Civilization 5 is out.

[Lord Woodlouse]

Yeah, I understand why they've done it (any more than three squares and combat becomes impractical, they need to distinguish archers from melee units and they need to distinguish artillery from gunpowder units), but it does offend suspension of disbelief severely.

[Serafina]

That COULD be fixed with a "range negation"-mechanic and a hard limit for range. Basically, some units (and more the more advanced you get) can only be attacked at shorter range. If a unit normally has a range of 3 and attacks a unit with "Range Negation 1" it could only attack it when it's 2 or less squares away.
Such a mechanic could also be nice for infiltrators, scouts, submarines or the like.

Of course, balancing that is not probably not easy, but it would solve the problem.

[AniThyng]

I have to say the patch is a superb improvement, and hopefully a sign of things to come:

1) Buildings can be sold
2) Puppets don't build buildings that need strategic resources
3) At least unit maintnance is not a great mystery anymore
4) AI defends cities better, though it still tends to go all kamikaze with units that are better off standing their ground.

Still needs addressing imo:
5) Naval combat so far has been tolerable for me because the AI builds few ships, but it's still less lethal than it should be and transports really need ability for escort, though i've pulled off some decent invasions, usually by

a) securing naval supremacy and keeping destroyer pickets to keep watch over my invasion force
b) Bombarding units on the shore and keeping the beachhead clear with battleships and bombers/fighters from carriers
c) make actual landing on area with enemy city and good defensive terrain
d) hold beachhead with mech infantry and arty as anvil for enemy to smash army against until broken
e) profit!

Pity the AI seems not to have any air assets to make life more difficult, in 2 out of 2 games i've tried this AI had tech parity with me but never built a single fighter to challange my air force

[Serafina]

Actually, the way you pull of an invasion sounds pretty good an realistic. What else would you expect?

[AniThyng]

Actually, the way you pull of an invasion sounds pretty good an realistic. What else would you expect?

Oh, I'm not complaining about it, just that the AI needs to put up a better fight on the sea against my fleet and airforce, the actual landing combat is pretty good. But the caveat is that there needs to be a fix to make it so transports can at least be escorted directly in the face of significant naval opposition to go with a more aggressive sea battle system

[adam_grif]

The fix is trivial; have transports count as civilian units and navy military ships count as military ones so they can stack 1 military and 1 civilian unit on the tile.

[AniThyng]

The fix is trivial; have transports count as civilian units and navy military ships count as military ones so they can stack 1 military and 1 civilian unit on the tile.

Yeah. I think a good tweak for naval combat in general is to hybridize it with the direct combat so sea battles are ranged duels between ships with mutual damage inflicted.

Seriously though all in all I've been quite happy with this patch. The game runs a lot faster too

I've also noticed the AI is now less likely to just go conquer wildly and dominate an entire continent in 2 out of 2 post patch games i've played - can't prove anything, but i suspect the tweaked AI defense might have made it harder for two more or less equal AI's to lose catastrophically when they go against each other, so a superrunaway AI on the other continent doesn't arise. City States put up a somewhat better fight too, from direct observation of AI attempts to wrest control of some CIty states in my LOS

Oh yeah. As an aside, there is a certain majesty to seeing 6 transports (12 ships) steaming in convoy across the ocean and then spreading out just before making the big amphibious landing. Very D-day.

[Darmalus]

After fiddling around with the map editor for a bit, I accidentally hit the button that wiped all the resources off the map. This made me wonder, just how far could a Civ5 civilization go, if there were no resources on the map at all? I'm pretty sure you could advance all they way to the end of the tech tree, and only lack some of the military units and a handful of buildings.

[adam_grif]

The most powerful unit you could build would be Mech Infantry/Artillery. No aircraft, no advanced naval units, no tanks. Rocket Arty takes Aluminium.

Mediaeval combat would be pretty boring without any horse units or iron units - no catapults/trebuchets, no knights, no swordsmen/longswordsmen etc. PIKE COMBAT SIMULATOR.

[Darmalus]

Mediaeval combat would be pretty boring without any horse units or iron units - no catapults/trebuchets, no knights, no swordsmen/longswordsmen etc. PIKE COMBAT SIMULATOR.

That sounds almost exactly like my current game, 800+ turns in, and not one single enemy has anything better the mighty spearman and archers. I'm bored to tears crushing their feeble attacks with my tanks.

[Karza]

800+ turns in? What in the nine hells? Are you specifically avoiding winning the game or something? The longest games I've had have been around 400 turns, and those only went on so long because I wanted a cultural victory.

[Samuel]

And civfanatics has discovered how to ICS in this game.

Meritocracy- +1 happiness for each city connected to the capital. (Liberty social policy)
Communism- +5 production in each city (Order social policy)
Planned Economy- 50% reduction in unhappiness from the number of Cities you have (Order social policy)
The Forbidden Palace- Unhappiness from number of cities reduced by 50% (Wonder)
Colosseum- +4 happiness Empire Wide (Building)

Each city costs 2 unhappiness and each citizen costs 1 unhappiness. Which means you can have up to 5 citizens in your new towns and be happiness neutral. Build them as close as you can, spam trading posts, buy city state food and you win.

[Darmalus]

800+ turns in? What in the nine hells? Are you specifically avoiding winning the game or something? The longest games I've had have been around 400 turns, and those only went on so long because I wanted a cultural victory.

I turn off all victory conditions, the game is over when I say it's over.

[Stark]

That's pretty funny, since you just said you're bored to tears.

No victory conditions means no goals, you know.

[Darmalus]

That's pretty funny, since you just said you're bored to tears.

No victory conditions means no goals, you know.

The problem isn't the goals, the problem is the AI seems to think spears are the end of the tech tree. I was trying to get a nice global war going, but it looks like I'll have to downgrade to get even footing.

Edit: This used to work like a charm in Civ4. Race to then end of the tech tree, build up while the AI caught up, then have a nice couple rounds of global warfare.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

The new patch is supposed to make substantial AI improvements. Also, try playing on a higher difficulty. You really have to be on top of your shit to win on deity, even if you're using the so-called "exploit" strategies like the Civil Service slingshot, ICS, and allying with all city-states.

[Karza]

The problem isn't the goals, the problem is the AI seems to think spears are the end of the tech tree. I was trying to get a nice global war going, but it looks like I'll have to downgrade to get even footing.

What difficulty is this? Settler? On prince the AI invariably has riflemen by turn 300, and on king I've fought riflemen vs riflemen wars at around turn 250. Hell, even on chieftain the AI players had firearms by turn 300.