civ v gods and kings

rtil · June 15, 2012 09:02 PM

i've heard of it but never bothered since i have always owned the latest civ game. is it any good? which civ is it most like?

rtil · June 17, 2012 07:49 PM

rtil · June 21, 2012 09:08 AM

i really like what they did in gods and kings so far.

city states are now more integrated in the game. in the past, they only really reacted to gold, killing another city state, building something they liked or building a road to them (which was bugged until recently). now, city states do far more - sometimes they want you to "Bully" another city state by demanding tribute from another city state (a new feature), they can also be impressed by certain things about your civilization like your culture, technology or religion, and you can gain points with them just for that. they also call gold 'investing', where for a temporary period of time gold gifts will be more effective. with religion, if they like your religion they will ask you to spread it there - you can do this by sending a missionary or prophet close to their city and spreading it.

i am playing as the celts on prince on a 6 player map. the celts have a few religious bonuses , i wanted to try a religious civ to see what kind of impact it has on the game. so far it is 600AD, and my religion, Mikuism, has spread throughout half the world. it is beginning to engulf Christianity, started by my rowdy neighbors the Ethiopians. this is because my faith-based civilization has far more "pressure" on neighboring cities than Christianity does. there are 3 religious units i know of so far - prophets, missionaries and inquisitors. your first prophet is used to start a religion, which you can choose an icon and name for, as well as one player & follower based perk. a player perk is a civ-wide benefit. a follower perk is based on how many people in each city follow the religion. the followers are associated with the city population. prophets and missionaries from then on can be purchased with faith, something that accumulates like gold, culture and science, after 300 points. prophets can "enhance" your religion with more perks, and missionaries can spread religion to your own cities or others. inquisitors only job is to remove "heresy", or other civ's religions, from your own cities.

how religion impacts the game so far i can't really say yet. some city states are more fond of me because of Mikuism, but how it impacts other civs yet i cannot really tell. i have built just about every religious-based wonder and improvement thus far, and have worked fairly hard to spread Mikuism all across the world. the way religion spreads is like a disease really, and it has a radial influence called pressure from the center of each city where it is the dominant religion. this influence and radial size can be improved upon with religion enhancements.

i've set the game to a domination victory so i can see how religion plays out in the long term. i'm hoping that it will have some sway over my position in the world since even if a civ leader may not like me, their people folllow the religion i founded, and will therefore make it difficult for them to oppose me without serious repercussions.

espionage is not available yet in my tech path so i have no comments on that yet.

some other interesting things to note:

enemy units get combat advantages against civs that are larger than them (up to 20% i have seen so far)
there are a handful of new units available to ALL civs and not just new civs
there are now embassies in the game. embassies allow you to view a nation's capital. an embassy closes if a war starts. you can establish an embassy by agreeing to it with their leader after researching writing. an embassy is required for a defensive pact
there are now great admirals for people who want to do naval warfare, and now there are melee naval units as well
there are some new luxury resources. three i've noticed are copper, crab and jewelry. however jewelry can only be found from city states, so you have to be their ally in order to get it.
if another civ has told you not to settle cities close to them, after a while if you have not done so, the game will notify you that you have respected this agreement and it will no longer have a negative impact on your relations

Ashington · June 21, 2012 12:33 PM

All will celebrate the eventual victory of Mikuism over the worlds religious tot! Especially those fucking Ethiopians and their Christianity! This religion will be celebrated with Miku Jewelry and the eating of a crabs arms on a copper plate!

In all seriousness though it sounds quite interesting and the idea of preventing your opponent from harming you due to your religious influence in their nation until you can waltz over and take over their lands is definitely cool!

creamcorn · June 21, 2012 01:51 PM

anyone else experience loading times of +20 minutes between turns in the late/end game?

rtil · June 21, 2012 06:56 PM

Quote from: Ashington on June 21, 2012 12:33 PM
All will celebrate the eventual victory of Mikuism over the worlds religious tot! Especially those fucking Ethiopians and their Christianity! This religion will be celebrated with Miku Jewelry and the eating of a crabs arms on a copper plate!

In all seriousness though it sounds quite interesting and the idea of preventing your opponent from harming you due to your religious influence in their nation until you can waltz over and take over their lands is definitely cool!

it does.. so i hope it works

Quote from: creamcorn on June 21, 2012 01:51 PM
anyone else experience loading times of +20 minutes between turns in the late/end game?

i did ten years ago when i played civilization call to power. not these days though. what are your specs?

creamcorn · June 21, 2012 08:23 PM

Quote from: rtil on June 21, 2012 06:56 PM
Quote from: creamcorn on June 21, 2012 01:51 PM
anyone else experience loading times of +20 minutes between turns in the late/end game?
i did ten years ago when i played civilization call to power. not these days though. what are your specs?

AMD dual core 2.1 Ghz
2 gb ram
geforce 7600gs

i know thats why it lags towards the end game but if i just switch to strategic mode things go faster

rtil · June 21, 2012 08:30 PM

are you playing with many other civs?

creamcorn · June 25, 2012 11:27 PM

yeah like 10, but now i just switch to strategic mode when it starts to lag and everything goes normal

have you tried spying yet?
its pretty cool! you can use your spies to 'rig elections' in city-states to increase your influence there. and (the main purpose) steal technologies from other civs. if youre far past them technology-wise, you can place your spies in your own cities to kill enemy spies. you can also use them to find out what other civs are planning military-wise, and warn other civs if you find out theyre are planning an attack on them, or prepare for war yourself.

if you get caught spying it can turn out pretty bad. ive had civs declare war on me immediately when they found out, but others only ask me to remove my spies.
the expansion also has extra buildings to counter enemy spies, like police stations and constabularies.

