40 Turns To Build A Granary? This Game's A Half-BAked Joke

[ralphtobybob]

As you can see, this city has a trade route to the the capitol. Happiess is at 7 and the civ is raking in gold. The city is in a WLKD, yet production is handicapped as if though happiness is below 0, or it's a new city without a trade route. A few turns later, the number dropped to 20. Most of the time, it only takes 4 turns or so to build the first granary in your capitol.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1323815865



I've also noticed that when you tell a ship to explore a landmass, once it's explored about 2/3rds of the way around, it's next move will be in the opposite direction to reach a spot 2 tiles away.

Normally, you can use your ships to run over embarked units. Unless there isn't an empty water tile in the spot beyond where the embarked unit is. Then the ship refuses to move or will go in the opposite direction.

The notification system is also half-baked. You're told a unit needs upgrading. Focus turns to that unit. Logically, the next step is to move it if it's stacked. But suddenly focus moves to another unit, then back to the first unit. Sometimes in the middle of a battle, focus moves to a combat unit, then a worker. Sometimes you'll still have the combat unit highlighed. Focus then turns to a worker and the worker menu pops up. So you move the worker somewhere. Except that it's the combat unit that gets moved. Other times the focus moves to the middle of nowhere

If you're in the city menu, you can't do anything if a unit suddenly needs orders. So you have to exit, attend to the unit then go back into the city menu. It's not amusing if you spent time trying to prioritize your production without noting that nothing got added to the queue. So then yo go attend to the unit and hope you can quickly recall what you had decided to build previously.

Units get skipped when in combat and a lot of times when an enemy approaches your city and it or another unit can fire, you don't get a notification, just an icon with an exclamation point.
Or you just get a notification that a unit was killed.

Then to top it all off, my own computer team member came from the other side of the map and looted my pet barbarian camp. I don't usually clear them, instead I harvest them for culture points and combat XP.

The game also confuses 'unexplored' with 'fog of war'. My focus shouldn't be swinging to a battle between 2 civs I'm not allied with, on land I've never explored. I should only be able to see tiles that are within the line of sight of a unit or city. Everything beyond that should be just the terrain I saw. Besides, that adds hours of thumb-twiddling to the game.

Why do workers build traffic circles sometimes when they're building a road? Why can't a worker and settler occupy the same tile?

Resource distribution is some sort of a kludge or possibly a high school coding assignment. In one game a civ had 11 incense. In another one civ had 1 cotton for most of the game. Using the same resource setting, you'll either get several unique luxury resources or several identical ones. But you can't always trade the excess. In one game, I had a lot of incense but it didn't show up when I tried to trade with France. Other items don't show up with different civs so once again, you're relying on luck for trade and it's a distraction from the rest of the game when you have to keep checking each civ to see if they not only have something to trade, but that their civ has a preference for your goods. Which is really stupid, because most of the civs represented had wine, sugar, incense and cotton. Or at least alcohol and sweetners like honey.

There is a bit of pretentiousness to this game too. The in-game help is mostly book reports on a civ rather than useful information. After adding the map pack, I tried to find out the details of units the new civs were using. All I found in the docs was that civ's resurmé.


The fact that when a unit is killed and explodes, and the details are pus-colored instead of red, suggests the game developers were going for a Reader's Digest seal of approval.
Either show the gore, or dont' show anything. Or least give me the option to decide what I want to see.


And what's the deal with treating units with firearms as melee units instead of ranged units? Are they using just their bayonets and rifle butts? They should be able to fire at anything on water tiles that are within their LOS and range. But Noooooooo.

I tried to get into this game 'cause I don't have a goto strategy game anymore. I'm afraid to check how much time I spent on this game, but it's around 400. One game lasted about 24 hours or more.

It seems almost Quixotic to keep playing this game in the hope of winning or even enjoyuing the ride in light of the randomness of almost every aspect of this game. The random seed option even tells you that the outcome of a battle could change once you load a save.

Further proof it's all luck: I had a spearman and a warrior side by side. I had the Honor adjacent tile perk for combat units. Both units were facing separate barbarian brute units.

Both attacked the unit in front of them. The warrior somehow managed to kill more units than the spearmen. Both had the same upgrades. The spearman unit had been a warrior but got upgraded after finding a ruin.

Other times, if you attack, you get the 'defeat' warning, and even the military advisor says not to attack. You attack anyway and end up killing the other unit. It's just a roll of the dice, not numbers or combat skill. Another time, a damaged mech infantry defeated my undamaged fortified mech infantry.

Whatever.

