Brave New World is fun

[Dinner]

Huh. How about that. I remember back in the day the off-topic was like an epistolary napalm-infused cage match. Now it seems mostly civil over there. It must have mellowed over the years.

Regardless of the game's suckitude, it doesn't seem to have slowed things down for Apolyton's competition. I've never bothered to get an account over there with the fanatics, but that site looks busier than a one armed bricklayer in Bagdhad.

Yeah, I remember the OTF back when it really was a something like a cage match as well. Also CFC seems to have gotten the corner on the modding community which has helped them keep on topic posters where many of poly's on topic posters left during a forum schism after Dale got fired as a mod for abusing his powers and going mental. They went to WPC but that place is also dead so eventually everyone just settled into Civfanatics and that seems to be about all the forums Civ5 can support. I'm sure it didn't help that 2k set up their own competing official forum but its so heavily modded simply saying you didn't like anything in the game would get you banned.

[Dinner]

I think they toned down the AI's military aggressiveness, maaybe to hide its inability to really understand 1UPT, because I still haven't fought more than one war.

That was my other main complaint about 1UPT; that the AI doesn't seem to be able to handle it intelligently. That was actually why Sid put unit stacking into the original Civ1 way back in 1991-1992 and sadly it seems like the AI hasn't improved all that much in the 20+ years since. You add to many complicated things interacting at once and the AI just can't handle it so why not eliminate 1UPT and at least improve the AI's performance?

[Wiglaf]

I'm nearing the completion of my first BNW game, while I agree it is a massive improvement and makes the game enjoyable, some preliminary criticisms:

(1) AI is very passive especially on prince. Even the warmonger civs. Do not play on prince or lower.
(2) AI has shown no improvement at land combat and is only a major tactical threat if you were going to lose the game anyway (ie are a full era behind or so)
(3) The constant barrage of city state espionage alerts is a little frustrating. Not only is it unrealistic (I haven't seen this many coups since I worked in a ****ing parking lot in high school) but it also makes meaningful city state diplomacy a turn-by-turn thing. My allies can be bought off one turn and then I have to go back and spend more money on them. Then some other AI civ rigs their election, so I have to go buy them off again. It feels like needless micromanagement. Espionage was bad in Gods and Kings and it's bad now. P.S. "secret attack plans" learned from intrigue do nothing. Intrigue is still useless; it never is accurate, and it never affects anything when you share it with another AI civ. OH THANKS FOR THE INTEL "FRED" AND "DENNIS" (WHY THE **** DO WE INSIST ON NAMING SPIES LIKE THEY ARE OUR PET HAMSTERS) HERE'S A PROMOTIONS FOR YOU! GOOD FRED! GO BACK AND RIG ANOTHER ELECTION LIKE EVERYONE ELSE! THANKS
(4) Justice for Trayvon
(5) 95% of my interactions with the AI diplomacy are them telling me random things on their mind ("I liked your proposal to the World Congress") that I did not need to hear, or the AI just asking to re-up on peace deals/trade deals/open borders.
(6) I still don't fully understand tourism. Don't think I ever will. But I like it
(7) World Congress is a great idea. Sometimes significant items come up for a vote, which means it's time to buy off some city states, but far too often it's banning some luxury no one really cares about..However, the ability to rename the world congress makes this feature at least as good as religion. Gods and Kings let you emulate Reagan and spread HIV throughout your empire, and now Brave New World lets everyone assemble at the First Suckfest Convention of Babylon.
(8) Ed Beach, the lead designer, is a child molester and likely will molest again. If you see him please call 911 https://fbexternal-a.akamaihd.net/sa...re%3Dog&jq=100
(9) Ideology should not have been a skill tree. It should have been a binary choice that cleanly establishes blocs. With religions and social policies and tourism we have enough trees to figure out. This was a bridge too far.
(10) Trade routes are good. They benefit both civs and require decisionmaking. I shouldn't have to manually re-up them if I don't want to.

[Wiglaf]

Wow, my game got a lot more interesting once it hit modern era. Some world congress proposals become really important (the Arts ones are vital for culture victories) and the World Fair competition is actually a lot of fun (it is a good example of Firaxis thinking outside the box, instead of just using more arbitrary themed modifiers).

The AI is not great on the offensive, but it can put up a fight when you want to take cities.. I am actually impressed it held this back. It rushed city walls, bombarded all 3 of my siege units to death and then rush built defensive infantry. It also called in a sub to wipe out that carrier in one shot about two turns later.

[Brutus66]

I can feel your pain. I got pulled into a war with the Assyrians because of a defensive pact I made with Maria. I knew I had a good lead in tech and had a decent collection of experienced troops, so I figured while they were busy with Portugal it would be a great opportunity for a land grab.

