The new patch helped a little but ....

[mkorin]

Your thoughts,

Mike

[mkorin]

Denouncing and DOW are still too touchy. There should be a good reason and winning the game or coveting my land is only a good reason if you are ready to attack me, meaning you armies are near my border and ready to attack.

[mkorin]

Removing a happy face from each happy building bites, it is almost impossible to keep your civ happy. Funny, the AI doesn't seem to have this problem.

[LzPrst]

...there is not enough for me to do in the game. There are no decisions I feel are of consequence, there are no strategic choices of importance, the only balancing act I am doing is whether a new building will put me in the red, but that hardly matters as I can just hit "money focus" in a few cities for a while then sit back and be bored.

Everything feels slow and boring. Individual civs have no flavor. Specialisation is not working very well, cities lose all sense of uniqueness after a while, the terrain improvements are dull and finally, the AI makes me feel bored rather than concerned when fighting a war.

[rah]

In there attempt to defeat ICS they managed to suck all the FUN out of the game. You are correct. Terrain improvements are bland. Wonders aren't wonderful. Most of the time whatever you build is going to eventually hurt you. The AI sucks so wars are not that exciting.

[a.kitman]

the game could certinaly use some work on tiles and tile improvments. but i have more fun after the patch then i did playing civ 4 vanilla.

i dont know what settings you guys play at. but the game got alot more fun for me when i started to play on small maps whit double the amount of civs.

[Nikolai]

Removing a happy face from each happy building bites, it is almost impossible to keep your civ happy. Funny, the AI doesn't seem to have this problem.

Are you serious? My tall (all cities 18-20+ pop) civ had around +60 happiness at the end of the game, and I never, ever, had a negative happiness situation throughout the game. The games I dip into negative, and those are seldom, I'm never below perhaps -3 or -4. If anything, there is a little too much happiness in the system right now...

EDIT: And btw, those happiness numbers were without more than one luxury trade going on.

[Nikolai]

Really, I'd like to know how many of you guys have tried to play tall. You should.

[mkorin]

Are you serious? My tall (all cities 18-20+ pop) civ had around +60 happiness at the end of the game, and I never, ever, had a negative happiness situation throughout the game. The games I dip into negative, and those are seldom, I'm never below perhaps -3 or -4. If anything, there is a little too much happiness in the system right now...

EDIT: And btw, those happiness numbers were without more than one luxury trade going on.

Not sure what you mean by play tall, but I assume less cities more people. I should have been more clear, and said if you're a warmongering land grabber (which I am) the -1 happy face makes the game almost unplayable. I happily cleared away 7 our of 10 AIs and had to stop before finishing the last two as my happiness was -19. Once I got stadiums and built one in every city, I was able to resume my ways.

Mike

Mike

[Nikolai]

Tall is smaller empire with large cities. Wide is larger empire with small cities (max 5-6 pop). Both can easily be played with huge amounts of surplus happiness. Most people play some kind of mix ofc. I often play with a core tall cities and conquer the rest, keeping them as puppets. Usually I am at no more than -6 or so, but ofc you shouldn't take it all in one swoop. More and smaller wars, take a few cities, improve and catch up, rinse and repeat. Happiness is no big problem if you know what you do.

[mkorin]

Nikolai, you're playing a different game then me. How do you get shorter wars. I would love for the AI to allow peace. In my current game, Genghis has been at war with me for a couple hundred turns despite the fact we share no borders or has he been able to attack me other than 1s or 2s.

Mike

[Nikolai]

Well, obviously you need to win convincingly. Take out his forces, take a city or two. He will be more than willing to make peace if he feels he has nothing to win on continued war. Important point: Make him come to you, kill his invading force while you build up(use terrain skillfully), then take out a couple cities. If his cities are too strong and you're too weak, pillage and kill his invading units. And remember it's almost never too late to turn the tables. If your empire is big and he's superior, it can pay off to continue the war even after you've lost a few cities. If he is weakened enough and you can build, build, build(with the needed techs gotten ASAP of course), you can then take what you lost back. Under the patch before the december one, I lost half my cities before I managed to turn around the situation and ultimately conquer the whole enemy civ. That cost me dearly in happiness though. In retrospect, i should have stopped after I had taken the first two of his cities.

[mkorin]

Great strategy if it works. I pretty much have to destroy an AI before he'll make piece. In your scenario, It wouldn't allow peace after I took the first two cities. This is why my happiness goes so bad.

[Nikolai]

Well, it works for me, so it should work for you. What difficulity level are you at btw?

[mkorin]

I was playing at emperor, but the patch made me drop down to king and I'm still having trouble.