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Post by steve59 on Feb 22, 2017 18:44:34 GMT
I must admit that's my problem. Played Civ II for a decade or more. Then when it no longer matched up with a new machine I upgraded to Civ V I think it was. However could never seem to work out how to play the damned thing. There were a hell of a lot of extra units and abilities but couldn't really understand how to use most of them so never really got into it. I never played Civ II, but I found Civ V to be a lot easier to figure out than Civ IV. Maybe it was because I was a lot younger when I played Civ IV, but the implementation of one-unit-per-tile made warfare a lot more intuitive for me. If you ever want to give Civ V a go again I'm happy to give some tips and answer questions about it - I'm not a pro player by any standard, but I'm at least competent. Krall Thanks for that. I have the problem that I spend most of my time looking after my mum, who is rather frail, physically and mentally. There now and accessing the net via a laptop. About 10 days of every 35 I spend at home where I have the Civ installed. May well take you up on that offer when I get back there. [Won't be for ~ 3 weeks as just returned to mum's on Monday.] Interesting the one unit stacking limit. Must make it more difficult to defend areas or non-combat units so would make a lot of the warfare tactics I was used to obsolete. Thanks.
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Post by Krall on Feb 22, 2017 19:46:07 GMT
Krall Thanks for that. I have the problem that I spend most of my time looking after my mum, who is rather frail, physically and mentally. There now and accessing the net via a laptop. About 10 days of every 35 I spend at home where I have the Civ installed. May well take you up on that offer when I get back there. [Won't be for ~ 3 weeks as just returned to mum's on Monday.] Interesting the one unit stacking limit. Must make it more difficult to defend areas or non-combat units so would make a lot of the warfare tactics I was used to obsolete. Thanks. No problem! I can sympathise - I spend a lot of time looking after my sibling. Thankfully we live together so I don't have to move around and lose internet access to help them. Defending areas and non-combat units isn't as hard as you imagine. Civilian units (workers, settlers, great people) and military units can stack with each other, but not more units of the same type. A worker and a settler can't be on the same tile, but a warrior can sit on top of a worker to protect it. Defending areas is more situational - rough terrain can be very easy to defend, whilst wide flat land is harder to defend. One of the things that helps is that there are units which can attack over several tiles, so you can have a front line of melee units and a back line of supporting archers/artillery. This makes holding chokepoints pretty easy, as you can plug the gap with one melee unit and then have ranged units behind it to ruin any enemies that come close. The melee unit can just sit there defending and healing, tanking all the attacks, whilst the ranged units massacre enemy melee units without having to be in danger. Basically tactical positioning of units and combining several different types of units is a lot more important - no more doomstacks, instead you have actual military formations.
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Post by steve59 on Feb 23, 2017 17:22:04 GMT
Krall Thanks for that. I have the problem that I spend most of my time looking after my mum, who is rather frail, physically and mentally. There now and accessing the net via a laptop. About 10 days of every 35 I spend at home where I have the Civ installed. May well take you up on that offer when I get back there. [Won't be for ~ 3 weeks as just returned to mum's on Monday.] Interesting the one unit stacking limit. Must make it more difficult to defend areas or non-combat units so would make a lot of the warfare tactics I was used to obsolete. Thanks. No problem! I can sympathise - I spend a lot of time looking after my sibling. Thankfully we live together so I don't have to move around and lose internet access to help them. Defending areas and non-combat units isn't as hard as you imagine. Civilian units (workers, settlers, great people) and military units can stack with each other, but not more units of the same type. A worker and a settler can't be on the same tile, but a warrior can sit on top of a worker to protect it. Defending areas is more situational - rough terrain can be very easy to defend, whilst wide flat land is harder to defend. One of the things that helps is that there are units which can attack over several tiles, so you can have a front line of melee units and a back line of supporting archers/artillery. This makes holding chokepoints pretty easy, as you can plug the gap with one melee unit and then have ranged units behind it to ruin any enemies that come close. The melee unit can just sit there defending and healing, tanking all the attacks, whilst the ranged units massacre enemy melee units without having to be in danger. Basically tactical positioning of units and combining several different types of units is a lot more important - no more doomstacks, instead you have actual military formations. OK thanks. That makes a good bit of sense. IIRC and its a while since I last tried it that was one of the problems, distinguishing between assorted civilian units and what their roles were. Is there any on-line help that would give a basic break-down, like the civiopia I think it was in the older games? Steve
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Post by Jasen777 on Feb 23, 2017 20:15:21 GMT
Basically tactical positioning of units and combining several different types of units is a lot more important - no more doomstacks, instead you have actual military formations. That just sounds like more stuff for the AI to suck at.
