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[Classico]

Also, I find it funny that the AI (even Gandhi) will be condescending or boastful while I'm counting my nuclear weapons and contemplating who to invade next. Or, I just capture one of Hiawatha's cities and liberate it back to Suleiman and a turn later he has the gall to tell me to basically F off.

Gandhi is a twat.

I noticed the same thing (Caesar has been the same so far btw). In one game I controlled the upper half of a continent, while Gandhi and Caesar shared the lower half. They were constantly sending condescending messages to me, even while I was clearly in the lead in every field. At some point Caesar seized Gandhi's two cities. I recaptured them, liberated the indian capital and destroyed all roman cities except their capital and retreated again (I usually prefer not to pick on the weak). It only took a short while for the once grateful Gandhi to return to his old ways... I dropped some ICBMs on their cities out of spite after that and conquered them.

I've pretty much just resolved to nuke him into the bedrock after the first cocky comment. I don't even care about his resources at that point. In the future I won't even completely conquer him, just nuke and nuke and demand gold every game.

I mean, Montezuma and others I can understand, but when Mr. Non-Violence starts heckling my nuclear armed country he and his overpopulated dungheap deserve what they get.

/"My country is surrounded by the units who liberated my civ back from the dead, and aside from the sea I am completely surrounded by said civ, how about I call him a warmongering dick?'
//"Hmm, I say, whats that naughty shaped thing streaking towards my capital?"

[Sowelu]

[Urist McDepravity]

I was playing on continents map, starting on small island in the north alone with 2 city-states. Conquered both and soon covered whole island. Having no neighbours, I advanced into techs quite fast (playing on epic speed), and by the time I disembarked on southern continent, I was already in industry era while everyone else was in renaissance. 100 turns later, most of that continent was conquered by japan, and since it was becoming a threat to me, I started a war. Japan noticed my preparations and amassed their troops along their border as well, even asked me about my intentions. I got 3 mech. infantries supported by 2 bombers on east front, and also sent mech infantry with battleship support on west coast to liberate maritime city state. Japan had like 20 samurais, pikemen and trebuchets. War was going well, I took 5 cities w/out any losses, liberated that city state and captured japan's capital. Japan surrendered and offered me all their gold, strat and luxury resourses, and long list of cities for peace treaty. I accepted it immediately and there where problems started to appear. My +40 happiness immediately dropped into -10, even tho ALL new cities aside from city-states were made into puppets.
Seems like I should trade all that stuff back to japan and just raze it upon re-conquest.

Also its quite funny that fortified samurais somehow managed to damage my bombers by throwing pointy sticks at them.

[Lap]

Game Quirks:

-Connecting a railroad to a harbor gives the railroad benefit to all other cities with harbors. This seems to make coastal cities extra powerful as you don't need to pay insane upkeep for long railroads.

-Unit maintenance only increases when passing certain thresholds i.e. 2-4 units you pay X amount, but if you have 5 units you pay more.

-Playing on epic or marathon actually "shrinks" the size of maps as it makes units have more turns to move around. Even with reduced production and therefore less units it still has a noticeable effect.

-The animation for bombing with air units can sometimes take almost 10 whole seconds before another air attack can be used. I turn off combat animations for this alone.

-Overall production seems a bit slower than I'd like on all settings compared to research. Regardless of what speed setting I always feel like I don't get to play around with my new toys enough (either because they get obsoleted so fast or because I can't make more than a couple of them). For this reason I usually play on fast or normal, otherwise I find far too many turns pass without any events, which is unacceptable with the current turn processing time.

-On building a unit that requires a resource and later losing that resource after it is built you will then have that unit fight at a penalty (makes sense). However, certain units like the Atomic Bomb have no penalties associated with later losing uranium. Also, factories and other buildings that lose their resource seem to operate normally.

-Destroying a transport by moving a unit over it is unintuitive. If you aren't immediately next to that unit it will default to firing a ranged attack and only damaging it. Similarly, no sound or message is played when a unit is eaten by another naval unit.

