Alright boyz, here we go!!! Civ 5 first impressions & tips thread!

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

Here's an example of a challenge that's fun. In my current game, which I have been working at a lot since Friday, I'm trying to get the last few techs to quickly build the last two parts. Then there is Greece, who has always given me trouble in civ5, trying hard to win diplomacy. World leader votes are coming up every 20 turns and twice before, they have had a commanding lead in delegates. In addition keeping my tech rate high (around 850), I also have amass lots of gold during those 20 turns so I do not lose. I've done it twice but not sure about the third time, going to be a tight race. All this with 3 cities, two which are relatively small.

You say three cities. Number of civs and size of map in that one?

I personally love to do the huge map with 12 civ/20 city-states. I always do random civs, including my own. I like the challenge of adapting to the civ you control.

[Buccaneer]

I always play standard size (7 opponents) and standard speed. The map is my favorite: Small Continents with Low Seas.

[Buccaneer]

The long-awaited Fall Patch has been released

[UI]
New map options on the Setup Game menu. Now, DLC map packs are grouped into folders without having to go to Advanced Setup. Additionally, all the extra maps are placed in an “Additional Maps” folder.
Warmonger UI improvements:
Now there are 4 different levels of concern displayed by the AI about the player's warmongering.
Added a tooltip to the city banner for each city owned by a civ you are at war with that shows the warmonger penalty and/or liberation bonus.
Added a tooltip for warmonger penalty and/or liberation bonus to the Annex/Liberate/Puppet popup.
Trade Route Improvement: Update the UI to reflect the change in Trade Route gold if a Trade Route policy is picked.
Added "Click to move" and "Click to view" radio buttons to improve the behavior of clicking on a great work in the "Your culture" tab.
Deal History tab on the diplomacy screen now shows more relevant information.
Air Combat Preview: added preview of damage your bombarding air unit would take. Note that this information does not include damage from intercepting aircraft or anti-air units.


