrapping, but this one doesn't appear to. I never liked a fixed Civ map as it means that someone can hunker down in a corner of the map and not have to worry about being flanked or surrounded like the rest of us. One last thing may be unfounded, only subsequent games will tell, but I've started twice so far, once just to make sure the install had gone OK, then to try it out properly. Both times I started dead-centre on the map. I'll see in time, but if it's a case of always starting there, with the map fixed there may be a risk of future games becoming too similar to each other. That will seriously diminish the replay value for me. Oh, and the other last thing was that I don't like the Civilopedia much in this one. It seems kind of jumbled and I found it really difficult to find the info I wanted at times, and when I did it was scant. Once I couldn't find an answer at all, so I still don't know.

So... Having said all that, I'm actually loath to recommend CV to anyone, simply because I can see that it's the kind of game that some will either get hopelessly hooked on for hours, and others will be bored to death with in short order, depending on their tastes. I wasn't aware of the demo that deadman mentioned, so my advice to anyone wanting to check out CV would be to DL this demo and try it out first. There's quite a bit to learn if you've never played a Civ game before, however the game has so many helpful tips and pop-ups that you should be able to pick it up fairly easily. Plus the game eases you in quite well - you're not bombarded with things right off the bat.

Awright, now I hope you all appreciate how much of my Civ time I put into writing this, so if you don't mind, I'm going to make myself a near-viscous cup of coffee and get stuck into it (the game, that is, not the coffee – although I probably can if I make it the way I said).

Cheers :)

Nice write-up, fragger  :-X

From your description, I take it that it is multiplayer only?

I just found this game play video:

Civilization 5 - Official E3 Gameplay Trailer [HD] (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMA0iBRAdvI#ws)

nice one, PZ. I just finished reading and was about to reply to fragger's last post when I noticed "2 more replies" had been posted in the meantime: yours.  :-()

However, nice review, fragger :) Man, what a big post.  ;D

It looks interesting - like an animated version of the paper map-based strategy games I knew from my youth.

You hit the nail in the head fragger when you say something along the lines of:
"Its a matter of who builds more and faster, not really strategy"
So a turn base game gives the player time to study and create a strategy to face the opponent  :-X

I played one turn based strategy game I can't remember the name some 10 years ago and it was great... after that only classic RTS games, and even though they were quite addictive your ideas as to not being really straegic games proceed!

I am seriously considering Civ V now... only I'm too hooked on Borderlands to switch to something else, but as soon as BL starts wearing out, I might look for something different (and openworlded  ;) )

Cheers all :)

I just need to set a couple of things straight. The map does wrap around from left to right, in my post I said it didn't. At first it actually doesn't, but later it does, apparently after you've achieved something to enable it. I suspect that might be when you finally get to move units close to the map edges, or possibly when you discover some tech like Navigation. Once the wrap is enabled it stays. So scratch that personal gripe.

The other thing is in answer to PZ's question - the game is playable in both SP and MP. I read my post through again and in places I did give the impression that I'm describing a MP game, so yes, you can lord it over your computer minions in SP mode if you wish, which is what I've been doing so far and how I prefer to play the Civs. But for the record, you can time-limit players' turns in MP so that you don't have to wait an age for the other players to make their moves, the flip side being that you have less time to analyze things and make your own move. Not liking either alternative, especially the one where I have to rush things, I prefer to play SP. Any other MP aspects of the game I'm pretty clueless about.

OK, corrections made, back into it >:D :-D

Enjoy, fragger  :-X

Cool about the SP aspect - having the computer as your opponent in a turn-based game sounds kind of fun.  You can think about your next move while enjoying classical music, a glass of wine, and fine food.  Sounds like I might enjoy something like this.

Maybe a little hijacking the topic, but picking up on the question about RTS vs RBS. As I mentioned, I never liked RTS (got obliterated once online, the first time playing, lol) but for reasons unknown I happened upon a voice commentary on world class starcraft2 players.

I really enjoyed simply watching and listening to that kind of commentary, it's like a live sports event (he always comments like that). Take a look if you want and follow the youtube links (there's part 2+3 of this match).

Spoiler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGD6SicyCmw#ws

Grrr... I'll have to try and look at that vid later during my "good" net access window, Art (like at about two in the morning once all the neighbourhood grommits have gotten off Facebook and freed up some of the local bandwith) :D

@PZ, the good thing -well, two good things - about the computer opponents is that they don't make you wait hours while they think out their next moves, and they actually play the game very well. But you, as the human player, can take all the time you want. I find it absorbing and relaxing - well, except for the odd off-colour outburst when a PC player has just done a major dirty on me ;D

Heh, your gaming style sounds much like my own. You can indeed fire up some music while you play because whilst there are sound effects throughout the game, you don't need to hear them as all the sounds underpin some kind of visual event, except for the ambient effects, which are really audio decoration that you don't need to hear. I nearly always play while listening to music, and I too enjoy classical, but it's a Tommy Bolin and Blue Öyster Cult kind of night tonight 8)

maybe you could expand your firefox by installing the "1-click youtube video downloader 1.5" addon so you can download the vid (probably faster than watching the stream) and watch it offline later? :)

Aha... I didn't know about that, sounds promising. Capital idea :-X

Quote from: fragger on October 02, 2010, 05:17:24 AM
(...) it's a Tommy Bolin and Blue Öyster Cult kind of night tonight 8)

HELL YEAH... You got my attention fragger...  >:D >:D >:D >:D >:D

I was at the local Fred Meyer (kind of department/grocery store) and almost made the purchase - should have!  :-X

re: vid on RTS, stacraft2, better check this epic game which shows about everything there is in one game (3 parts)

Spoiler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NAszqrp3aw

Spoiler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHa-sQKUcgM

Spoiler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwQ-t9CgCRI

Well, I went into town today, back to Fred Meyer, and couldn't resist - Civilization V was on sale for 10% off.  It is now happily installed, and I'm enjoying becoming accustomed to the play.  I really like listening to the classical style music in the game - makes me feel like I'm an armchair general.  :-()  It reminds me of an old Avengers episode (the ones with Dianna Rigg as Emma Peel) where an old general had a war room complete with a huge map containing military units, sound effects, and memorabilia.

Interestingly you have a choice of playing the game in DirectX 9 or DX 10/11, with the latter being recommended.  I can say that the animations are excellent - the battles among the tiny men are quite chaotic.

This is the kind of game that you can play for a long time to come, it you like slow-paced strategy games with lots of atmosphere.  :-X

The more you guys mention "slow" and something along the line of "take your own time" the more it interests me. Remembering the good old Dune II, despite the difference to its predecessor which was an adventure (RPG), I did like to build armies. I don't want to play RTS (oh dear, if you watch online games, see the links above.. but it really is fun to watch commented top level games) because of their hectic nature. So, who knows, maybe I'll give Civ V a shot sometime.  :)

I've started 3 games now while becoming accustomed to the game - it is the first of it's kind that I've ever played.  I don't know if you can choose where you begin your adventure, but this is my experience so far.

Spoiler

The first game I started was set in Greece, and one of the first things you do is to build a settlement.  When I accomplished that task, it turned out to be Athens.  The music was appropriate for the city  :-()

The second game was evidently set in what will eventually be France, because my first settlement was Paris. Again the music was appropriate to the setting.

With my third game, I'm in Asia because my first town is not Beijing, complete with the distinctively Asian music.

Although I'm still not positive the game will be to my liking, it may be something that I install on my office computer so while I'm going through my daily activities, I can take a break every once in a while to take a turn with the game.  Because it is STEAM based, I can install it wherever I want.

Quote from: PZ on October 04, 2010, 10:15:41 AM
(...) it may be something that I install on my office computer so while I'm going through my daily activities, I can take a break every once in a while to take a turn with the game.  Because it is STEAM based, I can install it wherever I want.

I also remember something about you baking ginger cookies in your office...  ????

Say... do you have any position available? I can bake cookis and more and sure like playing games. If I have to do it monday to friday, working hours, I'm sure we can get to an agreement as to how much you'll pay me  8) :-D

I'd apply for a job over there, too. Between games, I'd even make coffee for all of us.  ;D

lol, I'll let you guys know as soon as a spot opens up!  ;)

I had to give up baking cookies in my office through - the fragrance of baked cookies was more than my colleagues could stand  :'(

Just knock them unconscious until you're finished eating them. All that remains would be a faint smell no one could tell where it came from. You should wash your mouth with a couple of espressi though and remove the crumbs scattered all over your belly before those guys regain consciousness.  ;D

Lol guys ^+-+

Well, I finished my first game last night, by launching a spaceship to Alpha Centauri and thereby pulling off a Science Victory. Man, I'm really hooked on this silly game :-X Gonna start a new one and see how I go as a war-mongering despot this time >:D

I played on the second-easiest difficulty setting, and only just managed to slip a victory in before the turns ran out. It's a tough game to beat. Here's one tip I've discovered: try to become allied with at least a couple of the "City-States". Each map throws up a bunch of these, they're sort of like AI players but they don't expand and build more cities, instead they just inhabit one city surrounded by a small area of land throughout the game. Becoming allied with two or more of them can get a good dollop of extra dough in the kitty each turn, can provide you with additional resources, and sometimes they'll supply you with new units. To get allied, you have to build up enough "influence" points with them. One way is to make them a gift of money, the more you give them, the longer the alliance will last. City-States also issue different kinds of "missions" from time to time, and completing one for them will earn you a large pile of influence with that City-State. This influence diminishes over time unless you keep it up by periodically giving them money and/or units, or by doing missions for them. It's a cool new concept in Civ, and can be very beneficial to your empire :-X

I have to make yet another correction to my original review (just as well I don't do this for a living :-\\ ). I claimed that the number pf players was tied to the map size, but I found that you can in fact specify the number of players for any map (I didn't notice the "Advanced" button in the pre-game set-up screen - d'oh) and you don't always start in the same location. At the same time you don't have any control over where you start on a map, but I did notice in the Save Game menu that you can save either the whole game or just the map you're playing on, so if you ever get a map you like you can save it and have different games on it. I also discovered what the mechanism is for making the map go from its initially fixed state to wrap-around mode. At first the small world-map in the lower-right corner is zoomed right in on your start position, and as your empire expands and your units explore further and further afield the world map view zooms out, until such time as you explore enough ground for the map to end up being zoomed right out to it's full extent. That's when it begins to wrap around from left to right.

I'm finding this to be a delightful game, with all sorts of cool little surprises popping up. The animations just get more and more entertaining the more advanced the units become. Paratroops can be dropped into any land square within 5 hexes of your territory, and when they do, a little Hercules aircraft will fly across the map and your unit will float down into the indicated hex on their 'chutes. Order a bomber to attack a target and a silver Flying Fortress will take off, fly to the target, do a bomb run, circle around and do another one, then fly home and land. The sound effects are great :-X

I found a couple of minor graphical glitches. All units have a colour-coded symbol above them to tell you whose it is, and when you have an aircraft carrier with a few planes aboard, a number also appears above this unit to indicate how many aircraft are aboard. At one stage I moved a carrier and a copy of that number stayed behind in the hex, apparently for the rest of the game. It didn't obstruct movement or anything, but it looked odd. There's also the odd flaw where the map wraps left to right, at one stage I had what looked like a straight line of coast in the sea by itself which persisted for quite some time before it went away, and at one stage all the resource icons disappeared from one city display, returning in the subsequent turn. Minor glitches, and hopefully there'll be a patch of two to take care of them.

Right - I'm off to conquer the world 8)

don't worry about errors in your first review, as long as you know they're there and  correct them in a follow-up, no harm done :)

Those graphical glitches you mentioned, try to scroll/move/zoom those glitches away, like outside the screen and then go back in again. Sometimes they are just reminiscences of a certain event that didn't get "washed" away, at least that's what I observed in similar games that use that kind of map view (they disappear once you get back in again).

However, have fun :)

Great review fragger - I must say that the game is rather adicting - hours whiz by before you know it.  I'm currently in a game in which I chose the largest map (Earth), the greatest number of other AI players (24, I believe), and am at about 450 AD in time.

I agree wholeheartedly about the animations - they're really funny!  I typically start at a far view hex, and when anticipating a battle, zoom in to close view where I can see their weapons, battle dress, and almost their faces before I initiate the action.  Loads of fun watching the little guys line up and then launch foreign objects at one another.   ^+-+

Here's a screen cap of my little guys in the city
[smg id=2592]

My boys (left) are firing on a group of barbarians (right)
[smg id=2593]

Those "little" guys are about as little as the rocky mountains when you look at the map completely and utterly unbiased.  ;D

Yes, they are giants among men, but ants among gamers.  >:D

I found a way (new for me) to maximize my efficiency in each turn - when I started, I was just moving around the map looking for any of my units that needed to do something.  Then I discovered the Unit display, which is sortable by what the unit is doing - automated versus player controlled.  A little green light indicates that the unit can still be manipulated.  Now at a glance I can see the list of who I need to instruct, click on the unit in the list, and the map centers on it's position - much easier, and I don't leave anyone out.

Quote from: PZ on October 05, 2010, 03:40:49 PMthey are giants among men, but ants among gamers.

I think this  is worth quoting.  ;D

 ^+-+

Yay, finally – screenies! (thanks for the link to Irfanview, PZ – much obliged. Neat bit of software that, btw :-X )

I've cropped nearly all of these, but the game looks terrific on a widescreen monitor.

Here's a couple of my Egyptian War Chariots. The "light from above" effect and circle on the ground indicates that this is the selected unit to be moved. This was from my first trial game which I later aborted due to getting my butt kicked...

[smg id=2594  align=center width=400]

There are many cool landmarks in the game, and being the first player in the game to discover these on the map can improve your peoples' happiness factor.

[smg id=2595  align=center width=400]

[smg id=2596  align=center width=400]

The State of the Nation, circa 1575 AD. The wriggly white lines around my cities are my territorial borders.

[smg id=2597  align=center width=400]

There are lots of cool little surprises – this is a Great Artist. There are also Great Merchants, Great Scientists, Great Engineers and Great Generals which may be generated by your cities over time, and these Great People can give your empire a large boost in terms of resources, money, scientific discovery, military strength, and other ways. This particular GA is a 1930s-era filmmaker (note the cameraman in the back of the car).

[smg id=2598  align=center width=400]

Game of Battleships, anyone?

[smg id=2599  align=center width=400]

Here's my spaceship to Alpha Centauri being constructed on the launch pad in my capital city.

[smg id=2600  align=center width=400]

And here comes the final module, on its way by rail to be installed. Note the modern buildings in the city. Cities and units change in appearance over time depending on what era you're in, going from primitive to modern during the course of the game.

[smg id=2601 align=center width=400]

Of course, these screenpics lost a lot in quality and clarity during the translation. The copies in my Media folder (fragger's stuff) are a little bit clearer, if you want to check them out there.

Outstanding pics, fragger  :-X

I'm looking forward to making my way through the game as you have.  One regret is that there are a limited number of moves in a game.

Thanks, PZ :)

True, the turns are limited, but there is sort of a way around that, although it's not very satisfactory. Whenever anyone wins a game, be it you or the AI, you get the option of concluding the game at that point or playing on. If you play on, the game will just keep going and going ad infinitum, though of course it's no longer possible for anyone to win a second time. But for instance, you might achieve a Science victory, and then just for the heck of it, see if you can conquer the world afterwards. If you do, you won't win anything except the knowledge that you did it. Eventually you'll reach the end of the tech tree, but there's one last endless set of techs collectively called "Future Tech". These are simply numbered (FT1, FT2...) and they don't give you anything new when you discover them, they're just there so that part of the program has something to do.

But if you don't mind the fact that you can't win, or win a second time, you can go on playing the same game indefinitely, if you're so inclined.

Now, that's my kind of game! It is kind of like FC2, or just about any other game I've played - the ability to go on and continue to explore the world is just plain fun.  In this instance, seeing what else you can accomplish.

One question - if I just plain stink at the game, is it possible to still be riding horses, and flinging wooden shafts when the AI wins, or do you automatically advance in time regardless of your gaming prowess?

This and: can you save anytime you want and resume from that point at any time?

I hope so! ::)

Yes, save any time you want, and also lets you save on steam so you can synchronize from anywhere

@PZ, you'll still keep discovering new techs throughout the game, no matter how badly you play it.  The game employs a base number of game turns that are required for each discovery to be made, and the more you can up your empire's science output, the shorter that number of turns becomes. You can increase your science output by building things in your cities like Libraries, Universities and the like, but of course you need to discover the prerequisite techs for these buildings first. The point though is that the research goes on in the background regardless and you'll still keep making discoveries which will unlock more advanced units and such, it's just that if you fail to build any "Science" buildings, it'll take a lot longer. Actually, it's not really the case that you can mess things up, and things can often be corrected – for example, if you order a Worker to build a Farm in a hexagon but later feel that a Trading Post might be better there, a Worker can build the new improvement over the old one. You can upgrade your old, obsolete units to new-fangled ones, or you can disband them and get some gold back into your coffers. You can also change whatever your cities are building and what tech you're researching at any time if you change your mind.

On my second go-around, and I'm currently in the process of ridding the land of the Chinese as this continent ain't big enough for the both of us. I captured one of their cities and mauled their forces so badly that they offered a very lucrative peace deal to persuade me to back off, which included ceding two of their smaller cities to me. Of course I accepted as I needed the time to regroup and refit. But now the deal's up and my guys are spoiling for a fight - time to clean house >:D

Sounds great, and makes me like the game even more - I appreciate all of the thought that goes on in the background of a strategy game.  This will be fun for quite a while.  :-X

One annoying thing about Civ V is that whenever you fire up the game, it forces you into the intro sequence. If you're getting sick of seeing that old geezer sitting by the fire, there's a way to skip over it:

1. Go to \[My] Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5.

2. Find the file UserSettings.ini, and open it with your fave text editor.

3. Find the line SkipIntroVideo = 0 in the section named GameSettings and change it to SkipIntroVideo = 1.

This will skip the intro video. You'll find yourself staring at a blank screen for a moment of two when you load the game, but it is working, so just let it run.

Incidentally, I think the intro sequence is an excellent piece of CG-ing:

Civilization V Intro - HD (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPu26IXwob8#ws)

Nice one, fragger  :-X

That was awesome  :-X

Cheers :)

Impressive indeed... the fire was perfect... and all textures a revery rich too...

If anyone besides me plays Civ V and you haven't come across this as yet, Steam has a new update available which will add a new civ (Mongols) and a swag of additions including new Buildings, Wonders and Tech features, as well as new options in the Setup Game screen such as new map styles and special rules. The in-game rules have been tweaked a bit as well, and some of the Social Policies have been modified. Maintenance costs for some Buildings have been reduced (such as the Colosseum, which I always felt was a bit steep to maintain originally) and some Buildings now provide extra benefits. There is in fact quite a bit of new stuff, so if you're into Civ V I believe the update is worth doing.

nice :) Have fun  :-X

Thanks mate :)

Thanks fragger - I have Civilization V - haven't played it in quite a while, but this update sounds pretty good.

No worries, PZ :)

If you start a new game by going to "Setup Game" and then click on the "Advanced" button at the bottom of the window, you'll see the new setup options. On the right is a list of things you can change, such as clicking on "Map Type" (I think that's what it's called, or "Map Style" - something like that) will cause a newly-lengthened list of map styles to appear. There's other new stuff in that right-hand list as well, and below that in the Special Rules section are some new rules. The other new stuff you'll come across during the game, such as in the Tech Tree and in Social Policies. Check out the auto pop-ups there and in the list of Buildings/Wonders in your City Displays to see what they now do - some have been changed in terms of function and benefits. For example, originally you could only build a Stable in a city that had the Horses resource nearby, now you can do so if the city has Horses, Sheep or Cattle. You'll still need Horses from somewhere to build mounted units, but even without Horses a city with a Stable will now get a Production and/or Food benefit . There's quite a lot of stuff like that, I'm still finding new things.

Sounds intriguing - thanks for posting, fragger  :-X

The update has added considerably more to the game than I first thought. There are now also some new Natural Wonders and a new terrain type (Atoll). I'm still coming across enhancements and new additions of one sort or another.

Some prior graphical issues appear to have been addressed, such as the "Railroad glitch". Prior to the update, if you had Workers building Railroads, they'd build a nice looking railroad up to a point, but past that point the appearance of the railroads would become indistinguishable from ordinary Roads (meaning you'd have to put your mouse over the hex and consult the popup to check if there was Road or Railroad there, if you couldn't remember what you'd built). I just finished a game where I had quite an extensive rail system in place and it all stayed looking the way it should. Other graphic quirks have been addressed too - there are no more odd bits of coastline in the middle of the ocean or mismatched tiles. Not that these glitches occurred very often, and they didn't affect the running of the game when they did, but they were a tad unsightly when they did occur.

These are the most powerful units in the game, the dreaded Giant Death Robots:

[smg id=3365 align=center width=400]

These aren't a new unit, they've have been in the game all along – I've just never gotten around to building any before. They only become available when one of the last two techs in the tree has been researched (Fusion Power) so more often than not a game is already over before this tech is reached. They're cool to watch – they tromp around leaving big footprints in the ground which quickly fade and blow away enemy units with rockets and plasmatic blasts. They're the only fanciful unit in the game, everything else is real-world.

