Civilization V

[Jan-Poo]

That's not exactly so. The game assigns to each unit a certain military value, so if a warrior is worth 5, a swordsman is worth 15 and so on. Then the game sums all of these values and gets a number that is supposed to represent a civ's military strength. This considers both quantity and quality of the army.

The AI most likely considers that, as it never happened to me that they would start a war against my 10 industrial units with their 40 medieval footmen. And upgrading always caused a boost in my military power statistic.

When a civ insults you most of the time it's just big talk without basis. They hate you so they tell you all kind of stuff, even if it doesn't make sense. An AI never begs for peace if they think they are stronger. If they think they are stronger they "graciously" offer a peace treaty with outrageous compensations.

Anyway I don't think that exp is considered at all in the calculation and that's a big fault. A siege weapon with the "attack twice" promotion is even worth more than two siege weapons and the same goes for an aircraft with attack twice and autorepair.

Additionally the AI only takes in account the relative military strength to decide whether the war is going in their or your favor and it doesn't matter if the bulk of their units are in a completely different continent and they have practically none on the war front.
You might even have slaughtered 20 enemy units with no losses, you might have even conquered three of his cities, if his military strength is higher he'd still think that the war is going good for him.
And that means he'll ask for a peace treaty with extremely unfavorable conditions for you, even if he's losing cities after cities and soldier after soldier.

In war you should always consider the skill of the general and not just the strength of his army, but the programmers must have been too lazy to create a code that counts losses and conquests from the start of the war and rather went with a simple comparison of two numbers.

[Metaler]

Quick question: is it true that G&K made navies a lot better? I remember they were awful in the vanilla game, and I've heard from some people on Something Awful's Let's Play forum that the expansion made naval combat a lot better in many ways...

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by Skane

This might seem silly, but... religion makes it "complicated" for me to declare war on someone when my Civilization's religion passively converts them.

They're just so friendly, so... chummy... that I feel like a douchebag clicking the Declare War button. I prefer it when they're hurling insults at you or laughing manically as they declare war on you. Makes it sweeter to steamroll over them until they enter Afraid status and grovel for mercy.

Natch.

Sid mentions in an interview that it is partly why he makes the AI to be defiant when you are about to wipe them out. He doesn't want the player to feel bad for winning the game, so he tries to make dying leaders more angry and insulting towards you as you strike the killing blow.

[Kyuu]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

dying leaders more angry and insulting towards you as you strike the killing blow.

In that weakened position -- I'd be acting the same way actually.

"You gonna take my capital? Suck my balls!" XD

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Metaler

Quick question: is it true that G&K made navies a lot better? I remember they were awful in the vanilla game, and I've heard from some people on Something Awful's Let's Play forum that the expansion made naval combat a lot better in many ways...

It really depends on what do you mean by "better" and "awful".

-Naval combat has a lot more options now, ships are divided in melee and ranged, which means you can conquer coastal cities with your melee ships.
-Embarking your armies into the sea is a lot safer. Not only naval units can no longer instakill them (unless they're powerfyl enough) but you can stack your embarked units with your naval units.
-There are admirals now that work like generals but support naval units instead. They can be expended to insta-heal them.
-In the renaissance era you get privateers who can steal other naval units and gain gold from attacking coastal cities, so you can have fun being a pirate.
-Battleships now are the equivalent of artillery in the sea. They have two hexes range and they are strong against cities. They are extremely powerful.


In short if what you wanted was more options for your naval strategies, gods and kings offers a lot of that. But if you thought naval combat was too easy, now it's even easier.
-The AI for naval combat was made better in several way. Whenever they build an army to send to you, they make several naval units accompany them taking advantage of the new stacking rules.
-If the map has prevalence of sea, AI favors naval units a lot more now.
-I've often seen the AI using encircling tactics against other ships. They take a target and focus on it, and because of the encircling, they can't escape.
-AI Naval units pose a real threat to your coastal cities. you must make sure to defend them.

