Civ V Brave New World : Endless Cycles of Love and Self-Hate

[Madrun Badrun]

Ya vanilla is bad.  The last expansion makes the end game really cool and fun as well.  One of my favorite moments ever was sparking an ideological world war. 

[Madrun Badrun]

The one thing to note is that the culture/tourism game really ramps up in the end game so if you don't have enough culture output you can be overtaken by others tourism easily. 

[Madrun Badrun]

Played to games this weekend thanks to this thread.

1st was Poland on King; military victory kinda boring.

2nd was Shoshone on Emperor.  Great game. 

I started on an Australia sized continent all alone.  Half the continent was tundra.  Barbarians plagued me the entire game.  There was like 8 silvers that my cities eventually could get too but only 1 other luxury so I was relying on city sates for happiness for 3/4 of the game.  So early on I got the great library and a national uni, so I decided to go for a science victory early one.  Problem was that I could only sustain 3 cities because of the happiness issue so I didn't get a forth city until about 1800s. 

Thought the entire game one of the AI's, the iroquois doubled my points.  They were also always beating me to wonders by a few turns.  SO much rage.

I avoided any kind of wars until the 1800's.  Infact I had defensive packs and friendship with everyone but the huns.  Then all my allies declared war on the huns so I did too and I took their capital from see while they had moved all their land units to defend against the AI's.  This got me a happiness bump, so I made two other cities one for general production and one was in the artic but was the only city I had near oil. 

Now the iroquois start being a bitch about city states. every fucking turn I'm buying them out to stop them from going to the iroquois and its using up all my gold.  Basically I know at this point I'm fucked unless I go to war with the iroquois.  Problem all my units are outdated.  They have subs I have frigates.  and my military advisor keeps saying they could wipe me off the earth - in fact this never changes and they are 5 times more than me in terms of pointiest sticks.    Hell I'm not even the second pointiest.

Nukes were the only option.  I rush my science to them, which is inline with a science victory anyways.  Build a single air carft carrier.  Problem. No fucking uranium at all on my content.  I find 4 urianium on a single tile island in the middle of nowhere and make a city that has only water surrounding it. 

I up grade my navy so I have a shit load of subs and do an open boarders with the iroquois to scout out their navy.  Luckly two things happen.  The iroquois go to war with my closest friend, and the only other AI to have the same idiology as me.  So they move most of their super navy out there.    Second the hun decide to declair war on me to try to take back their capital.  They were laughable and when they sue for peace they offer me two cites.  I decline the two cities and ask for a shit load of gold insteadm which they graciously accept.  I then use this to buy out two cities cates that keept flip flopping to the iroquois.  I have three nukes on a lone aircraft carrier right next the their capital and I declare war. 

I spend all three nukes on their capital.  I was going to try to rush in a a single infinty just to see if I could hold onto their capital for a few turns but he died as soon as he hit the shore.  I did however reduce the capital pop from the 30s to 7.  I rush my aircraft carrier back home while I make more nukes and my small as navy takes out a good chuck of their navy in the intial suprise and attack before I loose two subs to their nucular subs and I retreat my navy back to protect my capital. 

The iroquois offer me terms.  The war ends and I just have to give them every city I have other than my capital.  I decline. 

I get thee more nukes and try to take out their second largest city but they have a bunker built and it does almost nothing.  So I strike at a smaller coastal city and that pop goes from 23 to 5. 

With my navy near my cities I capture on of their friendly city states.  All my trade routes are plundered.  I'm make 40 gold a turn and I'm basically fucked.  I offer terms just to see of I can get out of the war easy.  I'm already building space parts, got the hubble space telescope which helped a lot for science and I had saved all my faith to buy two more scientists.   The iroquois accept terms of ending the war and I didn't have to give them anything.  The was so lucky. 

So now everyone is afraid of my because I've used nukes and I rush as hard as I can to a science victory.  The iroquois only need to bring over two more civs for a cultural victory and my culture output was laughable (I didn't build any culture buildings outside of monuments).  And the Americans had already built a three ss boosters. 

Great game. 

[benjipwns]

I play with the time limit off but then near the end I go "man, I really should have used the time limit, this is taking forever."

[pilonv1]

This page is making me want to start a warmonger game. Most of the time when I try to do that I end up pushing too early and getting destroyed

[benjipwns]

exploit unique units that are overpowered (the chu ko nu for example)

I think the Impi are the worst. Or at least most annoying.

[pilonv1]

Alternatively you can play the slow game and build a rich empire, whilst baiting powerful nearby civ's. Let them declare on you, upgrade as i outlined above, and then become the warmonger.

That's usually what I do. My normal MO is to piggyback on to someone else's war and steal the cities they're about to take.

