Hmmm? Are they broken right now? (I almost never try for them; I tend to go wide, which facilitates every victory type *except* cultural.)
Also, the earlier patch didn't fix the unit activation sequence as promised, and the hotfix hasn't fixed it either. The game is still jumping all over the place.
Is there really still no in-game way to speed up bomber/fighter animations? I assume there are ways to mod them out, and pressing F10 for the strategic map works, but then you miss a lot of what happened.
You can turn off combat anims entirely, but that's it. There's a mod that speeds up aircraft anims exclusively, but I haven't tried it -- last I checked mods locked you out of cheevos, and I am a sad pathetic excuse for a man.
Actually, mods only lock you out of cheevos when you're actively using one. So... you can use whatever mods 'o convenience you want (such as that plane-speed-up one), and then a turn or two before you're about to win just save & exit your game, then load up that save from the main menu. (i.e. while no mods are loaded) You'll get the cheevo for the win. I regularly use a map editor mod to instantly win games that I can see that I will win, allowing me to skip the long, tedious end-game mop-up that most games have. It means all my wins in the Hall of Fame are artifically 50-ish turns faster... and almost all of them are recorded as Domination. But that's a small price to pay for not having to wade through the end-game slog.
Thanks for the links! I now have something to read at the office since I finally snagged Civ 5 during the steam sale.
I had no idea either. Well then. Looks like I'll be annexing more cities when chasing after Domination & Science victories. Who needs the later social policies anyways?
Man... I *really* wish there was some way to turn down the AI aggression. Not because it makes the game too difficult, but rather, it makes the game too stupid sometimes. "Really, Alexander? You're denouncing me? It's turn 7, I *just* finished producing my first scout, you're clear on the other side of the (large) continent with a mountain range between us, and I'm a threat to all living beings already? Alrighty then." Seems to happen every other game. I mean... it's nice to have a clearly defined enemy front & center, with none of that "trading" business that some of the lesser civs engage in. But honestly, I get tired of puppeting conquered people. Forcing them to provide science & culture for my amusement can get so onerous at times.
I'm don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but I find that the aggressive AIs are also the most predictable. That is, I can count on them to attack me right around the time I research Iron Working. Of course, the AI is still pretty mediocre at warfare; it understands the concept of numerical superiority, but not the concept of frontage. I seem to remember hearing somewhere that puppeted cities aren't counted when calculating the required amount of culture for the next policy. Personally, I prefer to annex cities anyway, but only after the city stops rioting. That is, when going for a cultural victory, I find it's much better to optimize captures cities for culture than to rely on whatever the puppet government decides to do.
Right... that's the whole point of puppeting cities. (as opposed to annexing them) They don't make your cultural policies more expensive. Actually, there's two other differences between puppets & annexed cities. First, the amount of unhappiness that puppeted cities is the same as any of your regular cities, but annexed cities generate *way* more unhappiness until you build a Courthouse, at which point they generate unhappiness just like your regular cities. (Basically, you're paying the upkeep on the Courthouse for the rest of the game for the priviledge of having somebody else's former city.) Second, puppeted cities generate 25% less science & culture than regular cities. But even so, it's generally better to puppet most cities. They kinda act as "free" science & culture... all you have to do is deal with the unhappiness that their population generates.
I was just trying to research this and can't find a source. Is that from the online civilopedia quoted in the previous post? That server appears to be down right now.
No, it's from a first-hand account in the GMR game The Fickle Finger of Fate in which I have a non-revolting puppet city. The modifier description says something like "-25% modifier for Puppet" when I mouse over the Science or Culture stats in the city screen.
Excellent, thanks. I'll have to look through my patch notes to see if that was added at some point, I don't think it was in the release version. edit: Nope, no mention in the patch notes and nothing in the manuals either. Must have been a secret change...
In one of the GMR games, one city is accruing +10 culture per turn, but the "Current Culture/Culture Needed for Border Expansion (# of turns)" values are "69/35 (-3 turns)". Of course, this might be a bug due to being a game started before the Fall patch, but I wonder if my border expansion for that city is hosed for the remainder of the game. :-(
In case there are others who aren't aware of this UI shortcut: In the main view, when you click on the circle that contains the item a city's building and the quick build menu appears, you can quickly transition into the city view by clicking on the name of the city at the top of the quick build menu. Is there any other method for this one-click transition?
Have you tried buying a tile? That usually resets the counter, doesn't it? I know it's a waste of resources, but if your border's never going to expand because of the bug, it's worth trying.