I love Civ V - it's got to be the best Civ yet, and the best turn-based, deep-strategy empire building game ever 8) :-X

I think it's great that the devs/publishers got round to fixing those issues and on top add content players like, and all that in a regular patch rather than any DLC. Nice  :) :-X

Good post, fragger  :-X

Weekend deal at STEAM... US$17...

8)

Cool :-X

It's almost a pity I have it already :-()

It's a pitty I have so many other games I'm playing now...  :-[

Just for curiosity value, here's a comparison between DirectX 9 and DirectX 11 as seen in Civilization V. You can most readily see the difference in the water areas. I made no alterations to the in-game graphics options between the two pics. Bear in mind that I reduced these images from a res of 1920x1080 to 1200x675 before converting them to 60% compression jpegs, so there is some loss of image quality here. I also don't know why those weird  white areas at upper right are showing in the DX9 pic, they don't appear in the game. My guess is it has something to do with the fact that CivV saves its screenshots in Targa format, which is used for layer-based Alpha-channelled graphics, so for some reason it's treating those two areas as transparencies when saved in DX9 (the areas were black when seen in IrfanView and transparent in Photoshop, ended up white after saving from the latter):

DX9:
[smg id=4344 width=600]

DX11:
[smg id=4343 width=600]

The game looks fantastic in DX11 but at a cost of frame rates, there's a noticeable hit. Still, it's definitely prettier. You can't tell here but the water is animated and it looks so wet that I almost expected it to slop out of the side of the screen when I scrolled the map, lovely effect :-X

That's quite a dramatic difference!  :-X

It's been well over two years now since I started playing this gem of a game and I'm still not sick of it. Like all the previous Civ games (with the exception of IV, which I didn't like at all) the replay value is awesome - provided you like turn-based strategy that is. They have always been classic "just one more turn" games, addictive and engrossing. A Civ game of one iteration or another has always been on whatever PC I've owned since Civ II came out in 1996. I've played Civ II, Alpha Centauri (essentially a Civ game transplanted into the future and onto another planet - had to be done that way for legal reasons, long story), Civ III, Civ IV (very, very briefly - I hated that one, ugly pos) and now Civ V. I never played the original Civilization game but it was pretty mickey mouse judging by the screenies I've seen of it, like this one:

**Warning** - outdated, butt-ugly screenpic inside

1992 Civilization I:

[smg id=5527 align=center width=640]

(Blown up - original res was 320 x 200)

Compare that to the pics in my previous post here. It's come a long way since then!

Since JRD mentioned it in the Shout Box, I thought I'd provide a bit of an update. If you have Civ V or want to get into it, it's worth logging into Steam and letting the game update to it's newest state. The updates have been systematically improving the game over time, adding useful extras, refining the rules and expanding the options until they now have the gameplay balanced to near perfection. It was a tad unwieldy at first with some odd choices for cultural advantages and costings of some things (e.g. building Colosseums to help keep your people happy could quickly send you broke for relatively little return).

For JRD (or anyone else who wants to know): If you want to capture a screenshot, hit the PrintScreen key and a screenie will be saved in My Documents/My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization 5/ScreenShots (just like FC2/3). However, Civ screenies are saved in .tga (Targa) format, which a few graphic apps have trouble handling, but IrfanView or Photoshop will display them just fine (recommend using IrfanView to open them, then save them as .jpgs). I find a funny thing happening with DX9 caps - there will sometimes be null areas where alpha-channeled transparencies have been used for some graphic objects. These show up as black in Irfanview and transparent in Photoshop. This doesn't seem to happen at all under DX10/11. Then again, it could just be my graphic card or driver.

Steam also has an upgrade available for owners of Civ V which will DL all the extra content that comes with the more recent GOTY edition for $20.00 USD, which is not bad considering that there's quite a lot there, mostly in the form of "scenarios" (which are a different way of playing Civ from the standard gameplay), but there are some new cultures and stuff as well. I intend to pick that up even though I was never crazy about scenario play. The other new stuff sounds cool though.

Long live Civilization, best empire-building strategy game series ever :-X I'll be playing this for years, or until there's a Civ VI...

 :) At least it's not from UBI so you don't report a gazillion of game crashes here  :-D

Quote from: fragger on February 05, 2013, 02:59:36 AM
... If you have Civ V or want to get into it, it's worth logging into Steam and letting the game update to it's newest state...

OMG I never thought words like those would come out of fragger's mouth!  ???

 :laugh:

The usual words almost did actually :-() When I first tried to login I had to wait almost an hour for the Steam platform to update, then another forty minutes for the Civ update. Then I tried to play offline like I always do and I kept getting an error. First, a Steam dialog would appear saying "Installing... 0%" which would sit there for a minute without proceeding before being replaced with another dialog saying "The Steam servers are too busy to handle your request for Sid Meier's Civilization V. Error Code (3)" followed by a tech support link. Actually, there would be two of these dialogs open at the same time. Following the link, I learned that error code 3 meant that I had some sort of connection error. Funny - I could get online and see other sites... I reopened Steam and my username was still showing in the Library window so I assumed I was still logged in (what do they say about assuming?) I tried to run the game from the Library window with the same result.

Just when I was starting to think up colourful names for Steam (my usual modus operandi when dealing with them) it clicked - even though my username was still showing, I wasn't in fact in online mode yet. Switched to that and everything went OK. Phew! I couldn't bear to lose my Civ...

Glad you got it sorted  :-X  When I first started reading your post I was thinking this would turn out to be another D_B story.  ????

Six hours vanished from my life in what felt like a blink of an eye!!

After trying some of the tutorial lesson to familiarize with the interface I started a game fresh from start today. All random but the easiest difficulty level.

I'm playing the Incas on a Continents type map.  8)

So far my impressions are of an excellent game.

Graphics The game looks great on DX11. The terrain is diverse and varied and relief is smooth. The characters and cities are very well done and pass the idea of an animated table top board game but with beautiful animations.

Interface The easiest difficulty level allows for players who are not familiar with Civ games but are no strangers to strategy games to learn as they play without much problem. The many advisors pop up as events needing your attention happen and there's always several links to a massive Civilopedia providing much more information than you can read but not on an overwhelming way!

Gameplay. Being able to win a game by military, technological, diplomatic or cultural victory adds a lot to the genre. One can simply be peaceful and invest in technology or negotiate and make friends or destroy enemies. Lots of fun.  :-X

Turn based strategy. The fact that you can think as much as you want and plan what you want to do next is a great feature. I can relax and enjoy a game taking my time... just great.  :-X

Glad you're enjoying it so far :-X Yep, the game is a major time-dilator :-()

The Advisers are a great help if you're new to the game. Once you've got a handle on things, you can turn them off in the Options menu. Once you've turned them off, you can still get their "feedback" by clicking on the appropriate button among the ones at the top right corner of the game screen. These buttons are quite helpful:

[smg id=5567 width=600]

A useful one is the first, smaller one. I call it "Reports", the official title is "Additional Information".
[smg id=5568 width=600]

You can get all kinds of useful info here. Remember too that if you hover the pointer over the info in the top-left bar (Science, Gold, Happiness, etc) informative popups will appear to help you know what's going on there.

The beauty of this game design is in the way info is presented and how accessible it is. Not like in Civ IV, which was about the most user-unfriendly Civ ever.

It can be a bit of a learning curve, but it can be great fun watching your forces go from primitive warriors to helicopter gunships, aircraft carriers and paratroops! And once you pull off a victory of some sort it's quite satisfying. IMO the toughest victory type to achieve is the Diplomatic one.

One tip I'd offer - make the most of City-State alliances. Picking the right ones to cultivate can make a world of difference, especially when it comes to getting access to Strategic and Luxury resources that you don't have access to yourself!

Great tips fragger... thanks a lot!  :-X

I specially like the "victory progress" one. It gives me a measure of my skills against the easiest players. In fact there are so many interfaces to take care of I'm still lon a steep earning curve. The presentation is so well organized I don't feel lost.

Quote from: fragger on February 15, 2013, 03:24:42 AM
One tip I'd offer - make the most of City-State alliances. Picking the right ones to cultivate can make a world of difference, especially when it comes to getting access to Strategic and Luxury resources that you don't have access to yourself!

It's too late for the people of Lhasa, unfortunately!!!!! But I will try to keep my trebuchets away from those poor states from now on... the same cannot be said about China though... need more room to expand my empire!  >:D

Quote from: fragger on May 21, 2011, 07:53:36 PM
If anyone besides me plays Civ V and you haven't come across this as yet, Steam has a new update available which will add a new civ (Mongols) and a swag of additions including new Buildings, Wonders and Tech features, as well as new options in the Setup Game screen such as new map styles and special rules. The in-game rules have been tweaked a bit as well, and some of the Social Policies have been modified. Maintenance costs for some Buildings have been reduced (such as the Colosseum, which I always felt was a bit steep to maintain originally) and some Buildings now provide extra benefits. There is in fact quite a bit of new stuff, so if you're into Civ V I believe the update is worth doing.

Thanks for the update, I haven't played it for a while:)

No worries :)

Among the updates, there are now nice splash screens to look at while the game is loading, instead of a featureless black nothing (once the geezer-by-the-fire animation was turned off) and a bunch of other minor tweaks and fixes. It gets better all the time :-X

Maybe UBI should take a leaf out of their book? :)

Quote from: fragger on October 26, 2010, 05:32:47 PM
One annoying thing about Civ V is that whenever you fire up the game, it forces you into the intro sequence.

There's a simple "Display intro movie - on/off" option on the menu in my Civ V version...   8)

But thatnks for the tip anyway!  :-X

Haven't seen that, it must be a new addition. Originally when you started the game the intro would automatically start and it was hard to get out of it. You had to hit the esc key repeatedly until the intro eventually froze (it would stuttering for a bit first) then wait for the game load. The only way to stop the intro playing was to edit the .ini file and set SkipIntroVideo to 1. Then when you started the game, the intro wouldn't play but you'd be left looking at a blank screen while the game loaded. Not very elegant.

Good to see they've addressed that. Now you get some nice splash screens to look at while loading. They're actually the same pictures you see whenever you complete a Wonder, just made full-screen size.

I had to giggle, I noticed something today that I hadn't spotted before.

When you finish a game of Civ V, a tabbed stat screen appears that gives you all sorts of info on how you went. One of the tabs is your Rating. Your rating is determined by your point score and is compared to that of a real-world historical leader (point scoring is just one of five ways you can win). The highest accolade is an Augustus Caesar - if you can score 2500 points or more, you are compared to him. Below that are about 20 other historical leaders who you will be compared to depending upon your score bracket.

Score a zero and you make Dan Quayle :-()

I found a funny quote from that man,

"What a waste it is to lose one's mind or not, to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is." :-()

 :laugh:

Crumbs, I just looked at the date for my last post here, just over a year ago. Shows what a Civ tragic I am...

I picked up an expansion pack for Civ V called "Gods and Kings". This adds a swag of new goodies, including nine new Civilizations, all sorts of new units and things to build, and an overhaul of the tech tree. It also adds two major new gameplay elements: Religion and Espionage.

Religion allows you to establish - well, a religion, but this can be customized to an enormous extent and provides myriad options to enhance your culture in quite a large variety of ways. You can call your religion whatever you want ("fraggerism" is on the rise - infidels beware) or you can go with a default name, such as Islam, Christianity, Shinto or Taoism. If you go with a default there are eleven different names to choose from, but the name you select has no bearing on the type of religion you subsequently create - they're just names. Great Prophets and Missionaries can be earned via accumulation of "faith points" (there are all sorts of ways to generate these) who can then be sent forth to spread the Word to other players' civs. If your religion becomes strong enough, these guys can convert other players' citizens, and if a majority of converts arises in another player's city it will allow you to supplant that player's religion in that city, and will allow you to nick gold and culture points from them as well as undermining their religion and thus depriving them of the benefits of their faith. Inquisitors can be obtained who can help guard the homefront against the intrusions of pesky foreign belief systems and "re-educate" those of your citizens who follow them (shudder). Prophets, Missionaries and Inquisitors are non-combat units and in varying degrees hard to come by, especially the Inquisitors, so they must be used carefully. If you're at war with someone and these units get caught out unprotected, they're toast. If it's late-ish in the game, you may not get a shot at another.

The religions are structured in such a way that no two players can have the same set of beliefs. It's quite clever and adds a whole new dimension to the game - there are tons of options to choose between when creating your religion, but you never get to choose a huge number of them in any one game. The various options govern a wide variety of benefits - cultural, happiness, monetary, military, scientific, and religiousness itself, and is an ongoing process - as you accumulate more faith points they can be expended to acquire new "beliefs", i.e. benefits. If you don't want to bother with a religion at all, you don't have to. You can still try to be as much of a warmonger, scientific pioneer, cultural powerhouse or diplomatic mover and shaker as you like. However, the way you customize your religion can improve your chances of winning a particular type of victory (conquest, scientific, cultural or diplomatic) but you must choose wisely. If you've designed your religion to boost your cultural influence, it may actually end up hampering you if you change your mind mid-game and go for a scientific victory instead of a cultural one.

Espionage allows you to plant a sleeper agent (once you've earned one) within another player's civ who can attempt to steal technologies from that player, can try to rig elections within the "non-civ" City States and thus make them more amenable to becoming your ally (or kill any alliance with another player they may have), or the spy can be kept in one of your cities to stymie other players' spying attempts, if you think that's a distinct possibility. There are a couple of new buildings that can be built, Police Station and Counter Intelligence Agency, which can help with this, once you've made the appropriate tech discoveries.

There are many cool new unit types and the combat system has been revamped, it's even better now than it was before, and it was already pretty good.

There is still another expansion pack available, "Brave New World", which I haven't tried yet, but this one will keep me busy exploring new possibilities for some time.

Civ V just gets better and better 8)

Thx Fragger for that  :-X, been thinking of buying the Gods and Kings & Brave new world addons for the game for couple of days now, just because they are on sale.
But seems that this will add even more challenge to the game.  8)

glad you're enjoying it, fragger :)

Cheers guys :)

Stiku, the game does seem more challenging now, in part (but not only) because of the combat system refinements. I've had a couple of skirmishes with AI players and they seem to use their units a bit more effectively, plus they seem to be more aggressive in war. The hit point system has been multiplied by a factor of ten, i.e. a unit starts with 100 hit points instead of 10, which makes for more varied combat damage. Correspondingly, when units take damage it's a more precise number like 37 or 23 or something like that, which makes unit durability more dynamic and complete elimination of badly damaged units less certain.

Siege units such as catapults and trebuchets are more effective against cities but less effective against other units than they were before, which makes sense - in the real world, a catapulted boulder may breach a wall but is less likely to land on more than one or two soldiers, especially if they can see it coming. There are now sea units which can engage in melee combat (there are still ranged combat ones) and it's now possible to stack a naval combat unit with an embarked land unit, thus affording embarked units some measure of protection. There is a new Grand Admiral unit which I believe functions in a similar way to the Great General, but I haven't looked into how to get these yet and at this stage I haven't played through enough of a game to find out.

There are quite a few new unit types. There are 27 in total, but this includes the unique units particular to the nine new civs. Of the generic newies there are about nine as far as I can tell, not counting the religious ones mentioned in my earlier post.

Some of the units, buildings and wonders require different techs to be discovered as compared to before, and there are some new techs altogether such as Guilds and Drama & Poetry, to name but a couple. There are some new Bonus and Luxury resources, but the Strategic ones are the same - however, some units such as catapults and trebuchets no longer require the Iron resource to build (yay!) so you can now make these siege units even if you don't have access to Iron.

If you enjoy Civ V, I think Gods and Kings is worth getting. There's a rundown of the new stuff here. (http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Civilization_V:_Gods_%26_Kings)

There's a bunch more that's new, including some cool new Wonders. I haven't really begun to plumb the depths yet :-()

The new refined fighting system sounds very intriguing, I hate that you can only escort only settlers and workforce, and now if you can escort embarked units, that would make it more feasible to embark units rather than moving them 1-2 tiles at a time in a rough terrain, as the coastal line usually tends to be like that in my map choices.  >:D

Trebuches are pain to move into enemy city, or near it, unless you have builded a monster army. Also their defense bonuses are crappy when they are not fortified. I do hope that Artificial Idiots at least attack now, and not denounce you and then make war with 2 units and run away after those two units are gone.

Have they done anything to the city economics? I read that they also added couple of new wonders and those religions seems to have a bigger part now than before, as they were in the good old Civ. Do they bring a noticeable difference to the game now?

Thank you for the info, so far.  :lamp:

You're welcome Stiku :)

The religions do appear to be making a difference - maybe not hugely, but there is some. The way it works is: you first have to accumulate enough Faith points to found a Pantheon (hint: build the new Shrine buildings in your cities as soon you discover Pottery, as these generate Faith). Certain Wonders can also provide more Faith points, such as Stonehenge. Your Faith points are displayed along the top of the screen along with Science, Gold, Culture, etc. Hovering the pointer over the Faith points icon will tell you how many you need to accumulate for your next Religion enhancement. When you establish a Pantheon, you can choose a Pantheon Belief, and accumulating enough further Faith points will eventually cause a Great Prophet to appear. The Prophet can then be expended to found a new Religion, or if you already have a religion established the Prophet can be moved from city to city to help reinforce the religion, which he can do a limited number of times before he is expended. He can also be expended in a vacant hex to build a Holy Site Improvement, which will generate Faith points along with whatever other resources can be gotten from that hex as long as it is being worked (if the hex contains a Luxury or Strategic resource, the Holy Site will also act as a Mine or Pasture or whatever Improvement you would normally need to build there to get the resource, which can come in handy). The appearance of Prophets (and later Missionaries) is similar to the acquisition of Social Policies - each successive Prophet requires more Faith points to obtain than the last one.

Once you establish a Religion, accumulation of further Faith points will allow you to choose more Beliefs, which come in several categories: Follower Beliefs, Founder Beliefs and Enhancer Beliefs. There are a number to choose from but you can only ever have five of the various Beliefs in total (six if you play as the Byzantium civilization). The Beliefs you choose can increase your Happiness level, Gold output, Culture points, Faith points, enhancement of military performance, and numerous other benefits in various combinations. Faith points can also be spent to purchase an Inquisitor or one of a few types of religious buildings, such as a Mosque, which will confer further Religion benefits and/or Faith points. Inquisitors, Mosques, Cathedrals and Monasteries can only be purchased with Faith points - there is no other way to get them.

Each Belief can only be chosen once per game, i.e. once a particular Belief has been adopted by a player, no other players can adopt that Belief. Neither can every civ have a religion in any one game. The number of civs that can have Religions is based on map size, but as a general rule, only 2/3 of the civs in a game can have a Religion, so if you want one it's important to try and establish it as soon as you can or you may miss out.

The religious system and the options involved are a tad too complicated to go into here, but I found a quite informative description of it all here. (http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Religion_%28Civ5%29)

Yep, there are some new Wonders (and some new Natural Wonders), and some of the existing ones have been moved around in the tech tree, requiring different techs to be discovered from the previous version of the game, and a couple of those have been changed a little in terms of the benefits they provide. The Social Policy tree has also had some adjustment, but not a lot.

Just be aware that once you install Gods and Kings, your Civ game will be permanently altered - you can no longer choose to play the standard game without Religion and Espionage, unless you reinstall the game, I guess. So if you decide you don't like the religious part of the game, you'll still be stuck with it. Even so, you don't have to establish a religion at all if you don't want to, so you can just ignore it. The other added goodies that come with G&K still make it worth getting in my humble opinion.

The Brave New World expansion adds even more to Religions as well as adding more units and buildings, etc. but I'm holding off on that for now until I've gotten my head around G&K.

Regarding war, as I said in my last post I've been attacked a couple of times, and the attacking civs sent quite a few units at me. It was touch and go there for a while, they almost captured the city they were going after and were pretty tenacious. So at this early stage it looks as though the AI really does mean war when it says it does. However, after beating them off they did offer a peace treaty with pretty generous terms and didn't try again, so maybe they can still be half-hearted about it. Too early to tell just yet.

One thing hasn't changed - Happiness can still often be the biggest obstacle to expansion, especially during the early game. This has always been the one major strategic flaw in Civ V and is something they still need to address more closely, I think. Of course there are ways around it in the Social Policies and construction of certain Wonders and Buildings, but fortunately some of the Religion Beliefs can be adopted to help tackle that little prob. I've had games in the past where I've gotten my Happiness level up to over 100, so it can certainly be overcome.

I still love the game regardless :-()

I'll keep you posted if I come across anything else that I really like (or really don't) :)

UPDATE

I had a bit more of a play (as the Spanish) and the Americans are giving me a real hard time. The AI certainly seems more aggressive - at least George Washington does. He keeps coming at me and he's ahead of me technologically so I'm having my hands full holding him off. Fortunately I have the Great Wall which is slowing him down. I've given him a run for his money and made him sue for peace a couple of times, but as soon as the treaty expires he's at me again, and with quite a few units. Last time he sent four Trebuchets against me, supported by half a dozen Minutemen units, two Knight units, three Longswordsman units and two Crossbow units. If I hadn't had the Great Wall I would have been in serious trouble... :-\\

I've also planted my first Spy, she's in Philadelphia and is currently at w@&k worming her way into George's research establishment to pinch a technology from him >:D Spies can earn promotions like the other units (even though they're not units at all) and this one is a complete rookie, so we'll see whether she gets caught in the act or not...

