Thoughts on improvements

[Ariovistus Maximus]

Well now that I've been playing a while I have some ideas on it. Overall the game is fantastic but there's certainly room for improvement. Most of these issues I think are well within the powers of patches to fix.

Please everybody post your thoughts on the game as well.

BALANCE

Spoiler:

There are also balance issues. Some civs' abilities are just plain better. The Songhai, for example, make 3x more money from sacking cities and barb camps. I'm playing a game with them and I can show you just how overpowered this is.

I played on Continents with Prince difficulty. After exploring I found there were two other civs and a smattering of city-states on my continent. My exploring warrior happened upon some ruins, where he was upgraded to a spearman. Then I researched Archery. Taking advantage of the obscene amount of money I'd gotten from barb camps, I purchased an archer straightaway. Then I built another one.

Around that time I also got my second social policy, which I used to unlock the Honor policy that gives a free great general. So I took this army to my nearest neighbor, Ramkhamhaengabangajangakabooglurgishaaft of Siam. What had he been doing? He had built two workers and some cultural buildings. I effortlessly assimilated him and, thanks to the multitude of luxuries in my territory and his, I was able to annex him immediately.

Now, I made an even MORE obscene sum from sacking the capital of Siam. So I rushed THREE more units: a spearman and 2 archers. Now with my massive army for such an early point in the game (3 spears, 3 archers), I marched on the other civ on the continent. Russia had been busy founding a second city and constructing two Wonders. To her credit, she also managed a chariot as well. Russia was likewise ruined.

So now it's just passed turn 100, I have four cities and 3 wonders (I actually built one myself ), and I'm the only civ on my continent. And with my gobs and gobs of money I gained two maritime cities as allies, who are feeding my cities.

A bit overpowered. I think so, maybe just a touch.

COMBAT

Spoiler:

A lot of people have commented on combat. Generally I find it pretty good; the AI can handle itself fairly well. However there are hiccups on occasion. The most common one is where an enemy will just sort of wander around my city and do nothing in particular, while I bombard him from the city every turn until he finally dies. The barbarians do this rather often, although they usually manage to pillage an improvement or two.

DIPLOMACY

Spoiler:

Diplomacy is, of course, broken. I've never even been able to find the AI's attitude towards me more than a few times. In the beginning of my first game it said that the Persians were "Afraid" of me; after that the status field for each civ is blank except for war. I know that the AI does have an opinion of me but I have no idea what it is except for extreme cases.

This obviously makes diplomacy feel pretty disjointed and pointless. My second issue with diplomacy is that the AI itself has serious short-term memory loss issues. Someone will declare war on me, I kill a few units that wander into my territory, and then we make peace. Shortly after that we're making cooperation agreements and all that.

Or, in other cases, I'll do hardly anything and the AI will make this unbelivable offer for peace. Greece and I attacked Egypt in one campaign. I had hardly any troops but my score was high. I had done nothing but pillage some improvements with a swordsman when Egypt offered me gold, annual tribute, a luxury resource, and open borders for peace.

Then at other times, when I am thoroughly owning another civ, I can hardly extort anything out of them for a peace deal.

City-States

Spoiler:

Next is city-states. Frankly, they are a convenience at this point and not always worth the trouble. This is mainly because their missions are impossible half the time. One city state in the very early game asked me to spawn a Great Artist. Yeah, I'll get right on that. Other times they'll ask me to destroy another city-state halfway across the world, or take on a huge enemy civ that's bullying them. As if I'm going to do that for a few influence points that will disappear ina matter of turns? I think not. Thus the only option left is to pour money on them.

So it's great if you have money, but if not... city-states don't really work.

Basically, relations with city-states aren't realistic. With civs, relations improve with simple things like long periods of peace, trade relationships, or open borders. But there's not even the option to do that with cities. And you can do any number of favors, but none of them count for anything unless they specifically ask you first. And the odds are that they've given you some impossible mission that you can never do. Since there's no way to reject that request and get another one, you're pretty well stuck.