Unfortunately these tactics are still exploitable. If you build a concentrated fleet of 5 or six ranged ships and two melee you'd still be unstoppable. It doesn't matter if the AI has hundreds of ships throghout the world, they're almost never more than three in the same place and you can annihilate them.
Encircling tactics work well against single targets but not against fleets, they just expose themselves to your concentrated fire.
The AI doesn't seem to favor submarines, which you can use to destory the AI's fleet and other embarked units with almost no opposition.

Same old stuff, except you'll find that your fleet can conquer cities a lot easier now, not much for the melee naval units which don't really change much imho, but for the fact ranged naval attacks to cities actually do damage. I used to chip cities' health away 1 point at a time in the past, and it was still a convenient tactic due to higher mobility of ships.
Triremes on the other hand are a lot less useful now. You can't use them to attack land units and if you attack naval units you'll suffer damage too (like any melee land units) except you can't heal outside friendly territory! Prepare to lose a lot of them to barbarians if you're sending them into exploration.
The bright side of this, is that barbarian triremes won't bother you as much as they did before.

[erneiz_hyde]

So, I've been playing this like mad for several days now. I gradually step up the difficulty, starting from Prince and now with a bit of luck I can do decent in Emperor.

One game in Emperor was actually so successful I can't believe I actually did it. I never tried the Chu-Ko-Nu rush before so I went and played as China, Marathon speed, on a Huge Hemisphere map. To spice things up, I put 22 civs and 38 city states in there so it doesn't feel as lonely. It started as usual, your neighbors declaring war on you with waves of units, nothing I can't handle with a few archers.

I conquered a CS right next to me and that made some of my neighbors DoW on me. Anyways, things happened (I just have to say that Chu-Ko-Nus are simply awesome). Eventually I conquered half the continent until I stopped the spree.

Oh, and here's the other amazing thing: China's paper makers are ridiculously amazing. At that game, I eventually conquered the whole continent I started on and I had over 2000 gpt. I bought every single one of my units and almost never build them unless I run out of things to build. At this point I just can't lose because everyone else is still on riflemen while I had Giant Death Robots (and I had the Utopia Project and UN one turn before completion, and i had the last SS part idling in my capital).

Anyways, bored and with that much of gpt, I tried something VERY cheesy: I BOUGHT all of a civ's city before I nuked their capital. They never say no when I offer 2000 gpt and lots of luxuries for about 20 of their cities which they never get lol. Repeat this until eventually my PC stopped running the game because it doesn't have enough of...something. I don't know, the game just crashed and it happened every time I reload it

Sadly my games since hasn't been as successful. I'm starting to think that regardless of your chosen victory condition, going to war is really the only way to win in the higher difficulties. Oh, and despite the slow, marathon speed seems to make the war game easier too, since the enemy needs more time to replace their defeated soldiers, I just had to make sure they kill none of mine (and with Chu-Ko-Nus, that's easy). And the length of time my Chu-Ko-Nus remains useful is lengthened considerably (they don't suddenly send muskets at you after a long march to their capital).

Anyways, another thing I'd like to add: I F'in HATE jungles. And forests too in that matter, but I got more bad experience with jungles. They can seriously deter assaults made on cities early in the game. Whenever I see a enemy city riddled with forests and jungles I'll at least bring twice the number of units than planned or wait until at least artillery. marshes are still okay because despite the extra damage taken, I can still fire from 2 tiles away and that's vital.

[Jan-Poo]

Yeah forests and jungles are extremely annoying because they block your ranged unit's view. In one game I even used workers to cut down forests and free the view before launching a particularly difficult attack. You just need to protect them with strong defensive units while they fortify. They usually can resist 2-3 turns, and you can always switch them.

Huge maps tend to crash my game too and that's I generally avoid them. It's a pity but even high end PCs have problem dealing with that. It's fine as long as you don't uncover the whole map though, but then what's the point?