War is hell...

I finally kicked George W off my turf, but it wasn't easy - he put up a helluva fight :-\\ I lost a lot of men taking him down, but their sacrifice will ever be enshrined in the consciousness of the nation - until the next game.

Here's a couple of screenies. The first shows a few of the new things (shows up better if you click on it):



[smg id=7207 align=center width=600]

[smg id=7208 align=center width=600]

Overall, the game seems more challenging, which is a good thing. It does appear to be a lot more difficult to pull off any sort of victory given the changes. That's one nice thing about Firaxis - they evidently listen closely to the players of their games and make changes accordingly.

nice, particularly the comments about the Brits.  :-()

I wish Madrid was located at the seaside. When I was there, I missed the sea.

Here is the solution for civs that constantly annoys you.  8)

Spoiler

Guests are not allowed to view images in posts, please Register or Login

Spoiler

by the way, congratulation Stiku, one year already on August 22. +1  :-X ;)

Quote from: Art Blade on August 27, 2014, 01:16:30 PM
by the way, congratulation Stiku, one year already on August 22. +1  :-X ;)

X2  :-X

I struck an odd glitch today - at least I think it was a glitch. I somehow found myself in possession of a Landsknecht, which is a unique unit that only the German culture can build. But - the German culture isn't one of the civs in my current game. I'm playing as Spain, and my AI opponents are America, Byzantium and England.

I have no idea where the Landsknecht unit came from. I found it outside one of my cities ????

City-state perhaps donated you one?!?

I thought about that. I am allied with a militaristic City-state but so far they have only provided me with two units, both of which were Gatling Gun ones. I've never seen City-states donating other civs' unique units. Maybe the rules have been changed and I just didn't notice getting the unit. We'll see if it happens again at some point.

It could be possible, I guess. One of the things that has changed is that when a militaristic City-state gives you a unit, that unit appears outside one of your cities, not inside the City-state's territory like before. Which is good because if the allied City-state is a long way away, you don't have to move the gifted unit halfway around the world 8) You can still turn on/off gift unit spawning from City-states, btw.

Winning a Science victory looks like it might be a tougher ask now. The parts needed to build the starship have been reassigned to different prerequisite techs, requiring the player to research more of the tech tree to get to them. Before, there was a whole branch of techs in the Modern/Future Era parts of the tech tree which could be bypassed for that, but now it appears you don't have that luxury anymore. I'm going for it, but it ain't gonna be easy. Which is good, as I felt that the Science Victory was just a tad too easy to achieve before.


[smg id=7213 align=center width=600]
[smg id=7214 align=center width=600]

yep, nice  :-X :)

Indeed, reminiscent of the Red Barons triplane

It is in fact the very same model, a Fokker DR-1. The WW1 bomber unit is also a German aircraft, a Gotha G.IV.

The air units in Civ V are quite authentic. Other aircraft units include WW2 Messerschmitt BF109 fighters (you get Mitsubishi Zero fighters instead as one of your unique units if you play as the Japanese), RAF Avro Lancaster bombers (unique B17 Flying Fortress units instead if you play as Americans), F22 Raptor jet fighters and Stealth Bombers in the Modern Era. If you drop an atomic bomb on someone (as opposed to launching an ICBM at them) a B29 Superfortress will deliver it 8)

 ??? :)

Won my first game playing with the Gods and Kings EXP, managed to score a Cultural Victory.

[smg id=7255 align=center width=600]

I led technologically throughout the game but the other players' spies were an occasional nuisance, stealing Techs from me whenever my metaphorical back was turned. Building Constabularies and later Police Stations in each of my four cities, placing Spies in each of those cities and completing the Counter-Intelligence Agency project helped to reduce the incidence of tech theft but couldn't eliminate it entirely - the other Civs still managed to swipe the occasional Tech from me. There is a later project which can be undertaken called The Great Firewall but I pulled off my victory before I was able to make the discovery required to build it. The Great Firewall will reduce the other players' chances of nicking Techs from you by about 99%, so it sounds like it would be worth getting if the other players' light-fingery is ticking you off.

I played as the Byzantines on a Small Continents map and lucked out by starting with a nice-sized landmass all to myself, just big enough to get four cities up and happening (Cultural Victory was my goal from the beginning and I didn't want too many cities - the more cities you have, the more expensive subsequent Social Policies become, which hampers your chances at achieving this type of victory). I was pulling down over 700 Culture points per turn toward the end, had just under 100 Happiness points and was making money hand over fist (around 200 Gold per turn). One advantage of playing as Byzantium is that you get an additional Belief to add to your Religion, should you decide to found one (you don't have to if you don't want to). Naturally the additional Belief I chose was one that boosted my Cultural points generation. The Celts managed to convert one of my cities to their Religion at one point - I had to buy an Inquisitor unit to put an end to this effrontery. You can only buy these with Faith points, but I had plenty up my sleeve at that time. Stationing Inquisitors in your cities will prevent this kind of spiritual head-turning from happening.

I finished the game without a single shot being fired in anger, except for very early on when I had to biff out a few Barbarian troublemakers. That's what I love about this game - if you want to be an all-out warmonger you can be, and the combat can be great fun, but you can win a game without any conflict whatsoever - so long as you wave a big stick around. I had a powerful and technologically up-to-date standing army and navy throughout the game which pretty much intimidated the other Civs into not wanting to mess with me.

I found out that if one of your spies discovers that a particular player is planning to attack another player, you can initiate a diplomatic talk with the intended victim and spill the beans about it. This can be useful for pitting the involved Civs against each other, thus getting them off your back while they squabble and bicker with each other.

There are heaps of new types of side missions and quests offered by the City-States now, and some of them are pretty cool - like bullying another City-State into paying you Tribute, converting the requesting C-S to your religion (by transporting a Missionary or Great Prophet unit to them and having them do the preaching thing), achieving the most Culture or Science points over a 30-turn period, and a bunch of other stuff. You can plant one of your Spies in a City-State to "rig" an election in your favour, thus trashing another player's alliance with them and establishing your own after a certain number of turns. The more skilled your Spies becomes, the more effectively they can carry out missions.

I love this game, there's just so much that you can do :-X

Next, I want to try for a Science victory, but I can see it's gonna be a tough ask.

interesting read, I can virtually see what you were doing. Nice, and congratulations on your victory  :) :-X

Indeed - sounds like you continue to have a great time in the game.

Ta :) I never seem to get sick of these games. In fact I've been playing the Civ series for almost twenty years now, ever since Civ II back in 1996. They have generally gotten better with age, except for Civ IV which I just didn't like at all.

Started m tour with CIV, with the only and only point in mind, get the nuke and blow stuff up.  >:D
But it seems that it took about 8 hours to get those nukes, and then it hit me, I started to do all kind of stuff with it, like dominating the world.
Nowdays its more like I dont try to wage a war with anyone in the game, but everytime you start to expand the countries nearest to you start pissing you off, and then the artillery comes in.  >:((

The other Civs do seem to be a bit more aggressive now. It also depends on who you play against - some Civs are more expansionist than others, some are more prone to go to war than others, etc. Some Civs such as the Greeks, the Japanese and the Americans like to gobble up land quickly and will readily get their noses out of joint when you start to butt up against them or move into lands which they consider theirs. Some Civs such as the Indians and the Siamese are more perfectionist and less aggressive, they will tend to concentrate on developing just a few cities at a time instead of spreading out like mad and are less likely to get cross with you - as a general rule.

Throwing nukes around like confetti can land you in a bit of trouble. Your standing in the eyes of other nationalities will diminish if you start raining nukes on someone, especially if you're the aggressor. But it does take time to get to the point where you can build atomic weapons, which is logical as you can't simply go from throwing spears to throwing ICBMs. It took humanity thousands of years to get to the Atomic Age, just as it does in Civ game years. There's a lot of technological discoveries to be made along the way, and of course you'll need a source of Uranium when you do get there. If none appears in your territory when you make the discovery which reveals it on the map, the only way to get it is to trade for it or become an ally with a City-State who does have it.

There are two types of nuclear weapon in the game:

Atomic Bombs
Atomic Bombs can only be launched from a City or a Carrier, and when launched, a WW2-era B29 Superfortress will fly to the target and drop a Fat Man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Man) on it. An Atomic Bomb will destroy or severely damage any units within two hexes of the target hex (including your own, so be careful) and will reduce a city's population value. Subsequent bombings of the same city will reduce the population further, down to a possible value of 1, but can never entirely destroy a city. The Bomb will also cause fallout pollution within the two-hex blast radius which will have to be cleaned out ("scrubbed") by a Worker. The Worker will then have to repair any improvements that may have existed in that hex (i.e. fallout must be removed first).


Nuclear Missiles
Nuclear missiles can be launched from your Cities, Missile Cruisers or Nuclear Submarines. These are more powerful than Atomic Bombs, and if used on a city with a population value of 4 or less, can actually obliterate that city, leaving a bunch of ruins in the city's place (Capitals and City-States however cannot be destroyed, but population value can drop to 1). Nuclear Missiles will also destroy or severely damage any units within two hexes of the blast hex, and cause the same fallout headache within those two hexes as the Atomic Bomb.

I'm sure there used to be a third type of nuke - an ICBM unit - in Civ V which could only be launched from within a City, but this may have been changed with the Gods and Kings EXP (the Civ V Wiki I looked at doesn't list it at all). I'll have to check that out next time I'm in the game.

Either way, any of these weapons suck the big one when you're on the receiving end of them- as I have been a couple of times :D

 :-D

After a brief trial foray into Civ: Beyond Earth, I just had to get back into Civ V to try and win the game I had going there, in which I was pursuing a Science Victory (which is achieved if you can be the first Culture in the game to build and then launch a huge spaceship to colonize an extraterrestrial planet). This was going pretty well and I had to see it through.

It wasn't easy, but I pulled it off. I led technologically throughout the game (got lucky with my starting lands and resources) but along the way I had to keep the other players' spies at bay as they tried to rip off my discoveries. They managed to snaffle a few, but I placed my own spies inside my cities and as their experience levelled up (and after establishing various counter-intelligence buildings in my cities) I started catching the other players' spooks red-handed before they could scoot with the loot.

I nabbed a Swedish one who was trying to nick off with some of my best-kept secrets. The Swedish leader, Gustavus, had some explaining to do:

[smg id=7277 align=center width=600]

Luckily for him I'm the forgiving type. Actually, I didn't want to get into too much of a spat with him over it and possibly precipitate a war, as war is expensive and time-consuming and I wanted to keep things on track for an eventual space mission, which is also expensive and time consuming. There is seldom enough time and production capacity to let you w@&k towards both in the same game.

Here I am around turn 430 (out of 500), circa 1990 AD and getting near to the end of the tech tree:

[smg id=7278 align=center width=600]

Finally! All parts constructed and transported to my launch facility in my Capital city. 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1... LIFT OFF!

[smg id=7279 align=center width=600]

Science Victory achieved, and humanity's future in the cosmos is assured. Unless we manage to screw up our new planet...

[smg id=7280 align=center width=600]

impressive, well done :)

Looks as if you could now seamlessly continue your endeavour with your new game Beyond Earth. Nice  :)

Very nice, fragger!  I'm glad you get such pleasure out of the Civilization series  :-X

[smg id=7709 align=center width=600]


[smg id=7710 align=center width=600]

[smg id=7711 align=center width=600]

Incidentally, I discovered that in Gods and Kings, if you're not crazy about the espionage side of things, you can turn it off altogether before starting a new game. I wasn't crazy about that aspect of the game and was getting sick of other cultures stealing my techs, rigging elections and undermining my alliances with City States, so that's a plus :-X

oh, that's indeed a nice touch :)

Diplomacy and conquest; quite opposite :)
I wonder what that will do with the happiness factor in your next playthrough ;)

It won't make me very popular with my people :-() The happiness level is much harder to maintain when you're at war. For some reason, your people aren't as happy with you when you send them off to fight. Funny, that...

[smg id=7723 align=center width=600]

[smg id=7724 align=center width=600]

I sort of lucked out with an excellent starting location which enabled me to get up to strength quickly and take out the first two opponents without much trouble. The last opponent was a tough nut to crack, but I prevailed. As expected, my people weren't as happy with me this time :-() I could only manage a Happiness score of about 35 at its highest, as compared to almost 200 in my last game. But since I now rule the world, the people can whinge all they like >:D

I've found that if you want to pull off a Conquest victory you pretty much need to be committed to it from the start, and can't waste too much time shilly-shallying. If you spend too much time expanding, establishing new cities, building up your infrastructure and going for techs you'll give your opponents enough time to get their strengths and defenses up, making it harder to take them out later. They may even strike you first and catch you with your britches down. You need to decide which techs to research in order to gain the military edge (and you'll need to acquire the proper strategic resources to build the best units, either through territorial access or trade), but if you strike fast and get some of your opponents out of the way as early as possible, capturing their cities instead of spending time founding your own, you can acquire more territory, money and resources that way. The Happiness level will be harder to maintain, but it can be built back up over time once the fighting is over.

You still have to watch your back. I've had opponents who have taken advantage of my brawling with another Civ and have attacked me while the bulk of my forces were away fighting elsewhere. I try to keep a good standing force at home to help guard against such underhanded shenanigans.

After four years I still love this game. It has just the right amounts of depth and flexibility - plenty of management, strategic and tactical options without ever becoming overwhelming. After playing for over four years, it still allows me to come up with new ideas and approaches. If you want to be a warmonger, you can, but you can still win without ever firing a shot. If you want to treat it as a micro-management exercise, you can. You don't need to build a sprawling empire to win a game, but you can go for that if you want. It's all up to you. I've always loved strategy games, especially ones which reward good planning and which have multiple paths to victory.

It may not be for everyone, but Civ V rocks for me :-X

Nice story fragger  :-X

I have one of the Civ games, but I never could get much in to the turn based games, although it should be something that I would appreciate.

I remember when young going to specialty stores that sold only games, mostly turn based.  I purchased a Civil Way game, which I still have, that came with hundreds of pieces and a map that was at least 4x5 feet in size.

Oh well, that's what we're all about at OWG - a variety in gamer styles and preferences.

nice, fragger  :)

For some reason you made me remember my stint with X-COM.

Art, I guess the two games are roughly similar in that they both involve more than just moving units around a map, and are turn-based. I might have a go at X-COM one of these days, I remember you had a great time with that :-X

PZ, I remember those games well. I had this one for a great many years:

[smg id=7725 width=600]

I bought it in about 1973 and I only got rid of it when I moved about a year ago. Half of the hundreds of pieces had been lost at some point so it wasn't much good anymore...

Funny to think that there used to be whole stores devoted to these games. That was well before home computers, of course. They use to be called "bookcase games" because the boxes were made to look like books on a shelf when they were stood up on end. And in a standardization move that took the digital gaming industry years to catch up with, ALL the boxes were made to the exact same size, even those from different manufacturers, so they would all fit on your shelves perfectly with each other. I remember going into shops and seeing hundreds of titles. They were originally created by a gaming company called Avalon Hill, but other companies got on the bandwagon later and they all adopted the box-size convention set by AH.

I used to have a couple of others, one based on Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers (the novel of course, not the film) and a Battle of Britain one. I good friend of mine still has his Dune game.

Those were the good 'ol days where you and a friend across the country would each have the game, and then take turns making moves - the first of the multiplayer games  :-()

 :-() :-X

 ^-^

That Panzer game reminds me of a more recent board game, The Colonists of Katan.  A small civ-like game about exploring and conquering an island and starting a small settlement using the products the land would generate.
A very well thought out game development with single tiles of land in a hexagram form, that can be sorted in any order when you 'build' the island before the game starts.
I've played it many times. It's very popular in Europe, even though it has to conquer with PC games. There's lots of expansion packs, a little like the DLC's we know, but they do add additional joy to the game because they change it quite a bit. For example an expansion pack that adds knights, cities and more complex trading. Or another expansion pack that offers lots of extra 'sea-tyles' and boats to travel to additional small islands, and with a new resource; gold ;)

It's funny that old fashioned board games are still being created and sold even when the difgital gaming industry has taken 95% of their market share. There's no multiplayer games that equals a group of friends / family around the table playing an old fashioned board game.  ^-^

Quote from: Binnatics on February 06, 2015, 10:59:02 AM
... There's no multiplayer games that equals a group of friends / family around the table playing an old fashioned board game.  ^-^

Indeed - I remember my family sitting around the dinner table playing games like The Game of Life, Monopoly, and Clue

I have fond memories of all of those :-X As a matter of fact, I still have a Monopoly and a Clue (although for some reason it's called "Cluedo" here and I think in Britain). I've still got a Buccaneer game as well. Risk was another old game I used to like, and Stratego.

Binn, that game you described sounds really interesting, I haven't heard of that one. It's good to see that tabletop board games haven't died out completely. And you can still play them during a power outage :-()

There is another relatively recent board game I like based on the Lord of the Rings story. It's produced by Hasbro and is a bit different from most board games because instead of the players competing against each other, they play cooperatively against the game itself. There can be two to five players (works best with four) and each player is a Hobbit (Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin, and an optional Fatty Bolger if five play). You must w@&k as a team to get the ring to Mordor and destroy it without Sauron getting his rotten mitts on it. If he does, you all lose. There is one "master" board and four separate "quest" boards (Moria, Helm's Deep, Shelob's Lair and Mordor) which must be played through one after the other in sequence. It's largely a card-driven affair but has plenty of open-ended scope for discussion and tactics. The game does actually make you feel as though you're on a quest as you go along, and it can develop a different atmosphere each time you play. Very innovative and engrossing, and for a board game, surprisingly exciting at times.

Changing the subject for a moment (back to what it was :-()) - I'm currently doing something with Civ that I like to try from time to time. When you're setting up a new game, there is a list of optional "Advanced Rules" which can be independently toggled on or off at the start (can't be changed once the game is on). One of these is "One-City Challenge". If you go for this, and as the name suggests, as a human player you can only ever have one city. The AI players however can still build as many as they like. It certainly is a challenge as you can forget about pulling off any kind of major victory - Military, Scientific, Diplomatic or Cultural, although I've come close to a Cultural victory in one instance. You simply can't get enough money, science or manufacturing capability up to be a serious contender. The "challenge" is mainly to see if you can survive until the turns run out, in 2050 AD.

The last time I tried this, I lost. After fending off Elizabeth I in a series of ruinous conflicts for most of the game, Catherine the Great came along and unexpectedly nuked my one city into radioactive rubble just ten turns before the game's end :D Getting squeezed between two women may sound like nirvana but it ain't when they're both megalomaniacal power-junkies who are bent on taking everything you have away from you...

Quote from: fragger on February 06, 2015, 09:49:51 PM
Getting squeezed between two women may sound like nirvana but it ain't when they're both megalomaniacal power-junkies who are bent on taking everything you have away from you...

:laugh: Good luck then ;)

The Hasbro game where you play coop reminds me of Dungeons and Dragons, a game I played once with a bunch of stoned friends. A game that unfolds completely in your imagination. The spill is the game-master though, one guy that needs to, sort of, imagine the storyline in anticipation of, or during the gameplay.

If you're interested in the Catan game I found an English promotion page where you can get an idea of the game. It is actually called "The Settlers of Catan".

www.catan.com (http://www.catan.com/)

Quote from: fragger on February 06, 2015, 09:49:51 PMGetting squeezed between two women may sound like nirvana

"In the Buddhist context nirvana refers to the imperturbable stillness of mind after the fires of desire, aversion, and delusion have been finally extinguished. In Hindu philosophy, it is the union with the divine ground of existence Brahman (Supreme Being) and the experience of blissful egolessness." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana)

Funny.. referencing the quote above, it doesn't sound like nirvana to me. Getting squeezed between two women sounds like just one type of sexual experience to me.  :-D

I remember Risk! One of my favorite games when I was a teenager

After being properly squeezed, I think I will have quite some stillness of mind... no cigarette can equal that ^-^

 :-()

Well... I didn't mean "Nirvana" in it's literal Buddhist sense, I meant it as the rough, slangy, uninformed Western substitute for heaven ^-^ I do know what Nirvana really means.

Invited another couple over for dinner then played Monopoly - was loads of fun this evening  :-X
Next time we plan to play Clue

Excellent :-X It's great fun to sit around a table with people you love and have a good old-fashioned board game from time to time :) Another board game I like is Trivial Pursuit. Having a head full of otherwise useless information, I tend to do well at that one...

Just looking at my last post - I hope I didn't come across as being peeved or defensive, because I'm not. Sometimes I forget that English with all its corruptions, hijacked foreign words and slang distortions is not the first language of everyone here :) Just explaining my usage of the word :-()

Anyway, whether it would be heaven or not would depend on the kinds of women you were stuck between... :-\\ 8-X

No worries :) We use Nirvana in a wrong way, too, as in "to disappear into Nirvana," which I know is identical in both languages, and we both mean to fall into oblivion or just to vanish :-D

Quote from: fragger on February 09, 2015, 02:17:09 AMwhether it would be heaven or not would depend on the kinds of women you were stuck between... :-\\ 8-X

There goes a perfectly shaped dream..

