That sounds like an exploit that's going to get fixed in the next patch. :) Probably by forbidding workers to work on enemy land.
It is not cheese! It is a totally valid tactic that simply makes sense. In real life, when the Romans invaded a province, they brought along hordes of peasant workers which allowed their legionaries to recuperate by burning the fields that the workers repeatedly sowed. It's just common sense.
Love the justification, Mark M, but there is zero chance that I'm willing to put in that kind of micromanagement to squeak out an advantage. Flashbacks to pre-chopping forests and micromanaging whips in Civ IV...shudder.
So I take it, you don't move lock all workers and then set a production focus just when a city grows and changes it back right after for the free hammers?
I do micromanage my worked tiles, actually -- that's an optimization problem I enjoy and intrinsic to the Civ experience for me. Just not to the point of switching around tiles before pop growth to scam a few free hammers. Blech.
Realistically, if you're repairing the improvements, it should be costing you more in gold to repair than what you get from pillaging it again.
The funny thing is that it's not really any extra micromanagement. If you're like most people, you're manually controlling your workers anyways. And again, most people steal a worker from a CS in the early game anyways. The only difference is that instead of running that worker back to your home cities, you leave it near its original owner. It's actually *less* micromanagement, in a way, since it's a lot easier to just hit the repair button over & over (and the sentry or pillage button for the military unit) than it is to actually escort the fellow back to home base.
You can capture workers from other city states and civs and then force them to mine salt. It doesn't exactly sound like a salaried/hourly position.
The Great General bug is really making things unnecessarily difficult for me against barbarians in my GMR games. Thanks, Firaxis.
Just finished a game on Prince to check how the AI does without outrageous bonuses, and I'm happy to report it's doing quite well. Even on an island map all AI city tiles I uncovered were properly improved -- a few patches ago I'd see unimproved tiles around capitals in mid-game. The AI was spreading rapidly across the oceans, too, and Arabia even eliminated another civ entirely -- I don't think I've ever seen that before on an island map. Eventually Arabia won a spaceship victory while I was busy defeating another player. The tactical AI is still kind of dumb but otherwise Prince is a pleasant level now, not much easier than in Civ4: BtS.
Babylon: Worst designed civ, or the absolute worst designed civ? Seriously. Given how Civ 5 is designed, a civ that gets a large bonus to research merely ends up teching *way* ahead of what his empire can handle, and he collapses when his one excellent troop dies to the first wave of AI invader. Either that, or you ignore his special ability & play normally, in which case it's like playing a civ with no bonuses. And his UU & UB don't help at all. Walls suck, even when they're improved walls, and his super special archer is completely useless, since any decent player techs to Construction toute suite and gets Composite Bowmen anyways. And for later game stuff, getting a bonus to Great Scientist production is like a kick in the teeth; I *never* get Great Scientists now; every other great person type is more useful. (Except Great Admirals. Oh... and I guess your third & later Great Generals are pretty useless too.) /rant off Edit- I should add that all this only applies to high difficulty single player games, which is the only thing that I play. For multiplayer or mid-level single player I would imagine that their tech boost would be fairly fun. But at higher levels, production (or gold, which is just another form of production) is *always* the limiting factor.
I dunno, I think Babylon is pretty good actually (playing on Emperor). - Early research boost lets you get to certain key Wonders faster and pretty much lock them in. - Not having to pick and choose your techs early on is pretty handy. - Being well ahead on tech through the Medieval era is a strong benefit. - Opens up the option of working Tradition for an early 4 free Amphitheaters. - Walls are ok, but yeah not exactly exciting. Some combo with Tradition + Honor though. - Better archers means you don't have to rush for Composite Bowmen. - Easily demolishes early AI attacks, though I do prefer early units that keep bonuses across upgrades.
The better archers make it kinda feasible to do a Pikemen/Education/Chivalry strategy with Babylon and forego Construction until after you have those techs. It worked on Prince! I dunno about MP.
