Civ thread

[MercyWalk]

Military approach on higher levels is too much of a risk especially during the early game for me most of the time because of the stupid bonuses the AI receives, the only time i've won on Deity is with Zulus and I had to do some cheese strategy

[XeKr]

I couldn't beat Emperor for a while but at some point your knowledge just snowballs (a bunch of little things add up) and you can move up. I think a big step is realizing how important growth is. Like if you don't want to micromanage tiles or are too lazy to (with the production trick), you can leave cities on Food Focus like 90% of the time (lock academies, etc). Also, don't be afraid if it seems like you're really behind (in score/demos and such), that doesn't mean much and you can always catch up.

Domination is a lot harder than peaceful play in general, but I prefer the former myself. I do know some people who play deity but crumble if they face any combat at all, offensive/defensive/whatever. They just avoid it completely.

Edited September 20, 2014 by XeKr

[MacLovin]

Is there a tier list for civ 5?

Oh and I was fiddling around with Persia. Golden Age spam lategame is fun when you focus on food and great person production.

[Esau of Isaac]

Tier list is Poland, Korea, Babylon best and unstoppable tier, everyone else dirt tier :B

[BBM]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=505057

okay tier list; though something you will realize upon reading the thread is that they place a VERY high emphasis on reliability and don't really care about turncount at all. There's a dude in there who advocates for Huns to be higher because you can win really fast victories with them if you're good and he's pretty much shot down because they treat a 95% reliable 200 turn win more favourably than a 80% reliable 100 turn win.

I mean, I would put the civ that can win all 4 ways in 200 turns higher than the one that can only really win in one way in a 100 turns, but probably not 4 tiers higher, so that's a thing.

Edited September 20, 2014 by BBM

[XeKr]

That list is okay, but it’s more for people just moving up to deity.

Beyond that, at a certain level of play, it’s more like 95% sub250/4%sub 300 win/1% loss or 90% sub150/10% sub 310 win (conservatively by Pangaea domination. Naval maps can't be won as early as the fastest mentioned turncounts, but are over by Frigate tech so consistently sub 220 or so.).

Actually, one could argue the Huns are actually more reliable (in terms of not losing) since the only way you’ll lose (playing optimally) is if you are surprised by a rare early attack. In that respect, it’s actually safer if you have an op early UU (Horse Archer).

The other thing is, if you conquer like 3-4 civs or such (say on Continents) by turn 100, it's then trivial to win essentially 100% of the time no matter what victory condition you care about, if you don't care about turncount, so…

It’s the same thing debated to death in FE, easiness vs. efficiency, etcetc. Still, once you’re good enough at the game, winning is a given. So ltc ftw? >_>

Edited September 20, 2014 by XeKr

[MacLovin]

How is Ethiopia that high?

Austria looks pretty good later on. Idk how reliably it can get diplomatic victories though.

Edited September 21, 2014 by Groot

[AnonymousSpeed]

Simply because the Stele kicks but. It grants twice as much faith as a shrine and you don't have to research anything for it.

Personally, I can play on 5 alright, I'm currently on my first Emperor game (but it's as Babylon, so I'm not going to headed to Immortal for a while), which is going alright. I actually didn't like culture until Brave New World, but it's something I really like now.

[MacLovin]

I just finished a Poland game.

Finished Tradition->Liberty-Rationalism-Aesthetics with most of the things in the Order ideology done.

Going to try Byzantine or the Celts sometime.

[Rehab]

Basically, different tier lists serve different purposes, especially for a game played as much in single player as in multiplayer (if not more)

[BBM]

I think that list was for single player only. A multiplayer tier list would probably look very different.

Also, Sharpy had a Civ Draft idea. Essentially, we have 8 people, and each person picks one civ. Everybody then plays with the civ they picked, with the seven civs that others picked as the AIs.