Ranged units with double attacks are obviously your most overpowered asset until you get bombers. China gets those for free, but you can only use them for one era until they become obsolete. You should always try to get that with your siege weapons. A rocket artillery with double attack, one range increment and autorepair is simply godly. Think carefully before taking upgrades VS cities or defensive bonuses. Unless it's a short game I rather go with 3 barrage or 3 accuracy for my siege weapons, it will pay in later eras.

[Duo Maxwell]

Ah man, the new expansion pack has been released today, and look like it's a huge improvement compares to the previous one.

Key features and changes.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Duo Maxwell

Ah man, the new expansion pack has been released today, and look like it's a huge improvement compares to the previous one.

Key features and changes.

I had a chance to try a game and well the game truly has become hectic now.

The start has become harsher due to the fact that gold has been removed from rivers and sea tiles. In addition there are new trading rules that only allow exchange of lump sums of money if the other civilization is friend with you.

You now need to build caravans and/or cargo ships to establish trade routes with other cities. If you can get your economy in shape those will provide a lot of money for your empire, but it will take a while. The building queue was already crowded as it was, now it's become even worse, with a lot of important choices to make.

Trade routes can also be set between cities of your empire, and that can be a very huge boost for your newly founded cities. You can give them up to 6-8 food or hammers thus providing them with a rapid development.

The problem is that Barbarians and enemies can destroy trade routes, so you need to guard them. Moreover trade routes once set cannot be removed, they will naturally end their mission after a certain number of turns (30 in standard speed). This means that you're bound to lose a lot of your trade routes if someone starts a war against you, and yes that means that you'll lose your caravans and cargo, so you'll have to build them again.


The culture system has been drastically changed. Now buildings don't give much culture at all, but you can boost your culture output with great works and artifacts.
The way it works is that several buildings (but mainly wonders) will have slots that you can fill with great works. Great works can be produced by related great artists, writers and musicians. Those are great persons that can be "built" overtime just like the regular great persons, but have a slightly higher chance to appear and there are specific buildings that improve that.
Each Great work gives 2 culture and 2 tourism. But you get "theming bonuses" for tourism if you combine them in particular ways (there's even an option to trade great works with other civs to achieve the perfect combinations.)

The relation between culture and tourism is that the first allow you to defend against other civs' cultural influence while the second allows you to culturally "attack" the other civs and become influential with them.

The game keeps track of all the culture and tourism that you accumulated since the beginning. If your total tourism becomes more that a civ's culture, you become influential with that civ (I'll get to the effects of that later). Once you become influential with every civ you win the game with a cultural victory. That's a lot easier to say than to do.
Of course other civs can become influential with you, so you'd want to think twice before neglecting culture, even as a warmongering nation.

In addition the technology "archeology" will unlock a new unit that can go around the map and dig up sites. Those sites spawn according to event that occurred in the past. For example the place where a city was razed or where a battle was fought. Once a site was dug the archeologist disappears and you get the option to either get an artifact (it works exactly like a great work of art) or create a cultural landmark. Cultural landmarks now can only be created this way and they give culture depending on the age difference between the current era and the era the site is related to. So if you killed a barbarian in the ancient era it will give you a lot of culture later!

The policy system has been reworked. You now can choose piety since the beginning and it only gives bonuses related to faith. A new branch called "aesthetics" focuses on culture and great artists/writers/musicians growth.
In addition commerce has been split into land based commerce and naval based commerce, with bonuses related to the trade routes.

The Ideology system has been completely changed and now plays a major role on the late game. Once you build three factories or reach the modern era you are given the option to choose one among the 3 ideologies (Freedom, Autarchy, Order). You are given 2 free tenets if you found one, and 1 if you come second. Tenets are exactly like policies but are related to the ideologies and provide far better bonuses particularly geared for one of the 4 victory conditions.

The problem is that once you get an ideology you'll be hated by those who adopted another one, and a world war will inevitably ensue.

This is where the cultural influence will play a major role. If you are the most dominant culture in the game and you are influential with other civs they'll have the option to flip to your ideology system or face heavy happiness penalties. If their happiness go to much lower their cities might even revolt and join you.
Of course the opposite is also true.