 :laugh:

Actually, it's happening again in this game. I elected to start the game with three randomly-generated opponents, and now Empress Wu Zetian of China and Theodora of Byzantium are constantly trying to nick my precious little bit of land from me, attacking me from both sides. As if they don't have enough land already, the greedy devils. I'm holding them off by dint of an excellent natural defensive position, but it's a never-ending scrap. It ain't half costing them though.

You know you're a miserable wretch when your only friend in the world is Attila the Hun :-D

The difficulty with playing the "One City Challenge" option is that you invariably get left behind technologically, because with only one city you can only generate so much money and science. And since Wu just got The Bomb while I'm still struggling through the middle of the Industrial Era, I'm expecting a nuke to land on me any time soon.

But this is why they call it a challenge.

you need to counter him with your medieval means. Breed your weapon of choice and send him a gift called Black Death  >:D

 >:D :laugh: :-X

[smg id=7732 align=center width=600]

long live reincarnation  :-D

hehehe :-D

It reminds me I have to get back to this game one of these days. I enjoyed it but didn't finish my first game. Something is still missing for me to get hooked but I guess it is there somewhere, it's just a matter of time.

Quote from: JRD on February 23, 2015, 07:40:14 AM
It reminds me I have to get back to this game one of these days. I enjoyed it but didn't finish my first game. Something is still missing for me to get hooked but I guess it is there somewhere, it's just a matter of time.

I have one of the Civ games as well, and fragger's posts remind me that I might just appreciate another go even though I did not finish my game either.

My problem is that  have quite a few favorite old games that I would like to open again, and not that much time.  I'm the kind of guy that likes to watch favorite old movies repeatedly, so playing favorite games over is like becoming reacquainted with an old friend.

I think maybe I took to Civ V so eagerly because I've been playing this series of games since Civ II, about - holy moley - close to twenty years ago :o I've played Civ II, Alpha Centauri, Civilization: Call To Power, Civ III, and Civ IV (very briefly because I actually hated that one).

Maybe these games are an acquired taste, or maybe you just have to be of a certain gaming mindset to enjoy them. Bear in mind too that they are a bit of a learn, but not ridiculously so, and Civ V is very accessible with an excellent, informative and well-designed UI. I picked Civ V up quickly because I've been playing the franchise for so long and was already well acquainted with the basic principles. Even so, just because a game is a Civ derivative it doesn't mean I'll like it myself. As you may recall I started playing Civ: Beyond Earth recently and just couldn't take to it at all, so I don't exactly have a blind devotion to the series.

If you guys do decide to have another go at it, be aware that there have been several updates over the last couple of years so be ready for some downloading from Steam. The good news is that the DLs are fairly short and complete relatively quickly (unlike those from some - ahem - software companies I could mention). They are worth doing though as they do improve the gameplay and add a swag of cool new stuff.

Here are a couple of tips for picking up the game:

Don't immediately go for a big map with too many AI opponents first time around. From the main menu, go Single Player > Setup Game. At the bottom of the window that appears, there is a button marked "Advanced Setup". Click on that, and a new window will appear that gives you heaps of options for setting up a new game. On the right is a list of different map sizes and styles. Choose a "Tiny" map size and choose either "Continents" or "Archipelago" as the map style, and choose the easiest difficulty setting: "Settler". "Tiny" doesn't sound like a very big map, but trust me, it's plenty big enough. Maps in Civ V are pretty darned big. A "Continents" map (two large land masses with a smattering of islands of varying sizes) will generally start with you and one opponent on one large land mass, with the two remaining Civs on another, but you might get lucky and have a land mass all to yourself which will allow you to get to grips with things without having to worry about being attacked or intruded upon for a while. An "Archipelago" map (lots of much smaller land masses) will pretty much guarantee that you'll start on your own landmass, but it will usually be only big enough for two or three cities before you'll have to expand overseas. Leave all the other settings alone. If you go for a huge, sprawling map with lots of opponents you won't have much of a prayer.

I think, by default, if the first time around you simply choose "Start Game" from the main menu, Civ will start you on a Standard-size "Continents" map with eight players (including yourself) and "normal" difficulty. This really is too much for a first go, and even for a seasoned player, it's tough. I always play on a "Tiny" map against three AIs and 8 City-States, and I play on "Warlord" difficulty setting (the third of eight settings). This provides a good challenge while still giving me a fighting chance. You can increase/decrease the number of City-States and add/delete AI opponents in the Advanced Setup window, however there is a limit depending on map size. You can choose specific Civs as you opponents, or have the game pick them at random. Some Civs are more hostile and aggressive than others. I recommend choosing between India, Siam, Arabia, Persia, Iroquois or Egypt as your first opponents as these Civs tend to be less expansionist and warlike. No guarantees, however - they may still come after you.

Don't try to go throwing up too many cities too early as this will bring your Happiness level down quickly (one of the chief contributors to unhappiness is population growth). You can still get by if your Happiness level drops to zero or even a bit below, but if you don't address it in some way it will eventually start having an adverse effect on the functioning of your cities. Constructing particular buildings, achieving certain Wonders and unlocking the right Social Policies can help get your Happiness level back up, as can gaining access to new Luxury resources, either by building cities near them and working them, or by trading for them with other Civs or City-States. Every new "Natural Wonder" that you uncover through exploration will permanently add 1 to your Happiness level. Maintaining Happiness can be tricky early on, but it's possible to get it up quite high if you make the right choices. I've had it up to almost 200 in one game, and have gotten it well over 100 in some others. Waging war will also bring it down, but it can be gotten back up once the war is over and you consolidate things. I've managed to fight wars and still keep the Happiness level well up.

Spitting out too many Units too early might cost you too much Gold in support. Every unit and building you produce costs you maintenance, which comes out of your Imperial coffers, and churning out units becomes expensive until you develop the technologies to start building Marketplaces, Banks, etc to boost your economy. There is a limit to how many Units you can have at any one time depending on how big your empire gets. There is a "base" number of total permissible Units (dependent on difficulty setting - 10 Units on "Settler"). After that, each new city you found can support 3 extra Units (on Settler) and then you can have 1 more unit for every 2 Citizens that grow in each city. You can actually exceed your total permissible number of Units, but this will start having an adverse effect on your Production capabilities (this figures - too many people in the ranks means not enough people to do the civilian w@&k). So the bigger and more populous your empire becomes, the more units you can have. Regardless of difficulty setting, every unit you produce will cost you 1 Gold per turn to support, which comes out of your Treasury.

Like any management exercise, Civ V is all about maintaining a workable balance of everything. Remember that it's not a contest to see who can build the most cities or create the biggest empire - it's about how well you can manage things. You can win a game with just three or four cities, and without firing a shot. And even if you want win by conquest, you only need to capture the other players' capital cities, not every single city they have. Last player still in possession of his/her capital city wins (your capital being the very first city you build in the game).

Enough for now. There are some excellent Civ V Wikis online, and there is always the in-game "Civilopedia" for information (click on the "Help" button near top-right of the main game screen).

And there's me. I think I can safely assert that I would be the Civ go-to guy here at OWG (blushes modestly) :-D

 :-D

+1 :-X for that massive essay, fragger  :)

Thanks Art :) I got carried away...

Excellent post, fragger  :-X +1 for all the useful startup information.

I just checked and I have Civ V, and one of these days while between games I'll probably start it up and your tips will be quite handy  ;)

Thanks PZ :)

As I am feeling a little slow to any action/adventure/3rd person or FPS game at the moment I decided to give Civ V another go.

I remember now what put me off the game last time. I don't quite get how all units w@&k. I can move workers from one tile to another then my build options are gone. Ok, I've used all movements for that unit at that turn. What I expect is to have the options back when next turn starts but it seems I am missing something as the options are not available to me. Either I am not researching what I need in order to have my workers doing/building what I want or they are not being whipped... err.... paid enough to do so.

I also do have one great General that doesn't seem to do much to me (as expected). He can build a citadel but I can't make him do it and i don't know why to be honest. Also I am still struggling with the heavily layered menus and options but this sure takes some time to get used to so I'll keep playing and see if I get comfortable sometime soon.

Anyway, fragger... great tips. I am following your hints and making some progress. This game is fun!  :-X

Workers can only build improvements within your territorial borders (the unbroken coloured line that surrounds your cities). When a city is first founded, the border only encompasses the six adjacent hexes to that city. As you city grows and its Cultural influence increases, this border expands, one hex at a time. Cities can only access the hexes within your borders, and only up to a radius of three hexes from the city hex. Even if a hex is within your territory, if it is more than three hexes from any city hex it cannot be worked by Citizens. However, if the hex contains a Luxury or Strategic resource, your workers can build the appropriate improvement there to access the resource even if it is more then three hexes from any cities - but only if it is within your borders.

If you have the money you can buy additional hexes to expand your borders, but you can only buy hexes that are adjacent to your existing border and are within three hexes of the city in question. Click on a city hex to open the city screen, and at the bottom you will see a "Buy Tiles" button. Click on this and any hexes that you can buy for this city will be indicated on the map, along with their prices.

Only hexes within your borders can be built upon, the exception being Roads (need to discover The Wheel first). Workers can build roads anywhere except through Mountains, or within other players' territorial borders.

I don't know why your Great General can't build a Citadel. Maybe he can't do that outside your borders - I've never tried doing that. Be aware that if you order the Great General to build a Citadel and he does, you'll lose him in the process (this uses him up).

Apart from building Citadels, the Great Generals have a much more valuable function: When you're at war, any land Combat unit within two hexes of a Great General's position will gain a 20% Combat Strength increase, which applies to both attack and defense. The effects of Generals are not cumulative, i.e. if a single unit is within two hexes of two different Generals, it will still only gain 20% Combat Strength. But if you have more than one General and you space them out so that as many of your units as possible are within two-hexes of any General, those units will get the bonus. It can make quite a difference to the outcome of a battle.

If you really want the General to build a Citadel, try either moving him into your borders, or purchase tiles from a nearby city until the hex where you want the Citadel is within your borders. But remember, you can only purchase tiles up to three hexes away from any city. Incidentally, your borders will continue to expand throughout the game and can end up seven, eight or even more hexes away from your cities. When the border from one city meets the border of another they will merge together. Eventually you'll end up with one continuous border around all your cities. The standing rule is that you cannot enter another player's borders unless you have an Open Borders agreement with them, or you're at war with them. They can't come into yours either, of course.

A Great General can also be expended to start a "Golden Age", as can any Great Person (there are also Great Scientists, Great Merchants, Great Artists and Great Engineers. These guys all have different functions, which I won't go into here just now). This will only last for a limited number of turns, but while your empire is in a Golden Age all production and trade in all your cities is greatly increased. Another way that Golden Ages come about is related to your Happiness value (the number in yellow next to the smiley face at the top of the screen). At the end of each turn, your Happiness value is added to your "Golden Age" points total (the numbers in white to the right of the Happiness indicator). You may see something that looks like this: 75/200 (white numbers). The value to the right of the slash is how many GA points you need to accumulate in order to trigger the next Golden Age, the number to the left of the slash is how many you currently have. Each turn, your Happiness value is added to this total, so the more Happiness you can generate, the more frequently you will enjoy Golden Ages. GAs by default will last for ten turns, however some Wonders and Social Policies can extend this base figure.

Guessing though, I'd say that the reason you can't get your Workers to build is because they're outside your borders.

fragger.... mate... Wow!  ??? ... excellent tips.  :-X +1 for all that help. Saved me a lot of browsing and considering how much details there are in this game, I can easily say you saved me a whole weekend of reading wikis  ^-^

I guess one reason why my workers can't build sometimes may be because I move them to the tile where I want them to build something and use all their moves for hat turn so I have to wait for the next turn to put them to w@&k. That and maybe because thee tiles around my capital have forests so I have to chop them down first and then create something. Setting them to automatically do it can help but I am trying to control them myself first before I let them loose.

And yes, my general can build a citadel but only withing my borders. I could see the icon but it was greyed out. That's what created some confusion at first. Nice tip about him being near my military units to boost their combat strength. I'll make sure I keep him around next time.  8)

Question: can I build a road to a city-state nearby? Is it helpful as in increasing my trading or improving my diplomacy status somehow?

You're quite welcome mate :) Thanks for the kudo!

Building a road to a City-State won't do anything as such - however, sometimes if you're already friends or allied with a City-State, they may actually request that you build a road to them. If you do, it won't boost trade or anything, but you will gain more influence points with them once the road is completed, which will extend the friendship/alliance. This is the only time when a road to a City-State has any benefit - when they request it themselves. This actually happens quite commonly when you're allied with City-States, so there's noting to stop you building a road towards a City-State in anticipation of the request. Then if they do request it. you'll have less road to build, and thus less turns will elapse before the road is built. Remember, your influence with City-States always decreases per turn until such times as you top it back up, either through gifts of gold or through completing any quests they offer, such as building the road. Just be sure not to start building the road into their territory unless they offer the request, or they may not make the request at all. Stop the road a hex or two short of their borders - and don't forget that their borders will expand too, but never by more than three hexes from their city. Their borders expand much more slowly than the AI players'.

The value of friendships/alliances with City-States can never be understated. They can provide you with Strategic and Luxury resources that you don't otherwise have access to, but you need to be allied with them for that. Every City-State will have at least one Strategic or Luxury resource, sometimes more than one of each, but they can't provide you with them until their Workers build the appropriate resource Improvements, and you can't build those for them (although with the "Gods and Kings" EXP, you can pay Gold to have them build the Improvements immediately). If you're attacked by another Civ, they will fight for you if they're allied with you. There are three types of City-State: Mercantile (has a ship's wheel icon next to their name), Cultural (has a "pen and quill" icon), and Militaristic (has crossed swords). There are a few more types with the Gods and Kings EXP. If you're at least Friends with City-States, the Mercantile ones will provide additional food for all your cities, Cultural ones will provide additional Culture points, and Militaristic ones will sometimes give you a new combat unit (you can stop them doing this if you don't want more combat units - click on the City-State and choose "Stop Unit Spawning" in the window that appears. You can restart it later if you want). All City-States will give you additional Gold when you're at least Friends with them. Alliances with as many of them as possible are crucial if you ever want to try pulling off a Diplomatic Victory.

One last thing about Generals (and other Great People) - they are non-combatant. If your General is in a hex by himself and an enemy unit moves into that hex, you will lose him. He can be stacked with any combat unit for protection, but if the combat unit that he is stacked with is eliminated, he will also be lost. So you need to protect him and be careful about where you place him. Also, he can't be stacked with another noncombatant unit, such as a Worker. The only stacking allowed for land units is: one combat unit with one noncombat unit. You can have a combat unit in the same hex as, say, a Worker or Settler, but not two combat units, nor two Workers.

Hope this is of help to you. I love this game, and you can't ask me too many questions. I'm happy to share anytime, buddy :)

Thanks again. You are definitely the go-to-guy when it comes to Civ V.  :-X . All your tips have been extremely useful so far... keep them coming.  :-D

I am still trying to learn how the several commands and strategies play out. I used to play Age of Empires and Age of Mythology a lot in the past and even though these are also strategy games they are far more simple than Civ V and I have to do a lot of research to get the hang of this game.

What I am basically doing is trying to survive without even plan any long term strategy such as develop science and win the game by launching a spaceship or aiming for a diplomatic or military victory. I know it doesn't sound like a good idea for a seasoned player but this is just how I am learning to play. I know one of my unmet copetitors is more advanced than me and I am trying to catch up by investing in research and producing all sorts of important buildings and wonders to move on. I am sure I could benefit from an initial long term strategy since the beginning and avoid adopting policies or building structures that are not in line with this strategy but I just can't see through all available options yet.

I already found out that you don't actually need a whole lot of workers as they will become idle quite fast and since I'm playing using your tips from a couple posts ago I am in relative peace only bothered by a barbarian or two but with nothing to actually worry about. I am nut popping military units every turn, only a few of different classes (ranged, infantry, naval) to make sure I can resist an eventual attack and keeping them near my cities.

Other than that it is basically click here and there to me and see what happens.  ^-^ . I should be more comfortable with the mechanics on my next game.

Rapid expansion so that your workers wont become idle, you constantly need for grow, more cities, roads from city to city(these will also help you move quicker inside your own borders), and also trying to get different resources from the map is also handy.

Also garrison units somewhere, and remember more units, more mouths to feed.

Also check your cities production items, and what hexes they are using to gather its resources, and optimize this for growth, or at war times for other resources(food), this also helps eliminate unhappiness from people.

Thanks Stiku.  :-X

I am keeping four worker units with three cities. This way I can have a unit working at every city, building plantations, quarries, mines, pastures etc and one moving between them building roads or helping filling up any unused tile. Maybe one more could be good but so far it's working for me.

One of my city is between the other two and surrounded by water so any invasion army would either past through one of the cities to the sides of my capital or from the sea, which is maybe five or six tiles away and is occupied by one friendly city-state. With this set up I can keep military units only at the two cities to the sides of my capital and a couple trirremes down to the shore side of my capital and still be safe (I believe). I guess I am ok with my military units and will only build more when I settle a new city which may happen soon.

Now for all the wonders and buildings like Library, Market etc. I am randomly picking one everytime I have to choose one and sometimes checking the small gem stone like icon at the corner of any construction in the menu indicating that an advisor is suggesting me to choose that one. I'm not sure what is the impact of choosing this or that wonder and kind of building on my progress and this is what I am trying to figure out at the moment. By rovering the cursosr over any choice I get an indication of what that particular building will open up for me but again, as I don't have a clear long term strategy this is not helping me much.  ::)

Research wise I am just choosing whatever can be done in less turns so I can pick the next one. The implications of choosing this or that research are pretty straightforward and the hovering cursor tip is truly helping me when I can't decide which one to choose so this is going well too.

Another question: I can build a wonder or building on a given city. It will take a certain number of turns to be completed. I can also build a wonder and a building on another city which is more developed and the same choice will take less turns to be completed. For instance a Library at my capital will take, say, 8 turns to be finished but a Library at my newest city may take, say, 24 turns. The more developed your city is, the faster you can buid things in it. Is this how it works or am I missing something here?

Also, once I build a Wonder, like a pyramid... is it also available to my other cities or there can be only one wonder of each type (the Pyramids can be built only once for instance)? If another player builds it, does it disapper from my menu?

Cities have their development status shown usually, which tells you the accumulation of stats, more people living there, more happier they are, bigger the city is(more building in it), less time it takes to build units, wonders, building(try not to concentrate everything into just one place, look for the happiness of people, its the smiley face on top left, if it goes to bad you growth will slow down significantly and your income will also drop)

Wonders can be only built once, so if your AI build the pyramids, you or no one else can build it again.

Research is actually what you are aiming at, if you want to dominate the board, you might not want to research anything else than those that are essential to the war making. Research points on the left upper corner will tell you how many points you are getting per turn of research points also, so you might want to invest on buildings that produce research points.(also coins and diplomacy points are there too) Next is to look what you are researching, it will usually tell you that this will lead to these advancements when research has been complete, also you can check the ingame help research tool to see what leads to what, what gets you the quickest to the technology that you want/need.

But for now, try to enjoy the game, learn as you go, try different stuffs, you'll figure it out sooner or later what works for you the best.

There are two types of Wonders - Great Wonders, which as Stiku said can only be built once per game, and "Projects". Every player can build a particular Project, but just once. An example is the "Heroic Epic". To build this, you must first have built a Barracks in every one of your cities. Projects take longer to build than Buildings but not as long as Wonders, generally. You can only "build" the Heroic Epic once, but each player can have one. Once you've built the Heroic Epic in a particular city, any combat unit subsequently built in that city will start off with extra XPs, i.e. may start with an additional Promotion. Many Projects are like this, requiring every city in your empire to have a particular building existing in them. Another example is "Oxford University". Once you've built a University in every city, Oxford becomes available to build. Once completed, you will get a free Tech discovery (you can choose which one you want).

The game isn't clear on which Wonders are in fact Great Wonders and which are Projects. The Civilopedia can help here, as can online Wikis. Otherwise it's just a matter of getting to know which are which. Whether it's a Wonder or a Project, you can only attempt construction in one city at a time, i.e. you can't be simultaneously building the same Wonder in two different cities. If you want to switch construction of the Wonder to another city, you first have to cease construction in the current city by choosing something else to build there, then going to the other city and switching production to the Wonder.

Quote from: JRD on March 02, 2015, 08:49:46 AM
...For instance a Library at my capital will take, say, 8 turns to be finished but a Library at my newest city may take, say, 24 turns. The more developed your city is, the faster you can buid things in it. Is this how it works or am I missing something here?

Everything you build - Units, Buildings and Wonders - is priced in Production points. A particular Building or Unit may cost, say, 40 Production points to complete, so the more Production points a city can generate (represented by little hammers) the faster that city will build it. Buildings like Workshops and Forges (if a city has an improved source of Iron nearby) will increase Production, as will Improvements such as Quarries (if the city can access the Stone special resource), Mines (build in hill hexes for best results) and Lumberyards (build in Forest hexes). Lumberyards are pretty good actually if you have a lot of forest hexes around. Keep a few standing so you can build Lumberyards in them, as these will yield Production and Food.

Incidentally, any hex that is next to a river will yield an additional Gold point, on top of whatever other resources the hex's terrain will generate. These can really add up, especially when you get Marketplaces, Banks and Stock Exchanges happening, so if you see a place where you can build a City which can take advantage of a lot of riverside hexes, go for it.