-Strategic resources are sometimes too concentrated on one space. It is possible to not have a single unit of coal or uranium on an entire 50% of the map, while a single tile on the other side has 8 coal by itself. Luxury resources are finally regional though, which means far off colonies makes sense!

-Cultural victory is insanely hard on higher difficulty levels (probably how it should be).

-Diplomatic victory is really more like a military victory over city-states as you usually have to liberate almost every one from the AI players at this stage.

-Ironclads are still terrible and there is large gap between simple galleys and any improved types of naval units.


AI Quirks and Limitations

-AI still preforms terribly with water:
     -If an area is temporarily traffic jammed they may choose to send a unit into clearly dangerous waters instead of waiting one turn until the jam clears.
     -AI does not build enough navy. This problem is worse the larger the percentage of water on the map is.
     -Similarly the AI will not escort its massive naval invasions.
     -AI will mass massive fleets of transports at the "border" of an empire, even if that border is ocean. This results in entire armies that can be devoured by a few galleys in a turn or two.

-AI does not actively try to stop a space victory (and likely most other types).
-AI does not seem to liberate city-states.
-AI will often build more units even when in massively negative gold per turn.
-AI won't make much use of mountain chokepoints unless something like a fort already resides there (build them for your allies if you can).
-I have never seen the AI build a single air unit...ever.

Proper Map Settings:

Size: The single most important factor here. I know a lot of people always request the biggest sizes they can. If they could play a 10,000x10,000 they would. The general rule for size here to to pick 

Ideally, you want to give each player space for about five or less cities. Giving players more space means:

-Early ages of the game will likely not have any potential for conflict, which also hurts civs with early unique units.

-Many civilizations will end up being entirely out of reach. It is not really fun to lose to someone who you only first meet in the industrial age and you find out that they are 3x bigger than you.

-The game will lag, hard, especially with AI's.

-You waste your own time as having 20 cities fighting 20 cities. Isn't much different than 10 cities fighting 10 cities or even 5 v 5.

-Larger maps seems to favor certain culture trees like Order and Liberty and therefore skews the game balance.


If you are really worried about being unable to expand as much as you'd like on these smaller sizes remember that this is what city-states are designed for. There are also many map types you can play that give you the best of both worlds, which I explain below.

It is important to note that choosing "normal" on continents may not be the same as choosing "normal" on highlands. Start a game and just run your starting units around to test how close you are to other players to give yourself an idea. Then start a new game or adjust the map size accordingly.


Map Types: Most of the information I'm going to give out here relates to playing singleplayer.

Continents: This is one of the worst maps types to play in SP or Multiplayer. Why? because the expanses of water are far too larger. On these maps, it is very likely that you could be having an intense game on your continent and then by the time you research ocean going vessels you find that a single AI has already taken over the entire other continent. This is not fun. Also, the AI sucks at having this much water. If you must play this map, reduce the size one level below what you'd normally play and then reduce the sea level.

Pangea: If you want to have water in your map and still play with the AI this is a good one. The AI still won't react fast enough to navies boarding it's coasts, but this map still is fine for the AI.

Archipelago: This map is an AI nightmare. Multiplayer only for your own good, otherwise, it is a cakewalk.

Highlands: The rough terrain is a slight disadvantage for the AI. Humans use the terrain better and are more likely to make use of those super mountain chokepoints. I often have to build the forts for my AI allies so they know where to station their troops.

Inland Lake: My personal favorite map. Why? It has land and water, but without putting the AI at a massive disadvantage. The middle lake is small enough that I have frequently seen successful AI naval invasions. Also, by having water in the middle all civilizations are "closer" than if you played pangea or some other land map. Quick transport without needing open borders for all players.

Lakes & Great Plains: Great Plains is probably the best AI map, with Lakes coming in close behind it (every so often it'll embark units into a 1 tile lake or build a harbor on said lake).

Terra: For those of you who really want the option to colonize new cities at almost all stages of the game Terra is probably the best. Everyone is close enough that they are still threats and can interact, but there's always more room overseas. Without any "distance from capitol" type mechanics and the inclusion of regional luxury resources colonies are very much worth making and are very fun. However, creating and defending colonies versus improving the homeland can be a tough balance even for a human player so the AI of course will suffer a bit here.