We could leave it as it is for a non-competitive draft, but it would probably need to be polished a lot for a draft where we competed for TC. In the latter case I would maybe say we pick a wincon at the beginning and all go for the same one, so it's not like FIRSTPICK HUNS EVERYBODY ELSE SCREWED

Edited September 21, 2014 by BBM

[AnonymousSpeed]

I can imagine. I thought Civ was mostly played single player, but I've seen a lot of multiplayer stuff recently.'

Ooh, that sounds fun.

I don't know, I'm not much of a fan of judging performance based on low turn counts, but I guess it isn't a terrible way either. It does make a science victory pointless though, and really anything but domination would be impossible to win with. Of course, that's what the win condition is for. Score is a pretty bad base I think, since it greatly favors a wide empire. It could possibly be last for a certain number of turns, obtain a win condition, and have some sort of city number-population-happiness ration.

[AnonymousSpeed]

I can imagine. I thought Civ was mostly played single player, but I've seen a lot of multiplayer stuff recently.'

Ooh, that sounds fun.

I don't know, I'm not much of a fan of judging performance based on low turn counts, but I guess it isn't a terrible way either. It does make a science victory pointless though, and really anything but domination would be impossible to win with. Of course, that's what the win condition is for. Score is a pretty bad base I think, since it greatly favors a wide empire. It could possibly be last for a certain number of turns, obtain a win condition, and have some sort of city number-population-happiness ration.

[XeKr]

The other issue with playing for turncount is you can’t account for RNG in land/start locations (which is a bigger factor than civ choice and actual skill) unless we pre-choose some pre-set map (tbh maybe not that interesting, plus issues with who generates, blind-picks and map balance/knowledge). Or could do it HoF-style by stipulating the conditions for the map generator, but again there’s lots of randomness (I know I can’t be bothered to reroll myself…)

Otherwise civ choice can mostly be done with bans in addition to picks.

But I suppose I’m down for a fun draft, whatever conditions (or not) are imposed.

[AnonymousSpeed]

Right, true.

Yeah, a draft sounds fun. For reasons of balance, I'd say we probably shouldn't be allowing Babylon, Korea or Poland. Maybe Spain as well, since you either get a natural wonder and steam roll the game, or you don't and you're stuck with two pretty unimpressive unique units (in my opinion, at least). And of course it means everyone else has to deal with Spain's AI.

[MacLovin]

throw in the maya as well. guaranteed every baktun is a bit of a heavy boost.

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

oh, here's a small question. which ideology is the best for a culture victory?

i think it might be order, but i wanna make sure.

[Esau of Isaac]

Usually Freedom is best. Dat Media Culture doe.

Also one month until Beyond Earth. I don't want to have to wait. Someone please give me a time machine D:

[XeKr]

Freedom usually since Media Culture applies to base tourism and therefore Musicians.

Order’s advantage is the instant happiness with Tier 1 tenets and larger Scientist bulbs (to get to Internet faster).

[BBM]

Autocracy is pretty cool if you started off domination in the early-game but are trying to make a mid-lategame tourism push. Futurism and Cult of Personality are pretty funny. Freedom is probably still better overall though.

[AnonymousSpeed]

I was thinking Autocracy might be pretty good as well. If you're going culture you probably have lots of policies, which, combined with Prora and the social policy that give you a portion of your happiness as culture, could be pretty powerful.

[Psych]

I typically go England and rush boats and anything that improves Ship movement like the Grand Lighthouse or the Commerce tree but I have a bad habit of not building enough military units to protect my cities.

Also I honestly prefer vanilla because G&K and BNW nerf the baot strat grrrr

[AnonymousSpeed]

But with the expansions, you can actually take cities with boats!

[BBM]

Never played vanilla (or G&K) but naval domination victories are generally easier than land domination victories. AI is even worse at naval combat than land combat, and SotL fucking rules (though tbf Frigates are really good too).

Great Lighthouse is pretty difficult to get on Immortal/Deity though (although England's UA makes up for it)

Edited September 27, 2014 by BBM

[Psych]

Vanilla doesn't have melee/ranged ship seperation and while it takes longer to research Sailing, you can upgrade Triremes to Frigates a lot faster I believe.

Basically ships are stronger earlier and don't require stupid Caravels