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The Civilization V Thread

note to self: when freeing the slaves (aztecs in this case) from rome late in game, consider that they may be in a position to win a science victory.
 
I've thoroughly enjoyed Civilization V so far.

Started playing my first game on normal difficulty so far and it's been a blast. I'm playing a Pangea standard map at quick pace and my nearest neighbor is keeping up technologically.
 
ryken said:
no one will trade me a luxury good straight up for a different luxury good. I was trying to get silk, and offered dye, dye plus 50gold, and dye plus gems; the bastard wouldn't take any of it. What gives?
Click to expand...

Access to each unique luxury gives you +5 happiness, but excess doesnt help any. If the AI has only 1 silk and you offer 1 dye, he gains nothing. If you offer him dye and he already has dye, again no gain. Offer him dye and gems and gold when he already has dye and gems, then you are basically giving him 50gold to lose 5 happiness. No deal!

At least thats how it looks like things work. The game is pretty hard to understand without diving into a gigantic manual or spending hours on civfanatics.
 
ryken said:
no one will trade me a luxury good straight up for a different luxury good. I was trying to get silk, and offered dye, dye plus 50gold, and dye plus gems; the bastard wouldn't take any of it. What gives?
Click to expand...
Two things. First, they're not going to trade with you if they only have one source of said luxury good, since it's essentially a zero sum trade for them. So check the number next to the good to make sure they have more than one source. Also, they're not going to trade with you if you have a poor relationship with them. The diplomacy screen will show if they're hostile towards you, in which case they definitely won't trade.
 
whelp, after offering a whole host of trades, I finally just decided to attack the bastards. After taking out almost all their units and a 90% of a city, they offered gold, 2 luxury resources (including my silk), and peace on a city state (which had asked for help). All in all, it was a success. Got peace, and then took a good sized city from Japan. Ghandi was pissed, but whatever man, he's just been asking for free shit every other turn without offering anything.

This game is getting really fun. Once you get some roads going and some siege units, the game gets much more fun.
 
After playing 3 single player games I have not touched the game in almost a week. I upped the difficulty level each time, but the AI just keeps doing idiotic things, sure they beat me to research and wonders but they still neglect the defense of their cities (no garrisoned units, walls, castles,etc..) and cannot use their ranged units effectively.

I have had a single unit detached from my main force in the middle of 5 cannons and instead of having all the cannons blast that unit to bits (2 or 3 could do it) they try to run away in the forest while I have that unit take them out one by one.
 
Between Gothic 4, and F1 2010, and FIFA 11, and the upcoming New Vegas, I can't get through even one game in Civ V.

This is exactly what happened to me with Civ 4. The games are so long that I can't complete them. I would say I'm about halfway through my first Civ V game.

Jesus, I've got to do something about this... but again tonight I'll be back playing Gothic 4....
 
WabeWalker said:
Between Gothic 4, and F1 2010, and FIFA 11, and the upcoming New Vegas, I can't get through even one game in Civ V.

This is exactly what happened to me with Civ 4. The games are so long that I can't complete them. I would say I'm about halfway through my first Civ V game.

Jesus, I've got to do something about this... but again tonight I'll be back playing Gothic 4....
Click to expand...

Just face it. You don't finish games anymore :p

Not since Fallout 3. Did you even finish Risen?
 
DryFire said:
After playing 3 single player games I have not touched the game in almost a week. I upped the difficulty level each time, but the AI just keeps doing idiotic things, sure they beat me to research and wonders but they still neglect the defense of their cities (no garrisoned units, walls, castles,etc..) and cannot use their ranged units effectively.

I have had a single unit detached from my main force in the middle of 5 cannons and instead of having all the cannons blast that unit to bits (2 or 3 could do it) they try to run away in the forest while I have that unit take them out one by one.
Click to expand...

copy that, I just dont care anymore. I went back to playing civ4 during my cigar ritual.
 
Tried this 2 nights in a row playing on easy on large maps.