Time Period:

The only thing here is to make sure that if you start on a later time period that you specify which other civs you will fight. Putting Greece in a Renaissance Era game is simply a huge handicap as all its unique units are obsolete.

Favorite Map Settings:

Inland Lake: Small 7-8 Players 0 to 2 additional city-states

Highlands/Lakes/Plains/Pangea:Tiny 5-7 Players

[x2yzh9]

Can this game utilize Quad-cores?

[Lap]

Can this game utilize Quad-cores?

Not really. Core utilization seems almost entirely on one core.

[Lap]

Civilization/Leader Reviews:

CivName (Player Rating/AI Rating)
Out of 5


America(3/1): The scouting bonus is OK for human players as knowledge is power and it also helps early on finding the ruins and avoiding barbarians. The buying tiles is an average ability. The minutemen are controversial since they can't use roads and in some situations can actually be worse than the standard musketmen. I find them to be worth the disadvantage. B17 is great if you can last long enough. The AI is absolutely terrible with America and doesn't benefit much from either bonus. Every time I've seen America they are crushed just about by the time they get minutemen.

Arabia(4/5): I have personally never had a problem with oil before, but even still it does mean that you can trade away the extra oil for goodies. The real winner here is that trade route bonus. It's nice for the big expansive civs, but it really, really helps the AI. Every game I've seen with Arabia in it results in Arabia quickly becoming one of the top two civs. The trade route bonus starts to get out of control and I've seen AI Arabians with 30,000+ gold. The camel archer can also be very hard to finish off and are thus a better than average UU.

Askia(3/2): Askia really locks you into being a warmonger, but they are decent enough at it. They need to pillage constantly to use their ability. Their unique building gives extra culture, which makes it one of the few buildings that rounds out a civilization more than directly helps their abilities. In this case though, their unique ability is so focused that I don't believe their unique building is useful enough to them. Their unique unit is great and it's pretty much the closest you are going to get to being able to play as Atilla the Hun. Despite the fact that this side should benefit well from the AI bonuses their extreme aggression tends to make them too many enemies and other AI's gang up on them very early.

Aztec(1/2): Their unique ability to gain culture on kills seems to not give enough culture for how often units are actually killed. Furthermore, their unique unit is often obsolete before most players will even be in conflict with another civ. To make matters worse, even with start location preferences on, there isn't even a lot of jungle around the Aztecs. Even on hot maps with high water, the amount of jungle in the game is minuscule and I can rarely ever benefit from the jungle bonus. The water mill may be the worst building in the game. Not only can it not be built in all cities, but even in places it can be built it often isn't better than the normal water mill since the bonus only applies to LAKES. Even on the map "Lakes", with hot temperature and high rainfaill these guys are only average.

Babylon(4/4): Their ability, like every science focused civ in almost every 4X game, is extremely good. Their unique building is OK and helps them science whore, as does their early unique unit. Basically, every game you science rush initially, using your early game advantages to out tech neighbors. Once you are an era ahead you have a lot more freedom on strategy.

China(4/4): A solid civ all around even without needing to be a warmonger from the get go. Their unique ability does favor frequent war, but it also helps the more peaceful china get the first few great generals that could save your ass. Their crossbowman is amazing unless you are underteched, in which case it will do less total damage per turn than a normal crossbowman. However, with the paper maker (which is one of the best unique buildings) you shouldn't be falling behind in tech.

Egypt(3/3): Good unique ability with a mediocre unique unit. Their unique building is so good that it actually needed a downside, making it the only building I know of that can benefit enemies.

England(4/2): A great civ on any map with significant water. The speed bonus easily lets you have colonies on the opposite ends of the world and still defend them. Longbowman are one of the top unique units in the entire game. The extra range means you can have an army entirely devoid of siege weapons since longbowman can outrange cities, saving you the research and really letting you exploit this UU. Their other unique unit, the ship-of-the-line is very powerful, cheap, fast and comes at a great time. Considering how bad ironclads tend to be you can easily use this unit until you get destroyers. AI hates water so no surprise at that rating.