When you click on a city and the city display opens, at the top of the right column of information is a tab named "Citizen Management". By default, this is minimized. Click on the "+" and it will expand. Here you can choose a radio button to direct your citizens to focus on a particular resource, such as Food, Gold, Production, etc and the program will reallocate the Citizens as best it can to maximize that resource. Keep an eye on your other resources if you do this - setting them to "Production Focus" will increase the city's Production output but may decrease its Gold or Food output. It's a balancing act.

When you expand the Citizen Management tab you will also see the map change - the resources from all hexes currently available to that city will be shown, along with icons that indicate which hexes are currently being worked by Citizens. These are marked with a green-lit "head" icon. These icons are greyed out for non-worked hexes. This allows you to manually rearrange your Citizens, but for this, the Citizen Management tab must be expanded. If you want a particular Citizen to w@&k a hex other than the one the program has picked, you can click on the Citizen icon (the little green-lit head) and he will be temporarily removed from the display (actually he'll turn into a "Specialist", but I won't overload you with info about that here now). Click on the new hex you want him to w@&k in and he will appear there - the icon for that hex will light up and change to a padlock. He's not locked there - you can put him back if you want, or move him to yet another hex. If you've rearranged a few Citizens and you want to put them all back the way they were, click on the "Reset Tiles" button in the Citizen Management box, or choose a new resource focus.

Choosing a Resource focus and then fine-tuning it by reallocating some Citizens will allow you to tailor your Resource output to what is needed at that time. Sometimes I've found that if I direct the Citizens to focus on Production, for example, it will leave me short of Food or Gold. But then if I reallocate a Citizen or two manually to get back some Food or Gold, I can still come out ahead in Production while getting in enough Food and/or Gold to get by with.

Anyway, I hope you're enjoying the game, JRD. As Stiku said, don't try to focus on winning a game right from the start. Just take your time and try different things, see what works. There is a lot there, but it's just a matter of getting used to how things w@&k. The game's tutorial section can help a bit, but it doesn't go hugely in-depth.

Civ V is a deceptively deep game. Even after playing for a few years I'm still learning some new tricks :-X

Just out of curiosity - is your game fully updated via Steam? Some of what I've posted so far may not exist in the original, non-updated vanilla game. If you have the time, and if you haven't done so already, let Steam update the game all the way. Civ V updates don't take too long, and the updates really do improve the game - a lot :)

Nice way to open up things Fragger, and yes the game is so much more than just going from turn to turn, I do remember the transition from Civilization to Civilization 2 Call to power, which actually gave us the terrain factors, population factors and other improvements which makes the game so joyfull to play, Civ 1 actually just had the core game(meaning without the extra micromanagements that later games had), and Call to power actually gave us the micromanagement part, that allowed us to fine tune the cities and units.

One part that you should also take part of is the military units bonuses, which units are better to attack what units, this is known from the RTS games like C&C,Empire Earth, AOE1,2,3. If you played AOE, you should be actually be allready familiar with the waiting, as AOE had one of the most slowest unit creation, and moving time of them all, most people actually left their computers on for the night to create huge armies to beat the AI in some cases.

Second part is the politics in this game, which in my opinion are the most annoying thing ever, as you constantly have to think what neighbours want too, they don't like you to be too close to their borders, or have military units running near their capital city, also their have their preferences on what to take, and don't want to include you in them, as an example, if you cut them from accessing a water source, they will denounce you, also just by taking a tile that they wanted, can actually lead to the same outcome too, so its important that you take what you need right from the start, hence the game has scouts that will do the exploration part for you.

I never played the original Civilization, and I was surprised to learn, just recently in fact, that it actually began as a tabletop board game in 1980, before the PC age. It was distributed by Avalon Hill, the folks that had pioneered the whole genre of deep strategy board games beginning back in the sixties. The original Civilization PC game was Sid Meier's take on the board game. He and his team took the concept to a whole new level with Civilization II (1996) after realizing the potential for computers to enhance this type of game, and that was the one that really got me hooked on the series.

I think you're confusing two different games. Civilization II was developed by Sid Meier and his team, but Civilization: Call to Power was a totally different game altogether. Civilization: Call to Power was developed by Activision after Civilization II was released, and after Sid and his friends went off to form their own software company, Firaxis. It was a crap game which I played for about ten minutes before I got fed up with it. Civilization II on the other hand was a wonderful game and was the one that really snagged me.

On another note, I picked up the Brave New World EXP for Civ V today. I found it in the discount bin at my local gaming shop, for $18.00. I'll be interested to see what this new addition will bring to the table.

The Brave New World EXP for Civ V actually brings heaps of new stuff to the table, more than the Gods and Kings EXP did. Nine new Cultures (bringing the total up to 38), a redesigned Tech Tree with new techs, new game concepts such as Tourism, World Congress and Ideology, totally re-imagined Social Policy section, new Units and Buildings, new Wonders and Projects, and a feature that I've sorely missed from way back in Civ II, the ability to establish Trade Routes between your cities and other players' (or City-States) using Caravan and Cargo Ship units. There are new Great People and new ways of achieving Cultural and Diplomatic victories.

There are some new titles for the Scenario game, one of which is the American Civil War which features unique units and a cut-down Tech Tree created especially for that historical period (no A-bombs here, natch :-()) The action focusses on the Eastern Theatre. Play as the Union or the Rebs and try to capture your opponent's Capital to win the war. I'm looking forward to giving that a go.

Phew... It's gonna take a while to get my head around all the new stuff.

Oh, and there's a beautifully refurbished UI, it looks terrific. Still the same Art-Deco style and layout, but with new colours and renderings. Very classy :-X

As with Gods and Kings, this EXP will permanently alter the existing game. But I think it should be worth it, even though it would have been nice if they could have done what they did with Alpha Centauri's Alien Crossfire EXP and given you the choice of playing either the original game or the expanded one at launch. Oh well.

I also saw a trailer for this at Steam, a new game from Sid. Sounds like fun from the article. There are a couple of comments at the end of the article which mirrored my sentiments exactly regarding Civ: Beyond Earth. I wasn't the only one who felt the way I did about that game, obviously...

http://www.pcgamesn.com/sid-meiers-starships/sid-meier-s-starships-is-a-glorious-stripped-back-strategy-game-packed-with-chunky-spaceships (http://www.pcgamesn.com/sid-meiers-starships/sid-meier-s-starships-is-a-glorious-stripped-back-strategy-game-packed-with-chunky-spaceships)

I watched about half of this clip showing gameplay from Starships (it's a long clip, almost 40 minutes) but it looks like it might be quite a fun strategy/tactical affair. The earlier article described the game as having less depth than Civ but it looks like there'll be options enough to make for varied game experiences.

http://www.vg247.com/2015/03/04/sid-meiers-starships-video-pc-mac-ipad/ (http://www.vg247.com/2015/03/04/sid-meiers-starships-video-pc-mac-ipad/)

Out on March 12.

QuoteJust out of curiosity - is your game fully updated via Steam? Some of what I've posted so far may not exist in the original, non-updated vanilla game. If you have the time, and if you haven't done so already, let Steam update the game all the way. Civ V updates don't take too long, and the updates really do improve the game - a lot :)

Yup, fully updated. I keep the autoupdate option always toggled on so I know I have my games with the latest patches. This is the version I'm playing:

Sid Meier's Civilization® V
Sid Meier's Civilization® V: Babylon (Nebuchadnezzar II)
Civilization V: Cradle of Civilization - Double Civilization and Scenario Pack: Spain and Inca
Civilization® V: Explorer's Map Pack
Civilization V: Cradle of Civilization - Civ and Scenario Pack: Mongols, Genghis Khan
Civilization V: Cradle of Civilization - Mediterranean
Civilization V: Cradle of Civilization - Asia
Civilization V: Cradle of Civilization - Americas
Civilization V: Cradle of Civilization - Mesopotamia

Thanks for the tips on the University. I managed to build one on each city I have. I am going through the many ways of checking your cities regarding production and etc. I was lucky as I am the only civilization in the mini continent I spawned, along with two city states. Now that I have built caravels I managed to cross the ocean and found all other players. I can grow without worrying too much about war.  8)

Cool :-X :) Yep, that's a good way to start, on your own land mass. It doesn't always prevent war, though - the AIs will sometimes launch sea-borne invasions. Or if any of the City-States on your land become allied with another player and that player declares war on you, their allied City-State might then attack you. But being City-States they never have very many units. They become a nuisance more than they do a genuine threat.

One thing that makes Civ V completely different from any Age of Empires and it's many derivatives is that on those other games you are basically at war with any other player for as long as the game lasts. In Civ V you have multiple ways of playing and it makes the game far more enjoyable. I haven't been attacked by anyone so far except an occasional barbarian, who just a small nuisance, and didn't see why I should start any war against the other AI and be stuck managing military units (which I have a pretty good graps of its basic working principles) and miss the chance to lear the rest of the game. You actually get the idea of developing a civilization for the whole spectra of activities and social/cultural aspects and not just to be the first to grow an army strong enough to overpower the other players. In the end, any AoE is nothing but a rush through the available upgrades to see who gets the biggest gun first.

Another aspect that I wasn't excited about was the turn-based nature of Civ V as opposed to free flowing nature of AoE. At first I thought that it was hampering my progress but now I can enjoy it since I have time to check everything I'm doing, if everything is as I want it to be and check the fantastic animations.  :-X

I like the same things about the game too. It's not necessarily about war, but it can be if you want it to be. And if you do, it has a great combat model, and the fighting animations are fun to watch. I like too that the units are all tiny 3D models, not just 2D animation cells - it makes the game sort of come alive. I also like that there are other paths to victory open to you apart from warfare - scientific, cultural and diplomatic - so your options are open. You may begin a game with an intention to conquer everybody, but geography, resource availability and the status of the other players may preclude this. So you can try going another way and still manage pull off a different victory type. Or you can aim for, say, a scientific victory from the start and w@&k towards it. The game is quite flexible.

I totally agree about turn-based strategy vs. real-time. Both have their merits, but a turn-based game suits me better personally as I like to have time to think and plan. AoE, C&C and games of that type all too often degenerate into the usual "knight rush" or "tank rush" - you mass your forces, drag a box around them all to select them, then send them all in. Once the fight starts it's a real handful trying to direct individual units. All too often you'll select a unit but it'll get destroyed before you can give it an order. Often you can't tell who's engaging who. There's very little scope for tactics in those games. There is some, but it tends to go out the window once the battle is joined.

With Civ V there is not only a strong tactical element but a logistical one due to the fact that you can't stack combat units. Some thought has to go into how you move a collection of combat units across the map so that they arrive in a suitably useful arrangement. Otherwise you could end up with that highly-experienced unit that you wanted to lead the attack with being stuck at the rear, and have to swap unit positions around to get it to the front. Earlier versions of Civ used square grids instead of a hexagonal one, and you could have any number of units stacked in a single square, so this particular logistical element didn't exist.

There was one RTS game that I used to enjoy however - Sid Meier's Gettysburg. It was a real-time affair, but you could pause the game at any time and while it was paused, give your units orders. When you unpaused, the units would begin carrying out your orders. You could even give units multiple orders while the game was paused, such as form a column > march to a particular location > form into battle line > advance to the designated point. They would then do all those things in sequence once the game was unpaused. It made movement of your forces very manageable - and as it was at the time, battles were all about lines and flanks. Spread your units out too far or have them in arranged in sloppy lines and they wouldn't fight as well, and if your line got pierced or "flanked" your enemy could "roll up your line", clobbering regiment after regiment from the sides and sending your men running away in a panicked retreat.

That was a very rich game in terms of sound effects too - rattling musketry, booming artillery, shouts and orders being yelled, bugle calls, horses neighing. If you focussed on units marching in column, you would even hear authentic period marching tunes being played. The map was three-dimensional, and gaining the "high ground" could make a world of difference to the outcome of a battle. That was a very cool game, but unfortunately it won't run under any OS later than about Win 98.

Wow - the Brave New World EXP really lives up to it's name as an expansion pack.

Civ V was already a fairly deep strategy game. BNW has deepened it exponentially. Not only are there myriad new features and options, but the entire gameplay has been revamped in the areas of Social Policies, Culture and Diplomacy. Cultural Victory is now arrived at in a radically different way than what it was in earlier versions of the game, a way that is in fact far more logical and interesting - and challenging. The old "Utopia Project" is dead and buried... Diplomatic Victory has similarly been improved, to a more real-world conception.

One of the major innovations is the introduction of a World Congress. Once this is established, players can agree (or not) to pass "Resolutions" that will affect all players in the game, and there are no less than 18 of these, the effects of which are many and varied. Just a few examples are the designation of Cultural Heritage Sites, hosting of the International Games, construction of an International Space Station, signing of a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement, and the hosting of a World's Fair. Some of these will benefit all players who agree to take part (such as the ISS), some will confer extra benefits upon a player who hosts an event such as the International Games or the World's Fair.

I haven't gotten to the World Congress stage yet, in this my first game of BNW. I'll be very interested to get to it.

BNW is what an expansion pack should be, a positive and well conceived improvement of an existing game. I consider myself a Civ V veteran, but this will keep me occupied with the game for at least a few more years to come (if it didn't already). BNW has taken an already wonderful strategy game and boosted it to a whole new level. And it looks really nice, too - well, it already looked nice, but now it looks even nicer :-()

I believe that BNW may be primarily aimed at experienced Civ V players. If you were brand-new to the game and you added BNW before playing, you could find it all a tad overwhelming. The basic game is enough of a learn as it is without diving into this particular deep end. In any case, the Gods and Kings EXP needs to be bought and installed first because BNW builds upon it.

I see sleep-deprivation looming...

I'm glad I don't have it. I am already overwheled trying to understand all nuances of the previous gameplay design and getting yet more features could probably put me off game. The good side is that I have this BNW extension to look for when the version I run starts to get old.  :)

I've now reached the early 20th century and am aiming at a scientific victory. I can see now how I could've started the game when it comes to choosing research branches and buildings to create in my empire but still I believe I can bea it or at least get close. I've been also using all my Great Persons to my benefit. I only had a Great General and I kept it near my troops to make it useful but since it seems to be a fairly peaceful iteration I decided to use it to get a golden age and pump up gold and production all around my cities. As the game progressed more of those Great People were generated and at first I didn't know what to do with them sao I started reading the Civilopedia and search the net for a little info. I have used a couple Great Scietists to boost research and after building the Oxford University I also got another research item for free so it certaily put me up to speed towards reaching the technological level to launch a rocket. Another Great Person was a Great Artist I've used to drop a Culture Bomb and take over a few tiles from Vienna - including an oilfield. They got pissed off but a small gold offer changed their status back to friendly so no harm done  ;D. The Great Merchant was sent on a trade mission with Cape Town resulting in a substantial gold income to me. I see how I could've used my Great Engineer to speed up production of a certain building that would get me a Great Scientist thus leading to more research items delivered on the fly.

These Great People certaily can change the outcome of a game if generated and used to a specific strategy. I am already looking forward to my next playthough so I can bebefit more from those guys apart from all other tactics I am learning thanks to fragger's tips on this topic.  :-X

You know you are playing a great game when you you are not even done with one playthrough but is already planning what you will try on your next through. Only Far Cry 2 and the Assassin's Creed - Ezio saga, had this effect o me.  :-X  :)

One playthrough is about 10 hours, if you really want to sink in to it it can take even more.
That's the one thing that I like in this game, that you can spend so much time just making sure everything is perfect, and not to be punished by it.

Likewise, Stiku :) I find it to be a very relaxing and absorbing game for those reasons. There's a lot that you can delve into and micromanage if you're so inclined, but you don't have to know every nut and bolt of the game to play it and enjoy it. I like to plumb the depths myself, being the control freak that I am with things like this :-() I get a lot of hours out a game.

I'm happy to hear you're enjoying the game JRD :)

The Great Artist's ability to let off a Culture Bomb disappears with the Gods and Kings EXP, which is a bit of a drag. They didn't program a substitute ability for him, so all he can then do is start a Golden Age or build a Landmark improvement.

However, with the Brave New World pack the functions of Great Artists has totally changed as there are now several different sub-types of them: Great Artists, Great Writers and Great Musicians. They are used in completely different ways from the old Great Artists as they are now part of the process of scoring a Cultural Victory. I won't go into it all here, mainly because I'm still learning it myself, but it's quite a major change. So even though the Artists' Culture Bomb function disappears in G&K, these Greats can have far more impact on your Cultural development with BNW.

Here's a tip for your next playthrough. When you establish your first city, build one or two Scout units immediately and get them out and about (watch out for Barbarians, though - Scouts can fight but they're not very good at it). I always start out by building two Scout units if I'm playing on a map type like Continents or Pangaea. Scouts will reveal the surrounding map quickly as they can move two spaces over any terrain. They can also be useful for quickly finding nearby Ancient Ruins. I don't know if you came across any of these during your game, but a Ruins hex will provide a one-off freebie to whoever first moves a unit into it. The Ruins will disappear when this is done, so only the player who gets to them first will get the freebie. You might get some Gold, some Culture points, a new Tech, a new Citizen in your city, or one of a number of other one-off bonuses. You won't know what bonus you'll get from a Ruins hex until you move a unit into it. One of the best bonuses is when the Ruins hex upgrades the unit that moves into it into a more advanced type. If it's a Scout, that Scout will become an Archer unit, even if you haven't researched Archery yet - but better still, it will retain its ability to move two spaces over any terrain. It'll become a fast Archer unit! And no matter how many times you upgrade that original Scout-cum-Archer unit into the future, it'll keep retaining its "Ignore Terrain" ability. Even if it gets upgraded all the way to a Modern Infantry unit, it will still ignore terrain costs (Archers can't be upgraded to anything past Crossbowmen for a while, but eventually you can upgrade them to Riflemen once you discover Rifling).

For that reason, I try to save any Ruins I find for the Scouts.

Also, getting Scouts out early increases your chances of being the first player to find City-States. If you're the first player to find a particular City-State, you'll get 30 Gold. If another player finds it first, you'll still get Gold when you meet that City-State, but only 15.

The AI players will start exploring right from the beginning of the game, so if you start on a landmass with at least one other player on it but you don't get exploratory units out fairly quickly you might miss out on some of these early bonuses. They're certainly not necessary for a win, but they can be quite useful early on :)

A bit more about Ancient Ruins.


[smg id=7744 align=center width=600]



[smg id=7745 align=center width=440]



If you want to increase your chances of getting this particular bonus from a Ruins hex, you can do this:

When getting ready to start a new game, go to the Advanced Setup screen (choose Single Player>Set Up Game, then click on "Advanced Setup" at the bottom of the window). On the right, below the list of map options etc, is a list of "Advanced Game Options" that can be toggled on or off (these cannot be changed once a game is underway). One of the options is "New Random Seed". This governs certain things in the game, such as the outcomes of battles, but mainly random things such as the appearance of Barbarian settlements - and Ancient Ruins bonuses. By default this option is disabled. While it remains disabled, the outcome of any battle or any random event will play out the same way every time the game is reloaded from a particular save point. Let's say you do a save right before you send a Swordsman unit in to fight, and let's say that when the fight takes place, the Swordsman unit loses five men. If you reload and do the fight again, it will still lose five men. No matter how many times you reload, that unit will always lose five men.

If "New Random Seed" is enabled, the outcome will be different each time you reload. In the above example, you might lose three men in the fight after a reload, or you might lose seven after yet another reload. This also applies to Ancient Ruins. With "New Random Seed" enabled, you can do a save right before you move a unit into the Ruins. If you don't like the bonus you get, simply do a reload and try again. Keep doing this until you get the bonus you want. It might take a number of reloads, but eventually you should get the unit upgrade bonus (a window will appear saying something like "Your unit has found advanced weapons in the ruins").

Incidentally, F11 does a Quicksave and Crtl+F11 does a Quickload. F12 used to do the Quickload, but then Steam went and assigned F12 to be the screenshot key (good one, Steam). Crtl+F11 is now the Quickload key(s).

I'm almost there. I've advanced my tech tree up to the point whre there are anly three or four possible technologies to research thanks to some Great Scientists, one adopted policy that gave me two free technologies and fragger's tips on micromanaging specialists and changing the focus of some cities. I now have two of the three required SS boosters and an SS cockpit. A third SS Booster is on it's way and I should have the remaining parts to build my spaceship in a few rounds.

Is there a way to see how the other players are going? I mean... is it possible to assess their strategies and progress? I'd like to know if there is any other civilization out there building a spacehip too or about to fill out 5 policy trees in order to get to the Utopia Project for instance. Or maybe a score-like tab? I know I get a sort of score every now and then telling me the world's busiest people or world's happier civilization but can I check it somewhere else?

[smg id=7746 align=center width=600]



[smg id=7747 align=center width=600]



[smg id=7748 align=center width=600]

Under the Science category it will tell you how many players have completed the Apollo Program and thus are in the space race, but not which players or how many spaceship parts they have built. I don't know if there's any way of finding out exactly how far along other players' spaceships may be, unless you have an Open Borders treaty with them and you send a unit into their territory get a direct eyeball on their capital. You would see their spaceship under construction on its launch pad and would be able to see how many components have been added to it. You've no doubt noticed how at the start of each turn, any new developments will appear at the right of the screen when icons drop down from the top and tell you something of importance, such as "So-and-so has declared war on so-and-so" or "One of your units has received a promotion". Whenever another player completes a spaceship component, a message to that effect will drop down there. It won't tell you how many the player has built, so it's up to you to try to keep track.