[BALANCE]
Warmonger Penalty
Warmonger penalty for conquering a city is now halved with other civs that are also at war with the civ being conquered.
Make the building up of warmonger threats more exponential than linear (Minor - Major - Severe - Critical)
Research Agreements
Adjusted the cost for Research Agreements based on era. The cost increase should now be more linear to coincide with the gross gold-per-turn of AI civs, and also slightly cheaper when Research Agreements can first be used.
Will now only be cancelled with a Declaration of War or by elimination of one of the involved Civs. Denunciations no longer cause the RA to yield zero beakers upon completion of the agreement.
Both Civs will now only get the minimum of the two beaker counts (to balance out Rich getting Richer mechanic weakness).
Tourism: Further Benefits from Tourism when Influential with another Civ
Science (from Trade Routes)
Familiar: +1 Science per trade route
Popular: +2 Science per trade route
Influential: +3 Science per trade route
Dominant: +4 Science per trade route
Diplomacy/Espionage
Familiar: Just 1 turn to Establish Surveillance in influenced civ's cities
Popular: Surveillance boost (from above) plus Spies operate at an effective rank 1 level higher than actual rank in influenced civ's allied city states
Influential: Surveillance boost (from above) plus Spies operate at an effective rank 1 levels higher than actual rank in influenced civ's cities and allied city states
Dominant: Surveillance boost (from above) plus Spies operate at an effective rank 2 levels higher than actual rank in influenced civ's cities and allied city states
Conquest
Familiar: -25% reduction in Unrest time and Population loss
Popular: -50% reduction in Unrest time and Population loss
Influential: -75% reduction in Unrest time and Population loss
Dominant: no Unrest time; no Population lost
Abilities of Great Musician, Great Writer, and Great Scientist now scale properly based on game speed
Social Policies and Tenets
Social Policies: Added Mercenary Army social policy to Commerce (allows purchasing of Landsknechts). Trade Unions old effect (cheaper road/rail maintenance) moved to Wagon Trains.
Social Policies: Move double Trade Mission gold from Commerce finisher to Entrepreneurship.
Social Policies: Boost City-State trade bonus from +1 Gold to +2 Gold on Merchant Confederacy.
Social Policies: Merchant Navy now provides +4 Culture and +4 Production in the city with the East India Company.
Social Policies: Theocracy - Temples increase city gold output by 25% instead of 10%.
Social Policies: Boost Warrior Code from +25% to Great General creation up to +50%
Social Policies: Boost Navigation School to +50% Great Admiral points (to mirror the earlier change to Warrior Code for Great Generals).
Social Policies: Switch Ethics policy (Aesthetics tree) to Cultural Exchange (increase Tourism modifier for Open Borders, Shared Religion and Trade Routes by 15% each). The policy now gives bonuses to Open Border and Trade Routes.
Tenet: Order - Iron Curtain now also boosts yields on internal trade routes by 50% (on water routes the +100% modifier becomes +150%; effectively those only go up by 25% from 200% to 250%).
Tenet: Autocracy - Futurism now +250 Tourism for each Great Writer/Artist/Musician created (instead of +100).
Tenet: Weaken both bonuses from Arsenal of Democracy
Tenet: Spaceflight Pioneers: Remove +10 Science in Capital; add free Great Engineer and Great Scientist instead.
Tenet: Gunboat Diplomacy tenet now makes military units 50% more effective at intimidating City-States. Also rearranged tooltip text for bullying score so that the positive factors are always first, for readability
Civ-Specific Balance
Germany: Added the Hanse unique building (Replaces Bank, includes Bank bonuses, and +5% Production per City-State Trade Route across your civilization, not just cities that have a Hanse).
Germany: Boosted camp conversion rate to 67%.
Germany: Reduce Bismarck's desire to conquer city states from 7 to 4.
Japan: Give Japan an Ocean start bias
Japan: Japan: Samurai can build fishing boats.
Japan: Samurai upgrades to Rifleman instead of Musketman (also obsoletes later).
Japan: Bushido has a new additional effect: +1 Culture from fishing boats and +2 Culture from atolls.
Japan: Zero no longer requires Oil
Indonesia: Indonesian Candi no longer requires Fresh Water.
America: American Minuteman now has an additional promotion to earn points toward Golden Ages with kills.
Science Victory: Spaceship parts require twice the time to build (or twice the gold to buy) to increase the value of the Space Victory tenets.
World Congress
Congress: Gain 2 Delegates from a failed World Leader proposal (was 1).
Congress: Made Diplo Victory more difficult by increasing the delegates needed to win (2 more on Duel, 7 more on Standard, 9 more on Huge). Also exposed delegate equation values to XML for future tweaking and ambitious modders.
City-State Influence: Cleaned up influence calculations when a City-State is killed, to ensure a future liberator will be the undisputed ally and receive the intended reward.
Ally influence is set to 45 (becomes Friends).
Friends influence is set to 15 (becomes Neutral).
Neutral influence is set to 0.
Negative influence remains as it was.
When liberated, the liberator's influence is set to 150 (becomes Ally).
3 New Pantheons
Earth Mother: +1 Faith from Copper, Iron, and Salt.
God-King: +1 Culture, Faith, Gold, Production, and Science from the Palace
Sun God: +1 Food from Bananas, Citrus, and Wheat
Trade Routes: All City-State Trade Routes get +1 Base gold. Gold bonus from having a route connected to a city with a Market or Bank halved (from 2 to 1). Applies to unique versions of these buildings also.
Great Admirals now have a "Change Port" command. If either moving into a port or starting the turn in one, they can consume the rest of their moves to jump to another port city under their control.
Archaeology
Great Works of Writing (like the Rosetta Stone) now available from 30% of the Hidden Antiquity Sites. An alternative use of these is to create a "Cultural Renaissance" (equal to a Great Writer's Political Treatise).
There are now diplomatic bonuses for building Landmarks in both city state and major civ territory.
Air Combat
New stacking limits on air units in cities. Starts at 6; increased to 10 when you add an Airport. Game Concept text updated to match this change.
Player now receives a warning that projected damage can go up if the air unit is intercepted; number of visible enemy anti-air units that haven't fired is also given in combat preview.
Air Combat: Award experience to intercepting planes and firing AA guns
Change rules for razing cities to make it so the Holy City of any religion cannot be razed.
Reduced combat strength of XCom Squad from 110 to 100.
Influence anchor point increase gained from pledge to protect is now 5 (was 10).