Played a bunch yesterday on Polynesia/King/Archipelago to check out the patch a bit. Outside of a few bugs like pop-ups for ruins/CS-meetings not showing up until the next turn, I'm very happy -- particularly with the AI. Polynesia/Archipelago is completely, utterly unfair, and yet I'm not running away with the game like I absolutely would have pre-patch. I have the usual couple of minor AIs that have no chance (Austria, Russia, Celts, Ottomans) but the Incans, Carthaginians, and Swedes are right up there with me in tech and land. Now, granted I'm playing for a cultural vic because lol Moai, but still. Pachacuti has swallowed the Celts and half of the Russians (who were actually even before their disastrous war with the Inca), Sweden appears to be trying some kind of cultural path but is going to lose the race badly to me (lol Moai), and I'm not really sure what Carthage is doing. Sully could have made my life interesting had he declared on me a while ago, but he got stuck fighting some defensive wars against Carthage and Russia that left him under-expanded and behind the development curve. At this point he's welcome to suicide onto my Gatlings at his leisure. As usual, I sprinted ahead by saving up a Golden Age's worth of moneys and buying factories everywhere as soon as I hit Industrialization and got coal connected. Piety is, like, waythefuck better than I remember it -- not sure if it changed, but crapping out half-price shrines and temples everywhere that give double faith means a whole lotta GPs, missionaries, cathedrals, and pagodas very quickly. Good times. I'm going to win barring some crazy naval invasion by Pachacuti, but this map would have been a hilarious walk pre-patch. Nicely done, Firaxis.
"Sire, which tech shall we research next?" "All of them! Give me all the techs! And while you're at it, get me techs from some other games as well. We need Superstring Theory... I hear chaos guns kick ass."
Welp, the good news is that I achieved Utopia around the turn of the 20th century. The bad news is that it didn't trigger victory. Love the patch, but it could perhaps use a little more time in the oven.
Perhaps your Utopia wasn't Utopic enough. Did you fill out the Honor tree? No? There's your problem. Any Utopia without honor is no Utopia at all.
After further experimentation with the Babylonians, I have to admit: AaronSofaer and Jasper were right. The Babylonians *are* pretty good after all. I was just playing them wrong by focusing too much on increasing my research. (At the expense of my production & expansion) I remain unimpressed with their UU & UB, though. They both kinda suck.
True! But that's probably a good thing and I bet intentional, since their leader ability is one of the better ones. I suspect the stronger and cheaper wall would actually be alright playing against competent opponents, it's just that the AI is poor enough at military that extra defenses are generally unneeded.
Civ Fanatics seems to think the GG bug is text only (the effect is still there) and can be resolved by clearing your cache. I can't confirm, but I thought I'd pass it along in case someone wants to try.
Not only that, but their spawn rate & aggressiveness have been jacked way the hell up, even when I haven't selected raging barbarians. Not that I mind, though. They're so active that it's almost like fighting a weak but omnipresent civ for the first 100 turns. *Everything* has to be guarded from turn 15-ish onwards. Makes the game quite a bit more interesting, IMO.
Man... now that the AI is much more aggressive in settling cities (as it should be), I'm finding that this game desperately needs a "Where can future cities be settled" overlay. There have been several times now where I built a settler hoping to squeeze in a city somewhere only to find out I miscounted the number of hexes from one of the pre-existing cities.
Also, some way to find out projected *defensive* losses would be pretty nice too. The "move unit to spot, see if city can destroy it in a single turn, if so then reload & do something different" dance is getting kinda old.