The Additional Information windows contain quite a bit of useful data on how things are progressing. Be aware that some of the windows have multiple tabs along the top, but it's not immediately apparent that they're tabs. Hovering the pointer over them will make them subtly highlight. The tabs (if there are any) are located right below the window title.

Another useful information window in the list above is "Economic Overview". This lets you see at a glance the resource production of all your cities in table form. It makes it very easy to see which city is producing the most Gold, the most Culture, etc. Some of the table headers in these displays will sort the cities in order of the chosen header if you click on them.

Thanks fragger. After I asked the question I started reading this thread from your first post and found a lot of useful information I didn't remember. Sure enough you already told me where to find it, only I was overwhelmed with all information from the game I would never fiind it again on my own  ::) .

As of now I am officially hooked to this game. I pulled off my first victory!  8)


Built all parts of my spaceship and launched it to Alpha Centauri in 1995. Great game! I am starting a new game right away and will forcus o some other way to achieve victory, maybe Diplomatic this time (or not, depending on my thirst for blood  >:D )

Well done mate :-X :)

Diplomatic victory is my goal this time around. I've been searching the Civilopedia and an online Wiki to see how to plan ahead. It is amazing how much it can change your game choices. :-X

Last time I had so much  gold I was purchasing most of my buildings as the game progessed instead of actually building them. Now I will save that gold to keep City-estates as allies. It means I should be prepared to go to war for them as opposed to what I did last time when I was simply watching them fight without interfering.

I am playimg the Germans, lead by Bismark. Right from start I managed to get a unit upgraded after reaching a ruin and they are my elite fighters right now. Not just that but as I attack any barbarian camp they end up joining my side so I am now with quite a few military units I got for free! That's a great start! I keep playing on a tiny map with settler difficulty to be able to learn all tricks on the game without having to defend myself too often but as soon as I get one of each victory type I'll explore more difficulty options!

Germany is a pretty good choice for this venture. As you've discovered, anytime a German combat unit destroys a Barbarian encampment, there's a good chance that a Barbarian unit will join their side - this is one of the German "Strengths". Those defecting Barbarian units can be upgraded to more advanced units later, just like any other unit. It saves you the time of having to build the units yourself.

Diplomatic Victory is probably the toughest one to pull off. You'll need to get your technology almost all the way up in order to build the United Nations, which then triggers the voting rounds for a Chairman (oops, I meant Chairperson :-()). Voting takes place every twenty turns, or ten, I can't remember just now, and each player and City-State is worth one vote - two if you're the one who built the U.N. Of course one of the other players might build the U.N. first, and this will still trigger the voting rounds, but whichever player does build the U.N. gets an extra vote come election time. You'll need to try to be allied with as many City-States as possible so that they'll vote for you, as you need to tally at least seven votes to win (this is the case on Warlord setting, I don't know if it's different on Settler). A City-State will always vote for its ally, although there is one condition where they may not - see below. The other players will of course vote for themselves. So it's the City-States that hold the balance of power in elections.

Here's that condition I mentioned - if another player attacks and captures a City-State at any point during the game, and if you subsequently capture that City-State and choose to liberate it instead of keeping it for yourself, that City-State will always vote for you in U.N. elections later, even if they're allied with another player at the time. The other players won't be able to sway the City-State from this, no matter how much Gold they give it or how much influence they have with it. The only way they can deprive you of that City-State's vote is if they can recapture it.

I've had games where the other players have captured enough City-States between them for it to be no longer possible for any one player to amass enough votes to win an election, because as soon as a City-State is captured it becomes part of the capturing player's empire and thus can no longer cast a vote. The only way to break that deadlock is to capture and liberate City-States until enough of them have been liberated to provide you with the necessary voting total. Of course, you realize, dis means war :-()

The Germans were a random selection. Im happy with them, getting military units for free does help a lot at this stage of the game. I'm using two or three military units to explore and get rid of any barbarian encampment as soon as I find them. Scouts are good but only for finding stuff, if you have to fight, you're doomed. My trirremes are also very useful at this stage, even if they cannot cross deep ocean.

I figured the diplomatic victory would be a tough one. I'll have to manage my relationship with all City-Estates very well but playing in Settler makes things easier. None of my opponents on my last game were moving fast in the tech tree and no wars were on except for a brief moment near the end when one City-Estate was attacked by the Polynesian but apart from that it was as if they were all letting me win.

I am putting all my efforts into developing the tech tree as fast as I can and so far I am going well. My map spawned a series of relatively big islands so, again, I'm all alone on my own land. The closest two large islands have only City-Estates and I am making sure I'm their only neighbor. It will come in handy when the quests start popping up and I'll be able to maintain good commercial and trading routes with them.

It is also a chance of getting the hang of combat basics when attacking barbarians. Positioning the right units at the right hexes is the key to success when it comes to fighting and I'm still having some trouble dealing with them.  As a rule of thumb I place infantry and cavalry close to my enemies and ranged weapons right behind them. Warriors and horsemen against infantry, spearmen against cavalry and ranged attacks first! My next game will certainly aim at wiping everybody else from the map.  >:D

Good luck on your mission :-D

If you need to capture anyone else's cities - siege units! Catapults, trebuchets, cannons, etc are invaluable. You need Iron to build any of these (Gods and Kings removed this resource requirement however). You can throw melee units at cities, but they'll get worn down pretty quickly. You can take a city with just melee units, but you'll need a bunch of them, and you'll probably lose a good number of them in the process. Just remember to try and protect the siege units as their defense strength against enemy melee units is lousy.

The modern Artillery unit is a beauty as it has a range of three hexes, and can fire over hills, forests and even mountains as long as at least one friendly unit can "see" the target. But it can't be built until you've discovered Dynamite, which is a ways up there in the tech tree. Artillery units don't require any Strategic Resource to build, and your existing Cannon units can be upgraded to them.

Love your new avatar :-X 8)

yep, quite the eye-catcher :)

So I pulled a Diplomatic Victory last night.  :)

Playing on the easiest level (Settler) makes things very easy to achieve. I was keeping track of my opponents progress and they wasn't even trying to win the game. It is good to help you learn the game but makes everything way too easy. At some point I was simply building enough gold to gather the necessary number of City-Estates as allies and didn't have to worry about any of them attacking me or completing the Apollo Program (requirement to achieve a Scientific Victory) or catching up on me on the diplomatic aspect or any of the other ways to win a game in Civ V. It was even boring but on the other hand I could calmly plan and execute and had time to check the result of my decisions throughout the game, which is what I was aiming at.

I will start a new game and go for a Military Victory, camly and gently crushing my opponent's skulls as I march upon their cities.  >:D . I guess this is the aspect I need to improve the most as I am sure once I start moving up on the difficulty levels they will not only start to plan their victory strategy but also start to ruin my plans, so I better be prepared to go to war at any moment.  >:D >:D >:D >:D >:D >:D

Congrats on becoming Chairman, JRD :-D :-X

Sure, things are a lot easier on Settler mode, but that is the best way to learn the game. You'll find that when you up the difficulty level it will affect things like Happiness level (harder to raise and maintain) and longer duration of turns required to make discoveries. The other players won't be such pushovers either :-()

If you want to go for a conquest game, I suggest choosing the Pangaea map style. This will start all players on one big land mass, so you won't have to concern yourself with trying to organize sea-borne invasions. Then you can get straight at 'em >:D

To win a Cultural victory, don't build too many cities, because every city you build pushes up the price of subsequent Social Policies, and once they get too expensive you won't have enough time in the game to collect enough for a shot at the Utopia Project. You can pull off a Cultural Victory with no more than three or four cities. Napoleon is a good leader to choose, as the French get additional Culture points until they discover Steam Power. Focus on Wonders and Social Policies that boost Culture points. The "Piety" branch is a good policy category to adopt as there's some good Culture-boosting policies in there. Allying with Cultural City-States helps too, as you get additional Culture points from them :)

I hope I'm not overloading you with info here, mate :)

No, you are not overloading at all. In fact, now I can follow your tips better since I've been through the game twice. I am keeping this topic as my primary source of information, followed by an online wiki and in third the civilopedia!. Your tips have been extremely valuable in opening my eyes to this game. I don't think I can thank you enough for putting all this effort.  :-X

This game is truly addictive. "Just another turn before I go to bed" and I will be seeing the sun rise very soon.  :-D.

Yes, I am just learning all the basics and geting familiar with the Tech Tree, Wonders, Social Policies, Diplomacy and military units moviments before raising the difficulty level a notch. I thought the Pangaea map would be best but wasn't completely sure yet. The sea is an important feature in this game and knowing how to navigate while keeping your non-naval units safe is key to dominate the map. Anyway, I just loaded a random game on Settler, Continets but didn't even move my guys yet so I can start a new one anytime and lose nothing. I still like to have the civilization randomly chosen... except for the time I wanted to build a fierce army and got Hindu led by Ghandi as the random civ to play...  :D ... something didn't feel righ in this set up.  ????

 :laugh:

In order to validate it and to respect democracy as we understand it, here it is


Which lead to the following decision, giving me the role of World Leader. The gold and military aid sent to the 6 City-Estates and the mysterious, however legal, ways in which a few buildings were delivered ahead of schedule had nothing to do with my recent election.  :-D  :angel:






Oh, yes, the new avatar... can't decide who looks funnier!! It could very well fit into Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walk.  ;D

 :-D + :-D

 :laugh: hehehe

Quote from: JRD on March 16, 2015, 09:32:58 AM
I don't think I can thank you enough for putting all this effort.  :-X

No trouble at all! ^-^

I've actually never tried playing as Ghandi. I was never crazy about his Civ's particular attributes, they sound like more trouble than they're worth :-\\

Incidentally (you may have already found this out) if you play a few turns in a new game but don't like the look of things, you can bring up the menu and at the top it will have "Restart Game". If you click on this, it will start a new game with a different map but with the same settings as you last chose, so you won't have to go through all the startup menus again. If you last chose a random leader for yourself and random opponents, it will re-randomize those too :)

Turns out managing an army is far more difficult than I anticipated. I built a small army with range, melee, mounted and siege units, positioned them at the edge of my empire before moving into battle. I also had three units (pikemen, archers and warriors) near my capital in order to defend it plus a Great General and yet a small barbarian unit sneaked into my formation and killed my General!!!!!!!! Those bastards!!  :angry-new:

I am trying to position my units like this: a front line of melee with mounted/cavalry on the sides/back followed by a line of archers and siege which are proteded by mounted and cavalry units. I attack first with archers and siege then send my warriors to the slaughter, with my mounted units assisting them. So far, so good. The thing is that it doesn't play out quite smooth. Even in the Settler difficulty enemy units know how to position themselves and take advantage of the terrain, which I am not good at at this point. I took over one major city from the Russians and somehow the City-Estate of Tyre is now my enemy, killing my scouts........ and to make things worse, they are my neighbors and the city close to them is fairly unprotected which creates a situation where either I move a couple units back, weakening my battle front, or build new military units and place them near this city for protection, in which case I will be growing my population and increasing my already critical Happiness level. Not that they are attacking me at this point but as soon as I raise the difficulty level a notch it will certainly happen.

Now I paid special attention to how big my empire needs to be in order to keep my happiness level up while maintaining a fairly strong military force. I only founded four cities and they were close enough to each other to allow good use of land and resources, build roads and still be safe. Once I took over the first city, I made it a puppet city to keep happiness level at a decent level (near 30) and was hoping to keep it like that before moving in to my next attack. Turns out the Russian ruler, that bitch, wanted peace and offered St. Petesburg as a token of her intentions, which I obviously accepted, so I now have my original four cities plus two puppet ones. Once I started regrouping and upgrading I realised I needed iron to upgrade my existing units and to build new ones and this particular resource is fairly sparse in my empire so I now have a big strategic issue in my hands. No other nation have iron to trade or if they do the ammount is not enough and I cannot depend on this resource from someone else. There is one City Estate that has a huge reserve of iron but I can't trade it with City Estates so my only option would be to take over the City and use their iron but yet another battle front is not on my plans right now. My only alternative was to found another city near one nearby source of iron, which now put my empire with five cities and two puppet cities. As if it wasn't bad enough, when exploring a new continet I attacked a barbarian encampment and the survivors agreed to join my empire as settlers so I now have the opportunity to build another city. They are just sleeping somewhere safe in my territory since killing this unit would grant me zero gold and I don't want to found another city so I don't know what to do with them.  ????

Big questions ahead of my now. How to grow my army without lowering happiness level? I am building as many wonders and buildings that generate happiness as possible but it is still around 20, which I believe is too low. I will certainly play another game or two aiming at a Dominance victory after this one. Both other victory types were pretty straight forward with relatively small mpires to take care of, it was more of a tech and diplomatic game. Military plays completely different now.



I haven't seen the "Restart Game" option yet. Is it at the same menu as the save/quick save/load/exit screen?

Those Barbarians are cunning buggers... You should always try to stack a General with a combat unit if you can. If the General (or any Great Person) is in a space by himself and an enemy unit enters that space, the General will be lost. They are technically non-combat units, so they can't fight - they just fall down and die :-()

If I remember correctly, on Settler mode every Luxury resource you gain access to earns six Happiness points. I usually play on Warlord mode, and then it's only four, and with every next level of difficulty it goes down by one. On the hardest difficulty setting I think you actually start off with unhappiness already and you have to try to get it up from the start ??? It's a tough ask. There are some Social Policies that will enhance Happiness, it's worth going into the SP screen and hovering the mouse over the policies to see which ones do so. For instance there's one in the "Honor" branch which will add one Happiness point for every defensive structure you build, such as Walls and Castles, and another one somewhere that will add a Happiness point for every city that has a garrisoned unit in it. Each Natural Wonder you find on the map will also add a permanent Happiness point. Keep an eye out for the Great Barrier Reef if it appears on your map (not all possible Natural Wonders appear on every map). It takes up two sea hexes and each of those hexes counts as a separate Happiness point.

Regarding that spare Settler unit you got, if you want to get rid of it, try moving it into one of your cities and then get rid of it - you might get some gold for it. I've noticed that if I delete a combat unit in a city I get some dough for it. I don't know if it works for a freebie non-combat unit though... Maybe do a save before you try it and see what happens. Getting that extra Settler unit the way you did only happens on Settler mode, I think. I've never seen it happen on any other setting. I never actually played on Settler as I was already very familiar with the Civ games when I picked up V so I started on the next setting, Chieftain. Occasionally I'll play on Prince mode and I find it tough. And there are four more settings above that! I tried playing on King once and I got my butt well and truly kicked.

The only way you can get a Strategic or Luxury resource from a City-State is by becoming allied with it, as you can't trade for it the same way you do with the other players. If another player is already allied with a City-State that you want to get a resource from, the only way you can do it is to gain more influence with that City-State than the other player has, which means parting with a bunch of Gold or trying to complete as many of the City-State's quests as you can. Once you're allied, if the City-State has, say, an Iron resource value of six points, then you will also receive six Iron points. Whatever they have, you will also get.

A tip for protecting your Cities - garrison a ranged unit of some sort in each one, if you can. Then if the City is attacked, the City itself can be made to shoot at one enemy unit each turn, and your ranged garrisoned unit can also shoot in the same turn. The garrisoned unit itself can't be attacked while it's in the City - enemies can only attack the City it's in, so it has some protection.

The AI plays the game pretty well and knows how to use the terrain to best advantage. I don't know if you're aware of it, but units in forest, jungle, hill or swamp hexes get a defensive bonus when they're attacked (natural cover). They also get a defensive bonus if they're attacked from across a river. Conversely, a unit gets a combat strength increase if it attacks from a hill hex and the target is in the open (the attacking unit has the "high ground" advantage). Every time a unit survives a fight, regardless of whether it was attacking or defending, it gets awarded some XPs. When it accumulates enough XPs you get to choose a "promotion" for it. The promotions are actually in the form of special abilities, such as the "Drill" promotion (the unit gets a 20% combat strength increase when fighting in rough terrain such as forests and jungles) or the "Shock" promotion (the unit gets a 20% combat strength increase when fighting in open terrain). There are other kinds of promotions, depending on unit type. Some of the promotions can be improved upon, e.g. Drill I, Drill II, Drill III, each of which cumulatively add another 20% combat strength when fighting in rough terrain. The Civilopedia has a rundown on all the promotions.

A unit's current experience level is indicated by the blue progress bar shown here. Hovering the pointer over it will tell you exactly how many XPs the unit has, and how many it needs to earn its next promotion:
[smg id=7762]

A combat unit starts on experience level one. When it accumulates its first ten XPs, it moves up to level two experience. Accumulating another thirty XPs gets it to level three, another sixty XPs gets it level four, and so on. Every time a unit reaches a new experience level it earns a promotion, which you choose for it. When you build a Barracks in a city, any ground unit that is subsequently built in that city starts on level two, i.e. starts with a promotion (actually the Barracks gives new units 15 XPs, but this is enough to get to level two and thus a promotion). Building an Armory in that city, and later a Military Academy (each add another 15 XPs) will produce ground units already on Level Three (start with two promotions). If you can build the Heroic Epic (need a Barracks in every city first) AND the Brandenburg Gate Wonder in the same city along with the aforementioned Buildings, units built there will start on level four, with three promotions, right off the bat. It's a good combo of Wonders to try and get in the same city.

Anyway, I'm really enjoying reading about your experiences, JRD. I can almost see what's going on, as though I'm playing it myself :)

About the Restart Game option - it appears to go away at some point once you're into a game. I'm not sure when it happens exactly, possibly after you establish your first city. I have a game about halfway through at the moment and I just checked, and no, I don't see it there either. Ordinarily it appears at the top of the menu when you click on the "Menu" option from inside the game. I'll have to look into that a bit more and try to figure out what triggers it to go away.

Ahh... generals.... that makes sense. They are not meant to fight, those old geezer on camouflage pajamas.   :laugh:

I've started to raze cities instead of making them puppets. It seems like the best option now that I have so many cities to look after. I could very well go on and just attack the next empire to go for the Domination Victory but I am taking my time and wiping all cities as a way to learn to better position my units. A 2 hexes moving range on a turn based game is very demanding in terms of strategy. It can make the difference between win or defeat. I'm looking forward to see some attack helicopters in action though.  >:D

Having one range unit garrisoned inside a city is a great tip, thanks a lot. I didn't know you could fire from inside a city.  :-X . Also, nice tip about resources from City-Estates. I didn't know how to get them. So if a City-Estate has iron and I gift them money I will add that resource to my network? Same for all resources they have? Their importance keeps growing as I learn about them on the game.  8)

I have noticed that you have a very complex upgrading and training system for all your units. I am keeping my oldest, better trained units very well guarded and putting some newbies ahead of the front to draw enemy fire and only then move in with my well trained guys.

Amazing how it mimics real life combat and strategy. This is a very well thought out game. I like how the details are everywhere, from the table top board game look to the complex diplomatic and warfare micromanaging aspect. You were right, it makes any Age of Empires game looks like a chaotic, misguided and poorly developed game if you consider how much thought has to be put into Civ V to achieve any objective. No dragging a box around all units and sending them into battle. It brings the whole strategy game concept into a whole new level!  :-X

Razing captured cities that you don't need can indeed save you Gold and Happiness. You can't raze City-States or other players' Capitals though, you have to either make them Puppets or Annex them. I always make captured cities Puppets to start with until things stabilize a bit. You can always Annex them later if you want, which you need to do if you want to have any control over what gets built and done there.

You've probably noticed that when a combat unit ends it's turn in a City it automatically garrisons itself there. If you want to make it fire, you need to click on it to "wake it up". Otherwise it won't do anything. Once you no longer need it to fire, click on the "Fortify" icon (or just hit "f") and it will re-garrison itself.

Quote from: JRD on March 21, 2015, 12:46:19 PM
...So if a City-Estate has iron and I gift them money I will add that resource to my network? Same for all resources they have?

Only if you give it enough Gold and/or do quests for it to earn enough influence points to achieve Allied status. There are five types of diplomatic status that you can have with City-States: Allied, Friends, Neutral, Hostile, and War. City-States are always Neutral to you unless something changes to alter that status. The horizontal progress bar under the City-State name indicates your current status with them. This will look a little different in your game because the expansions packs enhance this display a little, but it works the same way.

[smg id=7763]

Here, I'm allied with Belgrade, as shown by the cyan-coloured bar under its name. The colour of the bar shows the diplomatic status: cyan for Allied, green for Friends, red for Hostile or War. When you're neutral with them, the bar doesn't appear at all (but it does show up as grey after Gods and Kings EXP is installed).

By default, you need to earn 30 influence points with a City-State to become Friends, and 60 to become Allies. There are Social Policies that can help with these numbers, under the "Patronage" branch. When you click on a City-State name and the diplomatic window appears, if you click on "Give a Gift" (or however it's worded) another panel will open showing how much Gold you can choose to give. and how much influence it will buy. Give them enough Gold to earn over 60 influence points and you will become Allied - then you'll get their resources, both Strategic and Luxury. But even if you're Allied with them, if another player comes along and gives them even more Gold or otherwise earns more influence points with the City-State than you have, the City-State will switch its allegiance to that other player and the resources will stop coming to you. A City-State can only be allied with one player at a time. Whoever has the most influence points with the City-State gets the alliance and thus the goods.