[AI]
Custom AI per Civ
Custom worker code for Brazil: Automated workers will no longer remove jungle unless there's a resource on it (ie: bananas). Workers will remove jungle for resources (like spices and bananas) but otherwise will build Brazilwood Camps.
Custom settlement AI for Brazil: Includes player suggestions of city sites near jungle for Brazil.
Custom settlement AI for Indonesia: Doubled the fertility on lucrative sites that are not on the same continent as previous cities. This should help Indonesia to better use it's UA.
Custom settlement AI for Netherlands: Will now tend to favor marshes and flood plains when choosing a site to settle.
Custom settlement AI for Morocco: They should now consider desert favorable when making settlement choices/suggestions.
Custom settlement AI for Spain: Settling next to Natural Wonders should now be extremely attractive to Spain.
Custom settlement AI for Inca: Inca should now consider hills more favorably; hills bordered by one or more mountains get an additional bonus.
Air Combat AI: Never rebase aircraft to a city being razed.
Deal AI
Deal AI: Never ask for something from the human that we don't consider having any value (such as Open Borders from a distant civ).
Deal AI: make AI aware of the value of Open Borders as players close in toward Culture Victories;
Deal AI: Make it so the AI will never pay more than about 15 gold-per-turn. There were cases before of 40+ gold-per-turn.
Fix a legacy bug that prevented the AI from ever putting together offers for a luxury that a human player now has available for trade.
Deal AI: fix valuation of Open Borders so AI never says "I want to negotiate passage" but doesn't put anything on the table.
Deal AI: Have the AI accept totally even trades with the human (before they always wanted some small bonus, even when swapping embassies ... assuming they weren't putting the embassies on the table themselves).
Deal AI: AI now understands how to put things on YOUR side of the deal table.
Deal AI: Embassies now worth 35 Gold base (so AI will almost always consider them worth 1 gold-per-turn).
Deal AI: Embassy cost scales based on deal duration (so 1 GPT over 45 turns is worth it on slower speeds)
Deal AI: AI properly values Gold in hand over GPT, so over 30 turns it won't get 150 for 5GPT. Instead only 85% of that.
Deal AI: Slight increase (about 7%) in the value the AI gives you in gold/gold-per-turn for things (this helped with getting them to always offer 1 GPT for Embassy).
Deal AI: Don't give such a huge (90%) discount on open borders with friendly players. Reduced to 65%.
Tactical AI
Tactical AI: Reduce overkill percentage from 50% to 25%. Previously, the AI would gather up much more strength than needed before trying to kill an enemy unit, which could bog down AI operations.
Tactical AI: Make sure units moving in formation don't use extra MP to "wander" a tile or two after their primary (formation) move for the turn completes.
Operational AI
Operational AI: On water maps (Archipelago, Islands, etc.) allow land operations to have a few units "spill out” onto water tiles so the operation doesn't get bogged down trying to get to its target. Also don't use the bigger city attack formation (16 units) on such a map (use 12 instead).
Operational AI: Weight barbarian camps within 10 tiles of one of your cities heavily; start up operations to eradicate them quickly.
Military AI
Military AI: Civs with very high FLAVOR_OFFENSE settings (7+) will buy military units with spare gold more frequently. Will boost the number of early attacks we see, especially on high difficulties.
Military AI: when rebasing air units, prioritize carriers within operations over those that aren't assigned to an operation
Homeland AI: Fix bug in ExecuteMovesToSafestPlot() where it would consider leftover moves from another unit, meaning the safest plot was not actually chosen. This essentially makes the AI better at determining safe plots to run to when a unit has to flee from danger.
Policy/City AI: Added a player strategy to focus on religious buildings and wonders if the AI has started the Piety social policy tree.
Diplomacy AI: Increase chance of City-State conquest if that City-State is a neighbor on your way to get to a targeted major power.
Ideology AI: If it’s possible to take a Level 3 tenet, make sure the AI always takes the one available that matches their current Grand Strategy choice.
Space Race AI: Don't consider capitals to be "medium cities". This change allows AI to start Apollo Program far earlier in Information Age starts where few cities are "Large" until 30+ turns in.
Great General AI: Fix rare case of AI trying to plant a Citadel on a tile that already had one.
Great Admiral AI
Great Admiral AI: The AI now takes advantage of the Transfer Port move to get Great Admirals out of dangerous cities and into the largest bodies of water
Great Admiral AI: Have the AI send Great Admirals out with more naval operations; have them stack with friendly units like Great Generals do on land.
Great Admiral AI: Improve the operational movement code for admirals to get to their targets.
Changed MINIMUM_SETTLE_FERTILITY to 20000, up from 5000 to keep AI civs from settling worthless plots. Added some logging code to track plot values.
Congress AI: When an Embargo on an AI player is proposed, that player will always use all of its Delegates towards preventing the Embargo.
Archaeology AI: Make it possible that the AI will choose to gain the diplo benefit by turning an antiquity site into a Landmark in city state territory
Science AI: upped the flavor numbers on Library, University, Public School, and Laboratory. Removed 'MILITARY_TRAINING' flavor from Library and University. Added culture flavor to University to support Archaeologist generation.


[GAMEPLAY]
19 new Great Works of Art. This is to address players running out a bit too early in larger games.
Added 3 more City-States (Vilnius, Bogota and Wellington, one of each type).


[SDK]
Beta password for the SDK tool required to access new content.
Added ability to swap player slots while in the staging room.
Stand-alone pitboss server app now included with the SDK.
New SDK launcher that includes the pitboss server (see addendum for quick-start guide).


[MULTIPLAYER]
Dedicated server added via SDK.
A human player's civ icon will now show as unmet in a multiplayer match until the local player has met that civilization. The human player's name will be known even when unmet. Made this consistent between the score list and the turn queue.
Additional refinement of hot-join system.
Players joining multiplayer games now delay the transition to the staging room until they have completely registered with the game.
Making the pitboss network modes selectable from the multiplayer select menu.
Now possible to switch player slots/civs in the staging room. This allows new players to select the ai civ they wish to replace when hot joining or loading a saved game.
Additional stability fixes.


[SCENARIOS]
Civil War Scenario Balance: apply a gentler scaling to city defense strength based on percentage of tech tree researched.


[MODDING]
Sound modding now supported. Added a "Reload Audio System" option to ModBuddy. Example mods will be uploaded to Steam Workshop at launch.


