Civilization V

[Dasquian Belargic]

So I can see from Steam that there are a few of us playing this game, thanks to the great deal that was on the past weekend. I arranged an event on Steam, for us to try out the multiplayer, but I thought we might like a thread to discuss the game as well -charting the rise and fall of our empires!

Last night I built the Eiffel Tower in Shanghai, and wiped out the Aztecs :D

[Peter McCoy]

I used the in-game editor to make me start roughly where Washington DC is as the Americans. I'm in a game with England, France, Germany, Russia, China, Japan, India and Egypt - all with their starting locations roughly where the real-world capitals are.

I'm 200 turns in (1400 AD) and am currently researching Gunpowder, moving towards Military Science with a view to crushing France. I've got veyr well developed cities along the eastern seaboard, a city roughly where Oregon is, a new city in the Amazon, and a new city just north of central Spain. This city in particular sparked a brief war with France whoich resulted in the loss of a unit of French archers and a unit of French horsemen. These two victories ended with France requesting a peace treaty with a nice bit of cash ove rthe next 30 turns so I accepted, knowing full-well that soon I'll have 25-strength cavalry units charging out of my city in Spain right into French territory That's assuming my treaty with England remains in tact for long enough since I don't have any horses in my own territory and a trade agreement with Blighty is keeping my troops mounted for now.

My gold income is so high, new cities can be up and running with the essential aquducts, granaries and workers the moment they're on the board.

I have to say that despite initially feeling extremely dissatisfied, I'm really loving this game now. I really like the whole strategic/luxury resources thing, as well as the ability to expand the city radius.

Plans for tomorrow night will include a few more cities to bolster my presence in Europe, as well as further expansion into South America to harness untapped resources lying there - namely spices.

How's your game coming along Jenny?

[Aurelias Kazaar]

What there was an event on steam? Dangit, I gotta check that more often.

[Peter McCoy]

Not an event in the sense of we all had a game. Just that Civ 5 was on offer over the weekend and a lot of us bought it. I imagine there'll be a Fans group event some time in the near future once we're more familiar with the game.

I'm itching to get home and continue my game! Stupid work!

[Aurelias Kazaar]

Yes I know...ugh I gotta check steam out more often. Especially after getting Borderlands on the cheap.

[Dasquian Belargic]

My game is going pretty well. I'm playing as China, using a map of Earth, but I started out with my capitol in what I guess is a western part of Russia.

Also in my game are Germany (who spent a lot of the initial game declaring war on me and then asking for peace), America, Arabia, India, Songhai, Persia, the Iroquois, Russia and formerly the Aztecs, who I have just recently wiped out.

I started out, and I am still playing, with the intention of winning a science victory. Russia have been ahead of me for most of the game, where technology is concerned, but I managed to complete the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Project first, so am now working on the first part of the Space Shuttle.

Russia has been my ally from the beginning, and we are the two largest empires - although Russia is on the North American continent. I actually gifted them one of my smaller, less well-located cities in order to allow them to build up some military presence within Europe. We have a defensive pact in place so it's helpful whenever someone declares war on me to have some Russian military units to back me up. My military is easily the largest in Europe, and only Russia has advanced military tech as far as me. Some of my enemies are still using archers while I've got paratroopers and fighter planes, with guided missiles almost fully researched.

I've never openly declared war on anyone myself, but as I say Germany declared war on me numerous times. Persia did for a period of time, and Arabia too, though I managed to fight them to the point where they gave up, without losing any cities on either side. Eventually, the Aztecs pushed me to the point of taking over the territory. They were located close to some of my newer cities and with only 3 cities of their own, they didn't take long to wipe out - especially since most of the rest of the world doesn't like them either.

All in all, I'd say - short of everyone else ganging up on me - Russia is my only real rival, and we have been allies from the beginning :)

[Peter McCoy]

This is gonna sound incredibly geeky but I'd love a NASA management/sim/RTS game. Something that starts out in the late 50's with initial satellite tests, through the whole Sputnik phenomenon, the Mercury, Gemini and eventually Apollo programs (or whatever names you decide on) right up to colonisation of the solar system. It could have actual as well as fictional technology and scientific concepts. I'd love it. Researching, testing, [planning missions, carrying them out etc. With todays graphical capabilities it'd look fantastic.

But I digress. back to Civ 5. I'd have liked to have more cities up and running, on my next game I'll concentrate on more settlers at the start. What I do in Alpha Centauri is drop a base, get a guard, roll out a former then do a colony pod, then start developing the base. A similar approach in Civ 5 might be on the cards.

I always like it when I'm historically ahead of the curve. I remember in a game of Civ 2 I had paratroopers by 1600 AD, shredding enemy chariots in a hail of gunfire.

Are you gonna stay allied with Russia or turn on them at the last minute? As soon as I have Modern Armour I'm gonna surround the French and steamroll them.