No... buying a tile is completely independent of the counter; it doesn't reset it. For that matter, buying tiles is definitely *not* a waste of money. I often do it in my games. There are a couple times you want to do it: 1) To grab a resource before the AI or to create a border that the AI can't cross. (without declaring war, at any rate) 2) If you want a production tile. The automatic tile claim algorithm has production tiles as bottom priority, so you often have to buy a hill or two in order to give a city decent production sometime this lifetime. This is especially true if none of your hills are next to a river. 3) If you want to grab a sea resource. These are given lowish priority, and yet they're probably the best tiles in the game most of the time. So it's often worthwhile to buy your way out to a fish immediately.
Well, I'll know on my next turn if I'm stuck with non-expanding borders, or if "-3 turns" increases to "-2 turns". Maybe I need to hit "0 turns" before the borders grow! haha
I forgot what thread this is, and I don't want to mislead via hyperbole. I agree, there are definitely times I buy tiles. Sorry I mistyped.
Had a funny occurance recently while spreading salvation to the masses. I was playing on Continents Plus and got my religion started and enhanced pretty early with the 'spreads 30% farther' perk. The other civs on my continent were still barely founding their pantheons so my religion spread uncontested. Once I was able to spare a Great Prophet I sent 'em out to target the capitals of my rivals and cement my theological hegemony. I moved him next to Gao and ran out of moves so I hit Next Turn and *POOF*, Askia sprouts his own religion in Gao. I check the religious pressure on the city and his native religion is exactly balanced against mine. As soon as my turn begins... *POOF*, Askia loses his native religion. Hehe. We'd been friends up to that point as he was on the other side of my direct neighbors and I'd used him to bleed off enemy forces during wars. His vengence was therefore impotent when he declared war on me in response but couldn't get to my territory.
Two quick random thoughts with Civ V 1. I've since fallen in love with the game again after I ditched playing marathon speed. It was my favourite game speed in Civ IV, it felt nicer having a true medieval and renaissance age that had musketmen actually being fielded. It was also punishing if I didn't build an army as the time to get an army together vs an invading one marching across the map is much shorter. Across Civ V though, marathon felt too much like a slog, many turns spent going next turn, because everything takes so long to make or research, or even build with regards to terrain improvement. Playing epic speed is good, I still have time to field a middle era army, I'm still punished if I don't actually have an army and an AI declares their intention to attack, the game pace finally feels right, I have some busy work to make each turn feel a little more important. 2. Korea got screwed over with their unique units. I've yet to play as Korea, their civ bonus sounds cool though. However, the units, not so. I'm playing as Elizabeth on a random selected map, which turned out to be an archipelago. Already my navy is dominant, nothing much can stop Ship of the Lines right now. But my poor Korean neighbour who decided to get greedy and attack me, his Caravel replacement, the Turtle Ship. Yeah... they suck. They are slightly stronger, but where I'm smashing my Korean neighbour is sitting in deep water and attacking at range, at leisure. Even worse when I pick up the +1 range perk. The turtle ships are not able to mount any sort of attack against me as they can not enter deep water unless within their territory. Also, caravels have always been the go to ship for game exploration and meeting distant civs, but the Koreans don't have that facility now until navigation comes along. Still, this is a lot of fun for me, mostly the general awe of watching my Ship of the Lines fire barrage after barrage against city, ship, unit, anything standing in my way. It has been a long, protracted war with the Koreans offering terms of peace that meant me giving up most of my cities, luxuries, strategic resources.... to then offering peace so long as I give up most of my resources, but I'll keep the cities. To now just offering peace and tribute of a small amount of gold. The good thing about the koreans is the Civ bonus,
Are you playing vanilla or G&K? It sounds like you're playing the latter, so I'll assume you are. :-) Turtle Ships, a naval melee unit, are not meant to go toe-to-toe with naval ranged units, like England's Ship of the Line; Frigates fill that roll, which come on the scene with the same tech as SotL. With a strength of 36 (16 more than the Caravel they replace!) and a limitation to coastal tiles, they're meant to conquer cities when a typical city at the time they come on the scene has at most 20 strength without defensive buildings. That's a huge advantage, assuming there are coastal cities to be conquered. EDIT: Sounds like the AI isn't utilizing them properly. :-(
Yes, definitely G&K. As soon as I heard it getting favourably mentioned here, I went off and grabbed it, having initially been disappointed with vanilla Civ. That was mostly because the diplomacy was boring. I guess it has taken me too long to sit down and have a few playthroughs. With regards to turtle ships, I see your point about how they are meant to take cities. They actually do have a similar strength to the ship of the line, (though they are ranged) and it will take three of my ships to take out one of theirs in one turn. Caravels of course are in a bad state when one ship of the line opens up on it. I think what I'll do is try out Korea next game and see how they go with a continents style map. However, it won't be until the next tech along will I have any deep water vessels to make use of. Thankfully, Civ V managed to make life a lot better when it comes to being isolated on a landmass. Tying research to population, and removing the tech trading capability means I no longer need to rush to caravels in order to remain competitive within the game. But that is the problem is that if I wanted to explore with them, I'm very limited with my options. Though as I'm thinking about it, given the tech lead that Korea should be able to establish thanks to their civ trait, it may actually be a non-issue. If I beelined to navigation, I'd probably be able to hit it as fast as another civ that did a similar thing to get to astronomy. I'll certainly give them a go next game. I think the AI just can not use them as it should, it isn't aware of its own limitation. Many were sitting ducks in the shallow water as my ship of the lines bombarded from afar. Of course, I did trap about half a dozen in a bay, and the AI is pretty much stuffed there. I may be giving it too much credit, but if the AI were using them as a defensive measure, then it could work, however it kept bringing them out to the edge between shallow and deep water. They can not actually do a melee attack into deep water outside of their borders, so provided I'm stationed in the right spot, which is easy with the amount of water around, I can score some free exp.