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Post by Krall on Feb 23, 2017 20:34:26 GMT
OK thanks. That makes a good bit of sense. IIRC and its a while since I last tried it that was one of the problems, distinguishing between assorted civilian units and what their roles were. Is there any on-line help that would give a basic break-down, like the civiopia I think it was in the older games? Steve There's a Civilopedia within Civ V with a page for every unit, building, civilisation, etc. There is an online Civ wiki too ( link), with all that information for every Civ game too. I don't think you need to worry about confusing civilian units though - I think it's just settlers, workers, and Great People. There are missionaries and inquisitors too, if you have the expansion that adds religions to the game. That just sounds like more stuff for the AI to suck at. Yeah the AI isn't great at it, but it rarely makes huge, blatant mistakes. Sometimes it gets lucky and does really well - like once I was attacking Persia's capital city, which had built the Great Wall wonder, meaning enemy units could only move one tile at a time. In Civ V cities themselves can launch ranged attacks like they're a unit, and Persia had both a ranged land unit and a ranged naval unit in its capital, meaning it could shoot my units three times a turn whilst I very, very slowly advanced. I had to retreat and research stronger artillery before I could safely attack it!
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Post by MinnesotaNationalist on Feb 23, 2017 21:24:33 GMT
Sometimes it gets lucky and does really well - like once I was attacking Persia's capital city, which had built the Great Wall wonder, meaning enemy units could only move one tile at a time. In Civ V cities themselves can launch ranged attacks like they're a unit, and Persia had both a ranged land unit and a ranged naval unit in its capital, meaning it could shoot my units three times a turn whilst I very, very slowly advanced. I had to retreat and research stronger artillery before I could safely attack it! yeah, that Great Wall can be a bitch. I don't think the AI is well enough at invasion for a player to really need to make it, but the AI is rather impressively good at using the Great Wall to their advantage.
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Post by steve59 on Feb 24, 2017 17:54:46 GMT
Well that's one interesting difference in terms of what the Great Wall does. Definitely nasty in terms of stopping a broad front advance. Or simply in delaying it allowing a defensive position to be established. Possibly not as great as the old one I'm used to, where an enemy can't sustain a war but then that became redundant when gunpowder is discovered.
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Post by Krall on Feb 24, 2017 18:53:49 GMT
Well that's one interesting difference in terms of what the Great Wall does. Definitely nasty in terms of stopping a broad front advance. Or simply in delaying it allowing a defensive position to be established. Possibly not as great as the old one I'm used to, where an enemy can't sustain a war but then that became redundant when gunpowder is discovered. The Civ wiki just says that the Great Wall's effect in Civ II was that "Other civilisations must offer you a peace treaty" - how does that actually work? Like any civ that's at war with you when you complete the Great Wall have to offer a peace treaty? Or do civs that go to war with you whilst you have a great wall have to offer a peace treaty the moment they declare war, so you can return to peace immediately instead of waiting for the AI to be willing to consider a peace offer?
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Post by steve59 on Feb 24, 2017 18:56:17 GMT
OK thanks. That makes a good bit of sense. IIRC and its a while since I last tried it that was one of the problems, distinguishing between assorted civilian units and what their roles were. Is there any on-line help that would give a basic break-down, like the civiopia I think it was in the older games? Steve There's a Civilopedia within Civ V with a page for every unit, building, civilisation, etc. There is an online Civ wiki too ( link), with all that information for every Civ game too. I don't think you need to worry about confusing civilian units though - I think it's just settlers, workers, and Great People. There are missionaries and inquisitors too, if you have the expansion that adds religions to the game. Gods! Had a look at that online Civ wiki and there's a huge expansion over what I've been used to. Going to have to get in front of the game and work through this steadily I suspect. Seems to be a lot less linear than I was used to. Thanks for that. Will have another few looks occasionally and really start working on it when I get back home. Steve
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Post by steve59 on Feb 24, 2017 19:03:34 GMT
Well that's one interesting difference in terms of what the Great Wall does. Definitely nasty in terms of stopping a broad front advance. Or simply in delaying it allowing a defensive position to be established. Possibly not as great as the old one I'm used to, where an enemy can't sustain a war but then that became redundant when gunpowder is discovered. The Civ wiki just says that the Great Wall's effect in Civ II was that "Other civilisations must offer you a peace treaty" - how does that actually work? Like any civ that's at war with you when you complete the Great Wall have to offer a peace treaty? Or do civs that go to war with you whilst you have a great wall have to offer a peace treaty the moment they declare war, so you can return to peace immediately instead of waiting for the AI to be willing to consider a peace offer? Well in theory it stopped other civs attacking you, presuming you had the wall and that gunpowder hadn't been discovered yet. However as you note there is a loop-hole in that another civilisation can attack you. I think their forced to make peace if you send a diplomat to them but of course this does give at least one turn for them to make mischief and possibly gain territory. [Working from memory as its a few years since I played it.]
