Civilization Thread!

[Herr Matzat]

There are other chalanges, but yeah they made it a lot simpler... but keep in mind that the other game is two addons ahead.

[Sousa]

To be fair, I think it's possible to make a Civ game less complicated than IV and still enjoyable, but that's because Civ IV is extremely fucking complicated. I've been playing with BtS for months now and have barely dabbled in Corporations and Espionage at all. Sid's Sushi, the fuck.

[Mick]

Sunday I got Civ IV, after about a month of dominating Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire.

Only three games done, all as the Americans; here's the results.

Game 1: Stopped due to time; I met some kind of glitch while I was building the space ship . Had trouble figuring out certain concepts (had no clue I could upgrade units; too used to the model in Civ II ).

Game 2: Went a lot better than Game 1, other than the damn Persians absorbing two of my cities . Had a nice relationship with Russia, until for whatever reason war was declared, and the SEALS proceeded to take Moscow and some other city. Eventually won by completing the space ship.

Game 3: At this point, I found out custom game was what I wanted (11 Civilizations? Hell no. I'm going with 5 ). Shared a continent with Mali and the Aztecs, which I proceeded to raze to the ground once I tapped the technology tree. I had it set for only a cultural victory or a domination victory; cultural quickly became a non-possibility thanks to me going culture crazy in Washington and my two other culture cities having no hope at all of hitting Legendary; thus, I tired my attention across the ocean, home of the Germans and Indians. Went over there and instead of burning India to the ground, I had to conquer them, and thus couldn't build basic units, taking forever to put a garrison in place. After the Indians went bye-bye, I had to take over a few German cities to secure victory.

My next game is going to be in BTS, and I intend on using the Portuguese; faster settler and worker production is essential to my play style, so I'll see how it goes. Still not quite sold on this over Alpha Centauri, though. Mainly I'm giving it a shot because I figured out how to dominate the computer in AC, and thus need a new challenge

[Sousa]

The Portuguese are pretty good, but they get by mostly on the strength of Joao being able to expand quickly in the early game--on the other hand, you can do that well enough with any civ if you leverage your capital well (my best rapid early expansion game was with Isabella and Spain, actually--she gets cheap workers, but most of her strengths come in the Renaissance when you can get Citadel-powered Cannons and Trebuchets online). To really learn the ropes, I suggest a Financial leader. Mansa Musa (Mali) is great for figuring the game out. He's Financial (the best trait in the game) and Spiritual, which means he can tech well and you don't have to worry about anarchy every time you want to change civics. Elizabeth is good for a similar reason, and the British have a better unique unit than the Malinese. If you want to work on war, though, go with Julius Caesar and Rome, set up Iron Working quickly, build a fuckton of Praetorians, and win. Over and over and over.

[Mick]

The Portuguese are pretty good, but they get by mostly on the strength of Joao being able to expand quickly in the early game--on the other hand, you can do that well enough with any civ if you leverage your capital well (my best rapid early expansion game was with Isabella and Spain, actually--she gets cheap workers, but most of her strengths come in the Renaissance when you can get Citadel-powered Cannons and Trebuchets online). To really learn the ropes, I suggest a Financial leader. Mansa Musa (Mali) is great for figuring the game out. He's Financial (the best trait in the game) and Spiritual, which means he can tech well and you don't have to worry about anarchy every time you want to change civics. Elizabeth is good for a similar reason, and the British have a better unique unit than the Malinese. If you want to work on war, though, go with Julius Caesar and Rome, set up Iron Working quickly, build a fuckton of Praetorians, and win. Over and over and over.

Early game expansion's always been my main paradigm; infrastructure be damned, so long as I just pump out a settler and one or two workers per city, things tend to take off like a damn rocket.

Might try to go for another cultural victory...

[Sousa]

We should do a pit boss game or something. You loveydubby it up as Hattie or Gandhi or whatever while I run Keshiks all over creation.

[Mick]

Oh, so the generals want me to build 12 chariots, eh? Well fuck that.

I just want to build my glorious empire in peace

[Sousa]

That quest gives you either a promotion for your chariots or your state religion spread to five cities--your choice. Not bad for going cultural.

[KevinStorm]

My biggest complaint about Civ 5 is that it seems like the game just doesn't want you to expand. I have something like 6 cities, with the Liberty social policy maxed out(which is supposed to be good for big empires), but I still barely break even on happiness.

I miss my sprawling, globe-spanning empires of Civ 2.

[Herr Matzat]

The mechanics work different, you can have a globe spanning civ and win just as much you can have only one city and win.... if you do it right.

[Benji]

Civ 5 comes across like they thought Civ Revolution was a good game. Which it wasn't. At all.

[Sousa]

I liked Civ Revolution on the DS. I can't imagine playing ostensibly the same game on a next-gen system, though.

[KevinStorm]

I finished a war with Russia fairly quickly. Conquered two of their cities, which I turned into puppets, and turned on a third. They sued for peace, offering me their open borders(not mine, though), ivory for 30 turns, 12 units of iron for 30 turns, 6 units of horses for 30 turns, and 3 of their cities, which I also turned into puppets.