On a general note, the acquisition of polices is now a faster, there are no longer heavy penalties related to the number of cities, and a lot of wonders and events give you free policies.

Finally the world congress has been introduced and the diplomatic victory has changed accordingly. This works pretty much like the planetary council of "alpha centauri". The first civilization that meets everyone else and that reaches a certain era can host a "world congress" and gain an additional delegate.
Delegates are necessary to vote for resolutions of various nature that go from embargoing a civ that nobody likes (no trade routes for you!), ban specific luxuries, initiate worldwide projects like the international space station or the olympic games and so on. You can even try for a world religion or a dominant ideology that gives to the winner several cultural and diplomatic bonuses (but make angry everyone else).

To win a diplomatic victory you need a set amount of votes that is decided from the beginning. Delegates keep increasing the more the world advances through the various era. Moreover the Unites Nations (which is required for this victory) automatically unlocks for everyone when 3 civs reach the atomic era or when one civ reaches the information era.
That apart you still basically need to maximize your gold output and buy the votes of all those city states.

These are the major changes, and that's really a lot when you compare it to Gods & Kings. In addition to that you get a lot of new wonders (including three natural) a few new units and 9 new civilizations. Of them Venice is certainly the most interesting. You basically can't build settlers, but you can still conquer other cities and "puppet" them, and you can "buy" city states directly with "merchants of Venice".

The religion and spy system is also included, so you could skip Gods & Kings entirely now as the only things that are missing are the scenario and 8 of the 9 civilizations (Ethiopia is included in Brave new World).

Talking about scenarios. I tried "Scramble of Africa" and it was a lot of fun, definitely one of the best scenario ever done in civilization V. As the name suggests you can choose among European countries, north African countries and subSaharian civilizations. Each group has a different way to win, only the coastline of Africa is set by default the inside is randomized and you need to explore it and claim the land before someone else takes it. With 12 different powers that compete for it it's pretty crazy!

Final words:
This last expansion completely changes the experience of civilization V, especially the late game. You no longer have a set game as soon as you become dominant in the medieval times (unless you play at a difficulty to easy for you), the several aspects of the game will give you a hard time either way. You can't even play the warmonger too much now since you need trade partners and you don't want them to embargo you with resolutions. Getting ahead on science through sheer numbers of cities has been nerfed. You still are advantaged but not as much as before.
Civilizations that stay small and grow tall aren't out of the game at all.

[Duo Maxwell]

Spent the last 7 hours and finally got my first win through Culture at Prince difficulty. This is the first time that I could win a game that peacefully . Not once did the neighbor India tried to backstab or denounce me, unlike the previous game. Being peaceful doesn't mean passive, though. I have to try my hardest to fight against his religious army which keep on swarming my city together with the influence from trade route.

Definitely a huge improvement for those that interest in peacefully winning method, as you have a lot of thing to do even without participate in any of those bloodbath war. City state also become more relevant with the trade route and delegate.

Each Great work gives 2 culture and 2 tourism. But you get "theming bonuses" for tourism if you combine them in particular ways

Didn't know about that, I sort of just let them assign automatically .
Also, I should remind myself not to start any Civ game at midnight.

[Terrestrial Dream]

I really enjoyed this game so far. The trading system has been superb, it gives reason to avoid war and explore the world. Previously all you have to was meet a civ and just trade, now you have to find where the certain cities is located. Also it makes growing your newer cities easier, which makes the granary really worth building.

Your oppositions are lot more passive so it has thrown me off my usual game, but it is much better than the over aggressive civ from the past. I only got attacked once in the ancient era by Rome, which I was able to repel it quite well. And I am not sure if this existed before, but under diplomacy it said Rome backstabbed me, which I thought was pretty cool.

Playing right now as Russia, the map small continents, difficulty on Prince (or maybe it was King). First thing I did was took out my neighbor Poland (lol), then conquered Japan, after that attacked England while she was attacking now weakened Japan. After that I decide to play passively as now I pretty much dominated two continents. My happiness was fixed thanks to the Order ideology policy and the commerce. Right after I destroyed England, my unhappiness reached 13, but luckily ideology kicked in after which saved my ass. So as a result I decide to stop expanding and focused on culture since I want to try the new system. So far I am around turn 370, and I just need to influence Portugal and England.