Both times I've done really well up until mid game then just got completely and utterly raped. It's just happened again, I'm doing really well, my first 3 main citys have maxed out land space all upgraded to the max, kicking out loads of resources, shooting way ahead of the research, im using artillary to shell the crap out of enemies...

Yet I can't seem to fucking make alliances with anyone, I open borders I gift them shit, I ask for treaties, they just refuse every single time, so what ends up happening the first time is everyone allies and I get stuck into a corner on the map and anyone I attack basically means every single unit in the game comes down on me.

The 2nd time I played it (tonight) I manage to stay at peace with a bunch of people but one civ is getting massive and I can't get unit right across the map to their cities, so I try and gang up on them by asking other civs to join me (THE MOST BASIC TACTIC FOR REMOVING STRONG PLAYERS FROM GAMES SINCE RISK WAS INVENTED) and yet they persist in ignoring me.

What is the point in having all of these options to negotiate if literally nothing works?!

So anyway this one civ builds up, I cant ally with them, I can only ally with several small civs who don't want to gang up, we're all bickering amongst the 1-2 asshole civs who insist on causing trouble and keep me occupied until the strongest civ just dumps down an army 20x my size on me...

This is on easy, this isn't ultra hard real politics mode, this is EASY, yet I've been annihilated both times despite a top civ in both matches, simply because the AI is shit and cannot ally with humans.

What a massive waste of time, up playing until 2:30am only to get trounced...so lame.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Tried this 2 nights in a row playing on easy on large maps.

Both times I've done really well up until mid game then just got completely and utterly raped. It's just happened again, I'm doing really well, my first 3 main citys have maxed out land space all upgraded to the max, kicking out loads of resources, shooting way ahead of the research, im using artillary to shell the crap out of enemies...

Yet I can't seem to fucking make alliances with anyone, I open borders I gift them shit, I ask for treaties, they just refuse every single time, so what ends up happening the first time is everyone allies and I get stuck into a corner on the map and anyone I attack basically means every single unit in the game comes down on me.

The 2nd time I played it (tonight) I manage to stay at peace with a bunch of people but one civ is getting massive and I can't get unit right across the map to their cities, so I try and gang up on them by asking other civs to join me (THE MOST BASIC TACTIC FOR REMOVING STRONG PLAYERS FROM GAMES SINCE RISK WAS INVENTED) and yet they persist in ignoring me.

What is the point in having all of these options to negotiate if literally nothing works?!

So anyway this one civ builds up, I cant ally with them, I can only ally with several small civs who don't want to gang up, we're all bickering amongst the 1-2 asshole civs who insist on causing trouble and keep me occupied until the strongest civ just dumps down an army 20x my size on me...

This is on easy, this isn't ultra hard real politics mode, this is EASY, yet I've been annihilated both times despite a top civ in both matches, simply because the AI is shit and cannot ally with humans.

What a massive waste of time, up playing until 2:30am only to get trounced...so lame.
Click to expand...

I've found that it is easier to neglect an army in Civ 5 - I think the one unit per tile thing is subconsciously keeping me from producing a large enough military.
 
Yeah attacking people and winning fights is fairly easy, with a mild tech lead and sensible use of units especially ranged balistas/cannons you can really flaw a large army, use your fast mounted units to flank archers, use your footsoldiers to take down pikemen, keep all your units away from their natural enemy so cover your cannons from sneak footmen attack etc...

Also what I don't get is that sometimes an equal civ will bring out upwards of 10 units, maybe 15 total which is quite a lot, and i'll be fighting back with maybe 4-5 decent units and I'm struggling for money, I have a strong economy with large cities which when set to gold preset can churn out a lot, but it all gets blown on the military, I don't understand how the AI can afford armies that large, I can still defeat 1 other civ bringing that much pain my way but it's completely retarded to expect anyone to fight alone vs several of these attacks, and it's stupid this situation even exists on easy.
 
I agree on the silly amounts of units the enemy can have. I have taken to fortifying a unit on a hill and soaking up the attacks. Once you get promoted enough to heal an extra point per turn you can hold out for a while especially if you have a ranged unit behind them to sofgten enemuies up.