[firestar587]

NeverWatchedAnimeBefore lähetti viestin:

germany, make massive army w/ full honor. TAKE THE WONDERS FROM EGYPT THEN THE AZTECS, (if those two are in the game). then be very peaceable and trade with everyone for the rest of the game. UNTIL YOU GET MAH NUKES... wonders aren't worth crap if you play it like that

or you know just play any nations and make 1 super city and make aton of wonders there that works (10 wonders in city iv had)

[ralphtobybob]

Masqurin lähetti viestin:

ralphtobybob lähetti viestin:

Start a game with a computer civ as a team member. Then count the units your team member gets and figure out how many turns it would take for you to produce that.
That's how far back you start. But then the computer civs get bonus science and culture perks that your team member won't get. If you decide to play the game through, regularly check the diplomacy overview and compare its completed social policies against your and the computer team member's. In just about every game I've attempted, the computer civ always hits modern age in the 1600s. That's at deity level.

And Deity is meant to be this way. To give people who know the game in and out still give a challenge. Most Deity Player rush for Writing, get the Great Library and the Philosophy School further down the line, plump some Academies down (Great Scientist Improvement) and will be equal in Technology with the AI by the Renaissance. With a good start probably even earlier. Library and Universities and all there Scientist Specialist Slots in use will do so.
And if you didnt had a goodStart, it isn't so bad. Because with the Renaissance comes the Spies to keep up/catch up.

And yes, you are only supposed to build one or two wonders by yourself. And only the ones who are really good and helps you.


Let me ask you something: Why you refuse to lower your difficulty till you feel more familiar with the game?

In vanilla, I could keep up the the computer civ in science. I tried the academies and Rationalism route. Even pumping out 500-600 science, I sometimes wouldnt hit Industrial until the 20th centruy.

So I started researching the tech that took the longest and started picking up freebies. Then I started beakering my great scientists for tech that put me in a new era. Then I was able to keep up. Even with less than 100 science.
Of course, most of the time going for a science victory, there wouldn't be any aluminium nearby.

The expansion doesn't give you an entire tech with a great scientist now, just a boost.

Human players get culture and science mostly through buildings. While you're producing those buildings, you can't produce combat units or wonders. If you build wonders, you can't build other stuff in that city. Each new city you found starts with minimal production since it has no palace and only one citizen. Unless the tile is a high production one, you're stuck at low production. So that means just producing a building or combat unit will take more turns to than your original city.

Yet you see the computer civ producing more cities, more combat units, more wonders while still staying at the top of the happiness pile.

The computer civ isn't getting its science and culture points honestly. You'll also notice that each of its cities will have a high defensive number. That number is based mostly on defensive structures built by the city. The rest is from social policies or wonders.

It isn't possible to catch up with the computer civ with that kind of a head start. Nothing you do can let you found two additional cities, 2 wonders and a large army within the first age.
Just building a worker in the beginning of the game can take 12 or more turns, a settler 16.

Even the raging barbarians option doesn't slow it down.

In my mind, this is just laziness on the part of the developers. I've played other war strategy games on the higher levels. They do give themselves bonus resources, but are still subject to the rules of unit production for a specific civilization. Most of the punishment they dished out though was from extensive knowledge or each civ's units and knowing how to combine them.

Being able to manipulate several units or groups of units simultaneously doesn't hurt either.
At times, playing with a computer team member, it would get cheat boost. Other times it wouldn't even advance more than a couple of ages, but would still put up a fight. Maybe it might be deploying archers to deal with infantry and tanks, but at least it tried.

You don't see that type of focus in battles in this game, especially with barbarians. A lot of times it appears the civ is attacking in the hope of a favorable dice roll, more than as a tactical move in support of an overall strategy. A lot of times when I wiped out an attacking force, it seemed to just spawn more units because it shows up with multiples faster than you can produce one.

The computer civs you use as a team member don't get any advantages other than the initial units. They even get beat up by city states, as though they're scripted to be pacifist.

In the wonders scenario, I got a hill and mines start, producing 7 prodution with one citizen. I started on the Oracle on the first turn. Got beat by the computer civ by about 10 turns.

Play enough games and you'll see a pattern: pull ahead and the computer civ magically catches up then beats you.

The spy add-on has less functionality than a Win 95 game I've played. In that one, you could generate one, physically see it and move it to another civ or neutral town and let it sleep while gaining experience. You could agitate, steal tech, or even capture a town or fort and most or all units inside. In real-time.

But why would a computer civ want to steal tech from a human player since it's already ahead?

Even losing thousands per turn doesn't faze the computer civ. It won't lose units or points and always has all of the strategic resources.

