Civilization V: Brave New World

It really takes many, many tries for me to find the game settings that I actually enjoy playing. Usually, the concept of having two large continents with the other nations being split evenly on those continents was great, so I first conquer my half and then set sail for the other was fun. However, in previous civ games, this goal always fell way short of success because of the HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE transport method for units. Transporting an army of 20 units across a large ocean was the worst pain in the ass I've ever experienced in a Civ game.

Was that shit fixed?

The game feels more playable to me because combat in Civ V has always been the worst part of the game due to the awful tactical AI, and this expansion gives you a whole pile of things to do other than fight wars. Loving it so far.

The AI used to hit whichever of your units was damaged over and over again while your catapults/trebuchets/artillery pounded a city, but now defensive units will hit your heavy hitters even if another unit (for me usually a ground unit) is damaged. Not a huge change, but it can make an assault on a city be more difficult if you don't prepare properly.

Those that are interested and don't have it yet - just woke up and saw it's on the flash sale right now for $20.09 (-33%) on Steam - still got an hour or so on the Steam sale.

Theory crafting more strategies for the Shoshone and their quick start potential.

1. Put the city down on the starting tile, to get things going turn #1. Immediately start building a Pathfinder.
2. Within the first 5 turns, try to find 2 ancient ruins, taking Composite Bowman upgrade and Culture.
3. On turn 5, adopt Tradition for +3 capital cultural, followed by Legalism for 4 free Monuments.
4. With the trained Pathfinder, find as many City States and ruins as possible.
5. With the 3rd policy advancement, adopt Honor. With the Composite Bowman, harass the fuck out of Barbarians, going lots of favor with City States and hopefully a few of them as Allies, as well as gaining exp and culture.
6. Buy 3 more Settlers immediately whenever gold reserves go over 500 gp and grab up as much land as possible, ignoring Civ's that get pissed off due to your land grab. Put your borders right up against their's and goad them into declaring war on you. Try to fight in your own territory for the Shoshone bonus, then counter attack once you have destroyed their armies.
7. Tech path: adjust accordingly to resources, but try to unlock Iron Working and so Military City States gift respectable units.

Has anyone got into the problem of being forced into a cultural or diplomatic victory? A lot of the games I've played since the expansion have been difficult to get a space victory in simply because you can't put off the world leader vote or other cultures love you too much. I suppose it's a good thing to have to choose, but I haven't been able to build any of the future warfare units yet.

Ah ok, so that is actually good for multiplayer game play. I guess that means I have to start micromanaging. I've always let the AI control what my specialists and workers are doing.

hodj_sl said:

No thats still a hassle for sure, like I said I can't name specific mechanics I didn't like that were changed. The game just feels more playable, but that specific situation you're talking about is certainly still a hassle by nature of the fact that you can't stack units and have to transport them individually. However, each unit once you get optics can disembark on its own ship but that's how its always been in Civ 5. Helps a little.

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They improved many things in G&K. Embarked land units can stack with a naval unit. They also removed that cheese where a enemy naval unit can poof an embarked land unit by moving on top of them. Embarked units definitely have a better shot now.

I've played a ton of Civ5 since G&K. Haven't gotten a good grasp on the new expansion yet but so far I've enjoyed it.

If you were turned off of Civ5 vanilla, but usually like Civ games, definitely give G&K a try (and Brave New World too, might as well).

So far trade routes are interesting and I now I might be more inclined to try a non-pangea map.

BNW is pretty fly. It'll be better when communitas is back up to speed though.

I love trade routes and how they encourage you to put your army/navy out to protect them. Trade routes should basically be the core economic aspect of the game, not something tacked on in the second expansion. I hope Civ 6 incorporates them in vanilla. They could be better though. Right now trade routes can express religious pressure and scientific progress, but the pressure is a bit underwhelming and the science is ridiculously pitiful on larger scale maps. Getting +2 research from a route because my trade target has two entire techs over me that cost me 20,000 research to acquire (and my research/turn is ~1k) is tarded. Trading also ought to augment your diplomatic position with either city states or civs. It doesn't seem to affect civ opinion or contribute to influence with cities. That's terribad. If you STOP trading with a city state sometimes they'll give you a quest to trade with them, but the best way to gain influence from this is to constantly cut them off. Like...derp?