But overall Brave New World has been really fun.

Oh and I really hate Venice.

[Jan-Poo]

It seems that some people are complaining about the fact that the AI is now less prone to attack you, even though people have been complaining about the crazy and unreliable AI since the release of the game. It looks like it comes down to a debate of people who thinks "Civilization shouldn't be a Sim City!" VS "Civilization shouldn't be Counter Strike!"

In my experience the AI seems to be generally more cautious and factors many things that originally didn't. It no longer starts a war if it doesn't have a solid infrastructure and a solid army. This of course means that at the beginning chances of war are rare also because trade routes are vital and money is scarce.
Another significant change is how the AI acts in battle, it's still generally stupid as it was before, but now it has a better judgement on when to act suicidal and when play safe.

When an army is near your city and they can conquer it, they go for it at full strength. It's really a lot harder to repel them.
Of course this only happen when they are strong and so at lower difficulties you probably won't experience that. When they are the weaker army they keep it safe, while originally they would suicidally swarm your cities and die like flies.


That apart I tried the culture game yesterday and it's really something very interesting. I think I should completely rework my strategies for that.
In the first place all you need for your cities is the monument, further buildings aren't that good, rather than that you should focus on production of cultural great persons and only build culture building on a need basis when you need more slots for great works (unless you are aiming for a culture victory at all costs).
So you really want to build the guilds as soon as they are available and you want to build them in populated cities.

In the end, while the new culture system doesn't force you to stay small as it was originally (for the old culture game you had really more chance if you never expanded at all), it is still made in a way that whether you are a large empire or a small one you still have more or less the same efficiency in producing culture and tourism.
That's because culture relies on the guilds and you can only build one of each.

Great Writers are absolutely awesome. In the late game you can expend them to produce huge sums of culture right away. I once got more culture than I needed to buy a whole policy and I was on the thousand digits!
This is also pretty good to defend against a cultural attack.

Great musicians likewise can be expended to increase your tourism against a specific civ. This is pretty handy when there's one cultural civ that stands in your way to victory. The problem is that you need to go inside their borders to do so, but there's a funny fact. You can use your musicians even if you are at war!

This is totally like "Macross", you fight a war then you send your great musician in the middle of the battlefield, he says "Ore no uta kike!" and then they all go: "Deculture!!!".

Great Artists in the end are the least appealing, there are more slots for their works, but those slots can be filled with great artifacts you can dig around and their unique ability is to start golden ages, which is good, but not as much as the other ones. If you are Brazil, though, they really come in handy since Brazil gets double tourism during golden ages.


Another thing that requires a strategic adjustment are the trade routes. Given the scarcity of money you'd think that sending them all to get money is a good idea, but I found that you shouldn't neglect the effects of internal routes, it really changes your city development.

Right now I think that after the first economic trade route, it's a good idea to send food to your newly founded city and then send hammer. Once you have four trade routes it's a good idea to send food to your capital, because your capital needs to grow.

Sea routes are also a lot more convenient than land routes. You really want your capital to be on the coast, alternatively try do settle on a river (which also get a boost). This might even be worth expending a few turns to move your first settler.

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

It seems that some people are complaining about the fact that the AI is now less prone to attack you, even though people have been complaining about the crazy and unreliable AI since the release of the game. It looks like it comes down to a debate of people who thinks "Civilization shouldn't be a Sim City!" VS "Civilization shouldn't be Counter Strike!"

They clearly didn't have Shaka Zulu or any warmonger just right under their nose at the start, because I had the mistfortune to have Zulu about twelve tiles away from me in my first emperor game. I could NOT settle any city anywhere else, I send one settle east for that sweet mountain with river, jungles and gems, he burned the city into the ground with Impi Zerging. I settled north, he did it again, I settle south, he did it AGAIN! Did I mention he raped Morroco a few turns ago? Needless to say, I ragequit.