Turns out he had a reception party of Gothas waiting for me and my troops paid the price for my lack of combined arms. I had to rush build antiaircraft and then wait for them to travel over the roadless terrain while wave after wave of bombers dropped their little eggs on me. The only bright spot was watching a bunch of his land units get slaughtered while trying to attack some machineguns I had that were behind a river and fortified in woods. Those gunners did a good bit of damage before they were bombed into submission.

[Wiglaf]

Yeah, I'm impressed. I hope to get into another land war soon to see if they can pose an offensive threat. That is really my only major, potentially dealbreaking reservation about the game at this point.

Oerdin, the addition of tourism/archaeology/physical trade routes/city states/religion/new policy trees/espionage/world congress are designed to give you things to do to offset the slowed production. Taken together, they now succeed. The game is not entirely about building structures and units.

[Adagio]

I personally prefer 1UPT than the stack of dooms you saw previously. It might not be the best solution to the problem, but it is better. Maybe something like in CTP with 12 units forms an army (or do I remember wrong?) or something completely different.
I personally like the idea where units can turn straight into boats. While it is not realistic, it has take one of the things I hated the most in the previous games and made it better. I remember when I saw that for the first time in Rise Of Nations, it was a big improvement that I really like and was happy to see it in Civ V

About Brave New World. So far I have played one game and is halfway through second game. It does add some great things.
I'm not sure what I feel about the caravans. They are better than in previous Civ games, but still a bit of an annoyance.
The tourism part seems interesting, but apart from giving you the culture victory it doesn't seem to have any effect. In my first game 2 of the Civs on my continent where dominated by my culture (more than 200%), but what does that do? Nothing as far as I could see. IMHO tourism should give some tourism income later in the game. I also have some problems figuring out the theme bonus thing. One of the buildings needed three objects from different civilizations and different eras, but even if I put that in the building I didn't get any bonus.

The world decision making is a very interesting idea, but due to lack of options there's not much to decide on. Usually it just ends up with banning a luxury. In my current game Greece asked to ban whales, this passed through with several yea votes from France. Then I asked the world to remove the banning of whales and the very next turn France said they are happy about my proposal. It really needs more options, otherwise we'll just end up in a circle with banning and unbanning luxuries.

One positive thing I have noticed is that it is possible to play a peaceful game. In both games I'm playing the peaceful guy, who is friends with everybody. So far nobody has denounced me without a reason. But this might be because I'm playing on a low level

[Adagio]

Ok, I have now found some more use for the tourism. In my current game I'm playing Brazil and has spread tourism in all other countries and is familiar in Russia. Russia decided to pick a different ideologi than me and is now revolting. So far they have given me two cities

On a side note: This is probably the last time I will use defense packs. I had a defense pack with Russia and was friendly with almost all other civs. Maya (one of my friends) declared war on Russia which caused me to declare war on Maya, this caused several leaders to get angry at me, this includes Russia... Come on Russia, I'm sending my army in to protect you, but you're angry at me because one of my friends attacked you while we had a defense pack? You have got to be kidding me. This needs to be fixed, I shouldn't be the one getting a penality when someone else attacks one I have a defense pack with. I went from being beloved by everybody to being hated by everybody.

[Wiglaf]

I love how right before a world leader vote, every city state gets hit with a coup attempt or a rigged election from civs scrambling for their votes.

PHOTO EVIDENCE

[Wiglaf]

Just lost on Prince. Kind of stunned. Turns out going for a culture win without understanding tourism is a bad idea. Unhappy with my life right now.

[Dinner]

Adagio, I really liked how CTP2 did armies and combined arms. I would love to see it in Civ6.

[Brutus66]

I think I found a pretty good exploit. I am playing a game on a small map with raging barbs. I have a pretty religious civ, and one of the beliefs I chose was "Convert Heathens", which allows missionaries to convert barb units that are in an adjacent hex.

I found a barb encampment right near my borders that is isolated from the rest of the continent by mountains, so the AI civs can't get in there and kill them. I parked a missionary unit off the coast, and just wait for them to spawn ships- which they do, a LOT. I convert the ship, run it over the border, and disband it for cash. Very profitable!

[Brutus66]

I also found out the hard way that F12- the Steam hotkey to take a screenshot- is the Civ hotkey to load a quicksave. Immediately after taking the screenshot, my game closed and the last quicksave loaded

[Dinner]

Well, it has been several days and I still can't be bothered to fire up Civ5. I did play a game of Civ4 tonight though which tells me a lot about which game is more fun even after all these years.

[aubreelewis]

I have a problem in Civ5. Can anyone guide me???? I am in tension... Thanks all!