I've been playing a lot of games recently with "random civ" selected, Partly because I enjoy making everything random & see what kind of game develops, but also because I enjoy re-acquainting myself with civilizations that I had played earlier while trying to get the achievement for winning with each civ. Anyways, so the most recent civ the game handed me was the Inca. Back when I first played them, I wasn't so good at Civ 5. I didn't fully grok what was going on, or how to maximize my development. Now that I do, however.... holy shit, I think the Inca are one of the most powerful civs in the game, now that Austria has been nerfed in the recent patch. It's a situational thing; sorta like how Spain's bonus can give them a boost in the early game that makes them unstoppable. But it requires a fair amount of luck for Spain to become runaway like that; they have to be the first to find a wonder, and that 500 gold bonus is only super helpful if they find it very early. A 500 game boost on, say, turn 100 isn't a big deal. But the Inca's bonus doesn't require all that much luck to kick in; mountains are pretty common, and the map generators have a natural tendency to put hills next to mountains anyways. And even if a hill has only one mountain hex next to it, that's still a tile that yields 2 food and 2 production when you put a terrace farm on it. But you'll often find grottos & niches where a tile will yield 5 or 6 food. (plus 2 production) That's an *unbelievable* tile at any stage in the game, but having that tile available after Construction is pretty fantastic. One of thosee super tiles alone could power a city to become a super-city. And you'll often get multiples of those... or you'll get several hills with 2 mountains, so the tile yields 3 food and 2 production, which is still really nice. The long and the short of it is that terrace farms are pretty fantastic, and probably make the Inca overpowered. It's a fun kind of overpowered, but I recently played a couple Incan games to see how they play out, and I've abandoned the games by turn 100 because they were all foregone conclusions. The incas do have a drawbacks: they're not financial powerhouses. Building out on the mountains means they tend to not be near rivers. However, one of their other special abilities pretty much counters that: all their roads are free (in hills) or half price (anywhere else). And the military advantage of having troops that zoom right over hills can't be overstated. It's a *huge* deal. The only unmitigated thing that truly does suck about them is their UU. Slingers blow. They're like archers, except they can't fulfill the main use I have for archers: protecting my busy workers. They'll retreat, allowing the barbarian to take my precious, precious worker. Fuck you slingers.
Brief thoughts on another civ I got recently in my random civ smorgasbord: The Polynesians Goddamn these guys are fun. Zipping around, taking to the sea before other people have invented the idea of "boats" or "swimming". It really allows you to grab territory on small islands off the coast, and even get settlers where they're going faster by hopping into the water & sailing there. Their UU is kinda useless, but at least it's not a net negative like the Incan slingers. And the Moai... I dunno. I'm not convinced that they're actually all that good, but it is really cool setting up your land such that a single tile might yield 3 or even 4 culture.
Yeah, Incas are really good, though it depends on the map generator. My son plays them a bunch, and the perfect Mountain/Hills setup doesn't come all that often. Kind of like how I only find lakes when I'm not playing the Aztecs. I like Slingers, especially since you can ditch their poor attack strength once you upgrade them to Composite Bowmen -- which are already pretty good even without a boost that makes them largely immune to melee troops. It's brutal in combination with the fast hill movement and a few Pikemen to deal with cavalry. Similarly the Polynesian early unit is good because the ability carries through upgrade -- in practice it effectively gives all opposing units -10% combat strength.
Huh. I get good mountain/hill setups all the time, and I consistently choose "Shuffle" or "Continents" with everything set to random. Yeah... but they follow the melee infantry upgrade line. It's handy to have one or two of those guys around, but that's about it. And they rarely stand next to the enemy for long... they tend to need to run away to heal constantly, so they're only brought in for key moments. (like right before a city is ready to be taken.)
Oh, I see decent Mountain/Hill setups frequently, just not great ones. Same way a Carthaginian Harbor + Sea Pantheon civ can kick great ass, except that you can't always have all your cities be ports. And I think you're discounting the benefit of the Maori's ability. Melee troops are quite useful, and I do generally use them to stand next to opposing units. Helps to have more than a few so you can rotate them out too and keep the fear effect going.
Oh, some of the incredibly, spectacularly, monumentally poor strategic city placement choices I've made would say otherwise.
A patch for the fall patch is in the works: http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread.php?179151-Fall-Patch-Issues-(Follow-up-patch-in-the-works