[BUGS]
Fixed an issue where you receive a Free Building in a city that had hard built the same building. Before the hard-built building would be sold off (deleting its effect) but due to a logic area the effects for the same (free) building would not be reapplied. Should fix Aqueducts from the Tradition finisher, Broadcast Towers from CN Tower, etc.
Fixed an issue causing Indonesia to get unique luxuries when acquiring a city on another continent through conquest or trade.
Statue of Libery +1 production now applies to Writer and Musician specialists
Fixed a World Congress AI logic error where the number of Great Person improvements a player owned was counted incorrectly.
Fixed a World Congress AI logic error which had cultural players valuing some resolutions less than they should.
Mongol Scenario: restore custom names for at start Mongol units.
Fixed a bug where gold per turn gained from resolutions would not be displayed correctly. There are no resolutions that give gold per turn, but modders can use it.
The denouncement counter (Declare War pop-up) now properly counts down rather than always reporting 49.
Make Harbor tooltip consistent with other buildings such as Markets and Banks (they all say “additional 1 Gold” instead of 2 gold – this is then multiplied by 2 before the final gold amount is listed for a SEA trade route).
Fixed an issue where the total number of techs a player could steal was being zeroed out prematurely, causing the tech steal to never resolve.
Properly enforce restriction that you can't found a pantheon when a religion has been enhanced and a number of pantheons have been created equal to the maximum number of religions allowed on that size map.
Tutorials – The tutorials now enforce that only the base game rules and UI are used for tutorials.
Additional misc bug fixes.
AI embarked civilian units could plunder enemy trade routes. This has been fixed.
Muliplayer: Fixed an early-game OoS (followed by a broken match) that could occur when playing between a player running DX9 and a player running DX11 on certain maps.
An AI gifted City-State (or city) could cause a game hang if the player did not make their choice immediately (liberate, puppet, etc.) because if you paused, and then liberated, you could get a production prompt for the city which you no longer owned, blocking turn progress. This is now fixed.
Fix a bug that could prevent paratrooper from appearing after AI moves and was causing planes from not fading out after re-basing.
Fix a bug that could cause existing pre-patch saves to sometimes display “1 turn to construct Fishing Boats” on Tundra tiles in the tool-tip. Note, if you have already saved your game with this glitch already in place, you're stuck with it, but it's benign.
UI: Fixed the logic for calculating the total number of original capital cities a team owns and determine if there is a clear winning team.
UI: Fixed logic to make sure we always designate one player as "winning" with most original capitals controlled in the notification (which makes this consistent with the Victory screen).
UI: Fixed "Discuss" UI so you cannot ask for a DOF when one is already in place.
Crash fix: If you find a Great Work of Writing and don't have a Writing slot available, UI would incorrectly check if you had an Art slot (instead of Writing slot) available before deciding to give you the choice to take the writing back home (instead of the Cultural Renaissance). But if you made this choice and no slot was available the game would crash.
Multiplayer: Waiting for Player tooltip now shows "Unmet" for the civilization of unmet human players.
Multiplayer: Making the dedicated server be windowed by default to prevent a crash that occurs if you start the pitboss server over a remote desktop connection while in fullscreen. If you are already encountering the error, open your GraphicSettingsDX9.ini, and set FullScreen = 0.
Multiplayer: Fixed an issue where Players were unable to open incoming diplo proposals in multiplayer if they had already made a proposal of their own.
Multiplayer: In hotseat games, diplomacy with Player 0 could block diplomacy for other human players.
Windows 8 touch: Steam Layer in-game (for inviting friends to MP, etc.) was not usable. Finger clicks would read in the game even if the in-game Steam Layer was up. This has been corrected.
Fixed an issue causing a slow-down in turn times.
Score for being able to bully a city-state is now more determined by military units near the city-state and less determined by player's global military ranking.
Players were getting public declarations from unmet civs (like minor state protection declarations) that revealed the player name.
Germany: Fix the German Hanse so its bonus only reflects production.
UI: There were two fishing actions visible on the Sailing tech. This is now corrected.
UI: Adjusted the logic for calculating turns left for next social policy (was sometimes off by 1).
UI: Fixed a few popup dialogs that were not correctly triggering the PopupShown message.
Multiplayer: Reconnecting players would revert to the default multiplayer handicap. We now cache the handicap of the last human player to occupy a civilization.
Multiplayer: Invites to standard internet multiplayer games were only bringing the player to the main menu if they accepted when the game was not running.
Modding: Exposed CvPlot:GetPurchaseCityID and CvPlot:SetPurchaseCityID to Lua.
Several fixes to Lua loops that were not taking into account that Lua's for is a <= and not a <.
AI embarked civilian units could plunder enemy trade routes. This has been fixed.
Muliplayer: Fixed an early-game OoS (followed by a broken match) that could occur when playing between a player running DX9 and a player running DX11 on certain maps.
An AI gifted City-State (or city) could cause a game hang if the player did not make their choice immediately (liberate, puppet, etc.) because if you paused, and then liberated, you could get a production prompt for the city which you no longer owned, blocking turn progress. This is now fixed. To work around it for now, make your choice quickly.

[B & B]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

I personally love to do the huge map with 12 civ/20 city-states. I always do random civs, including my own. I like the challenge of adapting to the civ you control.

agree with the random, makes it fun.

but, what specs are your PC to run a 12 civ game. mine drags later on in the fray

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by B & B

agree with the random, makes it fun.

but, what specs are your PC to run a 12 civ game. mine drags later on in the fray

I run it on a quad core laptop with 8 gb ram. Does slow down some, but not too bad. I'm usually watching TV while playing, so I don't notice the delay too often.

[Mike Lowe]

What version number should show for the latest patch?

[cartman]

Originally Posted by Mike Lowe

What version number should show for the latest patch?

