Civ 5 thread

didn't notice anything about AI that was really overly good or bad, but I'm not that advanced into the game, so the only real interaction I did with AI was with Barbarians and basic basic diplomacy. this is playing on Prince difficulty.

the Barbarians I noticed were dumb, but that's because they're barbarians maybe? I would plink their town with undefended horse archers and their warriors would often just stay in base and not come out, so taking them down was usually simple enough.

The Barbarian warriors would also rush my city and get destroyed, but it clearly states in the manual that this is what Barbarian units will do - something to the effect of "when a Barbarian encampment produces a unit, it will make a beeline for the nearest city and try to cause havoc." One time the warrior killed my undefended worker, which was definitely a noob mistake on my part.

The other civs AI was standard civ AI. They fortified and complained when I massed troops near them, some did open borders and research agreement trades, others didn't. Nothing to really report there.

 

I haven't seen anything really stupid yet, it seems to be about the same or better than previous civs... the 1up reviewer might have been the stupid one, who knows. I mean, so far I've yet to see the AI get ahead of my tech (but haven't played beyond prince level yet) but I generally setup my defenses in chokepoints, so they've never had the chance to attack my cities directly yet.

They don't seem that stupid though, an ironic example I played out today is that Japan pretty much surrendered (gave me everything minus its' capital) after I dropped a nuke on one of their major inland cities. On the other hand Rome would simply never give up even after being nuked MULTIPLE times - it seems to me your AI experience is directly affected by the civ's "personality". Some never seem to give you trouble (russia), some are just plain jerks.

Like the guy above said, the barbarians are pretty dumb, but they are barbarians.

 

As im slowly finishing my 2nd standard game (15 hours total gameplay) First one was on chieftain and super easy. This one is at prince and im on turn 456 and its been pretty simple. Next game will be one step up. But the problem with the difficulties is it doesnt really make the civ's "smarter" rather it just gimp you and buff them to compensate for the difficulty.

 

Installing the game now...let the addiction commence! I would take anything ign or 1up say with a grain of salt. They always base their reviews around a minor issue or something most people do not care about.... but tonight when i play ill see about this AI issue

 

Ahhhh....the smell of a new pre-ordered PC Game....

" Steam has closed down due to an error
Did this program installed correctly?"

NOOOOO!!!

My second attempt works yay! Non-sleepless nights looming....

 

My GPUs are not overclocked, no. Looking at the complaints on the 2K forums, I don't think the problems are hardware-based -- people with Nvidia and ATI (anything from a few years ago until today's) GPUs are having problems. OS as well.

DX9 mode is working fine for me now, I just beat my first game on Prince difficulty. It was way too easy . . . the AI was pathetic. Civ 4 is a harder game on comparative difficulty levels.

 

omg its 2:08.... need sleep now!

 

Barbarians have always been dumb in all Civ's. They are just aggressive and attack regardless of the odds. They are just a harassament race.

 

Yes, but I seem to recall that in Civ4 they could sack your cities. Maybe I'm remembering incorrectly, or perhaps it's because I'm playing on chieftain level, but I noticed in Civ5 the Barbarians don't sack your cities. They just hang around waiting for you to destroy them with your city's artillery.

On chieftain level, during the early game, it seems you don't even need to keep any units in your cities for protection.

 

It's more logical this way. Cities are not supposed to be so easily invaded without siege weapons.

 

City States are really annoying! Do they really bug/annoy bigger countries in real life with lots of side quests like in the game ? hah!

 

Yes they are annoying. I'm like ten moves away from being able to help them yet they keep screaming at me "help me, help me". I would if I could you sniveling wimp!

BTW if you haven't seen the thread, you can buy Civ 5 for $39.95 at Direct2Drive this weekend, well any game for 20% off as long as you spend $49.95 or more using the code IGNDEAL. So I bought it!