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Post by Krall on Feb 24, 2017 19:58:20 GMT
Well in theory it stopped other civs attacking you, presuming you had the wall and that gunpowder hadn't been discovered yet. However as you note there is a loop-hole in that another civilisation can attack you. I think their forced to make peace if you send a diplomat to them but of course this does give at least one turn for them to make mischief and possibly gain territory. [Working from memory as its a few years since I played it.] Ah, so they have to accept any peace treaty you give them? Interesting. Yeah, that does leave them one turn to do what they want, though I imagine the AI doesn't have the co-ordination and foresight to make use of that.
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Post by steve59 on Feb 24, 2017 21:11:53 GMT
Well in theory it stopped other civs attacking you, presuming you had the wall and that gunpowder hadn't been discovered yet. However as you note there is a loop-hole in that another civilisation can attack you. I think their forced to make peace if you send a diplomat to them but of course this does give at least one turn for them to make mischief and possibly gain territory. [Working from memory as its a few years since I played it.] Ah, so they have to accept any peace treaty you give them? Interesting. Yeah, that does leave them one turn to do what they want, though I imagine the AI doesn't have the co-ordination and foresight to make use of that. Not much but since you have to allow for such an attack it can be a pain, as you can't leave any border undefended. However the fact it does mean you can stop attacks and end wars did make it very, very powerful in Civ II. By the sound of it in Civ V its still powerful but not as decisive in ending wars when you want to.
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Post by Krall on Feb 24, 2017 22:07:39 GMT
Not much but since you have to allow for such an attack it can be a pain, as you can't leave any border undefended. However the fact it does mean you can stop attacks and end wars did make it very, very powerful in Civ II. By the sound of it in Civ V its still powerful but not as decisive in ending wars when you want to. Yeah it's not one of the more powerful wonders. There are some decently powerful wonders in Civ V though - the Great Library is a very good early game one as it gives you a free technology of your choice from those you have available to research, the Pyramids are great in the early game too as they give you a couple of workers and make all workers build tile improvements 25% faster. There are a couple that give you free Great People instantly, which is a pretty big bonus. Generally though there aren't any that are decisive or unbalanced, instead different wonders help with different playstyles and thus different victory conditions - e.g. conquering civs will need a lot of happiness, as conquered people generally aren't too happy, so wonders that boost happiness are great for the Domination victory. But yeah, I'm not sure how much has changed since Civ II, but Civ V probably isn't as difficult or complicated as I'm making it sound. That said I do tend to play as Civs with more powerful bonuses and units - some Civs are crap, having bonuses that are too small and too situational to be useful. The Aztecs especially are awful, whereas the Inca are one of the best civs in the game regardless of what victory you're going for.
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Post by MinnesotaNationalist on Feb 25, 2017 1:30:26 GMT
But yeah, I'm not sure how much has changed since Civ II, but Civ V probably isn't as difficult or complicated as I'm making it sound. That said I do tend to play as Civs with more powerful bonuses and units - some Civs are crap, having bonuses that are too small and too situational to be useful. The Aztecs especially are awful, whereas the Inca are one of the best civs in the game regardless of what victory you're going for. Honestly, I don't think the Aztecs in Civ V are that bad. If you get someone with the right hands, they can be a pretty cool military-culture civ, especially if you pump out a lot of Jaguar warriors early on. Although I'd say the Zulu are the definitive military civ in the game. Just stacking all their bonuses one on top of another is amazing. Speaking of domination victory, have you ever stacked a city with all 3 barracks buildings, the Alhambra wonder, and the Brandenburg gate wonder? It's a really awesome combination to have because you can start a unit off with one of the "advanced" promotions, such as March, if you finish off the Drill path.