Mine shows 6.1.7601.

I'm liking the changes with the latest patch. One of the biggest things I've noticed, instead of just asking for luxury resources, the other Civs offer something in return.

[Draft Dodger]

well, finally won my first game.

suffered a tough loss in my last game. Thanks to some aggressive growth (military and settling) I had a ton of land and was dominating in the score category with just under 3,000 and I think the next closest Civ had maybe 1,400. I just needed to play out the frame. Unfortunately, fucking Bismark won a cultural victory on turn 491. Ugh. The worst part, I saw it happening too late and then I wasn't sure exactly how to stop it. The only thing I could do was invade, and I think he had a big enough military to stop me. Frustrating.

This game, I ended up as the Zulu on what turned out to be a two continent map (I always do random civs, random map). I ended up with lousy strategic resources - no steel, no oil, no aluminum, no uranium, just one coal deposit - and not much in the way of luxuries either. I was pretty close to the Incas and Poland with Japan below them as the 4th Civ on the continent. I decided to make 4 cities, all spread as much as possible to give them room. I turned their management growth and pretty much focused on growth, science, money and then culture and happiness. I got a couple of composite bowmen pretty early, just in time to stave off an attack from Poland. I pretty much shredded his army as they marched to my city, and he quickly gave in. I made friends with the Incas and Japan and played nice with them pretty much the whole game so I only needed to worry about the inevitable rematch with Poland.

the small number of cities was new for me, and it worked great. I made caravans as soon as possible and had a lot of money for most of the game. With the focus on growth and science, I was just far enough ahead in the technology race to build my share of wonders and the tech and money allowed me to maintain a sizeable modern army for the entire game. At one point I expanded to a nearby island just for the oil and an extra fur resource.

Around turn 400, things got interesting. On the other continent, Indonesia and Portugal wiped out my two allies in Sweden and Mongolia respectively. Indonesia wasn't much of a concern, but the Portugal move moved them ahead of me in points. I got nervous and launched an attack to whittle her down a bit, but she was halfway around the world and I quickly realized that was futile. On to plan B.

While this was going on, Poland was getting pissy with me, so when the Incas asked to team up with me against them, I went all in. The two of us marched on Krakow and after a long battle we finally prevailed. Unfortunately, I couldn't quite seal the deal on my turn and watched helplessly as the Incas marched in and took over. Tough break. I started to march on Warsaw but he quickly offered me one of his other cities to end the war. In the last game, I had screwed myself by ignoring the war monger penalty so I was super cognizant in this game. I even had let one of Portugal's allied city states stick around although I had an opportunity to take it.

So, I took the deal and bided my time a bit. Still low on resources, I sent another settler out to another oil island, so I could build some tanks and stuff (had to do some creative trading to temporarily get my happiness above -10 for a turn to make this happen). I'm still ahead in the tech race and have a bunch of wonders, but I'm like 50 points behind Portugal and I can see that this game is going to be on points - no one is close to any of the other victories.

Thankfully, for whatever reason the Incas gave up on Poland and moved their attention to attacking Japan before taking Warsaw. By turn 470, I no longer cared about the war monger penalty, so moved my entire army into Warsaw, this time being sure to surround the city so that the frigging Incas couldn't take the damn thing. It worked. After a few turns, the city fell and all the wonders and land that came with it was more than enough to move me well into first place in points. With nothing else to do, I kept cranking units in case I had to do a late double-cross of the Incas (who were decimating Japan), but it never happened.

nice to finally get a win. I feel like I'm finally figuring out the game (as Bucc alludes to, it's amazing how much the early decision-making affects the late game). I do wish I could figure out happiness - no matter what I do, I always seem to be one of the least happy civs in the game and spent a lot of time in the red. Even in this game, where I had every happiness building and a shitload of happy wonders and policies, I still struggled. People frigging hate me, I guess

[lcjjdnh]

Are there any good tutorials on this version? I have not played Civ in a while. Or am I better off just reading the Civopedia?

[SackAttack]

Yeah, the new cultural victories are hard to stop once they get going. The only way you can counter them is either a) boost your own culture to the point where their tourism can't hold sway over you b) boost your own tourism (which you have to have been doing from the start) or conquer their tourism-generating cities.

[B & B]

Originally Posted by lcjjdnh

Are there any good tutorials on this version? I have not played Civ in a while. Or am I better off just reading the Civopedia?

im mostly self taught , but you can just youtube Civ V, and a keyword you might be looking for some incite on. grab a cup of coffee and sit down for 5-10 min. its let me pick up on some helpful hints, and also shows how differently ppl can really play (interact with others, build their cities and roads, etc_)

[Buccaneer]

I would highly recommend MadDjinn's videos/channel. Even though he plays at deity, he's a great teacher and explains why he does things. He also has some tutorial videos, some for G&K and at least one for BNW.

[SackAttack]

If anybody gets the urge to try the Mass Effect mod...I recommend Pangaea or another map that has contiguous landmass. That way if, like me, you wind up with the Reapers for neighbors...you'll last longer than two dozen turns.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

I would highly recommend MadDjinn's videos/channel. Even though he plays at deity, he's a great teacher and explains why he does things. He also has some tutorial videos, some for G&K and at least one for BNW.

