Civilization V

[Absinthe]

The hilly island fucks you so hard, even civ 5 tall empires wouldn't be viable.

Just have to fix that one with better map generation and placement. Which Civ5 has fixed to be clear.

Get coastal tiles and do the minimum (4 tile) spread so you can get to 3-4 cities this way. Get a granary and Sailing. Use Trade Routes with Cargo Ships to give your own cities food instead of trading with other players. Naval trade routes give double yield, so it gives +6 food to a city. If you can get a Pantheon either get God of the Sea (+1 production for sea resource tiles), God of Craftsmen (+1 production in 3+ pop cities, underrated), Messengers of the Gods (+2 science for every city connection) or Goddess of Love (6+ pop cities give +1 happiness, also underrated). Once you hit classical era your trade routes will give +8 food (+10 in industrial, and +12 in modern). With Tradition you will not only grow those cities fast but get a lot of happiness for high pop cities. Probably consider grabbing Colossus for extra trade route. Once you have workshops you can set these trade routes to give production instead of food and you can aim multiple trade routes from different cities at the same target. So if you have 4 cities 3 trade routes and workshops you can pile them all on your capital and get +24 production there. The downside to doing this is that your trade routes are stuck for 30 full turns before you can adjust them. If you just pile them for food you can try for meteoric tech with your massive population cities.

Fun follower beliefs if you pop religion (probably from Hagia Sophia) as a tall naval empire: Religious Community and Guruship (production good). Otherwise Pagodas & Peace Gardens if you need more happiness.

 

[tuluse]

Absinthe

I mean the way resources worked in Civ4, it's just impossible to overcome that. Civ5 did give many alternate ways to make just about any terrain viable, which is a good thing.

That said, I still doubt you'd compete with someone who gets a desert filled with flood plains.

 

[Absinthe]

You'd be surprised. Naval trade routes are ridiculous. With massive population you also get massive science output for fast teching. If you manage to get God of the Sea + Lighthouse (Optics) you're going to be getting some rather strong production (and food) from resource tiles too. Later on you pop open Exploration social policy tree and just grab Maritime Infrastructure (+3 production in coastal cities).

Your main weakness ought to be conquest, but naval conquest isn't so easy given that you can populate surrounding coastal tiles with archers. If you do get rushed (especially by Byzantine Dromons), you're going to be in trouble though.

 

[tuluse]

That's actually kind of a cool story. Civilization: Heart of Africa.

 

[Absinthe]

Raging Barbarians usually slows down the AI, and with that many factions I wouldn't be surprised if they also got bogged into infighting thanks to everyone having like 3 neighbors who covet their territory.

 

[Gozma]

Is there any other good way to play BNW on the second highest difficulty besides going tradition and making four cities, farting around surviving the AI advantage 'till renaissance and then combining rationalism -> freedom -> statue of liberty and burying yourself in a pile of great people and specialists? The AIs seem like they never take LIEBERALISM naturally so the statue of liberty is safe. Warmongering seems kind of silly because you just whore archers vs. 1UPT to wipe out a neighbor's army, leaving them crippled for the rest of the game - but there's like 10 other civs, most too far away for slow archers to reach, and you don't really get much out of it yourself unless you had to do it to get some space for a fourth city. Or is puppeting a decent city early on and leaving it in puppet for the rest of the game useful?

Also religion sure is complicated for it not to be very important. It's a weird design for Civ because they intentionally made it not be an accumulating snowball thing. Spreading the religion around has almost zero returns to faith; it just spends faith. You'll have the same faith income whether a religion you founded is the only one on a giant pangea or if it's almost gone from your founding city after getting prophet bombed to death. I'm happy to get a prophet spamming piety tree neighbor so I'll get some nice bonuses without having to be bothered to do it myself.

 

[Renegen]

The Huns are pretty cool, their horse archers have a range of 3 so you can practically take cities with just 1 guy (you can't because the AI churns out new units faster), and the siege weapon is also great for assaulting. With those 2 you can easily take over 1-2 civs and snowball that. Give it a go.

The Religion of Peace (Arabia) also has 3 range camel archer that are pretty broken, but on the whole I don't really like them.