What this game needs is a deathmatch mode that gives every player a fixed number of each type of points. That would put more emphasis on gameplay, or what you do with those resources to achieve whatever type of win you're trying for. Hoping you get a 'good start', or that you get the strategic resources you need for a win shouldn't play a part in trying to win.

They might as well have a pop-up that says: "SUCKER!" when you get to modern and realize you're not getting aluminum unless you found another city (if you can find a mine) and can cough up the units to defend it and the settler on its way to the site.

[ralphtobybob]

Ghadaro lähetti viestin:

Great generals aren't capture bait, they provide a combat bonus to all units within 2 tiles, a single great general can cover a reasonable area by moving him across your force as units attack especially if you are defending as you will likely have roads you can use. Use the range of the AOE to keep him safe.

You should usually have a general with every attack force and use any excess you obtain to place citadels in strategic locations. This will probably be to provide a hardpoint to defend or to extend your territory near an enemy city for the extra healing tiles.
A well placed citadel is a powerful position, douuble defense, friendly territory healing bonus and damages adjacent enemies.

I find it very rare that you hit a situation where you would want to use your last general to place a citadel.

Be more agressive, capture AI cities or at the very least go on a pillaging spree. You dont want to have the entire world turn against you too early for warmongering but you do want to inhibit the growth/production of the leading civs.

Great geneals are the first target everyone goes after. I've noticed thta when a city gets an intense fight, it hides its general in the city. If it looks like the city will fall, it will evacuate the general.

In vanilla, I saw citadel defenders get killed in the first attack. The attackers survive. I used to use them as a revenue boost by golden aging them. I ended up just building citadels because in theory, they're useful. I don't think they affect the tile resources like academies do; don't remember.

[firestar587]

@ralphtobybob dude git gud if your haveing problems on your diffculty lvl lower if ffs if you think its 2 easy up it that easy not stop complaining about a problem you made for yourself thx

also citadels are pertty much useless for defense don't bother with them just them them to steal land from other civs

[Ghadaro]

firestar587 lähetti viestin:

@ralphtobybob dude git gud if your haveing problems on your diffculty lvl lower if ffs if you think its 2 easy up it that easy not stop complaining about a problem you made for yourself thx

also citadels are pertty much useless for defense don't bother with them just them them to steal land from other civs

Citadels are extremely powerful against the AI if you place them well. Behind sight blocking terrain you can draw them in to melee range and against most units it will deal 30 damage before they get a chance to do anything. Since the AI sets a target point rather than moving a tile at a time even cavalry units will take the 30 damage if they are the first unit to move.

Naturally choke points like between 2 mountains or near a small lake are strong positions to use a citadel.

Land extensions or small islands near a bay can be deadly to invading embarked units or ships which have the added healing limitations away from friendly territory.

ralphtobybob lähetti viestin:

I've noticed thta when a city gets an intense fight, it hides its general in the city. If it looks like the city will fall, it will evacuate the general.

Ignore how the AI plays, the AI will often leave great generals unprotected, will sit them in 1 spot instead of moving them to grant their bonus to additional units. You can use any unit more efficiently than the AI does.

Citadels are far more effective in G&K than they were in vanilla, the 100 health system means modifiers mitigate damage a lot more effectively. An attack does a minimum 1 hp damage. In G&K this is 1/100th of your HP. In Vanilla this is 1/10th of your HP.

If you are losing units in citadels that fast in G&K you are either leaving them exposed to plenty of archer fire or Putting units in the citadel like cavalry or artillery that dont benefit from it. A well placed citadel will usually hold your strongest melee unit for the terrain its on.

[firestar587]

Ghadaro lähetti viestin:

firestar587 lähetti viestin:

@ralphtobybob dude git gud if your haveing problems on your diffculty lvl lower if ffs if you think its 2 easy up it that easy not stop complaining about a problem you made for yourself thx

also citadels are pertty much useless for defense don't bother with them just them them to steal land from other civs

Citadels are extremely powerful against the AI if you place them well. Behind sight blocking terrain you can draw them in to melee range and against most units it will deal 30 damage before they get a chance to do anything. Since the AI sets a target point rather than moving a tile at a time even cavalry units will take the 30 damage if they are the first unit to move.

Naturally choke points like between 2 mountains or near a small lake are strong positions to use a citadel.

Land extensions or small islands near a bay can be deadly to invading embarked units or ships which have the added healing limitations away from friendly territory.

ralphtobybob lähetti viestin:

I've noticed thta when a city gets an intense fight, it hides its general in the city. If it looks like the city will fall, it will evacuate the general.

Ignore how the AI plays, the AI will often leave great generals unprotected, will sit them in 1 spot instead of moving them to grant their bonus to additional units. You can use any unit more efficiently than the AI does.