This is an old post but I second it. I learned a ton watching him play.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

This is an old post but I second it. I learned a ton watching him play.

+1. Watched about three hours of his videos over the weekend while watching/listening to the football games. Great stuff.

[kcchief19]

Those are cool. I did the same thing MBBF did and I've learned a lot of tricks.

Just played one of the stranger games I've ever played. I play random maps and ended up with a map of two large continents -- but all eight Civs in the game were on one continent. Once I discovered the continent, I began settling cities on it. No other Civ stated settling it until the 1900s. Never saw that before.

[cartman]

Someone has done a full mod of Civ V to turn into a replica of Dungeon and Dragons: The Forgotten Realms.

Steam Workshop :: Faerun for GnK

[Draft Dodger]

yeah, I'm going to try that right this second

[kcchief19]

Here's a beef I've had with the addition (or at least increased prevalence) of the warmonger penalty.

Here's a scenario that has played out similarly in multiple games. I've never declared war on anyone, and have generally had positive relations. Korea declares war on me, we fight to a draw and make peace. I'm cozy with the Iroquois, who generally everyone hates. Korea declares war on me a second time. I pound one of their cities but they refuse to negotiate peace. I'm told if I capture the city I'll incur a "major warmonger" penalty. I take the city and move to their capital. They still refuse to make peace. I take the capital and eventually take their final city as well. Later, Japan and Greece declare war partly because I'm a warmonger.

Why does the game penalize a Civ that has not declared war and is merely defending? I'd be fine with getting minor warmonger penalties for capture cities, but it makes no sense for me to be labeled a war monger when I've never declared war.

[TRO]

I get your argument on that, but by taking their city, you've changed from a defender to an attacker. You followed that up by taking the capital as well.

It's not that you made the wrong call either. You were attacked twice and they wouldn't make peace.

[kcchief19]

I get that, and I definitely see where the war monger penalties could be abused by the player "bullying" a country into starting a war so they could then take cities without a major penalty.

The first time Korea attacked I did not launch a counterattack, I just held them off until they agreed to make peace. Of course their first peace offer was for every city I had, but they agreed unconditionally.

Japan declared war in concert with Korea, and had I taken a Japanese city I would have only received a minor war monger penalty. They were also at war with the Iroquois, so I just waited until they were willing to negotiate and they gave me their closest city.

[Blackadar]

Originally Posted by kcchief19

Here's a beef I've had with the addition (or at least increased prevalence) of the warmonger penalty.

Here's a scenario that has played out similarly in multiple games. I've never declared war on anyone, and have generally had positive relations. Korea declares war on me, we fight to a draw and make peace. I'm cozy with the Iroquois, who generally everyone hates. Korea declares war on me a second time. I pound one of their cities but they refuse to negotiate peace. I'm told if I capture the city I'll incur a "major warmonger" penalty. I take the city and move to their capital. They still refuse to make peace. I take the capital and eventually take their final city as well. Later, Japan and Greece declare war partly because I'm a warmonger.

Why does the game penalize a Civ that has not declared war and is merely defending? I'd be fine with getting minor warmonger penalties for capture cities, but it makes no sense for me to be labeled a war monger when I've never declared war.

Do what I do - download the mod for reduced warmonger penalty.

Steam Workshop :: Less Warmonger Hate [BNW]

[Buccaneer]

Why the mod?? It's very easy to manage the penalty and use it to your advantage. The AI opponents are way too passive (BNW+) as it is and anything that makes it a little harder on the human player is a good thing for a competitive game.

[Blackadar]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

Why the mod?? It's very easy to manage the penalty and use it to your advantage. The AI opponents are way too passive (BNW+) as it is and anything that makes it a little harder on the human player is a good thing for a competitive game.

Why? For the same reason kcchief just articulated. I'm tired of being attacked and getting hit with the warmonger penalty.

Example: I worked my butt off to be the nice guy one game. Everyone was my friend. I had two civs on the opposite side of the world who were very friendly with each other. So I signed defense pacts with each. A few turns later (I guess their defense pact expired), one of them declares war on the other. The game decides that I then should declare war on the attacker (didn't get a choice) and I got hit with a MAJOR warmonger penalty for declaring war on an ally. Relations with everyone else took a major hit and a few turns later two of my supposed friends on my continent denounce me and then declare war.

There are too many variables in Civ 5 diplomacy where shit can cascade on a player really due to no fault of their own. If diplomacy had been more robust, I would have had the opportunity to choose to participate in a war. I might take a small hit for not honoring a defense pact, but that would be far less than taking the hit for supposedly declaring war on an ally. Since there's no advantage that I know of in having any warmonger penalty, I just turn it down so diplomacy can actually work in the game.

[Bobble]

Originally Posted by cartman

Someone has done a full mod of Civ V to turn into a replica of Dungeon and Dragons: The Forgotten Realms.

Steam Workshop :: Faerun for GnK

Downloaded this (thanks, cartman) and having a good time with it. Anyone else feel hamstrung (-stringed? -stringulated?) by the lack of charters? It's really changing my game. So many prime city spots just sitting there!