[Brehvolution]

Is there a greater Civ feeling when some bitch ass Civ with tons and tons of medieval units gets fresh and starts plotting against you, lines up on your border and then declares war on you.... not realizing you have a huge science edge, 1500 gold, and a handful of high quality, tall cities?

*rush upgrades*

*rush buys modern era units*

*sees that distinguished mentally-challenged fellow AI is deciding to offensively push on this attack despite not realizing what will happen*

(Image removed from quote.)

No mercy. They made a choice, and that choice was to get erased from the map.

[Madrun Badrun]

exploit unique units that are overpowered (the chu ko nu for example)

I think the Impi are the worst. Or at least most annoying.

Fuck the Impi are over powered.  I was playing a game where I had an awesome starting place except I was next to Shaka.  dead. 
Also in another recent game a city state kept gifting them to me and I was using them to kill musketmen,

[Madrun Badrun]

Just barely lost that first game I played. I was about a couple turns away from winning a diplomatic victory when it hit 2050 and I lost due to points. Do play with points on in the harder difficulty settings?

I'm in the industrial age as the Arabs on King and still a couple hundred points down, but trying to go to a science victory. I purposely hid from the other 7 AI and denied embassies and I think it's worked out for me because everyone's left me alone. My religion is about to conquer my continent as well (unfortunately it's Judaism—someone nabbed Islam first). What good does a widespread religion do me here?

A couple of starting tips.  Unless you are on a lower difficulty lots of the early world wonders are pretty shitty and are kind of honey traps.  Religion isn't super important.  It can be really nice especially if you have a large empire but you get benefits from just letting another civ give you their religion as well.   Don't be afraid to build settlers.  In the old game you would just buy them to avoid the no growth but now money is much more limited.  Build trade routes ASAP having good economics is basically what the middle ages is about.

[benjipwns]

Having tons of trade routes plus anything that perks them 

I'll buy Settlers when I want to take a piece of land before anyone else, and take the hit for however many turns for having an extra unconnected city.

[Dickie Dee]

I've never played a multi civ game in my life

[Madrun Badrun]

Does civ 5 do the log out take a turn online game cause I would totally do that.

[thisismyusername]

Does civ 5 do the log out take a turn online game cause I would totally do that.

You mean Play By Email style? It added Steam notifications like that, kinda like Frozen Synapse did for when your turn is ready. I dunno if they made that option less annoying since Frozen Synapse will alert you even if you're in game already. :/

[benjipwns]

Thankfully Civ V has simultaneous turns in multiplayer, I've only played with two humans and it still seems like I was waiting ages for turns to go through just because all three of the people I've played with don't have ten billion hours of Civ racked up.

The farther into a game you get the longer you sit there because not only do you wait for other humans but all their PCs have to process the turns, etc.

I don't think I've finished a Civ multiplayer game in a decade or more.

[pilonv1]

I barely finish single player games, god help me in multiplayer

[Madrun Badrun]

Ugg I'm in a really boring game with 14 AIs in the highland setting and everyone hates me because I took 3 capitals then proposed that science should be funded.  Also the map is way to big with even 14 players; everyone is very spread out. 

[jakefromstatefarm]

exploit unique units that are overpowered (the chu ko nu for example)

I think the Impi are the worst. Or at least most annoying.

Fuck the Impi are over powered.  I was playing a game where I had an awesome starting place except I was next to Shaka.  dead. 
Also in another recent game a city state kept gifting them to me and I was using them to kill musketmen,

I don't think there's a bigger asshole in the game than Shaka. One of my games he'd been riding my dick all the way into the late Renaissance, we'd gone to war a couple times and exchanged cities, but what took the fucking cake was me taking diplomatic hits from him because he felt he had a right to my territory on a continent on the other side of the map.

Also,

Religion's importance depends on the civ, your strategy and whether you can get some kind of terrain based faith. If not? Don't bother.

GnK religion with the Byzantines was 

[Brehvolution]

What are you wearing, jakefromstatefarm? 

[benjipwns]

http://www.gamersgate.com/games?prio=relevance&q=civweekend

BNW for $7.49

[Madrun Badrun]

My boring game turned pretty awesome when I got into 4 nuclear wars and won a military victory with 3 turns left.   The last 10 turns was nuking two cities every turn and running my death mechs up a path to conquer them all the way up to the Ottomans capital. 

[benjipwns]

I literally just discovered that you can sort the list of cities for a caravan/cargo ship by different things.

 

[pilonv1]

How were you sorting trade routes before? 

[AdmiralViscen]

Bought this game on Steam. I played a lot of Civ 3 like a decade ago but I don't feel like I was ever any good at it, and that was the last I played. Let's see how this goes.

