Civilization V

[TheHarlequin]

I've tried several times for a cultural victory and failed completely. I now realize it's because I've had fairly large empires. I'm now trying for an India three-city cultural victory. Hopefully, I'll start in the Americas.

 

That makes 0 sense to me.. the larger you are > your world culture should be not less.

[Thorton_AP]

Not a big fan of the new happiness model as others above me are discovering. They removed corruption and pollution just to make happiness overly sensitive where it requires a massive amount of micro managing. And you get one resource and 2 turns later they loose interest in it and want something else. Its non-stop, fairly annoying.

 

 

The "interest" in the resource has nothing to do with the overall happiness model. That's simply for "We love the king" day's which increase your growth rate. Depending on the speed of the game you're playing, they tend to last like 10-20 turns. Once it's done, they request another resource you don't already have.

 

 

For the happiness model, if you get a new luxury resource you get +5 happiness. This will never go away as long as you keep that luxury resource.

 

Pollution in the old games required a stupid amount of micromanagement and I don't miss that at all. Lack of corruption is disappointing though. I liked the incentive for keeping your nation more continuous.

[Thorton_AP]

@Maria - Do you always play the Earth Map? One thing I have really enjoyed with the last two iterations of Civ has been the random map generation. Continents for the win.

 

 

That makes 0 sense to me.. the larger you are > your world culture should be not less.

 

The game states that the cultural victory requires you to build the utopia project, which you unlock by completing 5 of the policy trees. The cultural requirements for acquiring new policies goes up with more cities. The tooltip for culture explicitly states this.

Edited October 1, 2010 by Thorton_AP

[Rosbjerg]

Lack of corruption is disappointing though. I liked the incentive for keeping your nation more continuous.

 

But it killed the idea of colonies, which was a shame..

[Raithe]

I've tried several times for a cultural victory and failed completely. I now realize it's because I've had fairly large empires. I'm now trying for an India three-city cultural victory. Hopefully, I'll start in the Americas.

 

That makes 0 sense to me.. the larger you are > your world culture should be not less.

 

But to get the Cultural Victory you need to complete 5 of the trees of "Tradition, Freedom, Liberty, Honor, Piety" etc.. and for every city beyond the first.. the total cost for each new one is increased by 15%..

 

So the more cities you have..the more is needed and the longer it takes...

 

The question is where you can find the balance.

[Deraldin]

I've tried several times for a cultural victory and failed completely. I now realize it's because I've had fairly large empires. I'm now trying for an India three-city cultural victory. Hopefully, I'll start in the Americas.

 

That makes 0 sense to me.. the larger you are > your world culture should be not less.

 

But to get the Cultural Victory you need to complete 5 of the trees of "Tradition, Freedom, Liberty, Honor, Piety" etc.. and for every city beyond the first.. the total cost for each new one is increased by 15%..

 

So the more cities you have..the more is needed and the longer it takes...

 

The question is where you can find the balance.

 

I don't think you guys are quite getting his point. You're arguing from game mechanics. We all known how things work in the game. He's saying that a larger empire should have more culture than a smaller empire, simply because it's larger, has more people and therefore more creators and contributors to it's culture.

 

If you track the amount of culture points that a given civilization has, this is quite possibly true, but as you get larger your get less benefit from each point and I think that was the main problem Harlequin had.

[Raithe]

I look at it as the bigger the culture.. the harder it is to adjust the cultural thinking..

 

Which is represented by the increased cost to those cultural aspects...

[Enoch]

I've tried several times for a cultural victory and failed completely. I now realize it's because I've had fairly large empires. I'm now trying for an India three-city cultural victory. Hopefully, I'll start in the Americas.

 

That makes 0 sense to me.. the larger you are > your world culture should be not less.

Meh.

 

The whole idea of translating "culture" into a number that can be compared and rated between two peoples makes 0 real-world sense to me. If it makes gameplay sense to do it, the means by which you do so doesn't matter all that much to me. Small empires create more culture because the game designers wanted to give the players a victory option where the key gameplay element involved caring for and ensuring the survival of a small empire that spends most of its resources on city development rather than on empire expansion.

 

 

BTW, I recall reading something on the Civfanatics forums where someone did the math and calculated that the optimal # of cities for a cultural victory on the default speed and map size was 4.

[Thorton_AP]

I don't think you guys are quite getting his point. You're arguing from game mechanics. We all known how things work in the game. He's saying that a larger empire should have more culture than a smaller empire, simply because it's larger, has more people and therefore more creators and contributors to it's culture.

 

If you track the amount of culture points that a given civilization has, this is quite possibly true, but as you get larger your get less benefit from each point and I think that was the main problem Harlequin had.

 

As Enoch states, it's a game victory condition that ultimately doesn't necessitate "Need a huge empire."

[Calax]

[Tale]

I got paid. yay

 

I know what I'm doing. Blowing cash on this and Claptrap.

[TheHarlequin]

I've tried several times for a cultural victory and failed completely. I now realize it's because I've had fairly large empires. I'm now trying for an India three-city cultural victory. Hopefully, I'll start in the Americas.

 

That makes 0 sense to me.. the larger you are > your world culture should be not less.

 

But to get the Cultural Victory you need to complete 5 of the trees of "Tradition, Freedom, Liberty, Honor, Piety" etc.. and for every city beyond the first.. the total cost for each new one is increased by 15%..

 

So the more cities you have..the more is needed and the longer it takes...

 

The question is where you can find the balance.