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by Blackadar

Why? For the same reason kcchief just articulated. I'm tired of being attacked and getting hit with the warmonger penalty.

Example: I worked my butt off to be the nice guy one game. Everyone was my friend. I had two civs on the opposite side of the world who were very friendly with each other. So I signed defense pacts with each. A few turns later (I guess their defense pact expired), one of them declares war on the other. The game decides that I then should declare war on the attacker (didn't get a choice) and I got hit with a MAJOR warmonger penalty for declaring war on an ally. Relations with everyone else took a major hit and a few turns later two of my supposed friends on my continent denounce me and then declare war.

There are too many variables in Civ 5 diplomacy where shit can cascade on a player really due to no fault of their own. If diplomacy had been more robust, I would have had the opportunity to choose to participate in a war. I might take a small hit for not honoring a defense pact, but that would be far less than taking the hit for supposedly declaring war on an ally. Since there's no advantage that I know of in having any warmonger penalty, I just turn it down so diplomacy can actually work in the game.

Just a quick post before I go, I can detail more later. First mistake was signing a Defensive Pact - which one should never, ever do. But I disagree about "no fault of their own". It is easy to keep the number of red to a minimum compared to green, except those that are aggressive by default (like Zulus - let them come, defense is easy). It's simply a matter of not doing anything that could piss someone off - if you want to keep playing peaceful - and pretty much ignoring stuff that goes on. These include not forward-settling, not taking sides, not declaring (unless you want to) but let them declare which you can take advantage of, not denouncing (unless everyone has denounced a single opponent), no attacking city-states, minimize city-states protection (they reduced the bonus for that anyways), and more. You will have the luxury of time to build up your resources to win. Those are the rules of the game and as long as you play within those rules, they are easy to manage and take advantage of.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by Blackadar

Example: I worked my butt off to be the nice guy one game. Everyone was my friend. I had two civs on the opposite side of the world who were very friendly with each other. So I signed defense pacts with each. A few turns later (I guess their defense pact expired), one of them declares war on the other. The game decides that I then should declare war on the attacker (didn't get a choice) and I got hit with a MAJOR warmonger penalty for declaring war on an ally. Relations with everyone else took a major hit and a few turns later two of my supposed friends on my continent denounce me and then declare war.

o hai welcome to world war one

[Blackadar]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

Just a quick post before I go, I can detail more later. First mistake was signing a Defensive Pact - which one should never, ever do. But I disagree about "no fault of their own". It is easy to keep the number of red to a minimum compared to green, except those that are aggressive by default (like Zulus - let them come, defense is easy). It's simply a matter of not doing anything that could piss someone off - if you want to keep playing peaceful - and pretty much ignoring stuff that goes on. These include not forward-settling, not taking sides, not declaring (unless you want to) but let them declare which you can take advantage of, not denouncing (unless everyone has denounced a single opponent), no attacking city-states, minimize city-states protection (they reduced the bonus for that anyways), and more. You will have the luxury of time to build up your resources to win. Those are the rules of the game and as long as you play within those rules, they are easy to manage and take advantage of.

So in other words your suggestion is to largely ignore diplomacy. I'm not fond of that option which is the reason why I use this mod. The diplomacy isn't entire horrible in Civ 5, but it sure could have used another level of depth and some additional options. For example, I couldn't cancel the defense pacts with either country when I saw this hullabaloo (word of the day!) brewing. It would have been a nice option. Yeah, I might have taken a smaller diplomatic hit, but so be it.

As it was, this was the equivalent of the Grand Alliance in WWII failing with me as the US. GB suddenly decided to attack Russia. Does anyone think that the US sides with Russia in that scenario? There's no way to add options, but at least I can mitigate the impact of not having as many options as is needed.

Note that the mod doesn't eliminate the warmonger penalty. It just reduces it a bit.

Originally Posted by sackattack

o hai welcome to world war one

Except, ya know, the countries involved STILL had to declare war on each other. It wasn't automatic. Hell, in the scenario above I would have sided with the attacker if I had my choice because they had been friends longer. Not to mention the other country was closer to my territory and one of their cities on the coast would have been ideal...

---

As for the end of that tale, once it all shook out I beat back the invasion on my continent pretty handily and gained a city from that. I gained a city from the attacker on the other continent, but they took two from the guy I was supposed to defend. So I gave that city back to the defenders to try to keep them on par with each other. I was the monster warmonger to everyone and my reputation was in tatters, so I went with it. Steamrolled everyone off my continent, razed a few cities and played as the most evil warmonger ever. Call me the Devil? Well, watch me become the Devil. Just for fun, I bought off the city states and won the diplomatic victory anyway.

[Draft Dodger]

Originally Posted by Bobble

Downloaded this (thanks, cartman) and having a good time with it. Anyone else feel hamstrung (-stringed? -stringulated?) by the lack of charters? It's really changing my game. So many prime city spots just sitting there!

I played it for a bit. I was really impressed by it, but it was such a transformation that I really didn't know how I should try to play it. So I gave up fairly shortly, but I did like it.