Still, where the A.I gets all these I don't know.
 
I often see the enemy AI operating at negative gold per turn with no cash in reserve. Is there a penalty for this?
 
Can someone please explain to me the tactics that revolve around a non-military win, I mean if politics is either broken or unusable and you can't use military for a win then I have try something else. But for example a technology win, other than optimising your citys for research (1 click each) and creating alliances where you share technology...is there any other kind of tactics, it doesn't seem so?

Military seems like the only really interesting option to me, that requires some strategy and planning ahead, expanding the cities isn't really very hard at all.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Yeah attacking people and winning fights is fairly easy, with a mild tech lead and sensible use of units especially ranged balistas/cannons you can really flaw a large army, use your fast mounted units to flank archers, use your footsoldiers to take down pikemen, keep all your units away from their natural enemy so cover your cannons from sneak footmen attack etc...

Also what I don't get is that sometimes an equal civ will bring out upwards of 10 units, maybe 15 total which is quite a lot, and i'll be fighting back with maybe 4-5 decent units and I'm struggling for money, I have a strong economy with large cities which when set to gold preset can churn out a lot, but it all gets blown on the military, I don't understand how the AI can afford armies that large, I can still defeat 1 other civ bringing that much pain my way but it's completely retarded to expect anyone to fight alone vs several of these attacks, and it's stupid this situation even exists on easy.
Click to expand...

in the honor tree there is a policy to cut military cost by 1/3 and one of the other trees (freedom?) there is another to increase happiness a good deal and then in commerce there is one that reduces road costs. between those 3 you should be able to bank sufficient dough as long as you arent building every type of building in every city causing the maintenance costs to skyrocket

although I believe the AI cheats a bit to do what it does as I've seen large civs that had a ton of cities/puppets and large armies and yet they continue to function pretty well.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Can someone please explain to me the tactics that revolve around a non-military win, I mean if politics is either broken or unusable and you can't use military for a win then I have try something else. But for example a technology win, other than optimising your citys for research (1 click each) and creating alliances where you share technology...is there any other kind of tactics, it doesn't seem so?

Military seems like the only really interesting option to me, that requires some strategy and planning ahead, expanding the cities isn't really very hard at all.
Click to expand...

diplomatic victory is pretty easy, before the vote make sure you are the ally of a bunch of city states and maybe one of the other civs and you will win right there.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Can someone please explain to me the tactics that revolve around a non-military win, I mean if politics is either broken or unusable and you can't use military for a win then I have try something else. But for example a technology win, other than optimising your citys for research (1 click each) and creating alliances where you share technology...is there any other kind of tactics, it doesn't seem so?

Military seems like the only really interesting option to me, that requires some strategy and planning ahead, expanding the cities isn't really very hard at all.
Click to expand...

Tech rate is based on your population, so the more citizens you have the faster you'll be able to research. However, even if you go for a non military victory you can't completely ignore your military. You'll either have to befriend a military city state for a free army or build a small one yourself.

A fun non military victory would be the Bollywood achievement. Where you have to win a cultural victory with Ghandi using no more than 3 cities. So grow your cities as large as you can and befriend as many city states as you can. There are several cultural wonders you'll need to get in order to do this.
 
Thanks for the info. I do generally have a very good technology rate anyway, I'm generally very militaristic but shoot for a strong economy to back that and as such tend to end up with cities which are maximum size by expanding rapidly and buying up all the land as fast as possible, focus on large population first then switch to whatever I need later in the game.

One thing I didn't know at first was that roads need upkeep, I tend to build quite a lot, some long highways between my cities to make moving military units around for defence much easier, I also tend to just build absolutely everything building wise for all the bonuses, I guess a fair few of them aren't necessary and can be cut back, plus other cultural bonuses for cutting costs could help support a bigger army, I'll look into that.