 

whats annoying is that you help them out and their allied with you...but 5-10 turns later they apparently randomly hate you

I also do not understand the diplomacy in this one.... no matter how much I can try to get them to agree to a deal they always say no or want like 4 citys or something....its crazy

 

I'm not a hardcore Civ player, but I have tried the demo and it seems to be buttersmooth on my MSI. The Barbarians are not the smart and do not attack as much as I would have expected. But I think the idea is to compensate for not being able to stack. When being too friendly and diplomatic with the other AI players You can always use the barbarians to help increase rank on each military unit. I actually like that I can't stack since it will be more like a RTS where most games is terminated with a huge group of soldiers destroying everything on it's path. Not I actually have to think about how I attack since if I stack higher ranked with lower ranked I would loose less.

Anyways, this is only first thoughts on the game and I think I can be rather addicted to this crap

 

Arg, I had just taken London (as the filthy Russian Empire) and then as I was looking through demographics it crashed... Now my brilliantly planned invasion was all for naught and the sniveling Elizabeth will continue to insult my nation's (much more advanced but smaller) military.

 

I hate this game in a good way lol! I thought I would just play for an hour before I went to bed because I have a 8:30 class in the morning...Next time i checked the clock...3 am ..crap.... I just wish the AI was a little smarter...I am starting to see how dumb they kind of are... They never really attack you they just hurrass your city then back away...never really try and conquer anything

 

@gdansk: that's why I set my autosave margin to save every turn for a max of 12 turns

I'm starting to think that the game was meant to be played at king level or higher - at king level I actually had an AI (iroqouis?) complete the apollo program, at about the same time I completed the manhatten project... you can guess what happened shortly after that I've seen the AI take quite a few of my cities (back) actually, just never the barbarians.

At emperor level barbarians are actually quite a hassle in early and late game, but seem weak in midgame. At early level they'll harass your workers/farms and snipe your scouts, you have to escort settlers ect... in late game they start producing battleships and destroyers and blockading your trade routes, though it's true I've yet to see them try and take on a city.

ps Egypt is damn powerful. If you fail at rushing early with war chariots or can't eliminate enough people in time (I managed to take out both china and aztecs before they even had pikemen) you can turtle up and pump out wonders faster than any other civ, making you untouchable in your endgame.

 

I found through a few play troughs that the Japanese are one of the most powerful warfare civilizations... I can have one swordsman group take on 3 of anyone elses without breaking a sweat

 

Would you recommend Civ IV or Civ V for someone who is thinking of getting into this game?. You can pick up Civ IV for around $10 used or around $20 for the complete game (with expansions). Are there really major differences to justify getting the Civ V?

 

The basic controls, premise, and environment are similar, but gameplay is a little different. Civ IV is an awesome game though, and I wouldn't pass it up for $20 with the expansions. If you play Civ IV you will easily be able to pick up on Civ V.

 

I repurchased Civ IV Complete Edition from Amazon. Gave Civ IV and expansions away to friends. Can't beat that deal and Civ Colonization is better than Civ Revolution on the consoles. I still haven't pulled the trigger on V yet. I guess because Civ IV got spit shined and cleaned up since release.

I may do the same with V.

 

I notice a few things in the game. It a CPU/GPU hungry game thinking of upgrading my cpu for this dang game lol.

Few things to worry about is Running out or ores or oil.

 

Is it true that this game is a Civ 4 dumbed down?

 

The AI isn't as developed as its predecessor, but it's wrong to say this iteration is "dumbed down" from its predecessors. If the reviews and player feedback is to be believed, the experience is very different from Civ IV.

 

The game Differnt then Civ 4.

