Civilization V

[Gus_Smedstad]

Compared to a prior game where I had a much larger empire, struggled to maintain happiness, yet was getting about the same amount of research because my each of my cities were much smaller due to lack of food, and the frowny face greeting me.

Larger empires with lots of cities generate far more research than little ones. Mainly because, as you say, science is tied to population.

Pop is pretty much capped at the number of +happy bonuses you have. Each city costs you 2 unhappiness before improvements, but a city that can work a new luxury gives you +5 happiness, for a net gain of +3 citizens to your cap, and thus to your science. Once you've got Construction, each Coliseum adds +4 happiness, for a net gain of +2 even for cities that don't work new luxuries. As you unlock more happiness buildings, the additional cities become more and more efficient.

There are also significant bonuses that scale with the number of cities. Maritime city-state food bonuses are significant, because they let you run Scientist specialists. The Citizenship Liberty bonus gives you +1 happiness per city, the Forbidden Palace is -1 unhappiness per city, and the Communism policy is -1 unhappiness per city - though honestly Communism comes late enough that it's not so important for research.

That said, not all city sites are equal. Scientist specialists have a very large effect on your science output, but require that you run a significant food surplus. You want tiles that yield 4+ food, and that typically means a river site for the +1 food / farm from Civil Service, or 3-4 Maritime allies. Once you got +6 food or so per city from city-states, even cities on relatively poor sites can be research powerhouses.

[dtolman]

An enterprising person managed to create their own game replay script, with score histogram!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=388160

Why this wasn't in the game to begin with, as it was in Civ IV, is a complete mystery to me

[Chris Nahr]

I'm still trying to make Bismarck work, and failing. How is the barbarian conversion ability a bonus? Instead of 25 gold per camp I get a ton of crap units that I have to pay upkeep for -- or else disband, usually outside of my borders so no compensation.

By the way, has anyone figured out yet how unit maintenance fees and that mysterious unit supply overview are related?

[Chris Nahr]

An enterprising person managed to create their own game replay script, with score histogram!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=388160

Why this wasn't in the game to begin with, as it was in Civ IV, is a complete mystery to me

Wow, that's sweet. Great advertising for the HTML 5 canvas element, too. :)

[TheWombat]

I'm still trying to make Bismarck work, and failing. How is the barbarian conversion ability a bonus? Instead of 25 gold per camp I get a ton of crap units that I have to pay upkeep for -- or else disband, usually outside of my borders so no compensation.

By the way, has anyone figured out yet how unit maintenance fees and that mysterious unit supply overview are related?

In the early game, I've been able to use those barbarians to form a "Condor Legion" of "volunteers" to wreak havoc on other civs. Assuming you want to go warmongering early, that can be good--they die off as you fight so you don't have to feed them for very long. But as time goes on, it's pretty useless.

[Thesper]

I'm still trying to make Bismarck work, and failing. How is the barbarian conversion ability a bonus? Instead of 25 gold per camp I get a ton of crap units that I have to pay upkeep for -- or else disband, usually outside of my borders so no compensation.

By the way, has anyone figured out yet how unit maintenance fees and that mysterious unit supply overview are related?

I started with sending my starting warrior and a second one I built out to explore and raid barb camps for more units, then brought my army back together to use all my free units to take a quick city off the scariest bordering civ (Japan) then expanded and built up my cities until I researched swordsmen, crossbowmen and Landsknechts. By that time I had the right side of the Honour tree done, so I upgraded the archers and brutes at 50% normal gold cost to swordsmen and crossbows and went and knocked out the Egyptians. I'm just coming into the gunpowder age with an 8 city empire at around turn 150 I think, as second world power after the Russians (this is on Pangaea, Emperor difficulty). It's looking like I'm going to be able to sweep the west of the world, Russia is going to take the east and then eventually one of us is going to go and start Barbarossa on the other.

I can see Germany being less good on maps where you can't explore most of the total land mass for barbarian camps, as you wouldn't be able to get such a critical mass of free units to roll another civ over in the early game. But for Pangaea they're pretty good as far as I can tell.

[Greatatlantic]

By the way, has anyone figured out yet how unit maintenance fees and that mysterious unit supply overview are related?

The best I can figure, they are not related, though I am not sure I have ever gone over the supply limit.

I do know that unit maintenance is quasi-linear per unit: meaning every second unit causes the same uptick in maintenance on that specific turn, every odd unit costs no more additional maintenance. I have not figured out any further relationship between maintenance and turn except the former seems to go up exponentially with the latter. Unit maintenance becomes crippling by endgame.

[Lizard_King]

Unit maintenance becomes crippling by endgame.

Certainly, it's a powerful argument for Autocracy and the 33% discount for any amount of expansionism.