I'm not so interested in non-military wins, I find the managing of the cities and economy pretty trivial and it seems like most of them are just build as fast as possible and out pace the other civs in one area, the rest is just defending yourself and managing the politics which just seems broken to me anyway.
 
It takes some micromanaging to really get the most out of your economy. Its worth it though, all that extra cash can help you fund any sort of victory. Some tips-

-Only build what you need. For a military victory thats pretty much just units and happiness buildings as needed. Barracks and production buildings in your production cities, which are the major ones you start with. Ideally you want a city or two with rapid production of high-level units via barracks/armory/wonders that give free xp.
-Raze enemy cities, surround captured enemy capitals with trading posts to offset the costs of all the crap they will build. Fill the gaps with your own cities. Puppeting is also an option if you pave them over with tradeposts.
-Manually control your workers, or they will build a lot of crap and do silly things like embark to a city on the other side of the map.
-Worker control: build improvements to reach luxury goods first, then farms near water, tradeposts on everything else. Roads between major cities or to quickly reach an enemy (production city to your border).
-Experience bonuses matter, a small but good army can smash a larger AI army. Withdraw and heal a wounded unit instead of letting it die. Fortify a unit next to an enemy city to soak the city attack while an archer weakens the city, they will both level quickly.
-Tech is important. Upgrade obsolete units with experience, donate the rest to an ally city-state.
-If you are going for a domination win, start early. You can take your first capital with warriors very early. This will give you a big buffer space to expand early-game.

I like Huge games personally, even if I never run into half the civs before they die off. I usually play Prince level since that's the 'normal mode' with no advantages to either side. Earth, Terra and Continents maps are fun, I would avoid Pangaea though since there's just so much land and it disadvantages sea tech and civs like England. Plus its a pain late game when you could just embark and get somewhere quicker (Askia is great there, and a good civ if you want a military victory).
 
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thing is I like to automate the workers once I have a shitload of them and area to work, in past civs I believe there was an option for the workers not to replace existing improvements but I haven't seen this option anywhere, did I overlook it or was it one of the "improvements* they made with this game?
 
Here's the latest patch notes they're working on, no release date is currently set.


UI
• Fix for production prompt that sometimes appears with newly created puppet states that could stop the player from being able to end the turn.
• Aircraft banner corrections – now when you rebase an aircraft, the number will move with it.
• Resource icons now come up with Ctrl-R again, instead of sharing the same button with Build Roads.
• Selecting a great general will no longer cause yield icons to appear.
• Added option to disable auto-unit cycling.
• Fix for full-screen game when running dual monitors. Previously, the curser could scroll off the “open” side, and not be able to scroll the map in that direction.
• Misc additional fixes to mouse controls, and other interface issues.
• Rounded out financial information in the Economic Overview screen. Details now provided on the amount of gold provided by each city, the cost of buildings in each city, etc.
• Auto-populate save menu with save file name
• Allow selection of other cities by hex from within the city screen
• Added detailed trade route info to Economic Overview screen

MODDING
• Category list now displays correctly

GAMEPLAY
• Workers - Added option to force workers to ignore manually made improvements (so they don’t change what you decide was best for a plot).
• Workers - Fixed bug where number of turns to complete were incorrect in build action button tool-tip.
• Economy - Fixed bug where players could disband a single unit, and not see the economic return until disbanding 1 more.
• Economy – Increased city wealth setting to 25%
• Economy – Multiple fixes to the way trade-routes are tabulated and recognized.
• Economy - Can now sell Buildings in a city (to help lower maintenance for obsolete buildings later in the game).
• Trade – Found and corrected a Trade problem that could cause your Resource inventory to multiply.
• City States - Fixed a bug where you could not gift aircraft to city states.
• Military - Medic promotion now only provides healing bonus for adjacent units.
• Military – Fix for Minuteman movement.
• Military – Correct promotions for “archer-like” units (horse archers, chariots).
• Military - Embarked units will no longer slow enemy land units
• Military - Improved unit cycling logic. Camera will jump around much less.
• Balance - Engineers +1 hammer