 

Its got some things that are better then the old ones yet some things are dumbed down.... for example one thing thats new and imo better is that ranged units aside from siege weapons (archers) have a few space range instead of hand to hand like the old ones... but one thing i hate is the dumbing down of resources... for example you do not need saltpeter for musket weapons were in the old ones it was required... but on the plus side you can only build one unit to every resourse aquaired such as if you have 2 iron you can only build 2 swordsmen

 

Coming from a RTS background (starcraft, command and conquer, etc) I thought I wouldn't enjoy this because it's slow but it's strangely addictive. I still shudder when I see my units move one tile and then run out of moves for one turn sometimes but there's so much stuff happening that it's ok. Since this game is so approachable to non Civ fans, I'm guessing the hardcore Civ fans are not going to appreciate it as much which would be unfortunate. I tried Civ IV, played one game and then put it down, I'm on my 2nd game and still going strong so far. I wish it had more specific scenario's like Civ Rev though, I have a real problem with the fact that the game is all skirmish and there's no specific "challenges" or pre-set scenarios. But yeah, loving it, and runs pretty smoothly on my quad-core, I imagine there's a crap load of calculations during late game and my system is keeping up fine. Looking forward to more.... just one more turn...

 

welcome manwithmustache to the "HOLY CRAP it's 3 am" club

 

Yeah seriously! It's like

"Oh ok, maybe after this research is done i'll stop"
*research completes*
"Oh but I'm so close to conquering this city-state here now, ok I"ll conquer them and stop"
*8 hours later, eyes bloodshot*
"... ..."
*clicks Next Turn*
*collapses*

 

Hopefully the Rise of Mankind Civ IV mod will port to Civ V. That mod was THE MOD!

 

I must be one daft hick compared to the rest of you guys. I tried the demo on Steam and found it a bit slow and boring for my tastes. It felt like a turn-based version of the latter Rise of 'whatever' RTS games, which I never really liked much either. Chock it up to a short attention span or whatever, but it seems to take forever for the action to get started. In SC2, I start seeing action in as little as a couple minutes.

On a smaller map, how long would it typically take to start getting really exciting? (ie, battles going on every which way?)

 

well Honestly civ is not about the battles... their are multiple ways of playing and winning where military conquest just happens to be one

 

Rage... RAGE. That is like saying Quake is a Halo clone...
Rise of Nations was heavily inspired by Civilization (hence the cities and borders among other things). Other than that, I'm not too insulted you don't like actual strategy games but finicky real time tactical games. Be honest, Starcraft is at most an operational level game But misnomers will be misnomers

 

Just got the game yesterday afternoon (just saw it in stores here in Asia yesterday).

Started playing at 8:30pm in the evening. After glancing at the clock in my room, I was surprised to see it was past 2am already.

As a first time Civ player, I guess I understand what Civ veterans mean when they say, "just one more turn"...

The game also seems to run pretty smoothly on my G73 from what I can see (though I am still playing the tutorial). Running at DX11, 1920x1080, everything at max, no AA.

 

Just got the game, seems run fine on DX10/11 on max settings (specs in sig). I've been trying tutorial mode, though not sure what race to go as. My first time playing, so I'm hoping for an easy play through. Any recommendations for a race?

 

Japan is a good civ if you're going for domination victory, maybe a little too good. The attack and defense remains the same for your combat units, even if they are wounded.

France also provides a massive cultural bonus which helps your territory to expand quickly.

 

I don't see the argument for dumbed down. If anything it is the opposite as while some resources have disappeared as others have said, you don't get an infinite amount of units out of a finite amount of resources so it takes far more intelligence and strategy to play.

Perhaps it is because I rarely go to war unless I need to except in the latter stages where I am in a better position.

This game I think takes more thought than civ 4 at least as balancing , gold, happiness and a military is much harder IMO.

 

I have a question, do you guys ever conquer another civ earlier on? I find that I always goto war at the later stages of the game, usually once i get artillery. Have you guys conquered with some of the more earlier units?

 

I took 2 civs out as soon as i got archers and/or catapults... quite easy when the ai is not smart enough to kill your pults first

 

Conquered the world with Japan as my first play through, their units are simply imba, could keep on fighting and fighting at same power, then level up -> heal to full and continue...