France (4/5): Their culture bonus early on is amazing and allows for fast expands better than almost anyone else. The two back to back great unique units means that if you don't take down France early they will warmonger their way to the top 3 every single game.

Germany(4/2): These guys are very luck dependent. If you don't end up killing a few barbarian camps early on you are at a massive disadvantage.  Though most players will probably play these guys very warlike they don't necessarily need to be at war since their ability is dependent on barbarians and their unique units are still useful to deter enemies, and save production that could be better spent elsewehere.Their unique units are great and if you can survive from ancient age to actually get panzers you are probably going to demolish everyone else. The AI will unfortunately spam their unique pikeman a bit too much, to the point where you can easily build an army of crossbow/swordsman counters.

Greece(5/5): An absolute powerhouse of a civ if you start in the ancient era. I've only seen AI greece lose once (and it was to another one of the frequent top 3's). Their ability is generally useful. Like Rome, both of their unique units are in the same era, but since only one even needs a resource they are much more useful. Greece tends to explode outward with these two units, giving them a commanding lead which is rarely reversed.

India(2/1): India's ability is a bit better than it seems, but it really forces you into certain strategies. The larger the map is, the worse their ability and since most of the maps are already a bit big they are at somewhat of a disadvantage. Their walls are ok, but ideally you want to stop invaders at the border and not 1 tile from your cities. A smart player will just pillage everything in India. Their unique unit is short lived and serves only to make sure that India isn't quickly wiped out with an early rush. The AI consistently fails with this Civ because of it's love for expansion and because of how AI bonuses work.

Iroquois(3/3): An average civ all around. As with the Aztecs, even though the game tries to make your start position friendly for your civ I've found many time I don't actually have that much forest. Also, you won't get much use out of it early on as your cultural borders will be small. The mohawk warriors are average since forests aren't always easy to come by. I kind of think they need map conditions with high rainfall just to remain competitive. Their unique building is well designed though and combines very well with their unique ability.

Japan(4/3): A great ability, a great unit (samurai), and another average unit (zero). The ability works best for the AI as they are more likely to fight when injured than a player probably is. The only downside is if you are facing a a ranged heavy army and you aren't quick enough to change to using more cavalry units. The zero, while good on paper, is not that useful in singleplayer for either the AI or you as the AI doesn't build almost any air units.

Ottomans:(2/2): The ability to take over barbarian naval units makes this ability even harder to pull off than Germany's, with less payoff, and also making it entirely useless on maps without water or with little access to it. You can always be guaranteed to find barbarian encampments, but not always barbarian galleys. Their two units are at least average though.

Persia(4/3): If you play to exploit persia's ability with extended golden ages this is a great civ. However, maximizing golden age timing and frequency is a more advanced civ skill so many players won't benefit as much as they should. Their unique building is good enough to be built in just about every city. Immortals are average.

Rome:(3/3): I personally love their unique ability. It's really their unique units that are an issue. The legion is great and it's ability to build forts and roads makes them one of my favorites. However, they require iron and their other unique unit, of the same time period also requires iron. This means that if you are somehow unlucky enough to not be near iron it can spell a quick game over. Unfortunately, even if you have iron both of these units get obsoleted rather quickly.

Russia:(3/4): Siberian Riches is average, as I rarely ever run out of resources and since this is typically a large expansive empire you should have plenty. The unique unit is fine as is the Krepost and they fit Russia's playstyle. For some reason, the AI's bonuses cause Russia's natural expansiveness to balloon out even more and Russia ends up being one of the top 3 every game.