That apart I tried the culture game yesterday and it's really something very interesting. I think I should completely rework my strategies for that.
In the first place all you need for your cities is the monument, further buildings aren't that good, rather than that you should focus on production of cultural great persons and only build culture building on a need basis when you need more slots for great works (unless you are aiming for a culture victory at all costs).
So you really want to build the guilds as soon as they are available and you want to build them in populated cities.

In the end, while the new culture system doesn't force you to stay small as it was originally (for the old culture game you had really more chance if you never expanded at all), it is still made in a way that whether you are a large empire or a small one you still have more or less the same efficiency in producing culture and tourism.
That's because culture relies on the guilds and you can only build one of each.

Great Writers are absolutely awesome. In the late game you can expend them to produce huge sums of culture right away. I once got more culture than I needed to buy a whole policy and I was on the thousand digits!
This is also pretty good to defend against a cultural attack.

Great musicians likewise can be expended to increase your tourism against a specific civ. This is pretty handy when there's one cultural civ that stands in your way to victory. The problem is that you need to go inside their borders to do so, but there's a funny fact. You can use your musicians even if you are at war!

This is totally like "Macross", you fight a war then you send your great musician in the middle of the battlefield, he says "Ore no uta kike!" and then they all go: "Deculture!!!".

This is definitely why I wanted to try the culture game.

This might even be worth expending a few turns to move your first settler.

Hell yeah, this is what happened yesterday, as I rolled France to check out its revamping, and I restarted this time one level lower than emperor, Big Map, Epic Speed, all but my one leader random.

http://twitpic.com/d30hxa/full
http://twitpic.com/d30i8v/full
http://twitpic.com/d30if0/full

I found Victoria Lake east from my spawn point, just in turn 2, there are a moutain, few jungle spots and gold!

[LoweGear]

Finally tried out Civilization V this week (got it for free last year from my XCOM preorder), and despite some features being missed from previous games (like espionage), the game is generally as addictive as it's ever been. In addition, I actually find that it has the most FUN combat of any Civ game I've played, since no longer do you need stacks of doom to be effective, and tactical positioning now matters a lot more.

Also, I love the concept of city states, such fun things they allow you to do. My current English game saw me waging a shadow war with Mongolia, whom I didn't want to openly antagonize at the time, by gifting my best units to Florence, a city state said nation was at war with. It helped that all the units I gifted Florence with had been provided to me for free by another city state, Edinburgh, allowing me to build my own army. It proved to be so effective that Florence at one time had 3 cities under its rule before it razed them. Said action weakened Mongolia so much that once I jumped in and made my declaration of war they proved to be easy pickings.

A quick question though: I'm thinking of getting Brave New World for all the seemingly delicious features it adds. I did hear that though Brave New World doesn't include all the content from the previous expansion God and Kings, so my question is this: if I only install BNW without G&K, what content will I miss out on?

[Duo Maxwell]

Originally Posted by LoweGear

A quick question though: I'm thinking of getting Brave New World for all the seemingly delicious features it adds. I did hear that though Brave New World doesn't include all the content from the previous expansion God and Kings, so my question is this: if I only install BNW without G&K, what content will I miss out on?

Other Civ and Scenario, and that's it. You don't miss out anything. The new systems are included in BNW, as religious, espionage, tourist, world congress.

Also, fuck Greece. Suddenly he declares at war on me for no reason, and the whole 8 city states join the bandwagon. I've been at war for 800 years and he still doesn't give up.

[LoweGear]

Originally Posted by Duo Maxwell

Other Civ and Scenario, and that's it. You don't miss out anything. The new systems are included in BNW, as religious, espionage, tourist, world congress.

Also, fuck Greece. Suddenly he declares at war on me for no reason, and the whole 8 city states join the bandwagon. I've been at war for 800 years and he still doesn't give up.

Ah, so I can skip God and Kings then if I don't want to get all the other Civs.