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Post by steve59 on Feb 25, 2017 15:43:38 GMT
But yeah, I'm not sure how much has changed since Civ II, but Civ V probably isn't as difficult or complicated as I'm making it sound. That said I do tend to play as Civs with more powerful bonuses and units - some Civs are crap, having bonuses that are too small and too situational to be useful. The Aztecs especially are awful, whereas the Inca are one of the best civs in the game regardless of what victory you're going for. Honestly, I don't think the Aztecs in Civ V are that bad. If you get someone with the right hands, they can be a pretty cool military-culture civ, especially if you pump out a lot of Jaguar warriors early on. Although I'd say the Zulu are the definitive military civ in the game. Just stacking all their bonuses one on top of another is amazing. Speaking of domination victory, have you ever stacked a city with all 3 barracks buildings, the Alhambra wonder, and the Brandenburg gate wonder? It's a really awesome combination to have because you can start a unit off with one of the "advanced" promotions, such as March, if you finish off the Drill path. Yes some of the wonders in Civ 2 were probably way too powerful. The Great Libarary gave free any technology when it was discovered by any other two civiisations for instance. So some areas of the tech tree you didn't think too important could be ignored and picked up 2nd hand. Or Shakespeare's Threatre which was pretty cheap and made all unhappy people happy in the city it was in. Great for a mega-capital. If I got a nation going well then I wouild probably end up building 20+ of the 28 total wonders simply because they gave such great feedback in terms of the boosts they gave. One big difference I notice by 5 is that civilisations actually differ in their characteristics and advantages. In 2 they were all clones with no inherent difference between them. I always played England, generally changing the leaders name to Alfred or Edward but if I get the hang of Civ 5 there are plenty of opportunities for different play by using another nation.
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Post by Krall on Feb 25, 2017 16:28:56 GMT
Honestly, I don't think the Aztecs in Civ V are that bad. If you get someone with the right hands, they can be a pretty cool military-culture civ, especially if you pump out a lot of Jaguar warriors early on. Although I'd say the Zulu are the definitive military civ in the game. Just stacking all their bonuses one on top of another is amazing. I dunno, I've literally never seen the Aztecs do well. They always go right to the bottom of the leaderboard and fall way behind in tech, production, income, etc. I think it's partially because they tend to spawn in jungle and that makes it difficult to develop early on, since you have to get the right techs before you can even start removing the jungle, but it's also because their unique building is highly situational (+2 food for all lake tiles, bear in mind that I'm not sure I've ever seen the Aztecs have any lake tiles) and their unique unit is really early on in the tech tree, and so is no use by the time you're developed enough to go to war with another civ. You're right about the Zulu, though. Getting an army of Impi with Buffalo Horns, Chest, and Loins promotions is beastly. Speaking of domination victory, have you ever stacked a city with all 3 barracks buildings, the Alhambra wonder, and the Brandenburg gate wonder? It's a really awesome combination to have because you can start a unit off with one of the "advanced" promotions, such as March, if you finish off the Drill path. I don't think I've ever managed that - I rarely go for the domination victory, and when I do I'm rarely able to get the wonders I want. Having units that can heal every turn regardless of what action they take or that can attack twice in a turn right after being built would be amazing though - I'm not sure I've ever gotten units with either of those promotions, outside of bombers, which seem to get the "heal every turn" promotion quite quickly. Yes some of the wonders in Civ 2 were probably way too powerful. The Great Libarary gave free any technology when it was discovered by any other two civiisations for instance. So some areas of the tech tree you didn't think too important could be ignored and picked up 2nd hand. Or Shakespeare's Threatre which was pretty cheap and made all unhappy people happy in the city it was in. Great for a mega-capital. If I got a nation going well then I wouild probably end up building 20+ of the 28 total wonders simply because they gave such great feedback in terms of the boosts they gave. One big difference I notice by 5 is that civilisations actually differ in their characteristics and advantages. In 2 they were all clones with no inherent difference between them. I always played England, generally changing the leaders name to Alfred or Edward but if I get the hang of Civ 5 there are plenty of opportunities for different play by using another nation. Ah, I didn't know civs didn't have different abilities in the earlier games! In Civ V all civs have a unique ability and two other unique things which may be units, buildings, or tile improvements. For example, the Inca (one of my favourite civs) have a unique ability called the Great Andean Road which has two effects: units take no movement penalty when moving through hills, and tile improvements built on hills have no maintenance cost and half cost everywhere else. Usually a tile with a road on it costs 1 gold per turn to maintain, and railroads cost 2 gold per turn to maintain but this makes them really cheap, and you can often build a decent network of cities connected by roads with no maintenance cost at all, since the Inca tend to start in mountainous and hilly areas. Since gold is good regardless of which victory condition you're going for, this makes them one of the best civs overall. Their unique unit - the Slinger - isn't amazing. It replaces the Archer, the earliest ranged unit, and the only difference is that it's slightly weaker in melee but has a chance to withdraw and move back a tile without taking damage when attacked. That's useful for keeping them alive early on, but that's about it. Their unique tile improvement is awesome though - once they research Construction (a relatively early tech) they can build Terrace Farms. Terrace Farms act similarly to regular farms, but can only be built on hills (regular farms can't be built on hills unless the hill has access to fresh water, e.g. it's next to a river). Its main advantage is that it gains +1 Food production for every adjacent mountain. Since the Inca tend to spawn in hilly, mountainous areas, this means you can get a LOT of food and create huge cities in areas that most civs wouldn't do well in.