Nazism, I mean Autocracy is a great path because you can catch up in techs really fast, it's just quite tedious to play a Domination victory when it's literally 2x as fast to play a peaceful one.

I had a lot of fun with multiple creative strategies although most of them were on difficulty 6 not 7. Probably my favourite were the Mayas, I got a super early religious lead thanks to its early game buildings, I rushed a few religious wonders and then I was creating a shitload of tourism right from the classical age, I forgot what's the combination exactly. My first convert was in 500 AD. Religion requires a ton of meta-knowledge that I've kind of forgotten, I remember that if you rank up really fast, other religions won't surface through some obscure game mechanic and your religion will be popular everywhere with minimal effort.

 

[Raghar]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=404448920
You know what it's. And you know you'd want to play it.


You wanna make your own FAIL NATION.


Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCBSRRzGO_8

 

[Makabb]

Civ 5 with everything -92% on steam from 136 $ to 11$.


What is the consenus on Civ 5 with all dlcs ?

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Vanilla - banal, unplayable, boring.

With expansions - banal, playable, boring.

 

[Makabb]

Vanilla - banal, unplayable, boring.

With expansions - banal, playable, boring.

So why it is considered the best Civ game ?

 

[kris]

Something about playstyle variety

Not expanding is basically choosing not to play the game imo.

Then that is a design problem. IMO a 4X should be designed in a way that tall and wide empires are choices that bring different gameplay benefits.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Vanilla - banal, unplayable, boring.

With expansions - banal, playable, boring.

So why it is considered the best Civ game ?

It isn't.

 

[Space Satan]

Vanilla - banal, unplayable, boring.

With expansions - banal, playable, boring.

So why it is considered the best Civ game ?

Because it was first CIV to be released on STEAM with steam MP support. CivIV used GaySpy, which is more cancerous than hamachi

 

[tuluse]

Something about playstyle variety

Not expanding is basically choosing not to play the game imo.

Then that is a design problem. IMO a 4X should be designed in a way that tall and wide empires are choices that bring different gameplay benefits.

One of those X's is eXpand.

"I don't see why I should have to shoot things in an FPS" ~ you

 

[GrainWetski]

Something about playstyle variety

Not expanding is basically choosing not to play the game imo.

Then that is a design problem. IMO a 4X should be designed in a way that tall and wide empires are choices that bring different gameplay benefits.

One of those X's is eXpand.

"I don't see why I should have to shoot things in an FPS" ~ you

4 x X = 4 cities.

 

[kris]

Something about playstyle variety

Not expanding is basically choosing not to play the game imo.

Then that is a design problem. IMO a 4X should be designed in a way that tall and wide empires are choices that bring different gameplay benefits.

One of those X's is eXpand.

"I don't see why I should have to shoot things in an FPS" ~ you

another one is eXplore, do you consider the game to be finished when you explored the whole map?

 

[Delterius]

Something about playstyle variety

Not expanding is basically choosing not to play the game imo.

Then that is a design problem. IMO a 4X should be designed in a way that tall and wide empires are choices that bring different gameplay benefits.

One of those X's is eXpand.

"I don't see why I should have to shoot things in an FPS" ~ you

another one is eXplore, do you consider the game to be finished when you explored the whole map?

I don't see how that's relevant.

 

[kris]

Something about playstyle variety

Not expanding is basically choosing not to play the game imo.

Then that is a design problem. IMO a 4X should be designed in a way that tall and wide empires are choices that bring different gameplay benefits.

One of those X's is eXpand.

"I don't see why I should have to shoot things in an FPS" ~ you

another one is eXplore, do you consider the game to be finished when you explored the whole map?

I don't see how that's relevant.

Of course it is relevant to what he said. he more or less claimed that as soon as you are not doing all 4x you are not playing the game right. going as far as comparing it with not doing the ONLY thing you do in a FPS. But I put forward that you dont stop playing the game and you are not doing it wrong by not constantly doing all 4 of the things that named the genre.

Or would you compare doing a one city challenge with not shooting in an FPS?