And even in my current game, Greece is really hated for some reason

[Duo Maxwell]

Originally Posted by LoweGear

Ah, so I can skip God and Kings then if I don't want to get all the other Civs.

And even in my current game, Greece is really hated for some reason

Well, if you are playing the vanilla Civ V, beware of Ganghi . Backstabbing bastard, never fail to do that.

In BNW, the trade route is your main way of earning gold, so people are less likely to declare war on each other.

Btw, just want to ask is religious worth it? I feel like I spent too much time and resource managing religious, but the benefit is kinda small. On the other hand, it's annoying to see other Civ trying to spread their religious all over your territory. What's the best way to utilize religious?

[Strigon 13]

Well, I've decided to play Brave New World after a looooooong break (mostly because of job). Some thoughts:

Espionage is a little more "complete" and improved than in G&K (but comparing it to Civ IV Espionage, it is still lacking), and the adition to send a spy as embassador to another civ's capital is good if you're going for cultural victory. also culture now it feels like old Civilization games culture, before it was "build enough culture buildings to get culture", now with the adition of turism it makes quite a challenge to get cultural victory now.
The IA has been improved enough to make it balanced enough to give a challenge in mid and high difficulties (Prince and up). In G&K I used to steamroll the IA in Prince and King with Babylon after researching Writing and getting the great scientist; now it's a little more harder to get to the top, and even harder to maintain it. Also the 5% increased cost in research for each city is a good nerf to the whole "more cities, more science, faster research".

Trade routs are a good adition, specially in early ages you can make quite amount of gold (since the gold gain from rivers and coast has been vanished forever).

The new culture policies are better, and the fact you need 3 factories to unlock one of the three ideologies makes it quite challenging (if you don't have coal, you're done until next age).

Well, the expansion sure makes everything that was in G&K better, specially the culture victory. Getting on a domination victory is harder than before, and also Jews Na*is!

Random thing: Had a game where USA had the 50% of the world in it's control. It declared wars with small civs and vanished them from the map while taking their lands, even if the civs were at war with each other. The kicker was the ideology it was following: Liberty!

Also, Shonones are OP as ****.

[LoweGear]

Originally Posted by Strigon 13

Random thing: Had a game where USA had the 50% of the world in it's control. It declared wars with small civs and vanished them from the map while taking their lands, even if the civs were at war with each other. The kicker was the ideology it was following: Liberty!

Obviously it liberated them from the threat of COMMUNISM!

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by Duo Maxwell

Well, if you are playing the vanilla Civ V, beware of Ganghi . Backstabbing bastard, never fail to do that.

In BNW, the trade route is your main way of earning gold, so people are less likely to declare war on each other.

Btw, just want to ask is religious worth it? I feel like I spent too much time and resource managing religious, but the benefit is kinda small. On the other hand, it's annoying to see other Civ trying to spread their religious all over your territory. What's the best way to utilize religious?

Focusing on religion is kind of gimmicky/situational. If you can spread your religion, that can be great for gold generation (through Tithes) and diplomacy (people who share your religion like you more), but if there are other strong religious civs in the game, you usually won't be able to get great coverage.

Sometimes it can be really strong to get a religion just for yourself, though. I recently played a game as Zulu, and was able to get a lot of free units through having a Stonehenge and the Holy Warriors belief. Later on, I also got the piety policies, one of which gives you an additional reformation belief. There's a couple really strong ones, like:

Religious fervor: Use Faith to purchase Industrial (and later) land units
This is of course what I got as Zulu, so I could continue getting free units.

Sacred sites: All buildings purchased with Faith provide 2 Tourism each
Good if you're going for a culture victory with a large empire, and have secured two faith building beliefs, or you have many religions present in your empire.

Charitable missions: Influence boosts from Gold gifts to City-States are increased by 30%
Indispensable if you're going for a diplomatic victory, which is in my opinion the easiest way to win. All you have to do is survive until the United Nations and hoard enough gold to buy most city-states. Civs like Greece and Siam try to do the same, in which case you need shit like this.