My fingers are crossed that Communitas can make the new BNW features more effective.

Trade routes add +25% to tourism output.

well, culture victory still pretty much plays like before G&K, except the "next turn" thing starts a bit later because you have to lay a tourism foundation once you have the culture dominance going. Once tourism is up, it's next turn, next turn, next turn, next turn.

What speed do you guys play at? I usually change on whatever victory I want to go for. Next cultural victory I'll definitely go Quick just so I have to wait for fewer turns. That doesn't really work for conquest, because if your army has to travel long distance to fight an enemy, your knights will face infantry...

btw what's the deal with me sometimes walking on ruins and there not being anything?

Are you confusing antiquities and ruins? I always get shit from ruins, so I don't know.

Sometimes the fog of war shows ruins where you saw them before (perhaps from a map extension ruin or a boat explorer) and they may have been grabbed between then and now, so you'll run over to an empty tile.

I play on marathon, and I've basically disabled all but conquest victory. It bugs me that the spaceship parts absolutely do not function without space vic possible, but diplo/culture/time are usually junk victories to me.

Quineloe_sl said:

btw what's the deal with me sometimes walking on ruins and there not being anything?

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You probably got gold, culture, or faith.

I've bought the new expansion and played a few games with it. It's definitely improved, but I still have a lot of issues with micromanagement and pacing in this game compared to civ4.

I feel comparatively on a per-turn basis, there's less actions to do and the end of turn/start of turn load time is longer (which I might add, you can't issue any build or unit orders while in turn transition) than in civ4. It feels jarring and poorly paced -- I play on Epic speed because I can't imagine what a Marathon game is like with so many turns just being an End Turn click.

Any suggestions on how alleviate this issue I've got? Perhaps there's some mods that fix pacing some? Or maybe I just need to play on Standard or Quick speed instead -- just a note, I only played Marathon speed in civ4. I really want to enjoy civ5, but I still feel like to get my turn based strategy fix, I'd rather just load up civ4 and play that instead.

Agraza_sl said:

Are you confusing antiquities and ruins? I always get shit from ruins, so I don't know.

Sometimes the fog of war shows ruins where you saw them before (perhaps from a map extension ruin or a boat explorer) and they may have been grabbed between then and now, so you'll run over to an empty tile.

I play on marathon, and I've basically disabled all but conquest victory. It bugs me that the spaceship parts absolutely do not function without space vic possible, but diplo/culture/time are usually junk victories to me.

Click to expand...

I'm talking about newly discovered ruins, I walk on them but no reward message pops. I just get some culture, I noticed that now.



Another thing that bugs me about the new culture victory is that it seems flat out impossible before you get the end tier technologies that skyrocket your tourism output. With the utopia thing, it was possible to culture win somewhat earlier.

Most of my playthrus are on Standard and those games feel pretty long and drawn out. I cannot imagine Epic or Marathon.

I finished a Diplomatic victory game this week. I played Arabia and I had so much gold from trade-routes, bazaars, and religion spread that I was able to buy Ally status with all the City States pretty early on and maintain it throughout the game to victory. Every one of the other Civ's hated me, but with the backing of the City States, I had overwhelming support to be voted World Leader when it finally came up for vote. I actually wiped out my biggest rival about 3/4 of the way into the game to because she got greedy and declared war on me. I had an Era's worth of Scientific and Military advantage on them and it didn't take much to wipe them out, gaining 7 massive cities and about 10 World Wonder's for my trouble.

It was a pretty easy formula to victory: Make lots of money, buy city state loyalty, and over-whelm other civ's in the World Congress. So easy, it was a bit anti-climatic when it was all said and done. I was about 50% finished building the spaceship as well when the game ended. I was trying to do lots with Tourism and Culture, but I never fully figured that out. I definitely had the most of both, but I couldn't see anywhere what it was building towards or a "graph" showing if I was close to victory. It was a bit confusing.