[benjipwns]

How were you sorting trade routes before? 

Scrolling through the list of cities 

[CajoleJuice]

How were you sorting trade routes before? 

Scrolling through the list of cities 

fuck i've always done this too

[Dickie Dee]

Anybody else like watching Let's Plays on youtube. Shit got me addicted, I've been putting them on in the background for ages now. Multiplayer matches are on a different level

[AdmiralViscen]

Any recommendations?

[Dickie Dee]

I've only watched a couple games, but I really like this guy's channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/FilthyRobotChannel

[AdmiralViscen]

Thanks, will check it out.

I have been looking at The Solar Gamer the last few days just because it was the first hit on youtube, but I'm not sure I like the caster.

[pilonv1]

Depends on your goal. Usually you prioritise growth, so food. Once you don't want to grow anymore either production or research. With trade routes available it's not usually worth worth prioritising gold unless you're land locked and don't have any sea trade routes.

[Mandark]

You always want to improve every luxury resource in your borders even if you don't have a citizen working them, since you can trade duplicate luxuries for ones you don't have or for gold.

It helps to keep improving tiles even if you can't work them now, for both future use and for flexibility.  Having the farms and mines to switch a city between growth and production focus can be pretty useful.

[Madrun Badrun]

There is no reason not to improve all your tiles; just don't build unnecessary roads because you pay for that shit. 

[benjipwns]

I always build all the improvements and then I find I've got too many workers with nothing to do and then I can't decide to delete them or just tell them to sleep because I know I'll just wind up rebuilding them later if I keep founding cities.

[Madrun Badrun]

they are good war fodder to secure flanks/scouts for artillery

[benjipwns]

Since I play on the Terra map a lot, I often send them out as semi-scouts to establish beachheads on the other continents/islands, grab ruins, etc. Then they're already over there once I start building cities.

[pilonv1]

Since I play on the Terra map a lot, I often send them out as semi-scouts to establish beachheads on the other continents/islands, grab ruins, etc. Then they're already over there once I start building cities.

I park them on ruins as well if there's nothing else for them to do. By that point they're relatively useless unless I have a stupid amount of gold and feel like building railroads

[pilonv1]

Will they sell you luxury items?

[Madrun Badrun]

Make friends with city states for luxuries.  Also got to be careful with ideologies. If I don't get there first I tend to side with the highest points player. 

Playing immortal for the first time.  huge game on earth.  I'm 3rd in points and way behind in science.  Disabled all victories but military and no one seems to be doing any conquering.  lame. 

[Madrun Badrun]

I love fighting off superior invaders and winning; could be my favourite part if the game.  Also makes me realize how important it is to set up cities for defense.   Nothing like stopping an entire invasion because you control a mountain pass.

[pilonv1]

I love fighting off superior invaders and winning; could be my favourite part if the game.  Also makes me realize how important it is to set up cities for defense.   Nothing like stopping an entire invasion because you control a mountain pass.

It's even better when you have one longbowman and he mows down an entire army. Sure people like Tom Chick will complain that the AI is distinguished mentally-challenged, and it certainly isn't great, but it's nice to feel like a badass.

[benjipwns]

I recently beat the Fall of Rome scenario with the Monguls using just a handful of Horse Archers and like two Horseman conquering all of Sassanian Empire and like half of the Byzantine one just by rotating the front lines and having the Horseman take most of the city bombardment.

If it wasn't limited to 70 turns I probably could have pushed into Constantinople and then Europe because the Byzatines destroyed basically their entire army trying to come through the Cicilian Gates and grab Antioch back. So I was just raining down arrows as they tried to come through one at a time. (And when they made it through then the city could fire on them.  )

[benjipwns]

Should have put Egypt out of their misery.

[benjipwns]

It needs to be in your capital.

[benjipwns]

Other than getting through techs first, helps to have some good production cities so you can bang out the parts in multiple cities at once then just send them to the capital.

And the wonders/buildings for building spaceships can really give you an edge so buying them/Great Engineers can get you a few turns ahead.

I don't remember if you can launch early in Civ V? I used to hate the AI doing that in Civ IV and actually succeeding. 

[Madrun Badrun]

Blue Tooth beat you.


My war only game is getting scary.  I own south east Asia, to north arabia to parts of Russia and eastrean europe.  The highest ranked ai is based in china has 50 so cities and is 6-7 techs a head of me.  He was my friend through most of the game but just denounced me.  If he comes over the himillas I'm fucked.  I do have a pretty kick ass navy compared to him from what I've seen.  Building nukes now for insurgence.  I also have most of the city states, 3 of which are acting as buffers between me and him.     

[Madrun Badrun]

Still grinning about Blue Tooth, lol, dude is such a light weight.