 

I don't think you guys are quite getting his point. You're arguing from game mechanics. We all known how things work in the game. He's saying that a larger empire should have more culture than a smaller empire, simply because it's larger, has more people and therefore more creators and contributors to it's culture.

 

If you track the amount of culture points that a given civilization has, this is quite possibly true, but as you get larger your get less benefit from each point and I think that was the main problem Harlequin had.

 

Someone got it... thanks for clarifying my point to the others

[Calax]

I suppose the reason for that is while being larger you have more sources of culture, but also it's harder to keep the ball rolling in terms of culture and often a cultural magician might end up completely useless because he is not recognized by being lost in the sea of people.

[Thorton_AP]

Two of the largest nations in the world (Canada and the US) don't really have one specific culture. I'd say US culture is very predominant still, but I'd consider a much smaller nation like Italy to be a much more culturally recognized civilization.

 

Large nations often integrate a large variety of subcultures into what makes up their culture.

[Raithe]

Hm... I just can't seem to keep playing more than an hour without taking a break from Civ V...

 

Which just feels wrong for a game of Civ...

[Nepenthe]

Two of the largest nations in the world (Canada and the US) don't really have one specific culture.

 

[Tale]

Played my first game. Spent way too many hours on it.

 

I won by scientific victory, as is my tradition. But I was generally so rich and ahead of everyone else in technology I could have raized the planet. They come at me with pikemen, I field longswords. They field longswords, I field riflemen. They field riflemen, I field infantry. They field infantry, I field stealth bombers and giant death robots.

 

They were not catching up.

[Malcador]

Can I get your autograph ?

[Tale]

I really miss satellites. The one you research that reveals the world map. I could build giant death robots and space ships to other solar systems, but I still had no bloody clue where Persia was. And he was somehow winning.

[Kissamies]

This is a bit like Civ 3. Some good ideas, bad implementation. Some radical changes like getting rid of "commerce" that gets transformed into gold, science or culture by sliders. I like that one. I was somewhat sceptical about those social policies, but they seem nice. It's like another tech tree and I'm always a sucker for tech trees. Made me care about culture like never before. City states I like, just like I thought I would. Should be more ways to interact with them, though.

 

IMO the game suffers from oversimplification, just like Civ 4 did a bit. However, 4 was still pretty good and BtS fixed it pretty nicely. Not sure if expansions can fix it this time, though. AI doesn't seem to be that smart, especially the war AI. Pretty easy to beat. Could be that the 1 unit/hex is too much for its pathfinding or something. I just get the impression that it's being overly careful and doesn't unleash the hordes like it should. I've beaten many superior armies just because they come at me piecemeal. Maybe they can improve it.

 

So Civ 5 is pretty nice... but can it stand the test of time?

[Calax]

I think the problem for the ai is that it's one unit per hex. Plus the arty stuff and ranged kicks them in the groin as they come at you piecemeal and you just have three archers wiping out entire armies.

 

...

 

Now that I think about it, this reminds me of Empire Total War where you could be moving three units and a general around on the field and watch the enemies entire line constantly reorganize itself while the other 80% of your army cuts them to shreds.

 

And the culture thing I think is to prevent the expansion that we saw in civ3 and 4. Also to make smaller empires viable (I much prefer three or four cities rather than having to rush out to get 12-18 before all the land is taken). and make them more specialized rather than specializing cities.

[Starwars]

Yeah, I think the AI was really just as bad in Civ IV. The thing was that the key to victory there was basically stacks of doom. Since warfare is a much more tactical (and fun) affair, it seems that the AI hasn't really been updated enough to take advantage of it.

 

There are some things that definitely need to be polished up (combat AI and thus, difficulty, is the most prominent one), but I think the core gameplay is waaaaaaaay better in Civ V. It's true that it's not strictly improving upon Civ IV, but changing some things up. I welcome most of the changes. The inclusion of city-states in particular adds another layer, though their uses will largely depend on your playstyle. Social Policies are a great way to "customize" your civilization, though I would've liked it if they also had a negative side to them so that you needed to balance things out. Worldwide happiness is something that could be viewed as dumbing down at first glance, but it means it has a bigger impact overall. Same thing with resources, unit management. There's less of it, but each piece of the puzzle is more important.

 

I think the main thing I miss is the Espionage. Not that I think it was particularly well-implemented in Civ IV (it got annoying as hell after a while) but I would've really liked to see a better version of it.

Edited October 3, 2010 by Starwars

[Tale]

I'm not sure I gather the point of garrisoning a unit in a city. It didn't ever seem to really effect the outcome of combat. All it did was protect that unit from taking damage, while not allowing it to attack.

 

And heck, if you lost the city it was garrisoned in, the unit just poofs.

[Malcador]

I'm still not liking the global happiness, nor being able to adjust my tax, science, etc. spending. The finite resources is a nice touch though. Really wish that instead of doing away with the stacks you could form stacks of limited size, so you end up with a force that's linked. Also, wonder why there's no foreign trade, would be a nice addition to the diplomatic system - it could stand with some.

 

All in all, it does remind me of Civ 3, new concepts but still in need of tweaking.

Edited October 3, 2010 by Malcador

[Calax]

I'm not sure I gather the point of garrisoning a unit in a city. It didn't ever seem to really effect the outcome of combat. All it did was protect that unit from taking damage, while not allowing it to attack.

 

And heck, if you lost the city it was garrisoned in, the unit just poofs.

You don't put melee units in there, you toss in archers and other ranged units that can shoot the attackers two squares away with your city basically stopping any offensive cold by wiping out most of the units incoming.