[KevinC]

I'm sorry if this has been brought up before, but I've seen posts on the 2K forums discussing that the AI:

-Isn't effected by unhappiness (no growth/production penalties)
-Is able to produce military units in puppet cities
-Isn't effected by negative gold balances (no unit disbanding, etc)
-Can establish Research Pacts without gold

Is all this true? If so, that's... I mean I'm okay with the AI getting some gold/tech/production bonuses based on difficulty levels, but those are some pretty core mechanics of the game. If it's true, it really limits how you can fight the AI. You can't deprive him of luxury resources, wealthy cities, etc and have an impact.

I'm okay with AI getting bonuses, I'm not okay with the AI having a completely separate set of rules than I am unless the game is specifically set up to be asymmetrical (such as AI Wars).

[Lizard_King]

Could you provide links to the specific allegations and any confirming data that is offered? This seems like a very difficult argument to address secondhand.

[jpinard]

I'm sorry if this has been brought up before, but I've seen posts on the 2K forums discussing that the AI:

-Isn't effected by unhappiness (no growth/production penalties)
-Is able to produce military units in puppet cities
-Isn't effected by negative gold balances (no unit disbanding, etc)
-Can establish Research Pacts without gold

Is all this true? If so, that's... I mean I'm okay with the AI getting some gold/tech/production bonuses based on difficulty levels, but those are some pretty core mechanics of the game. If it's true, it really limits how you can fight the AI. You can't deprive him of luxury resources, wealthy cities, etc and have an impact.

I'm okay with AI getting bonuses, I'm not okay with the AI having a completely separate set of rules than I am unless the game is specifically set up to be asymmetrical (such as AI Wars).

Can you link to the thread? If so, that's disappointing. That would greatly hurt some of the global strategies a human might use against them.

[KevinC]

I've seen it brought up in a few threads, but here's the thread (Note: not just the OP, there's more statements made on the first page) I just read that motivated me to post and inquire with the fine Qt3 community.

[Lizard_King]

I've seen it brought up in a few threads, but here's the thread (Note: not just the OP, there's more statements made on the first page) I just read that motivated me to post and inquire with the fine Qt3 community.

Well, I can't address most of those for lack of evidence, but this

The AI also knows everything about you and you know nothing about it. It always knows when I am weak so it attacks, it knows when I am strong and it backs off.

seems a problematic allegation. I have seen predatory behavior when I am broke or some other obvious variable is at play, like being attacked by other civs that are stronger in their rankings. That I expect since it is globally available intel for me as well. But everything I've seen suggests that the AI is really limited to what it can recon with view distance or open borders when it comes to assessing your military capability in anything but broad strokes.

[razarok]

Well, I can't address most of those for lack of evidence, but this

seems a problematic allegation. I have seen predatory behavior when I am broke or some other obvious variable is at play, like being attacked by other civs that are stronger in their rankings. That I expect since it is globally available intel for me as well. But everything I've seen suggests that the AI is really limited to what it can recon with view distance or open borders when it comes to assessing your military capability in anything but broad strokes.

I have to agree with the second point. I would never have survived my single city culture victory otherwise. I had only two military unit (the starting warriors) and one boat to defend against barbarians. If the Ai had xray vision it would have seen through my gigantic, but defenseless border/fog of war. Furthermore, three other civs took turns in harassing me for "open borders" every 2 turns...

[copet]

I just hit turn 700 or so and got the Manhattan project done. I have been rushing the nuke for the past few hundred turns because I have a bug where I am in a permanent peace treaty with Siam, and apparently other people have gotten it too. That really makes me mad, to be honest... I had invested so much time in this campaign and then a bug like that makes it impossible for me to kill one of the biggest civilizations...

[KevinC]

Yea, seems to me that AI does need to scout you. On the other hand, it's obviously the AI doesn't suffer for a lack of gold... I mean I've seen an AI player with a balance of around -1800 gold with massive armies, and I think I've seen him forming research pacts as well, but I could be mistaken on the last part. That's the kind of thing that motivated me to ask here... I trust the Qt3 boards more than the 2K forums, and I thought maybe it had been discussed or confirmed somewhere in the past 118 pages :)

[Reldan]

Yea, seems to me that AI does need to scout you. On the other hand, it's obviously the AI doesn't suffer for a lack of gold... I mean I've seen an AI player with a balance of around -1800 gold with massive armies, and I think I've seen him forming research pacts as well, but I could be mistaken on the last part. That's the kind of thing that motivated me to ask here... I trust the Qt3 boards more than the 2K forums, and I thought maybe it had been discussed or confirmed somewhere in the past 118 pages :)

Usually I see research pacts happening between AIs that have the gold for it. I spend a lot of time in the diplomacy screens because I sell stuff to the AIs all the time in my games, and I don't ever recall seeing research pacts happening between broke AIs. In fact, I've noticed that if I constantly sell them resources for their gold they form less research pacts because, I assume, they can't afford them.