GLITCHES

Spoiler:

So far I haven't had any crashes at all, which is impressive. One issue I am having, though, is lag. When I load up a game it takes a while to draw everything, and turn times get rather lengthy on huge maps. Now my system isn't great; it's a Phenom 9500 Quad-Core @ 2.2GHz. But I have 8GB of RAM and a Radeon HD 5750; it's not a wimpy system. The strangest thing is that my previous system, an Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.4 GHz, was about the same performance-wise. I expected the game to be better optimized for quad architecture.

Finally, there are some annoying movement bugs. Ships don't seem to bombard cities properly, that sort of thing. Nothing huge here.

So overall, as I said, good experience thusfar. But I'd there's work yet to be done. My hopes are high for the first patch.

[Wyrda Edocsil]

Balance: Naturally, some Civs are going to be better than others for a certain strategy, but all, or at least most, of them, are equally powerful.

Combat: The system is great, but the AI is horrible, and needs a large amount of patching up.

Diplomacy: I wouldn't call it "broken," but it would be nice to have more information.

City-States: I don't really have a problem with them. If you do, you can easily ignore or remove them.

[Ninot]

I don't understand the purpose of the spoiler tags. I haven't completed a game yet but for a moment I thought there was a story mode I haven't unlocked yet

[Ninot]

I disagree with you on City States, I've made them a fairly big part of my strategy regardless of if I'm going for military wins or otherwise. Yes, many of their goals are ridiculous, but I chalk this up to realism that not every government has realistic demands of others.

In my latest game, playing as Rome, I make it apart of my game plan to work towards whatever a City-State is demanding. In one case, I was already preparing to go on a military rampage, and Monaco pleading for help in their defense against Siam just made it an easy choice. A few Siamese warriors killed, and I had a new ally with a tun of culture coming in for me. Now rather than plunking down 500 gold I have an easy ally. I've done this a few times to great effect, and all it cost me was a few military units worth of construction time, which I was going to do anyway.

[ColdPhoenix]

Re diplomacy, I think I remember reading that it was a deliberate choice to keep the attitudes hidden. You can determine their attitude from what they say to you so it was meant to give a more realistic feel.

Personally I would prefer that it was more transparent and they told us the attitude. I'm sure any head of state can get briefing notes on the diplomatic relations if they request them!

[MxM]

So it's great if you have money, but if not... city-states don't really work.

But that's kind of the point, is not it? If they "worked" always then that would be automatic benefit.

I also like the fact that you can not always fulfill their demands - otherwise it would be too eazy.

Also, please remember that you can have civics focused on them AND you can play as Greece (that you did in one game). When you do that, you will be friend and ally with most of them - it is VERY powerful.

I had couple of militaristic allies, (due to quests and being Greece) but I did not need the units, so, I donated all the units they generated to city state with which I was ally, and which was very far from me but I needed it, because it was the only maritime SC. So, not only I was able to maintain ally status for very long time (as Greece with right civics, even present of a military unit gives enough increase to last quite a few years), that SC had enough military units so that if anyone declared war on me, that SC would give me huge help because its army was equal to mine - about 7 units at turn 200. I did not finish the game, so I dare somebody to declare war to me (I do not do it myself, because I am struggling with negative happiness - to much cities)

[Guynemer]

Played my first MP game last night, just two of us with two AIs and 8 CS. I noticed two big issues:

Huge unbalanced start. I started with both other AIs and the majority of the CS on my continent; he was all by himself. And since the AI isn't good at defending itself, I jumped out to a huge lead.


Embarked units are too vulnerable. A caravel should not be able to autokill an embarked tank or mechanized infantry. I see two possible solutions here:
--Naval units can not autokill embarked units from a later age; they can damage them, however. Or,
--If a naval unit is "escorting" the embarked units, it should autodefend any embarked unit within its range of motion.