 

[Delterius]

The problem with your argument is that it is not a similar proposition to what was being discussed. The issue is to turn or not to turn Expansion into a strategic option of the game. You compared that to the finite nature of the Exploration phase.

On one hand, you've got the ability to opt out of a major game mechanic. To expand the scope of the game.

On the other you've got the eventual omission of another major mechanic. These are not the same thing.

To make your argument work, you'd have to ask wether it would be interesting to create a 4X game where its a strategic option to explore the world or to remain isolated. If anything, this all shows that there's no point in balancing a game around self imposed challenges or those who intend to play the game in a way completely outside of its scope.

If the 4X genre is fundamentally about Expansion, what about offering that in different layers? One civilization expands in territory and manpower. Another does so through arts, letters and culture. But instead of just giving them more <Culture Victory Points> for whatever reason, you could represent their cultural expansion on the map. They might even be conquered or severely diminished on the geopolitical board, but there's a different layer to the gameworld. One where the 'Civilization' lives on under different names and their culture expands. Buildings, institutions and language becomes and more like that of the cultural powerhouse - 'infecting' the great empires of bloody conquerors and great industrialists.

 

[coldcrow]

It's obvious that Civ4 is the best Civilization iteration. For nostalgia's sake I like Civ2 alot too, but how the fuck can you consider the fiftih installment even a contender? Everything about that piece of crap screams decline and lack of experienced game designers, starting with the abolition of their tried and true city formulas, broken 1upt, horrible "react-to-me" gameplay, art deco design that doesn't fit at all, except being glossy, braindead AI, the City state system which makes absolutely no sense at all, gutted tech tree, gratification systems without penalties, for example the culture traits which make no sense at all etc.

 

[Lady_Error]

Civ2 and Civ4 are actually the two I like the least, so let's agree to disagree.

 

[coldcrow]

And I didn't even mention how they fucked up the community by having no modding and multiplayer support whatsoever. Civ4 has a thriving modding community which spawned several outstanding, unique mods. FFH, Dune, Realism, but also stuff like K-mod. To just ignore this part of a game's following is either retarded or ignorant.

 

[kris]

The problem with your argument is that it is not a similar proposition to what was being discussed. The issue is to turn or not to turn Expansion into a strategic option of the game. You compared that to the finite nature of the Exploration phase.

On one hand, you've got the ability to opt out of a major game mechanic. To expand the scope of the game.

On the other you've got the eventual omission of another major mechanic. These are not the same thing.

To make your argument work, you'd have to ask wether it would be interesting to create a 4X game where its a strategic option to explore the world or to remain isolated. If anything, this all shows that there's no point in balancing a game around self imposed challenges or those who intend to play the game in a way completely outside of its scope.

If the 4X genre is fundamentally about Expansion, what about offering that in different layers? One civilization expands in territory and manpower. Another does so through arts, letters and culture. But instead of just giving them more <Culture Victory Points> for whatever reason, you could represent their cultural expansion on the map. They might even be conquered or severely diminished on the geopolitical board, but there's a different layer to the gameworld. One where the 'Civilization' lives on under different names and their culture expands. Buildings, institutions and language becomes and more like that of the cultural powerhouse - 'infecting' the great empires of bloody conquerors and great industrialists.

but this was not an argument that went that deep. i didn't see the need to write an essay about the subject. He claimed that you are not playing the game if you stop colonising (making wider empire instead of tall), i just countered by saying that is incorrect by using an example of how another part of the integral gameplay is not constant. the wide expansion will of course always hit the barrier known as "no more land"

How you design all those elements is another thing. I even have worked out an original design for a 4x on my own that I planned on posting on the codex one day, except I am kind of to lazy for writings something that big. (most my thoughts about gamedesign actually come up while i am out in mountains hiking, figures!)

 

[Delterius]

But it is constant. Even if you stop exploring eventually, there's no match in which you do not explore the map. To choose to do so would be a handicap and no sane designer would give you Isolationist bonuses in order to support your playstyle. On the contrary, last I heard Civilization VI gives you bonuses to tech development for exploring the map. Likewise, there's no balance or fairness to save players who do not expand.