But it doesn't last, because with every turn that passes, your influence drops by one point. If you've been Allied with a City-State and your influence points fall below 60, you will cease being Allied and will then be merely Friends (and you will no longer get the resources), and if it falls below 30 you will cease being Friends and will become Neutral again. You can only get their resources when you're Allied with them. When you're Friends you can still pass freely through their territory and you will still get bonuses in the form of Gold plus one Food for each of your cities from Maritime City-States (these have a little ship's wheel next to their names), Cultural points from Cultural City-States (have a pen-and-quill icon) and an occasional free combat unit from Militaristic City-States (have two crossed swords). In the pic above, the crossed-swords icon indicates that Belgrade is a Militaristic City-State. You won't see anything like the "yin-yang" icon in your game, this is something that only appears with the Gods and Kings EXP (it indicates their religious leanings - long story).

If you're Neutral with a City-State but one of your units ends its turn inside their borders, they become Hostile and a little bit of red appears in their status bar, plus a message appears warning you that you are trespassing. For every subsequent turn that your unit ends its turn inside their borders or just stays there, the red in the bar will creep up a bit more. If the bar fills completely with red, you will be at War with them (of course if you attack them you will also be at War :-()) But once you move your unit out of their borders, the red will go down a bit each turn until it disappears and you become Neutral again. Only when you're Friends or Allied with a City-State can you move your units through their lands without trespassing. If you're at War with a City-State, the red in the bar will not decrease, it will stay full of red - you need to do something else to rectify this, see below.

Incidentally, if you hover the pointer over a Friendly or Allied City-State name, a pop-up will appear telling you how many influence points you currently have with them. If you're Allied, it will display something like "Belgrade is currently Allied: 96/60", meaning that you have 96 influence points but when it drops below 60 you will no longer be Allied. In this example, it means that you will be Allied for another 36 turns, because it drops by one per turn. Of course if you give them more Gold or do a mission for them it will bump the influence points back up. You need to keep it above 60 to remain Allies.

If another player is at war with you, any City-States that they're allied with will also be at war with you and their status bar will be completely red. If you and the hostile player make peace with each other, the City-State will still be in a state of war with you. You then need to click on the City-State, and there will be a "Make Peace" option there. Click on this to make peace with the City-State. Its status bar will initially still be red but will then decrease over time, until you're Neutral again - unless hostilities resume.

The whole concept of City-States was introduced with Civ V - earlier versions of the game didn't have these. It's a great innovation to the gameplay as Alliances with City-States can make quite a difference to the outcome of things. One thing that's not obvious - if you go around attacking and capturing City-States, and if you do this too often, the other City-States will actually all rise up and declare war on you and you can never make peace with them again, and they'll stay like that for the rest of the game. So you need to be judicious if you plan to capture City-States. Don't do too many too quickly, unless the idea of being at war with all of them doesn't bother you :-()

this isn't real life so you may as well be careful.  :-D

 :-D

A steep learning curve!

Settler is not difficult at all, it has been pointed out here a few times. And yet my army took some beating from one of the other three civilizations on my map. I had previously erased all signs of the Russians quite easily, without losing a single unit. The other two are the Arabs and Aztecs. While the Aztecs are hardly present in game, having founded only their capital and nothing else, the Arabs have been growing their empire quite fast. After kicking Catherina's a$$ out of the game I aimed at the Arabians since they were geographically closer (and having nothing to worry about coming from Montezuma) and started my attack. The first two cities were quite easy but as soon as I approached Mecca things got messy. Their city was built close to mountain hexes surrounded by forrsts which significantly hampers any army's progress. Not only that but also they have another two or three cities not too far apart so once I start positioning my siege and range units I inevitably had to sustain damage from both Mecca and these other cities plus their army.

It made for a very interesting combat. I'm glad I found someone willing to put up a fight and still leave me alone on my own empire so I can manouver my army and still face the consequences. As it turns out two out of my three archers were lost plus two infantry. One of my siege weapons (cannons at this point) was in really bad shape but I was lucky to have the second one gifted to me by one Militaristic City-Estated I'm allied with (again, thanks fragger for pointing out this nice tip  :-X ) which made the attack quite easy after I managed to move it to the battle front.

I have to say, the strategic aspect of this game is fantastic.  :-X . Having to think about how to place and move your units considering the enemy's position plus terrain constrains makes for an amazing combat. It became clear to me how and why I lost m units and I will certainly play another game or two aiming at a Domination Victory in order to  lear better before playing on harder difficulty levels.  8)

Nice read JRD :-X I knew you'd pick the game up quickly though, being the very bright guy you are :)

The AI cultures play the game pretty well and seem to know just where to hit you. They're also fairly adept at predicting your moves and often seem to sense when you're planning to attack them. I once had a game where I started on one land mass with two other cultures, one on either side of me. I decided that this land wasn't going to be big enough for the three of us so I attacked one of them, the French. Big mistake... The French and the other culture, the Japanese, allied and ganged up on me. One would attack me from one side, and if I sent forces to check them, the other culture would take advantage and attack me from the other side. Then they'd switch. I was fighting a losing battle the whole time, constantly having to replace lost units and thus not getting the chance to establish any useful Buildings let alone Wonders, which in turn inhibited my financial, cultural and scientific progress. They kept tying up my time and stalling my progress with frequent attacks, while helping each other to advance, and I ultimately got squeezed out.

Some Cultures are expansionist and some aren't. I don't think it tells you anywhere which are which, you only find out by playing against them. I know that Arabia, America and Greece are among the most expansionist ones and they love to snap up territory quickly once they get a few well established cities going. The Greek leader, Alexander, seems especially prone to declaring war on you at the drop of a hat should you build anywhere near his cities, or in lands which he considers to be his, which seems to be a lot of them, the megalomaniac.

The leaders all have rudimentary personalities. Some are aggressive and some are passive, some are cautious and some are rash, some are expansionist and some are perfectionist, in varying combinations. It's interesting how they act towards you depending on how you're progressing and what sort of personality they have. If they're bigger and more advanced than you are, they tend to be friendly and magnanimous, but if you grow and start to rival them in money, tech or military strength they get edgy and less tolerant. If you surpass them they start getting petulant and threatening, or if you're way bigger then them they can be downright afraid of you.

Among the Advanced Rules is a toggle which enables you to randomize the Leaders' personalities. I've never actually tried that. I usually play with opposing cultures randomized, unless I want to try to get some payback against a particular one for what they did to me in a previous game >:D, so I like to go with their standard personalities. That way I can have an idea of what to expect when I finally find out who I'm up against, and prepare accordingly.

On the subject of Advanced Rules, one box that I like to tick is "Disable Start Bias". By default this is turned off (Start Bias enabled) and the game will start you in an area of the map where the terrain roughly imitates the historical land type of the Culture you choose to play as, e.g. play as Arabia and it will start you with lots of desert around, play as England and it will start you on a smaller land mass and on a cooler part of the map, etc. Disabling Start Bias removes this function so that you won't know what type of terrain you'll find around your starting area.

Quote from: fragger on March 24, 2015, 05:17:47 PM
Some Cultures are expansionist and some aren't. I don't think it tells you anywhere which are which, you only find out by playing against them. I know that Arabia, America and Greece are among the most expansionist ones and they love to snap up territory quickly once they get a few well established cities going. The Greek leader, Alexander, seems especially prone to declaring war on you at the drop of a hat should you build anywhere near his cities, or in lands which he considers to be his, which seems to be a lot of them, the megalomaniac.

I found this online wiki (http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Leaders_%28Civ5%29) with lots of information and strategy guides. Good read for a newbie like me. Maybe you can find something useful as well.

You can find things like the image below from Darius, who I'm playing as right now.


See the "Preferred Victory" box. It tells you pretty much what sort of victory the AI may try to go for or if you are the one playing with that particular civilization what leverage your unique ability can give you. It doesn't necessarily means what the AI will do during their turns but rather what the civilization were good at during their historic period that made them famous. See what they say about Alexander The Great:

QuoteAlexander will normally try either a diplomatic or domination victory.

Alexander is very bold and often hostile, and he will likely declare war on every civilization he meets

I seems in line with your impressions.  :-X

sounds strange to me that Alexander the Great "will likely declare war on every civilization he meets" and "will normally try a domination victory" but at the time "will normally try a diplomatic victory."

To me that sounds like complete opposite mindsets. If he is so bold and hostile and declares war on everyone he meets, how can that be consistent with diplomacy? ????

First you prove yourself as the dominant militaristic force of the globe, outgunning each and every other nation and mercylessly crushing your enemies, then you build dimplomatic relations with the remaining others and make friends with everybody who has something you are interested in such as oil or strategic locations.   :-()

Quite a realistic model I may add.......  ::)

 ??? :-(

Seriously though. The quote I found says "Alexander will normally try either a diplomatic or domination victory"... either/or. it means this civilization may grow and try to leave peacefully through diplomacy or just go for a domination victory, not necessarily both at the same time.

As for my last post, history has several examples of dominating civilizations such as Romans, British, French and more recently the US international policy model. My American friends here, please don't take any offense to that statement, it is merely an observation of how the government deals with foreign affairs, it's not a secret. Wars are fought, mostly, with many interests in the background. Whoever is invading wants something, whoever is being invaded is, at first, simply defending themselves but it probably didn't start with the invasion itself. It may as well be the case of an invading force liberating a nation as has happened before with US soldiers liberating France and changing the course of WWII. Any other nation taking sides will do so with something in mind as well. It is not necessarily wrong, its just how things are.

Civ V depicts such model quite well. If you need something you can either take it or negotiate it. Take it and there will be consequences. If you are not prepared, you will lose friends and may have to face war. Negotiate and you will have to give something back. If you don't have anything interesting to trade then you will try to expand, as peacefully as possible, into places where you can find tradeable resources. Strategic locations are very important and once oil and aluminum are revealed in the game all your strategy may change.

nice post :)

I had realised the correlative conjunction "either/or" which was exactly the reason for my surprised comment. It is as if saying, "Alexander is either a girl or a boy, either good or bad, either decisive or indecisive." Well, yes. He either wins or loses.

Thanks for the link to that Wiki, JRD. There is indeed a bunch of useful info on all the leaders there :-X The Civilopedia doesn't go into that depth of detail regarding the leaders' traits.

Man, the Brave New World EXP adds loads to the Social Policies part of the game. In addition to the policies, there is another new section to it called Ideologies. Actually, the Freedom, Order and Autocracy branches have been removed from the Social Policies screen and have now become the three overarching Ideologies (they have been replaced with a couple of new SP branches, Exploration and Aesthetics). Researching Ideologies is done a bit differently to the standard Policy branches. Each Ideology (you can only choose one) has Tenets that you can adopt the same way you do Policies, i.e. with Culture points, so when you have enough Culture points, you can either adopt a new Policy for one of the standard branches or a new Tenet for your chosen Ideology. There are way more Tenet slots per Ideology than there are Policies in the standard branches (16 per Ideology vs. 5 per Policy branch) and they are arranged in three tiers - seven in Tier 1, six in Tier 2 and three in Tier 3. They w@&k in tree format, roughly similar to the Policy branches - a Tier 2 Tenet will require two prerequisite Tier 1 Tenets. However, you can choose the Tenets anyway you like, i.e you can choose any of the Tier 1 Tenets to put in any Tier 1 slot. Once you have two Tier 1 Tenets and are ready to acquire another Tenet, you can adopt another Tier 1 Tenet or you can choose a Tier 2 Tenet. I'll post a screenie next time which will make this a bit clearer.

The catch with Ideologies is that you can't start one until you either reach the Industrial Era or build your first three Factories, whichever comes first.

An Ideology can actually be used like a kind of weapon, or rather as a means to undermine another culture's Happiness. If enough people in another culture prefer your Ideology over their own, they may actually abandon their host culture and start joining yours! Your own people might do the same to you, so you have to be careful. How an Ideology becomes attractive to other cultures is a bit too involved to go into here, but it can seriously hamstring an opposing culture's status. If it happens to you, you can try switching Ideologies, but this involves a nasty period of Revolution, which is a drastic, last-resort measure and you might end up even worse off. The idea of staging a Revolution is a kind of throwback to Civ III, where you could switch to a different government style but had to have a revolution first, which meant a period of unrest and unproductiveness. There was a funny gag there in Civ III - if you chose to start a revolution, a confirmation window would pop up which said "You say you want a revolution?" and instead of the "Yes" or "No" response, the choices were: "Yes. You know it's gonna be alright" or "No, you can count me out" :-()

Here's a rundown (http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Ideology_%28Civ5%29) on Ideology (from another part of the same Wiki). It adds a whole new dimension to the game and increases the strategic depth of Civ tremendously - as if it wasn't a deep strategy game already :-()

The method of winning a Cultural Victory has likewise had a major overhaul. It's now considerably trickier, but it's far more logical than the old Utopia Project. Here's a description (http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Cultural_victory_%28Civ5%29) of Cultural Victory in BNW (scroll down to about halfway through the article to the heading, "Cultural Victory in Brave New World".

The new additions brought in by the Gods and Kings and Brave New World EXPs are collectively like having a whole new game added to an already entire game. I could play this game for years to come - on top of the years I've already spent playing it :-X

The Cultural Victory is the oly one missing for me. I started another game after pulling off my first Domination to learn better how to w@&k with military units. I am now with the Babylonians lead by Nebuchadnezzar II  8)

That wiki says it prefers a Scientific Victory over the other but still, I'm playing warmonger again  >:D

I am curious to see the Utopia project though. The Policies part is fun and truly changes how the game unfolds and knowing it will open yet another game aspect makes me want to go for that as well.  :)

 8) :-X

Here is the Ideology window. Here, I've chosen Freedom as my Ideology:
[smg id=7768 align=center width=600]

Next time I earn enough Culture points, I can expend them to either adopt a new Policy for one of the standard Social Policy branches, or I can come here and adopt a new Tenet. In this example I can either adopt a new Tier (Level) 1 Tenet, or I can adopt a Tier 2 one. As you can see by the way it's structured, if I adopt a Tier 2 Tenet now, next time I will be able to adopt a Tier 3 Tenet or another Tier 1 Tenet, but not another Tier 2 - until I have two prerequisite Tier 1 ones. There are actually six Tier 2 Tenets available but for some reason you can only have four of them for whichever Ideology you choose. The other Tiers allow all Tenets to be acquired for those Tiers, but you can choose them in any order you like. It's highly unlikely that you'll earn enough Culture points to fill an entire Ideology tree anyway since you can't start adopting Ideologies until you reach the Industrial Era, so you need to choose them carefully - to suit the world situation, your playing style or the victory type you're aiming for.

Naturally the Tenet sets are different depending on which Ideology you choose - Freedom, Order or Autocracy. Generally speaking, Freedom is good for Scientific or Cultural victory, Order for Diplomatic victory and Autocracy for Domination victory.


The Cultural Victory is a more elaborate affair to pull off now. Essentially, if you can generate more Tourism points than the total of Culture points generated by each the other civs, you win a Cultural victory. It works like this:

The Great Artists have been removed from the pool of other Great People (there are still Generals, Scientists and Engineers, who continue to function as they always have, and the Gods and Kings EXP adds Great Admirals, Great Prophets, Missionaries and Inquisitors to the mix). The Great Artists have been split into three types: Great Artists, Great Writers and Great Musicians. Whenever you generate one of these, you can expend it to install a Great w@&k in a building or Wonder that will accommodate it, such as an Amphitheatre or the Great Library for a Writer's w@&k, A Museum or the Louvre for an Artist's w@&k, or an Opera House or Broadway for a Musician's w@&k. When you install a Great w@&k, it starts generating Tourism points, so the more Great Works you can install, the greater your Tourism value. Tourism can also be enhanced through establishing carefully selected Trade Routes, via Diplomatic choices, later-era Buildings such as Airports and Hotels, certain combinations of Wonders, and Ideological Tenet choices.

Most Buildings which can accommodate a Great w@&k will only have one slot for it, but typically the Great w@&k-enabled Wonders may have two or three slots - for example, the Louvre can house three Great Artist Works. If you don't have an available slot for a Great w@&k from a particular Great Artist/Writer/Musician, you'll either have to build Buildings or a Wonder to provide more slots, or if you have to develop a Tech before you can build a particular type of Building to house more Works, you might have to keep your Great People safe somewhere until you can. However, each of these three Great People types have one other unique ability, e.g. you can send Great Musicians into another culture's territory and expend them to do a concert tour there for a one-off Tourism boost, so you don't necessarily get stuck with excess, useless Great People.

The Great People are all named for historical personages (just as they always have been in Civ) and what I like about the Great Works is that you get to see what they are when you install them. If it was an Artist's w@&k you'll see the painting, if it was a Writer's w@&k there'll be a quote from his/her book, or you'll hear a snippet of the music from a Musician:

[smg id=7769 align=center]
[smg id=7770 align=center width=600]

With the Gods & Kings and Brave New World EXPs, Civ V has evolved into a profoundly deep strategy game. I haven't even touched on the World Congress, assigning Delegates and proposing Resolutions, creating and maintaining Trade Routes, discovering Antiquity Sites and carrying out Archeological Digs, pursuing all kinds of new quests for many new City-States, new Techs, new Units, new Buildings and Wonders, new Cultures, new Diplomatic choices - it goes on and on. This is strategy gaming on a grand scale :-X

[smg id=7771 align=center width=600]

 :laugh:  :-X

Those are annoying, always when you want to expand the bothering starts.

So far I have pulled off a Domination Victory and a Cultural Victory in Brave New World. Cultural Victory is quite tough now - I squeaked home with only eight turns to spare (out of 500). You have to generate enough Tourism points to exert 100% cultural influence over all other opponents. Whenever you achieve this with a culture, you get the pic that I showed earlier with their leader bitching about your pop music and blue jeans corrupting their people :-() You can check anytime under "Victory Progress" to see how you're doing.

Here's one of the many new units, a Trade Caravan (there is also a sea-going equivalent, a Cargo Ship).
[smg id=7793 align=center width=600]

Building one of these allows you to establish a trade route with a city of another culture, or a City-State. Once you select the destination city, movement of these units becomes automatic as they travel back and forth between the city of origin and the trading partner's. Each trade route lasts for a set number of return trips, I think twenty, after which you have to re-establish the trade route or you can establish a new one. You can build a Trade unit in one city, then expend one turn reassigning it to a new city of origin, if you have something more pressing to build in the new city of origin that you don't want to interrupt. Like any other unit, Trade units can be purchased with Gold. You have to be careful of Barbarians as they will capture and destroy a Caravan or Cargo Ship if they catch it. Later in the game (Modern Era) the caravan camels are replaced with freight trucks, and the sail-powered Cargo Ships are replaced with modern container ships.

Trade Routes will bring extra money to both trading partners, but of course the player who owns the route gets the most dough. You can also use Trade units to carry Food between your own cities, thus helping to boost Cities that aren't doing too well in the Food department. Setting up a Trade Route with another culture's Cities will bring in more money than trading with City-States, however a City-State may request a Trade Route in the form of a quest, which will generate Influence points with them if you set one up.

Trade Routes also carry Religion and Tourism influence to other cultures, which can help you w@&k towards a Cultural Victory. When you are ready to choose a destination for a Trade Route, a list appears which shows you what the Trade Route will be worth to you for each possible destination city. There is a limit to how many Trade Routes you can have at any one time, but this base limit can be expanded upon by constructing certain Buildings and Wonders.

Trade units are non-combatant, but they can stack with any other unit type, even another non-combat unit. Which is good because it means that they don't get in the way or interfere with anything. Land Trade units will travel two spaces over any terrain except Mountain, but they don't enjoy a road-movement bonus - they still move spaces per turn regardless. Cargo Ships move four spaces per turn. All Trade units have a maximum range and thus can only trade with Cities that are within their trading range. This is another instance where switching a Trade unit's City of origin to a different one can come in handy.

Trade units are a nice addition to the game - or should I say, a re-addition. You could build Trade units in Civ II, but they were dropped for subsequent Civ games, for some dumb reason. They're very useful units, and a great way to bring in extra Gold :-X

Trade routes seems a good addition indeed, fragger.

I was thinking if that sort of unit could be introduced somehow since trade routes with your cities do exist but you can only trade with City-Estates using your Great Merchant or becoming allies with them or with other civs via the trade menu once you click on another civilization's city banner.

I am beginning to master the art of trading as I get more experience in the game. You can benefit a lot from City Estates once you build up some gold. It seems that everytime you start a game you will have some resource in abundance and one very scarce or completely lacking which brings balance to the game and kind of force you to look for trading options with other players since both you and the AI will be needing something and willing to trade the excess ammount of what you have near you.

Becoming allied with one City -Estate helped me wipping the Persians off the map. That particular City-Estate (can't remember which one now) not only helped me by giving me some military units but they also created another war front against Darius with their own troops. They actually took a city by themselves and kept feeding me more troops and resources while forcing Darius to split his army on both fronts.   :)

There are many ways in which you can benefit from trading. You can get some extra gold by trading something with another player and that's the most straightforward outcome, of course. It can directly boost your production or make you enter the "City loves the King", also improving city growth and production. All of it can help you finish contructing specific buildings faster, which will also improve production and gold and food generation so there is a lot of feedback from a simple trading operation.   :-X

There are so many details and they are all very well balanced. It's not like you can just get lucky and spawn on an island with endless resources. Something will always be lacking and something will be there right from start. The game gives you fair ammounts of resources, terrain obstacles and possibilities of expansion to enable infinite outcomes everytime you start a new game.  8)

I thought Art might get a kick out of this.