AI
• Military – Better handling of unit need (navy vs land, etc.) .
• Military - AI will tend to build ships to deal with blockaded cities more often
• Military – Corrected an issue hampering movement of AI armies, especially when in close proximity to enemy forces
• Diplomacy – AI will be more reluctant to offer or accept open border agreements with more powerful opponents.
• Diplomacy – Fix for never ending deals (peace, research agreements, etc).
• City – City specialization and city focus improvements.
• City - Cities that are Avoiding Growth will not grow while that option is selected
• Workers – Priority of trading posts reduced, and rebalanced priorities on other improvements
• Workers – Improved the path-finding mechanic when building route-to roads improved, including a large performance increase when evaluating road-pathing.

MULTIPLAYER
• Exploit – Fix for gifting unit exploit
• Chat – Color-coding, sound alerts, etc., added for in-game chat system, including a larger window.
• Deals – Additional deal validation put in place to verify deals before they are committed

MISC
• Research treaties that end because you declare war will no longer grant the free tech
• Save/Load – Fix for corrupted saves being experienced by some players in late-game.
• Map - Huge map crash-during-load fix that were reported on some specific systems.
• Map – Terrain caching fix that could cause problems for certain video cards (the “glowing red orbs” seen on the map are an indicator of this).
• Map – Fix for the low res terrain that appears the first time the game is run (terrain tiles would not load in anything but low-res the first time you play on some computer configurations)
• Strategic View – Crash fix for units rendering in background.
• Strategic View – Fix for selecting units either standing on a city plot, or garrisoned in the city plot.
• Eyefinity – Better handling of leader scenes when using Eyefinity displays.
• Tutorials – Many tutorial tweaks and adjustments.
• Multiple crash fixes.
 
Thanks Ritorix, quite a few of those points are things I already do, I manually control the growth of my city when it comes to workers, I tend to raze enemy cities when I have the chance and generally the economy is fairly easy to manage, my main downfall is spend, I go overboard with buildings which a lot of the time I don't really need, the cost adds up I guess.

I'm good with my army units, I can defeat an army much bigger than mine with sensible unit use, retreating and healing and that kind of stuff, generally very clever baiting with weaker units and good use of long range bombardment with cannons (I swear the cannons are the best unit mid game)

I think Pangea might be where I'm falling down, I reckon a continent based map would work, where I can flex military might one just 1-2 civs at a time without bringing down a whole world of crap about me, although I find managing units across water a bit of a pain it's probably worth the trade off. I'm going to restart a game when I get home in about an hour and see if I can nail a military win.

*edit* Sell buildings in a city would come in very handy for me, I always overdo it and end up financially worse off for it, patch notes look good.
 
Still no fix for the retarded AI and advanced game setup. I guess I'll just stop playing until they fix that.
 
thanks John, that patch note answer my question. The sell building option would also come in handy. A lot of these are not new concepts, some date back to past civ games, seems like they rush this game out the door which is disappointing.
 
AI
• Military – Better handling of unit need (navy vs land, etc.) .
• Military - AI will tend to build ships to deal with blockaded cities more often
• Military – Corrected an issue hampering movement of AI armies, especially when in close proximity to enemy forces
• Diplomacy – AI will be more reluctant to offer or accept open border agreements with more powerful opponents.


That all should help towards the AI. The 'dancing units' thing was annoying. Open borders is a trap anyway, no real reason to ever let an AI onto your lands and the AI should act the same. Its more an option for real multiplayer.

Selling buildings should really have been in from the start. But at least now you will be able to do stuff like build granaries to boost growth then sell them later, or annex and sell everything, etc.


• Military - Medic promotion now only provides healing bonus for adjacent units.

When you nerf medics, everyone will be a medic. :rolleyes:
 
Interesting patch notes. I stopped playing because of the blue screens. Hopefully they will be fixed.
 