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Post by steve59 on Feb 25, 2017 20:36:16 GMT
Krall Well the big 'what' for me in that last bit is that now improvements to tiles [used to think of them as squares!] and roads and railways now cost to maintain! I rather suspect that railways no longer give infinite free movement either as well. That made railways very, very effective in moving forces about. Also since multiple units could stack on the same tile when I was launching an offensive the strike force would include a number of engineers to build railways on the fly so to speak. That meant that you could simply move a strong attacking force, including artillery from one captured city to the next and attack at full strength immediately. You could really blizkreig an AI enemy with such tactics. Steve
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Post by Krall on Feb 25, 2017 21:53:47 GMT
Krall Well the big 'what' for me in that last bit is that now improvements to tiles [used to think of them as squares!] and roads and railways now cost to maintain! I rather suspect that railways no longer give infinite free movement either as well. That made railways very, very effective in moving forces about. Also since multiple units could stack on the same tile when I was launching an offensive the strike force would include a number of engineers to build railways on the fly so to speak. That meant that you could simply move a strong attacking force, including artillery from one captured city to the next and attack at full strength immediately. You could really blizkreig an AI enemy with such tactics. Steve I believe only roads and railroads cost money to maintain - not farms, pastures, mines, or anything like that. Connecting cities to the capital does produce gold based roughly on the size of the city being connected, so you can usually make back the cost of connecting your cities together with roads - or even make a profit if they're big cities. Railroads cost twice as much to maintain, but cities get a 20% boost to production if it's connected to the capital via railroad. Generally it's worth it to connect up your cities, at least once you're past the early game. You can stack civilian and military units with each other so you could put workers under your military units to build roads/railroads as you advance, but it generally takes several turns to build one tile of road/railroad, so it may just be faster to move your military units cross-country. It only takes one turn to repair roads and railroads though, so repairing any damage to your enemy's transport network as you conquer it allows you to just use theirs. There are some other options for "blitzkrieg"-style tactics, since mounted units and later tank units have a lot more movement points than infantry and artillery units and can move after attacking (I think before one-unit-per-tile all units moved at the same speed). Plus in the late game you can airlift units between your cities, though I think there's a limit on how far they can be moved in one airlift. There are also paratroopers, which can be dropped anywhere within 9 tiles of your borders. In the end game there's also an XCOM Squad (one of only two sci-fi units in Civ V, the other being a Giant Death Robot) which can be dropped anywhere within 40 tiles of your borders, but it's right at the end of the tech tree which is generally too late to be useful.
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Post by Jasen777 on Feb 26, 2017 19:00:55 GMT
No, generally foot units could move one tile and horse units 2. Tanks and Mech. Inf could move 3. A few foot units though had the "treat all terrain as roads" feature which would let them travel faster than horse units over undeveloped terrain.
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Post by steve59 on Feb 26, 2017 22:06:12 GMT
No, generally foot units could move one tile and horse units 2. Tanks and Mech. Inf could move 3. A few foot units though had the "treat all terrain as roads" feature which would let them travel faster than horse units over undeveloped terrain. That matches with what I remember from Civ 2. Also that some terrain without roads, especially jungles & mountains, but to a degree also hills, deserts and forests IIRC would take more movement. Movement along a river used to cost less, think it was only 1/3 but I don't know if that's the case in Civ 5? Krall - It was that highlighted above which made it sound to me like otherwise improvements now had maintainence costs. Possibly I mis-understood?
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