Bus, did you get libraries, national collage, or unis really late?  That generally can be a death blow for a sci victory.  Research agreements are really important as well.  Hubble is also very worth while.  After the industrial age use should use great scientists for their active power where before that you should be making a tile improvement out of them.

Also did you puppet your cities or annex them?  What was your opening culture abilities?

If you need happiness go with Order, you get a lot from that. 

[Madrun Badrun]

The huns and England declared war on me.  England is doing nothing but giving me prize ships and fighting my city states.  The huns nuked me once.  I then nuked half their cities.  Fucking hun.  Caught up to arabia in tech (well 2 behind).  They are afraid of me and are doing a defensive pac (which I had when the huns attacked but they did shit to help me). 

Might be one of the best games I've played.

o and the war started at 3pm and I'm half way through killing the hun and haven't touched england's cities and its now 11pm.  Jesus. 

[AdmiralViscen]

pix nao

[Dickie Dee]

England is a good civ on any map (+1 range on longbows are great (and stay great as 2 range gatlings), the extra spy seems small but is no joke coming at the time they do

But on a map that emphasizes their ocean skills they're damn near unstoppable. For a fun game try England on archipelago and get the Great Lighthouse. I had my ships of the line doing donuts outside the other AIs capitals

[pilonv1]

Spain is totally OP

But given the asshole AI it's useful on Diety

[jakefromstatefarm]

England is a good civ on any map (+1 range on longbows are great (and stay great as 2 range gatlings), the extra spy seems small but is no joke coming at the time they do

But on a map that emphasizes their ocean skills they're damn near unstoppable. For a fun game try England on archipelago and get the Great Lighthouse. I had my ships of the line doing donuts outside the other AIs capitals

Archipelago with Elizabeth is  . Distant second is Gajah Mada, Kamehameha in third.

[AdmiralViscen]

I really love this game. I wish I had infinite time like when I was in high school and college

[Madrun Badrun]

http://steamcommunity.com/id/TheInfelicitousDandy/screenshots/



My game.  I'm going to win but its pretty crazy.  I keep having to gift Assira captured cities so I don't go bankrupt.  30 hours in and I still need 4 capitals. 

[CajoleJuice]

i've never played on a difficulty above prince lol

[Madrun Badrun]

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/81379587786617842/5F6E7F25AC3623998A84C4FF0077DA9AF0CBF2D3/

 the five tallest cities were the only ones I built (other than 2, 5 pop, throw away cities, I need for defensive territory.) Ankara got nuked by Arabia.  Pretty sure the only reason I will win was because of how lucky I got with the city state placement; they were perfect buffers so no one got pissy at me early on. 

[Madrun Badrun]

The only reason I keep switching difficulties is I get bored of winning.  I prefer when the AI isn't obviously unfair and when I don't absolutely have to go to war to win.

[benjipwns]

IMO, above king/emperor it's not that fun anymore. You basically just have to be more aggressive. I like the world building aspect of Civ a lot too, so i don't like to play aggressive games 

There's the entire aspect to it like in a lot of sports games where the AI doesn't think any better or run different routines, have different priorities, etc. it just gets bonuses. And the bonuses aren't even subtle.

I mean, that's how most games do difficulty, but with the semi open endedness of how a game can go in Civ or a sports game it grinds a little more because there's a lot of options taken away from you that skill can't do shit about.

Today I was watching Dawn of Planet of the Apes and kept thinking about the human and ape civilizations in Civ terms.

Went looking in the workshop to see if there was an Ape Civ, surprised nobody has made one yet.

But I did find this:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=281728572&searchtext=

You have dominated the world through culture, technology, diplomacy, and military might. Now dominate it through religious influence and economic power. This mod adds two victory conditions to the game, each of which has three requirements that must be met simultaneously:

Religious Victory
Spread your Religion: Have 70% of the cities on the map following your faith
Increase your Followers: Convince a certain amount of global population to adopt your religion (population target varies by map size)
Proselytize the Heathens: Spread your religion to competing Holy Cities, and have all of them following your faith simultaneously

Economic Victory
Amass Wealth: Accumulate over 20,000 Gold
Increase your Income: Maintain 400 GPT for at least 10 consecutive turns leading up to the end of the game
Corner the Market: Obtain at least one of every luxury resource present on the map

[Madrun Badrun]

won my game; last two turns I declared war on half the players and took 3 capitals in 2 turns with nukes and xcoms.  Took 40ish hours and my first immortal win.

[benjipwns]

I'm pretty sure now that the game is programmed to make it so when you pick Venice that you think you're on a full coast but like fifteen tiles away is a shit load of ice and no outlet to the rest of the seas.

Need a mod that lets me airlift ships to allied city states. Or build them there or something.