[Dasquian Belargic]

I can't see what benefit there would be in turning on Russia. We have excellent trade deals in place and they are far enough away from me that they don't feel the need to try and take over the land that I hold. The one city that I've gifted to them is in a region where there is no more land to settle, so they can't really expand on the territory there.

Aside from science, geographical expansion has been my main focus so my empire is spread across quite a big chunk of Europe. The smaller cities depend on their garrisons, or the garrisons of neighboring cities, to defend them against any upstart city states or empire that gets too cocksure.

With so many other nations right on my doorstep, evidently just waiting for a chance to strike me, I think declaring war on Russia would be the end of me. Whilst I was moving all of my units across the Atlantic to reach Russia on the North American continent, everyone in the rest of Europe would be able to swoop into my cities without a lot of resistance.

[Peter McCoy]

Yeah, but war is fun!

[Dasquian Belargic]

Once this game is over, I'm going to play again and go for military/domination victory ;)

[Yog]

Greetings, fellow members of ACA (Anonymous Civilization Addicts). Many a civilization gamer discovered that it was 9 pm in the evening, and decided to "play a few more turns", then next thing they know, they look at the clock again and find it is early morning, time to get to work..

My addiction started in 1992, on the Amiga, on 5 floppy discs. And ever since, I have been vigorously playing every chapter of what in my opinion is the king of strategy games. Indeed, you could argue it is the best video game series of all times (it's certainly my favorite series). It is also one of the best selling franchises of all time, with something like 8 million copies sold. Some of the reasons for that is how the series focused on depth and scope of game mechanics, a wide historical context spanning from the birth of civilization to modern time, and the versatility in how you can approach the game with multiple strategies. The emphasis on gameplay instead of fluff is the reason Civilization II with its horrible graphics is ludicrously fun to play, even to this very day, and by some fanatics still considered the best (although most will say IV, but personally I'd say V is the best).

Astonishingly, for every episode, the game designers made major changes in the rules and core gameplay mechanics, removing popular features, then adding others, which normally should be a recipe for disaster, yet generally, it has been a process of 1 step back and 2 steps forward. For example, in Civilization V, they took away religion, government, the throne room, and some diplomacy options, but they added stuff like city states, hex map grid and removed unit stacking, which all turned out to have a huge impact on realism and fun of playing the game in a positive direction, IMO.

With that bit of background on Civilization out of the way, on to my latest adventures! :)

Now my previous game as the Germans on "Warlord" difficulty level, did not fare too well, because I had let unhappiness build up by annexing too many cities and neglecting to build improvements such as colosseums, theaters, stadiums, circuses etc, and also neglecting the acquisition of luxury resources. This hurt population growth, and subsequently the economy in a big way. At the same time, I had neglected trading with other civilizations (the other civilizations traded research agreements with each other), so I was left behind in the science race as well, especially within military technology, since the romans had cavalry, while I still had knights, lancers and musketmen. It was all a bit of an evil spiral difficult to get out of.

The competing civilizations must have noticed this, so they started ganging up on me with overwhelming military force, badly outnumbering me and with better equipment, yet, in a desperate rally of defense, I was miraculously able to push back their invasion.

Still, I felt like a fresh start was needed. So I set up a new game with the Indians, and decided to try for a cultural victory, with "Prince" difficulty level, to make it more interesting. Now at this difficulty level, unhappiness builds up quicker, but this time I was prepared and had my plan and strategy ready. The idea was going for a "tall empire", rather than a wide one, with a few huge super cities, to maximize the bonus from Gandhi. Basically, throughout most of the game, I had only 2 cities to govern with a few puppet cities. This allowed me to minimize the 15% culture penalty per city.

But these 2 cities were ridiculous. By 2021, they had grown to 40+ size, and generating like 500 culture per turn. I had every single city improvement built, and more than 700 gold per turn during golden age, which was running all the time, because I used specialists to trigger them. All 12 city states were allies of mine, and the Americans and Chinese (the only remaining superpowers) were trembling in fear of the military force I had built of stealth bombers, modern armor, nuclear submarines, battleships and carriers with nukes and guided missiles. In addition, I had set myself up for victory in all 4 categories at this point. So I had the utopia project, united nations, and the space ship parts ready to launch, and my army and navy ready to strike the 2 remaining capitols, allowing me to get steam achievements for all 4 by saving and reloading the game.

In summary, after being somewhat humiliated in the first game as the Germans, I stroke back with a vengeance as a not so peace loving Gandhi.. :D

[Crusader]

It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls...

I love Civization Quotes and they are perfect for small talk...They will always let you appear better schooled than you actually are.

[Dasquian Belargic]

I must be playing on a much longer game length than you guys (I always tend to play on Epic length), or not playing as many hours, because I'm still just working on my first game! I didn't play at all yesterday, so I'm still in the same position I was.. think I'm going to play an hour or so tonight though, so we'll see how much further I am towards completing the space race then!

[Yog]

I play on standard, which is a comfortable setting for me. Epic length is, well epic, but it might be on the long side when you're still trying to figure out the game. At least you did not pick marathon.. :lol

[Peter McCoy]

In summary, after being somewhat humiliated in the first game as the Germans, I stroke back with a vengeance as a not so peace loving Gandhi.. :D

This is just awesome!