There's a new unit in the tech tree in BNW that is enabled once "Nanotechnology" is researched - an XCOM squad!
[smg id=7794 width=480]


Here's what a couple of squads look like in-game (click on the image for a sharper picture):
[smg id=7795 width=600]

I haven't tried them out in combat yet since I'm not at war with anybody, and I'm so close to winning a Science Victory that I don't want to stuff it up by going to war. But once I've finished this game, I'll go back in for a post-game muck-around and pick a fight with someone. I want to see what these bad boys can do. With a whopping combat strength of 100, they should be able to biff the snot out of any enemy ground unit >:D

nice reference  :-X :-()

I won the game (science victory, yay team) then went in and picked on a hapless City-State post-game with my XCOM guys.

They lasered the opposition into glowing green slime >:D

[smg id=7802 width=600]

 :-X nice!

:-X :)

Not much free time time as I'm in the middle of a busy, life changing process but I'm finding some time to squeeze in a couple hours of game play here and there.  ^-^

I finally won a cultural victory, which means I now made it through all possible types of victory on the easiest difficulty level (settler). I immediately started a new game but this time I increased the difficulty level one notch (chieftain). It doesn't seem too hard so far so I went after information regarding what changes when you up one level. I found this table (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ5/difficulties) here. For whoever plays this game, you can see this is not too different, which explains why it feels like the same challenge as before although a little less rewarding. Mostly I can see my happiness level is not as high as before (I initially thought it was due to my choices of which wonders and buildings I am producing but it seems like both the difficulty level and my choices add up to this outcome) and the gold I get from clearing barbarian camps have decreased (this one is a direct consequence of the difficulty level alone).

Apart from that, no other civilization seems to be threatening my dominance nor does anyone seems to be prone to invading my territory so I am quite comfortable on that level so far. I am going for a scientific victory and keeping my army to aminimum and it seems like I am in for another victory.  :)

go on, JRD, show them  :-D

Reach for those stars, JRD :-D :-X

Here's one of the new EXP Civ leaders, Pacal of the Maya. He's quite the party dude, judging by his intro spiel (click on the image to read it clearly). Apparently he also has quite a flair for "hat couture"):
[smg id=7981 align=center width=600]


Over four and a half years I've been playing this game, and I've never seen this happen before:
[smg id=7982 width=378]

It popped up at the start of my turn and when I looked, sure enough, the City-State of Genoa was now in Austria's colours and had joined their empire without a fight. I don't know how the Austrian player pulled this off - I've never seen it before and I couldn't find any way of doing it myself. No option of this nature ever appears in the City-State diplomacy dialogs, which is the only interface for dealing with them. Interesting...

nice pic, that Pacal chap surely has to carry a lot of weight on his shoulders. :-D

That marriage, if he can pull it off, you should be able to do it, too. Maybe a little research on the net will help you find a way.

I found it out. Acquiring a City-State via marriage is a "special ability" of the Austrian Civ (every Civ in the game has one or two of its own special abilities, and a unique unit and/or building or two, that the other players cannot construct). Austria is one of the new Civs introduced with the Brave New World EXP, which is why I've never come across this marriage thing before. That should have occurred to me... d'oh.

I'll have to play as Austria some time to see how this ability works and what's involved.

Hehe, travel around and collect brides, not bribes. Which reminds me, I reckon that the Austrians have "Harem" as their, erm, special building?  :-()

 :-D :-D

I'm trying "One City Challenge" again. It's kind of interesting, being allowed to have only one city. It's pretty much impossible to win in any way, which is why it's called a challenge, I guess. The main challenge is to see if you can hang on until the end of the game without getting clobbered, which means playing a defensive game. What I like to do is take a quick look around with my Warrior and Settler before I found my city to see what kind of start location I've gotten. If I don't like it, I'll bring up the menu and hit "Restart". If you do this before you found your first city, the game will immediately generate a new map with the same starting conditions you've specified. I do this until I get a start location which looks well defensible, such as having mountains at my back, and shows a good variation in potential resource yields from the surrounding terrain.

In my last game I tried switching off "Time" in the allowable Victories list to see what would happen. I've never tried that before. What it does is remove the time (turn) limit so that the game will just go on and on until somebody pulls off whichever of the four main Victory types you've enabled for that game (you can enable/disable them independently - enable one, some, or all). This will theoretically give you enough time to research all of the techs in the tech tree before the game ends in a victory for someone, something that I've very rarely been able to pull off. I say "theoretically" because you'll just have to prevent anyone else from winning before you've completed the tree. Simple :-() There's always the "Just... one... more... turn..." option which appears after someone does win, which allows the game to go on indefinitely and thus allow you to research the whole tree, but of course you can't win a particular game for a second time.

I'd like to play a game where I can win by conquest using XCOM squads and Giant Death Robots >:D For that, I need to research the whole tech tree as the tech required for GDRs is Fusion, one of the very last ones in the tree.

I'm already looking forward to reading your first impressions on XCOM  :-D

Same

So am I :-()

are you going to surprise yourself, then?  :-()

"So am I" was almost as good as, "how would I know what I meant before I've heard what I said?" :-D

 :-D

Whether I agree with my opinion is another matter :-()

I'll have to remember to forget you ever said that.  :-D

 :laugh:

For anyone who likes Civ V or is thinking about taking it up, there's lots - and I mean lots - of useful stuff on this site:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/index.php (http://forums.civfanatics.com/index.php)

These Civ lovers have wrung the absolute dickens out of the game. From what I've seen so far, which admittedly isn't a lot since it's a pretty massive site,  they generally seem to be a pretty cordial and helpful bunch of people. And a big bunch it is - there appears to be over 269,000 members, but I suspect there may be a few bots among them. Then again, they've got half a million threads and have had over 13 million posts ??? In just a few skimmings of the Civ V section I've come across all kinds of hints, tips and strategies that never occurred to me before and stuff I wasn't aware of. But that's the nature of this game - the scope for strategic experimentation is huge.

They have topics on all the Civ-series games going all the way back to the original (1991 under MS-DOS / Win 3.1 - them were the days) as well as Beyond Earth and some Civ spin-off titles like Revolution and Colonization, and a few other games.

Definitely for fanatics :-()

Impressive - sounds even more significant than the ArmA site  ???

Yet another fantastic tip for getting the most out of this game.  :-X

Nice one about Austria too, nice catch.  :)

Cheers :)

Some of the Unique Strengths of the new Civs that come with the EXPs are quite interesting. An innovative one is the Mayan Unique Strength - The Long Count.
[smg id=7991 align=center width=600]

Once the Maya discover Theology, thenceforth every 394 game years (years that is, not game turns) one "B'ak'tun" of the Long Count completes and they get a choice of a free Great Person. Each type of Great Person can only be chosen once using this method, however. But getting some freebie Greats does come in handy. It can be extra advantageous if you discover Theology early because the free Great People will be earned faster due to the fact that in the early game, turns represent a greater number of years than they do later on.

Also after discovering Theology the calendar date at the top of the screen changes to a Mayan one, so it looks like this:
[smg id=7992]

Instead of showing years, it shows the Mayan Long Count date format. Here, the date is shown as:

11 K'in (@1 day) . 0 Winal (@20 days) . 5 Tun (@360-day "year") . 11 K'atun (@20 "years") . 6 B'ak'tun (@394 "years").

To make it even more bewildering (and brain-bending if you're trying to w@&k it out in your head), the Long Count calendar was calculated in a weird not-quite-base-20 format. From Wikipedia:

Rather than using a base-10 scheme, like Western numbering, the Long Count days were tallied in a modified base-20 scheme. Thus 0.0.0.1.5 is equal to 25, and 0.0.0.2.0 is equal to 40. The Long Count is not pure base-20, however, since the second digit from the right rolls over to zero when it reaches 18. Thus 0.0.1.0.0 does not represent 400 days, but rather only 360 days. And 0.0.0.17.19 represents 359 days.

???

You don't have to bend your brain trying to convert the date in your head though - hovering the pointer over the calendar bar will show the "normal" year date as the rest of the world knows it. Phew... The Long Count date format doesn't have any particular significance in gameplay turns (other than generating Great People) but it's a cool touch. And if you really want to challenge yourself you can try to w@&k the date out in your head...

Dang, fragger, I admire your ability to dive into the intricacies of the game.  Same with AB and others in GTA with the stock markets.

I'm afraid that I'm a bit too dim to do much more than is required in a simplistic game like FC2, which is likely one reason it is my favorite game of all time.

Thanks PZ :) I can get into stuff like that in Civ, but the stock market aspects of GTA don't appeal to me, just as anything to do with finance doesn't appeal to me in real life. I'm happy just to have some dough in the bank :-()

PZ, I am willing to bet a year's salary that you're not too dim. I think that those subjects you highlighted are just not in your sphere of interest but once you've found something that really interests you, you'll be at least close enough to already sniff the scent of a Nobel Prize  :-D

You're too kind, AB  ^-^

PZ, Art's just telling it like it is. I think you're one of the brightest people here :)

Thanks fragger - your comment makes an old guy feel not so old and worn out  ^-^

erm, we were talking about your brightness. Your age, however, uhm.. :-()

 :laugh:

 8-X :-D

Speaking of brightness (or dimness) I listed the Long Count date sequence back-to-front in my earlier post because I forgot that the Maya read from right to left. Not that it matters a huge deal :-D

 :-()

 :laugh: :-X

Got into a bit of Civving after a month or two of three-deeing. I needed to play with some toys after trying to make some :-()

Here's a player-generated snafu which I've bumbled into perpetrating a couple of times. First, a bit of background info, bear with me:

At the start of each turn, the program will cycle through all units you have which are eligible for movement in the current turn. It will pick the first eligible unit in the list, centre it on the screen, put an animated circle around it and await your instructions (you can immediately start scrolling the map around and away from that unit, and hitting "c" will re-centre the map on it - or you can just scroll back to it). If you don't want to move the unit just yet, you can hit "w", that unit will be moved to the end of the list and the program will come back to it after cycling through the remaining eligibles. You can also hit the space bar and that will temporarily cancel that unit's move for this turn, although if you change your mind you can scroll or minimap-jump back to the unit, click on it to reactivate it, and then move it.

To move a unit, the easiest way is to hold down the RMB and move the cursor around the map. It will continually update as you go, showing you the route the selected unit will take to get to whichever hex the pointer is currently over and how many turns the unit will take to get there. As soon as you let go of the RMB, the selected unit will begin its move to that hex (or you can cancel and start again). If the move entails multiple turns, and if in a subsequent turn you change your mind, you can click on the unit before it makes its next move and cancel the order - it will then stay where it is and you can give it a new order. A unit that has been given a multi-turn move order won't actually carry out each successive move until the end of each turn, which gives you a chance to click on it and cancel the move if you want - however you have to find the unit yourself because the program won't centre the map on such units until they get to wherever you sent them.

So, a couple of times now there's been a unit selected and awaiting orders, but I've scrolled away to look at something elsewhere on the map. I've then inadvertently pressed the RMB after scrolling the map quite a distance away from where the unit is, and being such a faithfully obedient little unit it has dutifully began moving to wherever I've accidentally clicked without me noticing - until like 24 turns later when it has announced itself from some far-flung corner of the world at the end of its mystery tour. Or, I've left a unit somewhere, forgotten about it until several turns later when I've remembered it, only to scroll to where it was and find it gone. I thought it was a program glitch at first, until some time later when the unit gleefully announced itself from the surprise vacation I sent it on - halfway around the world and at the very bottom of the map, wondering why in the blazes it was sent there but too poignantly loyal to question orders.

I like to call this ham-fisted technique "Accidental Tourism" :-()

There is an easy way to find a unit that's been unknowingly sent AWOL however. You can bring up a list of all units, double-click on the one in question and the map will centre on it, which is how I've managed to track down the occasional one that I've inadvertently made go walkabout. That's provided I actually notice it's missing before it calls home from Ultima Thule...

That is not the only way to "lose" your pawns in the game, Ive got a bad habit of garrison units inside the cities, and then trying to find these units , and I don't remember where I placed them.

 :-D

I've just been playing a bit of Civ V when I remembered a cool little Easter egg that popped up once in Civ III.

A quick bit of info: There was a special optional rule in Civ III called "Regicide". It could only be selected at the beginning of a new game, and when enabled each culture's leader would appear in the game as an actual unit which could be moved around on the map just like any other unit, instead of just appearing as an animated head in the Diplomatic screen (the Leader units would look like who they were supposed to be - a little Napoleon, a little Cleopatra, etc., in their correct historical garb. They were kind of cute actually). The Leader units could actually fight as combat units, so if you liked you could in effect personally lead your troops into battle. Of course, if a Leader unit got killed, that player was out of the game. This allowed for an additional Victory condition - if you could bump off all other players' Leader units, so that you were the last Leader standing, you won the game (any other Victory types you'd selected at the start of the game would still be in effect if you didn't do this).

There was a further variant called "Mass Regicide". Same deal, but instead of a single Leader unit, each player would have seven - seven Julius Caesar units, seven Abraham Lincoln units, and so on. Then you had to find and kill all seven of another player's Leaders to eliminate that player. The Leaders could be hidden in cities, could be out in the field with the troops, could be squirreled away in some remote location - they could be moved freely around the map as the player pleased.

So one day I fired up a saved Mass Regicide game and I'd been about halfway through it when I'd saved. I got a bit of a surprise to see that all seven of my Leader units had turned into little Elvis Presleys. WTF? I thought. I'd expected to see seven little Catherine the Greats, instead I had seven little gyrating Elvises. When I clicked on one and moved him, he made a comment - something about a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I put another one into Fortified mode and he responded with a Presleyan "Thank you verra murch".

Then the light went on. I checked the date: January 8, the date of Elvis' birthday. When I played the game the next day, the Elvises were gone and the Catherines were back.

I thought that was pretty cool little egg 8)

 :-X

nice  :-X :)

I gave myself a challenge - try to research all technologies in the game before the turns run out. In all my years of playing Civ V, I've only ever pulled that off once before. Usually you're playing towards a specific one of the four victory types and as a result don't need to research the whole tech tree - or you simply run out of time before you can get them all (a standard game lasts for 500 turns).

So I put all other considerations aside and focussed solely on scientific advancement. It almost bit me in the bum  - by concentrating on Science, I had very little in the way of military forces and tech, so when not one but two of the other Civs simultaneously declared war on me, I nearly lost the lot. I just managed to repel them with only two badly damaged Swordsman units remaining to me, but it was enough to send them scurrying back behind their borders - and in true bully fashion, once they'd been hit back they didn't bother me again (though they kept denouncing me for the rest of the game, the sulking cry-babies).

[smg id=8851 align=center width=600]

[smg id=8852 align=center width=600]

There are 82 techs in the game, divided up into eight eras: Ancient, Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, Industrial, Atomic, Modern and Information. All players start with "Agriculture", and go from there. You can actually choose which Era you want to start in during game setup - by default, "Ancient" is the start Era, which is how I always play. You can see how the tree is like a flowchart showing which discoveries lead to which, left to right. You can also see how some Techs may require two or more prerequisite techs to be researched, e.g. "The Wheel" requires both "Animal Husbandry" and "Archery". This may seem an odd combination to lead to the wheel, but bear in mind that the earliest military use of both animals and wheels together was in the invention of the Chariot, a unit which "The Wheel" Tech allows you to then build ("Chariot Archer"), so it does actually make sense. The Tech Tree is very well thought out in regard to logical progression. There are a few leaps here and there, but they can be forgiven since overall it's very cleverly worked out.

Once you get to the end of the tree, you just keep researching Future Tech over and over. They are numbered - Future Tech 1, Future Tech 2, and so on. The Future Techs don't allow any new units or abilities or anything to be created - it's really just to give that part of the program something to do. You do, however, score additional points for every Future Tech you manage to research before the game ends.

[smg id=8853 align=center width=600]

[smg id=8854 align=center width=600]

The chance to build the ISS doesn't come up very often. It only becomes available when any player is the first to research the "Satellites" Tech. Even then, the opportunity to build the ISS can only be proposed as a resolution in a regular session of the World Congress, which then may or may not be passed, depending on how many Delegates each player commits to a vote of "Yea" on it. So it's a bit of a rarity, but it does convey some nice benefits to whichever player contributes the most Production points towards its construction (it's a collaborative effort, not built by a single Civ like other things, but whichever player can commit the highest amount of Production points towards it during its construction gets to "own" it when it's finished. There are similar World Congress projects, like the World's Fair and the International Games. All this World Congress stuff comes with the EXP, "Brave New World". The World Congress doesn't exist in the vanilla game, but it should, IMO. It's a fantastic addition).

Incidentally, you can switch the Time Victory (turn limit) off altogether, so the game will just keep going until someone wins whichever of the other four victory types you have enabled at the start of the game: Conquest, Scientific, Diplomatic and Cultural. These can be toggled on/off independently of each other, so you can have any combination of victory types in a game (you can turn off all victory conditions entirely, including Time, so the game will go on ad infinitum with no winners, if you're so inclined. I don't see much point in that, but the option is there). If Time is the only victory type enabled, then the game will run until the final turn is reached (in 2050AD) and the winner is then determined by highest points scored. If any of the other victory types are enabled, then the game will end when somebody achieves one of them. Regardless of how a game ends, you can still keep playing on afterwards for as long as you like, but of course nobody can "win" for a second time, and scoring is automatically turned off.

Anyway, I still have about fifty turns left in this game (due to the nature of my self-imposed challenge, all victory types are turned off except Time). I met my challenge, so I'll play out the rest of the turns and see what kind of score I can rack up. One side benefit of having all the Techs is that I now have a formidable arsenal of advanced units on hand, so If the other Civs get uppity and try invading me again they'll find themselves up against Missile Cruisers, Nuclear Submarines, Battleships, Destroyers, Stealth Bombers, Jet Fighters, Helicopter Gunships, Mechanised Infantry, Rocket Artillery, Modern Armour , XCOM Squads and Giant Death Robots - and if all else fails, I have nukes in the barn. A few Fat Men dropped on their Capitals should make them rue the day >:D

brilliantly played, fragger :) Apparently it takes at least one advanced ball but more likely a pair of those to pull that off. Wasn't me who said so, I can read it there in the first pic, from top left three down.. actually, there are three balls in that slot.. I can imagine that the game pops up an inspiring message on your way getting there which, since it's all about development, might read, "grow a pair for extra points and grow three for the win." :-()


Although it sounds funny, unfortunately I am pretty sure that the advanced ball got cut short and it was probably advanced ballistics if spelled out. ;)

 :laugh:

Yep, it is indeed "Advanced Ballistics". I really don't need another ball, advanced or not :-()

Alright, now that we played ball and hoofed it a bit we may abstain from dwelling on it for much longer and let the ball do the w@&k :-()

Agreed, let's change the subject :-()

[smg id=8855 align=center width=600]

Points are awarded for many things, including total population, land occupied and enemies destroyed (and much else). Because I was focussed on science, I didn't throw up a lot of cities, do much expanding or mong much war, so my score didn't loom very large. I'm still happy with it though, considering. I racked up no less than six Future Techs, which was beyond my expectations.

My personal best so far has been about 5400 points, more than a double Caesar (no, that's not some kind of fast-food salad). Vanilla Civ V used to have a "Hall of Fame" screen which preserved one's highest scores and lent credence to one's bragging rights, but they did away with it in some update years ago. Now you just have to take my word for it :-()

good. :-D

OK -- waiter, one double Caesar and a glass of Charlemagne to wash it down with, please. :-D

 :-D

[smg id=9336 align=center width=600]

[smg id=9337 align=center]


[smg id=9338 align=center width=600]

[smg id=9339 align=center width=600]

Note that above this panel is the "Victory Types" one. These are the five victory types allowable, and they can be toggled on/off independently. You can see here that I have "Time" and "Cultural" selected. The "Time" option is interesting. This is enabled by default, so that a game will end when the time, or rather turn, limit is reached (500 turns in a game, given my choice of map size and difficulty level). However, if "Time" is disabled, the game will just run ad infinitum until somebody achieves whichever of the other four Victory types are enabled - Science, Domination (Conquest), Cultural or Diplomatic. You can turn all of them off if you want, so that the game would run forever and nobody would ever win, but why you would want to do that I don't know.

If Time is enabled, yet nobody wins by any of the other enabled means, then the game will end on the last turn and the winner will be whoever has the highest point score at the end. It's still a way to win, but not as satisfying as the other methods.

I have won a Cultural Victory once before on One City Challenge, but on that occasion I had Time disabled. Even so, I won on turn 469, so that had I had Time turned on it I would have had a more legitimate reason to celebrate. But this time it was, so now I officially do 8)

Cultural Victory is not easy to achieve even in a "standard" game, where you can have as many cities as you can afford to build and thus a whole empire to support your ambitions. Pulling one off with just a single city is something of an achievement for me.

Now to see if I can win any other victory types in One City Challenge... Maybe I'll go for a Science victory next. It really is an interesting way to play the game :-X

very nice, fragger  :-X :)

Nice read, fragger  :-X