Citadels are far more effective in G&K than they were in vanilla, the 100 health system means modifiers mitigate damage a lot more effectively. An attack does a minimum 1 hp damage. In G&K this is 1/100th of your HP. In Vanilla this is 1/10th of your HP.

If you are losing units in citadels that fast in G&K you are either leaving them exposed to plenty of archer fire or Putting units in the citadel like cavalry or artillery that dont benefit from it. A well placed citadel will usually hold your strongest melee unit for the terrain its on.

thats why i said pertty much always not always but on flat plains they don't help aton bc they ai can just flank you and stuff like that (tho citys with cidals on everyside are damm hard to take)

[ralphtobybob]

Ghadaro lähetti viestin:

firestar587 lähetti viestin:

@ralphtobybob dude git gud if your haveing problems on your diffculty lvl lower if ffs if you think its 2 easy up it that easy not stop complaining about a problem you made for yourself thx

also citadels are pertty much useless for defense don't bother with them just them them to steal land from other civs

Citadels are extremely powerful against the AI if you place them well. Behind sight blocking terrain you can draw them in to melee range and against most units it will deal 30 damage before they get a chance to do anything. Since the AI sets a target point rather than moving a tile at a time even cavalry units will take the 30 damage if they are the first unit to move.

Naturally choke points like between 2 mountains or near a small lake are strong positions to use a citadel.

Land extensions or small islands near a bay can be deadly to invading embarked units or ships which have the added healing limitations away from friendly territory.

ralphtobybob lähetti viestin:

I've noticed thta when a city gets an intense fight, it hides its general in the city. If it looks like the city will fall, it will evacuate the general.

Ignore how the AI plays, the AI will often leave great generals unprotected, will sit them in 1 spot instead of moving them to grant their bonus to additional units. You can use any unit more efficiently than the AI does.

Citadels are far more effective in G&K than they were in vanilla, the 100 health system means modifiers mitigate damage a lot more effectively. An attack does a minimum 1 hp damage. In G&K this is 1/100th of your HP. In Vanilla this is 1/10th of your HP.

If you are losing units in citadels that fast in G&K you are either leaving them exposed to plenty of archer fire or Putting units in the citadel like cavalry or artillery that dont benefit from it. A well placed citadel will usually hold your strongest melee unit for the terrain its on.

I've only tried a couple of games with the G&K add-on. None of them involved a citadel and only used them in the vanilla version. I don't really have much of a choice now, but to use them.

I usually only get a couple of generals per game, one from Honor, and other times through gardens or wonders. Sometimes there would be a streak of GPs that would usually be merchants. There may be a link to the civ I was playing as, for several games.

[ralphtobybob]

firestar587 lähetti viestin:

@ralphtobybob dude git gud if your haveing problems on your diffculty lvl lower if ffs if you think its 2 easy up it that easy not stop complaining about a problem you made for yourself thx

also citadels are pertty much useless for defense don't bother with them just them them to steal land from other civs

The end result of the maps with useless terrains, is that in a multiplayer game, someone could start out on a desert, someone else on plains and river, someone else on hills near mines and on the coast.

Worse still, the other two could be landlocked. Obviously the player on a hill with mines and on a coast has the advantage.

I do like the ability to grab land with a citadel. In vanilla, only a great artist could do that. A lot of times, there's tiles I want but don't show up as buyable. Especially if the area it is in isn't worth starting another city.

[Ghadaro]

You dont get great generals, admirals or prophets through cities.
(If I say GPP it means Great Person Points)


Great prophets are generated through faith.


Great General and Great Admiral points are earned through combat experience so if an archer shoots an enemy and gains 2xp you get 2 great general points. If it was a frigate that fired you get 2 great admiral points.

Once a unit reaches 30xp they stop earning xp against barbarians and therefore also stop generating GPP against barbarians.

If your troops are farming barbarians for culture they wont get many points towards a great general. If your troops are fighting a war or farming another civ or a city state for promotions however they will generate great generals.

You should be aiming to get logistics and range on your ranged troops anyway so you can shoot twice and attack beyond city bombard range, thats 150xp per unit to reach that stage (unless they start with a useable bonus).

Indirect fire and heal while moving are just icing on the cake but by the time you have a few units upgraded that far you will have generated several great generals.


In cities try to specialise GPP. If you have 3 cities each with a specialist on a university, market and workshop you will generate less great people with those 3 specialists per city than if you use 2 of 1 type for example 1 city with 2 specialists in the university, 1 city with specialists in the workshop and windmill and the other with specialists in the market and bank.