I LOVED that the diplomacy screens with the leaders were just screens and not animated...they loaded SOOOO much faster than my game.

[Ryno]

Originally Posted by Draft Dodger

I LOVED that the diplomacy screens with the leaders were just screens and not animated...they loaded SOOOO much faster than my game.

There's a game setting to do that without the mod as well. In the "Sid Meier's Civilization 5" folder there is a GraphicsSettingsDX[9 or 11].ini file. Change UseScreenShots to 1 and you should be set.

[Draft Dodger]

I will have to try that - thank you!

[WVUFAN]

I fired up Civ V a little bit ago, and I now see a Pitboss option. When did this happen?

[Vince, Pt. II]

Just finished my first ever Diplomatic Victory (King difficulty). The Spanish (Gold gift for discovering natural wonders, natural wonders produce double their typical tile yield when worked by a city) are insanely powerful if you get a favorable setup. Found Uluru early, got 500 gold for discovering it. Bought a settler, created a city near Uluru and was raking in 16 faith per turn just on that tile alone. Went Buddhism for kicks, got Tithe and Pagodas, then took Religious Texts and Cathedrals with my second Great Prophet and went to work on the Piety civics track. Took Jesuit Education as my Reformation belief and then bought Universities and Public Schools for all my cities with faith the rest of the game. Was able to quickly spread Buddhism all around, and once the World Council was founded it was a pretty simple matter to make Buddhism the World Religion. Made for a pretty killer set-up. When America attacked me out of the blue, my artillery made short work of New York and Washington, and my biggest competitor was crippled (not to mention I got a bunch of wonders out of the deal).

Brave New World is such a fantastic expansion. The World Council/United Nations makes the end game so much better it's absurd. Love it.

[Buccaneer]

For those of us that don't like their Civ game to include flying robots and aliens, a new BNW patch has been released:

[EXPLOIT]
• Fixed tech overflow bug that could allow a user to get free tech each turn for multiple turns. The size of the maximum allowable science overflow is now set at 5 turns of science (about the same as a unmodified research agreement) OR the unmodified cost of the last tech researched, whichever is larger. AI also understands this adjustment.
• Fixed a multiplayer bug that would allow a player to steal everything from another player when trading.

[GAMEPLAY]
• Allow Conquest of the New World achievements to be unlocked when playing the Deluxe version of the scenario.
• Slight nerf to Tradition, and a boost to Piety (by adding one more prerequisite for Legalism and taking one away from Reformation).
• Scale warmonger penalties by era (50% of normal strength in Ancient up to 90% in Industrial; 100% thereafter). Penalties for warmongering vs. City-States halved.
• Added Cocoa and Bison resources from the Conquest Deluxe scenario into the main game.

[MULTIPLAYER]
• The autoslotting of human players when loading a saved game in LAN multiplayer was broken when trying to play round-to-round. This has been fixed.
• Players now properly exit LAN games when they encounter a version mismatch.
• Players can now set their nick name in LAN games.
• Fixed an issue where player would get stuck on the joining multiplayer game screen if they used an incomplete IP address while attempting to join by ip address.
• Notifications are no longer considered “broadcast” unless the player is connected to the game. This will make it easier to communicate information to players who were not connected when the message was broadcast.
• Players now unready themselves if the host changes the game settings before the game started.
• The number of player slots available was not updating for connected remote clients when the host increased the map size on the staging room.
• Fixed an issue causing AI civs that used to be players to still have the player's Steam name after the player leaves in Multiplayer.
• A player's name in the staging room chat panel no longer swaps if they swapped player slots.
• Some multiplayer notifications can now expire at the end of the next turn.
• Some multiplayer notifications will not expire until the player has network connected to the game.
• Multiple hot-joining bugs fixed in Pitboss.

[MISC BUGS]
• The icon no longer changes to a spinning globe during diplomacy (this normally means the game is busy).
• Don't show a third-party civ or City-State on the trade panel list to "Declare War" or "Make Peace" unless both players have met that civ or City-State.

[kcchief19]

Scale warmonger penalties by era (50% of normal strength in Ancient up to 90% in Industrial; 100% thereafter). Penalties for warmongering vs. City-States halved.

(applause)

This is close enough to what I wanted to cheer. I'd love if they scaled back the warmonger penalty in cases where you are simply defending rather than declaring war, but regardless I love this. I rarely start out intending to be a warmonger, and I never go warmonger as much as some Civs do (I'm looking at you, Attila). But I'm ready to test drive this.

[Draft Dodger]

I just saw bison and cocoa tonight and thought I was going crazy.

[Mike Lowe]

I bought the two big expansion packs as well as the original game obviously, but it's a bit upsetting that for being loyal, I don't get a discount to upgrade to the complete Civilization 5?

Is there a way to get these bonuses cheaper than individually or upgrading to the complete collection, the majority of it I already own?

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Civilization's Huge 61-Player War Is Just Nuts

[Critch]

Not really totally about Civilization, but I thought it was interesting and wasnt sure what thread to put it in. So here it is:

How will future videogame makers design a grand strategy game about the 21st century?

[Ben E Lou]

Civ6 info moved to new thread:

Civ 6 Announced - Front Office Football Central