 

In Civ5 you do not want to set your workers on automation.

I tried a game vs. AI over the weekend on a huge map and my workers ended up building a lot of roads and bankrupting me during the medieval era. Roads and tile improvements are very expensive in Civ5.

 

Sorry, didn't mean to incite rage. I'll give it another shot sometime later on down the road. Possibly during a Steam sale?

 

Yeah they are pretty bad with railroads too, building them next to roads...

My major issue with the game right now is that playing on a huge map is just not doable. It eventually crashes in the late game in addition to turns taking forever, not cool. Large plays just fine though, not sure how they messed this up.

 

Sorry, I don't mean to say it must be everyone's cup of tea. I rage'd when you compared to the RTS games it inspired rather than recognizing it as the progenitor of a good number of those features Anyway, Civilization V is fun but I'm getting bored of some features already, like the city-states. I think I'll turn them off next game.

 

Don't worry about it.

If Civ 5 is like Civ 4 or 3. I don't consider Civ games that much of strategy. To me these games are more of a designer, building, creation games, not to say there isn't strategy involved. But honestly, I think the most skill these games involve is patience which a lot of gamers like myself lack. It's just a different flavor, if you like turn based games then Civ 5 is great.

Certainly not my cup of tea. I'd rather play Anno 1404 myself.

 

Absolutely different strokes for different folks. But I don't think a strategy game should be about how fast you can do something, but how well thought out your strategy is. TBS games allows this. Even Sins of a Solar Empire does because of its molasses pace.

Games like Starcraft and C&C are really just a clickfest with a knee jerk response action. You definitely need to know how to counter units and have good build orders, but it's more of a real time tactical action game.

SC2 requires rapid response, Civ games require a broader picture and overall long term strategy. It's hard to change course in Civilization once you've chosen a certain path (domination, wealth, intellect, space, whatever) whereas in SC2 you can change on a dime more or less.

That being said, I enjoy both. Each require different skills.

 

Anyone able to post the various victory vids online? I can't seem to find them on YT.

 

damn, finished a game, exit, and found out it's already almost 12 midnight... and I have an exam tomorrow...

 

Finished my first game in a bit of a cheesy way... This was playing on Prince difficulty on a normal map.

I conquered the two Civs on my continent after about 200 turns. From then on, I set about researching and teching while Britain went buckwild crazy conquesting every other Civ throughout the world. around 350 turns their military was much more dominant than mine, and she was double my score. But I won by just gathering 7 destroyers, 2 cannons and a Mechanized Infantry, and making a beeline to London. I quickly sieged the capital with my ships and cannons, and the Mechanized Infantry marched in after 3 turns for victory.

The victory felt kinda cheap to be honest considering a real player would have obviously kept their capital better defended. The AI kept some longbowmen and a couple infantry/cavalry around the city, and only managed to get a few ships and infantry over to the capital before I rushed it. I'm sure that if I had to play 10 more turns, my little siege force would've been wiped out, but I won because I had the last capital standing...

a simple AI command would be to instruct the Civs to keep their capital cities heavily fortified once only a few are left in order to prevent backdoor victories like mine.

Also, reading some of the forums, it seems that a very common pattern is for one AI civ to get powerful and steamroll the rest of the AI civs, leaving just you and them to fight it out. I understand that there will be some survival of the fittest, but I hate that the weaker AI doesn't have the smarts to band together to prevent one dominant Civ from snowballing over the rest one by one like this.

I'll try playing again on King Difficulty with Random AI personalities and more Civs, we'll see how it goes. Taking French empire and going for a Project Utopia victory this time.

 

Interesting, I noticed this as well in the game I played vs. AI on Prince difficulty. I thought it had something to do with the leader traits of Alexander.

If you select Domination victory as the conditions for winning, you only need to conquer the capitals? I thought it was necessary to wipe out every unit and every city.