[firestar587]

ralphtobybob lähetti viestin:

firestar587 lähetti viestin:

@ralphtobybob dude git gud if your haveing problems on your diffculty lvl lower if ffs if you think its 2 easy up it that easy not stop complaining about a problem you made for yourself thx

also citadels are pertty much useless for defense don't bother with them just them them to steal land from other civs

The end result of the maps with useless terrains, is that in a multiplayer game, someone could start out on a desert, someone else on plains and river, someone else on hills near mines and on the coast.

Worse still, the other two could be landlocked. Obviously the player on a hill with mines and on a coast has the advantage.

I do like the ability to grab land with a citadel. In vanilla, only a great artist could do that. A lot of times, there's tiles I want but don't show up as buyable. Especially if the area it is in isn't worth starting another city.

iv done just fine with land locked starts yes its harder but its not really that cripleing and hey luck of the draw next match those players play the person who has the hills and coast could be land locked in a desert

one of my fav things do to in civ is overcome a hard start and do good it can be done it just takes skill (hell iv started as japan on japan (lol) and still took over the world even tho i was on a island with a civ already owning most of the coast of china)

[zxcvbob]

This is a joke, right? That's really not awful for a city location; but why do you have the city on gold focus? What's your worker doing?

Move a citizen to that one tile that has a hammer (looks like it's stone) and that will cut production times in half, and send a worker to build a quarry for another hammer to speed things up some more. What else do you have there; marble? Iron? Build quarries and mines, you don't need farms yet except on the wheat. Forget about walls for now, build a lighthouse or a granary. Buy a workshop if you can. Send the city a trade route if you can to help it get off the ground.

[ralphtobybob]

zxcvbob lähetti viestin:

This is a joke, right? That's really not awful for a city location; but why do you have the city on gold focus? What's your worker doing?

Move a citizen to that one tile that has a hammer (looks like it's stone) and that will cut production times in half, and send a worker to build a quarry for another hammer to speed things up some more. What else do you have there; marble? Iron? Build quarries and mines, you don't need farms yet except on the wheat. Forget about walls for now, build a lighthouse or a granary. Buy a workshop if you can. Send the city a trade route if you can to help it get off the ground.

Generally, if you set the city to production, you don't produce food. A lot of times, setting it to gold produces the same or more in food plus extra gold. Espeically if you have a lot of water resources.

You can't send citizens you don't have to work a tile.

Still, a compter civ manages to use that low level of production to build most of the Wonders and a bigger army and still have more culture and other points. This just isn't an honest game.

[airmikee99]

11/10, would laugh at again.

[mennään abessiiniaan]

ralphtobybob lähetti viestin:

zxcvbob lähetti viestin:

This is a joke, right? That's really not awful for a city location; but why do you have the city on gold focus? What's your worker doing?

Move a citizen to that one tile that has a hammer (looks like it's stone) and that will cut production times in half, and send a worker to build a quarry for another hammer to speed things up some more. What else do you have there; marble? Iron? Build quarries and mines, you don't need farms yet except on the wheat. Forget about walls for now, build a lighthouse or a granary. Buy a workshop if you can. Send the city a trade route if you can to help it get off the ground.

Generally, if you set the city to production, you don't produce food. A lot of times, setting it to gold produces the same or more in food plus extra gold. Espeically if you have a lot of water resources.

You can't send citizens you don't have to work a tile.

Still, a compter civ manages to use that low level of production to build most of the Wonders and a bigger army and still have more culture and other points. This just isn't an honest game.

do you mean their capital?? because the palace offers certain attributes unavailable to other cities..

also workshop + hospital + factory + aqueduct works really well....

[zxcvbob]

ralphtobybob lähetti viestin:

zxcvbob lähetti viestin:

This is a joke, right? That's really not awful for a city location; but why do you have the city on gold focus? What's your worker doing?

Move a citizen to that one tile that has a hammer (looks like it's stone) and that will cut production times in half, and send a worker to build a quarry for another hammer to speed things up some more. What else do you have there; marble? Iron? Build quarries and mines, you don't need farms yet except on the wheat. Forget about walls for now, build a lighthouse or a granary. Buy a workshop if you can. Send the city a trade route if you can to help it get off the ground.

Generally, if you set the city to production, you don't produce food. A lot of times, setting it to gold produces the same or more in food plus extra gold. Espeically if you have a lot of water resources.

You can't send citizens you don't have to work a tile.

Still, a compter civ manages to use that low level of production to build most of the Wonders and a bigger army and still have more culture and other points. This just isn't an honest game.

You have a citizen working a tile with 2 gold, no food, and no hammers. Move him to the 1-hammer tile.