Quick question - do I need to work trading posts, or do they provide gold just sitting there by themselves? Also, what's the pact of secrecy good for? I can't find it listed in the Civilopedia (maybe because it is a secret)
 
Forceman said:
Quick question - do I need to work trading posts, or do they provide gold just sitting there by themselves? Also, what's the pact of secrecy good for? I can't find it listed in the Civilopedia (maybe because it is a secret)
Click to expand...

Pact of secrecy was answered earlier in the thread. There is never any reason for you to get into one with an AI.
 
This game is so rough it is not even beta version quality. The balances are aweful, diplomacy is a joke, the only real way to win is either to defeat everybody (since everybody you look at funny declares war on you) or have more cities/land by the year 2050 than the rest. Making the rest of the winning conditions meaningless as well as half of the game mechanics.
 
I played a duel game this weekend and won a cultural victory, but it took so long and was so boring it would have been much easier to knock out my opponent and add every bit of landmass to my kindgom.
 
WildMonkey said:
This game is so rough it is not even beta version quality. The balances are aweful, diplomacy is a joke, the only real way to win is either to defeat everybody (since everybody you look at funny declares war on you) or have more cities/land by the year 2050 than the rest. Making the rest of the winning conditions meaningless as well as half of the game mechanics.
Click to expand...


you realize theres a bunch of different win conditions.. turn off the time win condition and you can go up as high as you want.. hell ive got 10 hours into my game and im in the year 2285 because im literally trying to take over the entire world.. not just kill the AI.. only problem is i ran out of uranium.. no more nukes for me :(

as far as quality.. its exactly what its suppose to be.. the civ series is a modder community game.. its designed to be modded.. its why they release the SDK's for civ 3 4 and 5.. they created the base for the game.. now they give people the freedom to make the game into what the gamers want instead of what the developers want you to play.. now if only more developers thought this way gaming would be great like it once was in the late 90's early 2000's..




• Fix for full-screen game when running dual monitors. Previously, the curser could scroll off the “open” side, and not be able to scroll the map in that direction.

this is the fix im waiting for.. thats the one thing that annoys me since i run dual displays..

• Map - Huge map crash-during-load fix that were reported on some specific systems.

this one as well.. since i usually play the world map.. i have to load the map wait for the game to crash.. then restart the game and the map loads fine the second time..
 
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Don't forget that the comparison with Civ 4 is really with Civ 4 + 2 expansions, which added a lot of polish to the game. I'd expect similar improvements over time to the base Civ 5 as well.
 
Unlocked: Oct 19, 2010 11:34pm
Flawless Strategy
Beat the game on the Deity difficulty level.

I've never been so happy to see Gandhi as my opponent. LOL.
 
Forceman said:
Don't forget that the comparison with Civ 4 is really with Civ 4 + 2 expansions, which added a lot of polish to the game. I'd expect similar improvements over time to the base Civ 5 as well.
Click to expand...

Both Warlords and BtS added content and some polish but vanilla Civ 4 was more polished than this. This game has a lot of rough edges that should've been smooth out before it even hit the shelves.
 
kledar586 said:
Both Warlords and BtS added content and some polish but vanilla Civ 4 was more polished than this. This game has a lot of rough edges that should've been smooth out before it even hit the shelves.
Click to expand...

indeed, not to mention it was just a much more full game...I didnt start installing mods until about 1.5 years ago and I've been playing civ4 since the jump and it was always fun and interesting...so much so that it could be more/less challenging on the same level of play just due to the differences between ai opponents and the map generator...

I'm really surprised they threw away all the advances they made in civ4 + expansions with espionage, corporations and religions in favor of hex maps and a cultural policy system?
 
maademperor said:
indeed, not to mention it was just a much more full game...I didnt start installing mods until about 1.5 years ago and I've been playing civ4 since the jump and it was always fun and interesting...so much so that it could be more/less challenging on the same level of play just due to the differences between ai opponents and the map generator...

I'm really surprised they threw away all the advances they made in civ4 + expansions with espionage, corporations and religions in favor of hex maps and a cultural policy system?
Click to expand...

Agreed. Seems like a step backwards.

I just want a damn map editor.
 
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