[pilonv1]

I'm still trying to make Bismarck work, and failing. How is the barbarian conversion ability a bonus? Instead of 25 gold per camp I get a ton of crap units that I have to pay upkeep for -- or else disband, usually outside of my borders so no compensation.

In my Bismark game I found that if I had too many units and their upkeep is costing me too much I just gifted them to city states. They don't give much influence but if you're fighting on different fronts its useful to prop them up a little.

But what it allowed me to do is not produce a lot of units, so I could use my cities for building production.

[Thongsy]

I just hit turn 700 or so and got the Manhattan project done. I have been rushing the nuke for the past few hundred turns because I have a bug where I am in a permanent peace treaty with Siam, and apparently other people have gotten it too. That really makes me mad, to be honest... I had invested so much time in this campaign and then a bug like that makes it impossible for me to kill one of the biggest civilizations...

I had that happen too, though it was with England instead. They were my last Civ I needed to destroy for a domination warfare victory but it wouldn't allow me to attack. Very annoying.

[Fancy Salami]

In my current game (Emperor/Archipelago/Standard) I just played around getting various islands and didn't have a game plan. I realized that I probably couldn't make any of the win conditions and the game would go to score victory. So I decided to try to cut Montezuma down to size as he was the only one with a higher score than me.

I had somewhat superior tech (Mech Inf/Modern armor/Rocket artillery vs Infantry/Artillery) and a superior navy to back them up. The war was slow, but steady going as my smallish elite army waded through seeminly endless amounts of infantry. I managed to free Copenhagen and slowly advanced towards his capital. Several times Montezuma gave me peace offers, but I wanted to reduce his score, so I didn't accept any. Then he suddenly offered me everything he got for peace, and I do mean everything. 14 cities, loads of gold, loads of strategic resources and every luxury resource I didn't already own. I accepted and when the dust settled he was left with only his capital...

Ironically he had a decent amount of troops still left around in what was now my territory. Even some Rocket artillery. But I almost felt like he fooled me, as a bug crept up and prompted me to select production in all my newly acquired PUPPETED cities. Ofcourse I couldn't and the only workaround was to annex the cities giving me -99 happiness (actually it was closer to -200 if you checked the tooltip, but happiness seem to cap at -99). It's very late in Europe, so will have to figure out what I'll do tomorrow.

Summary: Civ V needs some patching!

[Warren]

In my current game (Emperor/Archipelago/Standard) I just played around getting various islands and didn't have a game plan. I realized that I probably couldn't make any of the win conditions and the game would go to score victory. So I decided to try to cut Montezuma down to size as he was the only one with a higher score than me.

I had somewhat superior tech (Mech Inf/Modern armor/Rocket artillery vs Infantry/Artillery) and a superior navy to back them up. The war was slow, but steady going as my smallish elite army waded through seeminly endless amounts of infantry. I managed to free Copenhagen and slowly advanced towards his capital. Several times Montezuma gave me peace offers, but I wanted to reduce his score, so I didn't accept any. Then he suddenly offered me everything he got for peace, and I do mean everything. 14 cities, loads of gold, loads of strategic resources and every luxury resource I didn't already own. I accepted and when the dust settled he was left with only his capital...

Ironically he had a decent amount of troops still left around in what was now my territory. Even some Rocket artillery. But I almost felt like he fooled me, as a bug crept up and prompted me to select production in all my newly acquired PUPPETED cities. Ofcourse I couldn't and the only workaround was to annex the cities giving me -99 happiness (actually it was closer to -200 if you checked the tooltip, but happiness seem to cap at -99). It's very late in Europe, so will have to figure out what I'll do tomorrow.

Summary: Civ V needs some patching!

Now THAT is some AI!!! Using bugs to win ?!?

[Lloyd Heilbrunn]

Usually I see research pacts happening between AIs that have the gold for it. I spend a lot of time in the diplomacy screens because I sell stuff to the AIs all the time in my games, and I don't ever recall seeing research pacts happening between broke AIs. In fact, I've noticed that if I constantly sell them resources for their gold they form less research pacts because, I assume, they can't afford them.

I could swear I've seen two factions get a research pact the turn after neither had the gold to enter into one with me...

So I have 1 turn to build The Great Library, and I click next turn and get a message someone else built it. So why does the tie go to the AI??