Siam:(4/3): Somewhat luck based, but overall very good. I say luck based because it really depends a lot on which city states are near you, what type they are, and how many. It also matters which players are near you and how aggressive they are to you and your city-states. The unique ability is great, but there's always the chance that you will invest in a city-state that get's destroyed unexpectedly. Also, since most players will run this civ less expansive than most, maritime city-states don't benefit you as much as if you were a larger civ, so you don't want to have a lot of maritime city-states most of the time. The wat is a great building and should be built everywhere. Their unique unit is kind of like the minutemen in that it has a terrible disadvantage of lowered speed, which means it isn't for killing trebuchets and such. Considering how rarely I see mounted units used, especially against Siam, a defensive civ, the bonus their elephants get doesn't help very much.


Certain civs tend to lock you into a certain strategy. You can try to do other strategies, but you'll just end up wasting your abilities.

War: Askia, Japan, Aztec, China (Oddly enough, Germany, and Greece which can look extremely warlike, aren't mostly dependent on going to war with other players and city-states.)

Expansion: Russia, France, Arabia, Rome

Culture/Science: Siam, India

Most others are fairly balanced.

[Rakonas]

So I just came up with an idea for a challenge for Civ 5.
Germany with no cities. Never use the starting settler, just go out with your warrior and convert some barbarians and kick some ass. Puppet every civ you conquer until you've got a mass of puppets sending you their loot. Preferably on marathon or epic so that the other civs don't outclass your warriors too soon. Become an army with a country, instead of a country with an army.

[Deon]

I don't think it will work. As soon as AI gets an upperhand in tech and/or units, you won't get anything from them through demands. Plus, without teching you will miss most of the diplomacy options yourself so you will have to rely on their teching which will make the things much worse. A barbarians-type scenario (which existed for every Civ game) would be cool though..

[Meanmelter]

I don't think it will work. As soon as AI gets an upperhand in tech and/or units, you won't get anything from them through demands. Plus, without teching you will miss most of the diplomacy options yourself so you will have to rely on their teching which will make the things much worse. A barbarians-type scenario (which existed for every Civ game) would be cool though..

I was the Aztec and I only used one city (One city challenge) And I had done much more tech research than anyone else.

[Grakelin]

But if you have NO cities, you don't get to tech at all.

[Muz]

So I just came up with an idea for a challenge for Civ 5.
Germany with no cities. Never use the starting settler, just go out with your warrior and convert some barbarians and kick some ass. Puppet every civ you conquer until you've got a mass of puppets sending you their loot. Preferably on marathon or epic so that the other civs don't outclass your warriors too soon. Become an army with a country, instead of a country with an army.

I'm doing this on my next game. Wanted to try a minimum city game anyway. Terra map, marathon, noble difficulty. Shouldn't be too hard if you can get those ruins that upgrade weapons, then get some spearmen early on.

Can this game utilize Quad-cores?

Not really. Core utilization seems almost entirely on one core.

I thought I read somewhere in the settings on manual that it supports multicore. I'd expect multicoring to be a requirement for any AAA game, though.

[Rakonas]

I don't think it will work. As soon as AI gets an upperhand in tech and/or units, you won't get anything from them through demands. Plus, without teching you will miss most of the diplomacy options yourself so you will have to rely on their teching which will make the things much worse. A barbarians-type scenario (which existed for every Civ game) would be cool though..

You do get tech from puppets though. Presumably the culture you need for a next social policy is also ridiculously low, so having a mass of puppets and no cities might even win you a cultural victory. It's worth a try, anyway.

[Myroc]

I have a slight problem changing the in-game resolution. Namely, changing it works fine, but it doesn't change fast enough that I can confirm that I actually want this setting, and it reverts back into the normal resolution which I hate because I cannot see the topmost bar at the screen. Same problem with trying to change from fullscreen to windowed mode.

[Sowelu]

Bedtime--Oh, hey, the demo is done downloading.  Let me give it a few turns, and see how it plays.

Huh, the in-game music is actually really awesome compared to Civ IV (though nothing compares to the Civ IV title screen music).

Whoa, I am seriously digging the interface hardcore.

It's not Nimoy, but it's nice that they still have narrated techs.  Also, the new city system is really nice.

Wait.  Why is the sun coming up already D: D: D: D: D:  FFFFFFUUUUU--