[Louis XXIV]

BTW, about Songhai, since it was my first game. At first, their bonus was great. Then it went away. There weren't many barbs and, when there were, 75 gold wasn't a dramatic advantage. I found myself resorting to sacking City-States, which created happiness issues and an inability to get social policies. I think the bigger problem is the AI doesn't build units. Maybe at higher difficulties when they get free units, they aren't as vulnerable to rushes, but, if you want to, you can take them down early and stack those benefits to take down the next guy next. Songhai was fun, but I don't think they're overpowered.

I've appreciated Diplomacy. I have far less certainty, but I'm still interacting with them and they respond to that. I feel after people have played awhile and start writing strategy articles, we'll find that diplomacy isn't as empty as first impression gives.

[Ming]

What level are you playing at?

At the higher levels, the AI builds tons of units. And they early rush you. Even a bunch of warriors or spearman with an archer or two can totally take you down early. But they do have to come with tons of units, because the AI really doesn't know how to fight. Once you work up the higher levels, you will be more concerned about you being rushed, then rushing AI's

[dregor]

Heh. I tried my first Emperor game and thought I was doing well. Then Suleiman showed up and steamrolled my empire

[Fidel]

why does arty have range of 3? overpowered, imho...how come it was not nerfed during the playtesting?

[Louis XXIV]

What level are you playing at?

At the higher levels, the AI builds tons of units. And they early rush you. Even a bunch of warriors or spearman with an archer or two can totally take you down early. But they do have to come with tons of units, because the AI really doesn't know how to fight. Once you work up the higher levels, you will be more concerned about you being rushed, then rushing AI's

True, I've been playing on Prince (only in my second game. I want to get one military victory and one peaceful one before I advance to the next level). I thought that might be the case (I mentioned higher difficulty levels possible off-setting this).

[MxM]

why does arty have range of 3? overpowered, imho...how come it was not nerfed during the playtesting?

To reflect the fact that city defenses are useless once artillery is developed.

[Fidel]

well, city defenses kinda get too weak anyway as the combat strength of the units increases. 3 hex range means that cannons are completely useless and arty becomes a must-have

[Ariovistus Maximus]

Okay, on city-states.

First of all, I like them. They were one of the features I anticipated most. However, as I said I think they could use some work. My point about having more options makes perfect sense. After all, your relations with other civs depends on a lot more than how much money you give them. But things like trade aren't even an option with city-states, and protecting them or being at peace with them for long periods of time don't count for anything.

I'm just saying they could be a little more complex. As far as balance, you can read Sulla's thoughts on the subject and I think you will see how all cities are not equal, and they can create balance issues.

For example, get a couple of maritime CS on your side and you can grow to huge proportions even while concentrating on production and money rather than food. Culture cities are nice for getting more social policies, but they're not that strong. The other balance issue is that the AI doesn't seem to know what to do with them.

I guess what I'm saying is that using City-States effectively is just borderline on an exploit rather than being a strategy.

Some good points about CS missions. I guess they shouldn't be too easy or too simple. You're right about that. I still wish there were more ways to affect relations with them though.

As far as diplomacy, the only thing you can gather from talking with civs is if they like you, hate you, respect or disrespect you. That's pretty simplistic. The Civ IV system made it feel more real, I think. And when you have to make gameplay decisions based on the AI's attitude, this ambiguous system is not at all helpful.

And as to the Sonhai in particular, the issue is that once they score a few victories in war against another civ, they build a tremendous amount of momentum. Take one city, buy more units, take another city, buy MORE units... it goes on.

Also, notice that cities eventually have a range of 3 as well, so arty isn't that overpowered.

So, in conclusion I'm quite enthusiastic about V and the new features. It's just that some are rough around the edges and I'm hoping the community will draw attention to them so we can get them fixed. I think these issues are entirely within the realm of patching to fix.