Am I missing a way to turn off the Governor? Because I try to up production by ordering tiles to be worked but next turn they are not being worked again because Gov has switched them back. BTW, an icon rather than a empty hole would be better for showing hexes you've chosen to work.

[ShivaX]

Am I missing a way to turn off the Governor? Because I try to up production by ordering tiles to be worked but next turn they are not being worked again because Gov has switched them back. BTW, an icon rather than a empty hole would be better for showing hexes you've chosen to work.

If you left click the circle will get a little lock in it and wont change.

If you right click then it assigns it normally and the gov can change it on the fly.

(I might have those backwards, but you get the idea)

[rezaf]

So I have 1 turn to build The Great Library, and I click next turn and get a message someone else built it. So why does the tie go to the AI??

It's not actually a tie. In fact, any tie would go to you, the player, as your turn always goes first.
The AI finished that wonder in the same turn you were 1 turn away from finishing it.

Turn 100, player phase -> Your wonder will finish next turn.
Turn 100, AI phase -> AI finishes the wonder.
Turn 101, player phase -> You are informed that wonder has been built by the AI.

I finally finished my Japan game yesterday, and by now ...
I have to admit, I'm kinda surprised (not REALLY) how much slack people are cutting this game.
While Civ5 is no doubt addicting and for the most part elegant, many parts of the game are either non existant or basically broken.
There's little diplomacy to speak of, the AI has neither strategic nor tactical AI and does stupid things it can only survive in the first place because it's basically operating under different rules.
The AI cannot use navy and cannot properly wage wars under the new combat rules.
Many game systems are opaque (like unit upkeep), others are easy to "game" and scream "not throught through" (gold conversion).

I really like some of the things they did here, but, for example, why did everybody jump on Creative Assembly when their AI was unable to do naval invasions, and when in Civ5, the same thing is the case, everybody basically ignores it and continues the praise?

I'll no doubt be playing this for quite some time, but it's in need of some SERIOUS patching, and some stuff can and will probably only be fixed in expansions.
_____
rezaf

[Razgon]

CA's issue was a lot more noticable, since the maps you played on kinda depended on the AI being able to load troops into boats and sail to other places - and it did not.

But I agree, there's a ton of issues with the game, that pops up the more you play. But I've gotten used to shelving games for 3-6 months before playing them these days, if they involve anything but shooting/melting peoples faces

[Lizard_King]

But I almost felt like he fooled me, as a bug crept up and prompted me to select production in all my newly acquired PUPPETED cities. Ofcourse I couldn't and the only workaround was to annex the cities giving me -99 happiness (actually it was closer to -200 if you checked the tooltip, but happiness seem to cap at -99). It's very late in Europe, so will have to figure out what I'll do tomorrow.

Summary: Civ V needs some patching!

I had the exact same bug recently, although in my case it did not end up costing me the victory (but only by virtue of me having communism and other unhappiness reducing policies). I think going forward I will not accept peace treaties with city gifts unless I intend to annex or raze them right away, at least until a patch fixes this.

[rezaf]

Is there yet a mod that tweaks the amount of destruction happening when you take enemy cities?

One big part of the happiness issues springs from the fact that when you take a city, most everything that was in it is gone.
You have to rebuild everything from scratch, starting with monuments again.
That inevitabely takes quite a while, and thus it takes a while to compensate the unhappiness caused by the new population.
I'd like to see something along the lines of pillaged improvements, where it takes a while, but most everything can be brought back up.
_____
rezaf

[Chris Nahr]

Since the AI plays by different rules it's unclear whether it actually builds anything but wonders and units. If it doesn't that would explain why no buildings other than wonders remain -- there weren't any in the first place! I noticed that AI city defense is often so low as if it doesn't bother to build walls even in front line cities, for example.

[ydejin]

Is there yet a mod that tweaks the amount of destruction happening when you take enemy cities?

One big part of the happiness issues springs from the fact that when you take a city, most everything that was in it is gone.
You have to rebuild everything from scratch, starting with monuments again.
That inevitabely takes quite a while, and thus it takes a while to compensate the unhappiness caused by the new population.
I'd like to see something along the lines of pillaged improvements, where it takes a while, but most everything can be brought back up.
_____
rezaf

If everything is getting wiped out that's a bug (or the manual is out of date). Per page 76 of the manual:

The city's culture and military buildings (temples, barracks, etc.) are always destroyed when the city is taken. All other buildings have a 66% chance of being captured intact.

IMO wiping out culture and military buildings makes sense. Why would a monument to the previous owner's cultural greatness cause anything but trouble for me? But in theory most of the rest of the stuff should still be there.

[Chris Nahr]

Hmm, you're right... but does that actually happen? Admittedly I don't really know since I always puppet first, and puppet states build lots of junk on their own.