Last night I played from 1400 AD to 1750 AD. My cavalry own, as does my artillery so I'm steadily annihilating the French who are pinned between my advances out of Spain and Germany's Great Wall and territory, as well as the sea to the north. With nowhere to run, it's just a matter of time before Napoleon falls. Germany isn't on good terms with me at the moment but we're not at war. Same goes for England who were friendly a few turns back - I don't know what I've done to upset them. I did declare war on China at the request of Japan - there's a lot of land there that looks nice so I thought why not. Maybe they had beef with that decision, I don't know.

With 350 gold per turn, I'm really able to take the fight wherever it needs to be. The only thing preventing me from taking over the world is distances from foreign cities. I don't suppose teleportation is a researchable technology is it? LOL!

- I'm also loving the quotes you hear when various technologies and Wonders are obtained.

[Dasquian Belargic]

I play on standard, which is a comfortable setting for me. Epic length is, well epic, but it might be on the long side when you're still trying to figure out the game. At least you did not pick marathon.. :lol

I'm not completely new to Civilization. I have Civ 4 and I played a lot of Alpha Centauri in the past, which is just Civ in space, so I'm familiar with the way that the game works... I just like the longer length of the game ^_^;

[Peter McCoy]

I loved Civ 2. I still play it, well the version I have is Civilisation 2: Test of Time.

It has the original game mode whereby you start around 4000BC and work through to around 2000AD, I think you can extend a bit. Then there's the expanded original game which is a continuation of the spaceship victory - once your ship arrives at Alpha Centauri you get to colonise and build on there as well as on Earth.

There was a Science Fiction mode where you start with your one base and a defense unit on a planet in a distant star system. The tech was futuristic sci-fi stuff but there were 4 maps in total you could play on - two terrestrial planets, platforms in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant and a collection of orbital platforms around one of the planets - the latter two playing like a traditional small island map. You could transport units from one map to the other (or rather one planet to the other) once you had the appropriate tech.

There was also a fantasy one where you had faries and monsters. That also had different maps such as the normal ground based map, a skylands map, sea floor map, cavern/underground map and a hell map I think.

It was a very extensive collection of modes. I'd recommend it to anybody who likes the Civ franchise but has only played the newer versions.

..will continue at home, work is over :)

[Dasquian Belargic]

After a couple hours play this evening, my game is now over... and I didn't win!

The northern part of my empire was focused entirely on developing the tech necessary to develop the space shuttle parts, whilst in the south Arabia decided to declare war on me out of nowhere. I obliterated the majority of the Arabian cities, aside from a few that they had built on New Zealand and Australia which were a little harder to get to, before agreeing to peace terms.

Not long after this, Russia publicly denounced me - because I had too much land. The annoying thing is that they were supposed to be helping me fight Arabia but I didn't see a single Russian unit in the conflict.

In the end, Russia's massive military allowed them to wipe out Persia and their gold bought the friendship of every city state on the map. They founded the United Nations and got a majority of votes, so won the diplomatic victory.

The moral of the story? Do not trust Russia.

[Peter McCoy]

KGB wolves, the lot of them!

[Dasquian Belargic]

I decided to go for a quicker game tonight and focus on getting a Cultural Victory. I chose to play as France, and decided I would build three cities, all pretty close together.

Within settling the third city, I had Russia knocking on my door, telling me I'd settled land that they believed was theirs! I told them where to shove it and from then on wards kept military units right along the Franco-Russian border, knowing fine well that they would declare war once at least. They did and, after demanding all of my resources and one of my cities, they finally gave in.

I didn't realise at first, because I was so focused on culture that I wasn't exploring, but Moscow was a stones throw away from Lyon... so I guess they were worried I was trying to build up a threat near their capital.

Anyway, I built wonder after wonder and generally ignored the rest of the world - and eventually built the Utopia Project! Vive la France!

[Peter McCoy]

Nice one!

My immense game is approaching the final stretch now. It's 1864 AD and I now have Battleships, B16's and Mechanized Infantry. And Chicago is currently in the middle of The Manhattan Project. Although I am no longer on good terms with Japan, I'm still at war with China and I haven't put a foot in their territory, no idea where the chinese cities are but as soon as I have nukes it's time for a Chinese Take-Out! The only victory enabled is Conquest/domination/whatever, hence all the fighting in my game. Although next game I will definitely go for a peaceful victory if I can.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Now it's fucking Germany who's on my back non-stop! Starting playing as Greece, with the intention of moving towards a diplomatic victory. I've been winning over every city state I can find, but Germany is determined to scupper my plans to be a progressive nation by throwing every military unit they've got towards me.

They even had the balls to demand that I give them Sparta as part of a peace treaty. Making peace with them is pointless though. I did so twice already and they just use it as a chance to spawn a few more military units.

:shakefist

[Dasquian Belargic]

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