Then my happiness went to 13 unhappiness. I've got it to like 4 unhappiness now, but there aren't any more buildings I can make other than Circus Maximus to fix it.

[Mick]

If you want to work on war, though, go with Julius Caesar and Rome, set up Iron Working quickly, build a fuckton of Praetorians, and win. Over and over and over.

This worked pretty well, until the army went on strike right in front of China and promptly disbanded

[Sousa]

Wow, Mick, it's almost as if you should also build infrastructure.

[Mick]

Wow, Mick, it's almost as if you should also build infrastructure.

WE EXPAND OR WE DIE!

Also...

Are cathedrals a one shot deal per religion? I'm aiming for a cultural victory this go, and I don't want to waste building one when I'd need it in another city.

[Sousa]

You get to build a new cathedral when you build X number of temples and all multiples of X. So, for example, on a medium-sized map, you get a cathedral at 3, 6, 9, etc. temples.

I just finished a monster of a game as Qin Shi Huang--Diplomatic victory in 1710, my earliest to date in the vanilla game (I won another diplomatic in the 1500's in a Civ Gold game, but it was extremely cheesy). Ended up right next door to Roosevelt, rushed him with whatever I could get out, and had him out by 1000 B.C. I'm on an island with Augustus Caesar (much more agreeable than Julius), Sitting Bull (fortunately marginalized), and MONTEZUMA (because the game hates me). Monty declared war because he's fucking Monty and that's what he does, and he managed to do nothing while I amassed Macemen and Trebuchets. So by the time his army spent literally twenty turns puttering around trying to decide which of my cities to attack, I had a hefty Stack O' Doom at his doorstep. Bam, vassal. Took one of Sitting Bull's cities and vassalized him. Meanwhile, on the other continent, Shaka Zulu was freaking whaling on Pacal and wiped him off the map, which I've never seen an AI civ do. Anyway, I was in the middle of humbling Rome when the Diplomatic Victory vote came up, and I won handily thanks to Monty still having a hefty population despite being spanked. I was reluctant to use Qin because Protective sucks, but I learned in this game that Industrious is incredible fun--it's so easy to just go back and forth between building a stack and dipping your toes in and hammering out wonders. I built Chichen Itza, for fuck's sake. Nobody likes Chichen Itza.

Weird to see an AI civ go in a way that wasn't at my hand. The only weirder thing than that was an Asoka peaceful space race game I played. Sent Caravels out and found an island with barb cities named Thebes and Moscow. I couldn't figure out why until I realized that the barbs had destroyed Egypt and Russia in the first few dozen turns, and somehow I hadn't noticed. Took the continent, spun off a vassal (Pericles, who's always fun), and went to space easily. Weird game.

Edited July 7, 2011 by Sousa

[Mick]

Yeah, I figured out the part about the cathedrals...

Won by Cultural Victory in the 1970's...

Here was the game.

Played as the Chinese (Mainly for the Pavilion), but I set the game up so I could have any leader (For which I used FDR), and I picked my opponents as India w/Asoka, Byzantium, Mali, and Rome with Augustus. Continents, so two big ass islands, huge world, marathon game.

I'm pretty isolated most of it, save for sharing the island with Mali and Rome. I'm just cruising my way to the top, money's not a problem, research is going well, until about 1930. Mali and Rome both declare war on me in the same turn.

I raze one of the Mali cities, and I promptly get peace, but it's too late with Rome as they capture Macau (really a worthless port town for me) and Shanghai (One of my big culture cities). So, I go into crazy mode and switch from my warm fuzzy "Hurray 21st Century Government" type stuff into pure war machine mode. Yeah, I sacrifice population to get the Mechanized Infantry up, but thankfully I have The Pentagon, Mt. Rushmore and Westpoint. I raze a couple border towns before retaking Macau, then focus all my efforts on Shanghai, which I get back (Lest most of the improvements, but thankfully with most of the culture still there). I then proceed to recreate Sherman's March, all the way to Rome, which I refuse to burn, but after that Augustus sues for peace. The only thing I hated about the war was I was running neck and neck in culture with India, but I was a good 500 points behind when the war was done (Augustus was third, and fell to the bottom from all of it).

Eventually Rome went from a healthy size 17 city all the way down to 1 (Which I didn't care about), and then I finally won the game.

After doing Domination, Space, and Cultural, Cultural is the most satisfying, I think; Diplomatic might be next, so I'll see how that will go; I'll probably just conquer my continent early on, and from there, just build up a nice little empire with about half the votes for the election, then kiss ass to victory.

[SRN]

With all this talk of Civ4, and my compuer apparently not being able to run Civ5 properly, maybe I should get into again. Because I loved playing it even though I am really very horrible at it.

[Benji]

Played as Washington last night on a HYOOOOGE Earth map. I wound up starting just south of the African plains and I've managed to get myself three cities and seem to have a lot of free space to expand (presumably most of the others are based in Europe and Asia, which I can't reach because the borders of two other nations block me off). A lot more fun on big maps. I still miss the fact you can't seem to select the amount of enemy nations as well as the map size. Having a huge map with four enemies who all spawned on one side of the map was always fun.