Civilization V

[Abletile]

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:)

[fragger]

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

[Abletile]

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

[JRD]

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

[fragger]

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.

[fragger]

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 :-()

[Art Blade]

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." :-()

[PZ]

 

[fragger]

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)

[Stiku]

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)

[Art Blade]

glad you're enjoying it, fragger :)

[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.

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

[Stiku]

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. 

[fragger]

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.

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...

[fragger]

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):

1: The "Yin-Yang" icon in the city name banner indicates the fact that a prevailing religion has been established here - in this case Taoism, but I changed the name of it to something else (modesty forbids me from telling you what).

2: My spy has revealed that the Brits are up to no good. I'll have to be wary of them in my future dealings. After all, how can one trust a nation that dumps its excess prison population onto an unsuspecting land mass? (Just joking, my English friends... :-())

The yellow circle highlights a Holy Site Improvement, which I established by expending a Great Prophet in that hex. When this hex is being worked by a citizen of Madrid, it will yield a whole bunch of Faith points as well as the resources provided by the terrain type. Bow ye down before the light of the world...

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

This is part of the Espionage interface. I have two operatives so far: Mathilda, who is currently in the process of hacking into London's best-kept secrets to steal a technology, and Rodrigo, to whom I have yet to assign a mission. The panel on the right shows the various cities to which I can assign my spies - if I choose one of my own, the spy will try to protect that city from enemy spies (note that even though I'm playing as the Spanish, some of my cities have American names - those are ones I have captured and are now part of my empire). If I don't want to assign a spy to anything, I can send them to the "hideout", where they can do nothing but at the same time can't come to any harm. If they get caught during a mission they may well end up dead, and it could lead to an international incident.

[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.

[Art Blade]

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

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

[Stiku]

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

Spoiler

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[Art Blade]

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

[PZ]

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

X2  :-X

[fragger]

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 ????

[Stiku]

City-state perhaps donated you one?!?

[fragger]

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.

[fragger]

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.

Here are a couple of pics (clipped) of two new units - Triplane Fighters and Great War Bomber (taking a hit). They look pretty cool in their animated state:

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

[Art Blade]

yep, nice  :-X :)

[PZ]

Indeed, reminiscent of the Red Barons triplane