The turtle ship is kind of a disadvantage on anything but a Pangaea map since meeting new people to trade with is such a huge benefit. The Hwacha is a'ight; I generally don't see Trebs get a lot of play because composite bowmen are so rofl, but I guess if you find yourself at war then they'd be fine. None of it matters at all, of course, because the Korean special is so obscene. +2 beakers per specialist is a total goat fuck for everyone else as soon as you get Workshops up in your cities, and it snowballs from there. Once Universities show up, you have the option to just motor past everyone in tech if you feel like it, or destroy everything forever because a single city with decent food can output a stupid amount of science even without an Observatory or a bunch of Academies or whatever.
On higher levels a treb or three become a "must-have" for any city warfare of that era. CBs are quite nice, but they just don't have the necessary "oomph" to take seriously defended cities. (They do alright on smaller border towns sometimes.) This. When looking at civs in this iteration, you simply can't compare advantages on an item-by-item basis. The entire package is what makes the civ. Mongolia's civ advantage is only so-so, but their UU is fucking amazing. Conversely, babylon has 2 mediocre (at best) unique units/buildings, but their civ advantage is pretty amazing. Korea is the same thing, except their unique units downright suck. I'd *much* rather have the default units than Korea's unique ones. But even so, they're probably one of the more overpowered civs in the game. That beaker bonus for specialists is just ridiculous. I didn't buy the Korean DLC for the longest time because I had read (and agreed with) analysis arguing that they're grossly overpowered. I finally picked them up not too long ago, and after playing with them I agree with the analysis. It's still kind of fun to go up against them in games (they're almost always one of the top civs), and the one time I played them (I usually select "random civ") I had a fun rofl stomp of a game. By the way, the latest patch was supposed to tone down the Austrians some, but having played them in a recent game, they seem just as ridiculous as ever. There is now a requirement that you must be allied with a CS for 5 turns before you can absorb them, which prevents some exploits... but not much. I usually preferred to leave a CS unabsorbed for a few turns anyways, to enjoy whatever CS-specific benefits they give anyways. And although it's true that allying CSs is now slightly more expensive, I found out that they only increased the cost by the amount you get if you scrap the units, which means you can no longer *profit* from annexing CSs in the mid & late game. But honestly, right now I'm in the renaissance & completely, easily dominating. (If I were a better player I probably would have won by now, but beelining for victory has never been my strong suit.) Just recently I absorbed a CS right next to me & a civ that had declared war on me, and... presto! I had a ready made CS-built army for the low low cost of 700 gold. I mean seriously... they had it all. 4 pikemen, 3 bowmen... and they even had a worker to help me quickly join them to my trade network. Although fun, the Austrians remain as ridiculously broken as ever. (Again, this is on Immortal. You folks on lower difficulty levels will probably find them just alright... which is where they should be.)
Oh, for sure. I don't generally fight a serious war of conquest in the classical era unless I'm roflstomping King or something (as in my last game, which I was parallel-playing a Korean map seed to help a friend improve his game). If I did, I certainly wouldn't want to send bows against larger and/or castle-defended cities. Abso-friggin-lutely. Alex's UA is all right, but holy shit are the UUs downright godlike. Ethiopia's UU and UA are both meh, but the UB is a huge huge huge boost (special monument that also gives +2 faith). Etc, etc. One of the things I really like about Civ V is that the civs aren't perfectly balanced (I don't play on Immortal much, so I can't speak to Mark's Austrian silliness), but are within reason. It lets me handicap myself for the mood I'm in for a particular game, and spices up interactions with AI civs. And it's always hilarious when Sully or Biz ends up conquering half the world and being unstoppable badasses.