oh and btw, how did religion benefit you in the long term?

rtil · June 26, 2012 10:20 PM

Quote from: creamcorn on June 25, 2012 11:27 PM
have you tried spying yet?
its pretty cool! you can use your spies to 'rig elections' in city-states to increase your influence there. and (the main purpose) steal technologies from other civs. if youre far past them technology-wise, you can place your spies in your own cities to kill enemy spies. you can also use them to find out what other civs are planning military-wise, and warn other civs if you find out theyre are planning an attack on them, or prepare for war yourself.

if you get caught spying it can turn out pretty bad. ive had civs declare war on me immediately when they found out, but others only ask me to remove my spies.

yes, i got my first spy because some other civ entered the renaissance age before me. the first person who does, everyone gets their first spy no matter what. not sure if it's the same for each preceding era because i led the game after that period of time.

i do think the espionage is pretty cool. near the end i was just using it in city states to increase my favor, because if you're technologically ahead of your opponents, your spies are relatively useless. i wish that there were more things they could do besides occasionally supply you with information or attempt to steal a tech, like sabotaging production or trying to incite a revolt (these were present in civ 4).

i did kill a spy in one of my own cities and they apologized for it the next turn. that was pretty funny.

by the end of the game, all 12 of the city states were my ally. but this was mostly because i was gaining favor automatically from a lot of them for having the most culture, science, etc.. i really like what they've done with city states. they're much more important and powerful in the game now. i could see them being very overpowered with a fully explored patronage policy and playing as a city state based empire like the greeks. favor would pretty much never go down for you giving you near permanent alliance statuses with city states.

one fun thing to note, if they fear your military and you are not their ally or friend, and your military steps inside their borders, they will show their status as being "afraid" instead of "angry"

Quote
oh and btw, how did religion benefit you in the long term?

now that i've beaten that particular match, i do think it did help me out consistently in the game. i was gaining about 50 happiness, 50gpt and probably some extra cpt because of religion by my last turn. i could have done even more but i was very military focused in the late game.

one of the reasons why is because i chose peace gardens as one of my religion enhancements, which adds +2 happiness for every garden built, and i did the same for temples. temples were also free maintenance in my cities. so i had about 25 cities by the end of the game and every single one had a temple and most of them had gardens.

the thing about gardens is that they don't show up until the modern age. so this is a very late game religious based contributing factor.

because i was conquering nations and keeping lots of annexed cities, happiness was very important to me. without the extra bonus from religion my empire would have stagnated for at least the last 200 turns of the game.

i ended the game at war with germany with 2 revolting cities and 37 happiness.

creamcorn · June 28, 2012 04:29 PM

Quote from: rtil on June 26, 2012 10:20 PM
one fun thing to note, if they fear your military and you are not their ally or friend, and your military steps inside their borders, they will show their status as being "afraid" instead of "angry"

lmao yeah i noticed that
its also the only way to get them to pay you tribute. and then get more gold from pillaging their land hehehe

im trying to be allies with the city-states now instead of killing them all (i liked to play as the mongolians) and its really rewarding! you get cool perks from them that really help you go faster in the game. i think ill be greek next and stop playing on prince because i always end the game with a +1000 point difference from nr. 2 and two eras ahead of the rest
and about spies: do higher level spies rig elections faster? i dont know because all my spies do is rig elections and they dont level up from that

i havent tried faith yet (i focused more on wonders, late-game wonders are especially good) and ive never gotten any problems or something from attacking other civs that have the same religion as mine. but if its as rewarding as you say i might try it. right now for example when i prepare for war i just waste a lot of production (and gold for maintenance) on happyness buildings which really draws me back. also it must seem pretty shady for those civilians that whenever they get a extra theatre or broadcast tower their country will go to war (maybe the game is trying to tell us something?!?!?!?!??!?)

rtil · June 28, 2012 10:34 PM

city state bonuses are not to be ignored imo. i like gold focused empires to bribe city states and i generally try to do their quests. and now it's easier because they have lots of automatic quests that you can gain lots of favor from just for playing well. allied bonuses from CS are usually too good to pass up. +3 happines per turn, +6 culture per turn, etc... these are huge bonuses. of course the problem is that if an enemy decides to take over a city state you lose that bonus ( unless you're close enough to gift them units), but for the most part they are left alone.

it is true that spies do not gain levels from rigging elections. i do not know if they become better/quicker at it though i haven't checked. generally i wait until a spy is level 2 or 3 before i move them on to different tasks. the quickest way to level up a spy is to place him in your own high priority cities. trust me, people will be spying on your capital and trying to steal your techs all the time. there's no way you won't kill at least 2 or 3 spies within a reasonable span of time. but stealing tech is also quite easy (if there's any tech to steal).

religion on the other hand is something you can entirely ignore. i'm playing a new game as the dutch (wanted to try diplomatic marriage) on king with a 6p12cs map, and we're in the modern age and i never even founded a religion or got a great prophet. i just completely ignored faith. i do have a pantheon but at this point it's of no use to me (+2 science per city connected to trade route). religion is spreading into my cities from other civs and it probably benefits them in some way but i couldn't care less - while they are focusing on religion as part of their gameplan, it gives me more time to focus on science and tech and at this point my military is far more advanced than theirs... of course the problem is that on king and up, the AI gets artificial bonuses over you and they can outproduce me. i have lost 2 of my cities but i'm still in a solid 2nd place out of 6 players.

AI tends to get EXTREMELY mad at you for founding a city for the sole purpose of claiming a luxury resource. i've had 4 people declare war on me at once going from friendly to hostile instantly for grabbing some silver only 7 tiles from my empire out in the middle of the open. they were mad because they said i was "expanding too aggressively"