Rule of thumb is to have the two cities connected by road to be of a size equal to or greater than the number of road tiles between them.

I hook em up anyway, just for defense purposes.

Played with G&K for an hour or so this morning. I'm cautiously optimistic about it. I might end up liking the "forced" direction of your nation after all. I am playing as Rome (I always go "Random" for my nation start) and have two sources of stone in my capital's borders, and when presented with my first Religion-building choice, (I don't know all the terminology yet,) one option out of like 30 was "2 extra religion points per source of stone." It seemed like a very easy choice to pick that one, which seems to set our course as a religious Civ, a direction I wouldn't have necessarily chosen. It seems like there a variety of ways that religion can take you, depending on your resources. That could be rather interesting...

The only thing I'll say about Civ4 vs Civ5/G&K is that Civ4 BtS (which you knew to have been my favorite game for 5 years) was one of those rare games where the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. It's astounding how many bad, broken or poorly implemented elements there were in BtS (religion, espionage, vassals, civics, stacks of doom, overabundant resources - just to name a few) but somehow it worked. Civ5 has many far superior elements (wargamers hex, 1upt, SP, limited resources, ranged units, city-states, etc. plus supposedly a much better implementation of religion and espionage now) but the AI hasn't quite learned how to deal with the changes yet (sounds a lot like all those Civ5 ranters). But those elements make the game much more fun for me to play, particularly at a high level.

I don't have the illusion that G&K will "fix everything". Truthfully, I don't want them to fix much - just give me more variety and choices in the game (which they have done). I basically ignore diplomacy (doesn't interest me, never have in civ games) but religion should be interesting. I will turn off espionage as I can't see how that can be in a civ game.

I love the changes in G&K to the new civs, altered tech tree (much needed), Great Persons (very much needed), wonders, SP, city-states (huge changes there) and of course, the rebalanced units and finer-grained combat numbers. I look forward to playing soon.

I've been impressed with that as well. Really like the option to use religion while catering it specifically to what your civ has available.

Thank you... this will probably help me succeed in this game a lot more ;)

dola

Forgot to mention that skipping the opening sequence is MUCH easier now.

Looks like the natives are a bit grumpy. Some game crash issues along with slowdown. I personally have noticed a big increase in the loading time to get to the main menu. In addition, the turn time has increased dramatically. Think there's a memory leak in there somewhere. I went to an old restore point on my computer just to make sure something fishy didn't install on my computer and it's definitely not that. Did notice that there was an extra install this morning for Civ 5 today, so hoping that's a fix.

Seeing as I was getting mid game crashes with vanilla civ 5 I guess I'll resist rolling the dice on this one in the hopes that those kind of issues were fixed then. At least until a couple patches in

New download from Steam this morning helped quite a bit with lag. Much quicker gameplay now.

REALLY like the religion option. Much better implemented than the old religion component in Civ4. It's not the black and white option like in that game.

So, is diplomacy and trading still an empty husk at this point, or have they fleshed it out? I compare Civ 2 to Civ 5 in this regard and cry...

Been playing for a half hour this evening. Some comments...

• Much more robust interaction with City-States
• The more-robust interaction also makes diplomacy more interesting. For example, Japan just demanded tribute from Valletta. Valletta is pissed about it and asks me to denounce Japan. Japan is more powerful than me, so I run the risk of war, but denouncing them gave me 40 influence with Valleta, which is a big deal in the early game. I can see this sort of thing being a place where I have to weigh the pros and cons.
• Just found another diplomacy improvement, also related to C-S interaction. The Chinese have had negative interaction with Venice. The "You Will Pay For THis" vs. "Very well, I won't let this create a divide" has some real punch to it. "You will pay" pisses off China, while "I won't let this create a divide" costs -20 influence with Venice. Me likey.
• Gifted units now show up in your borders, rather than in the C-S borders.

(Overall: I'm impressed so far.)

If you want more of a random map, choose Shuffle.

Shuffle - Everything always random, in one click. Contains all the core map options and landmass types. So you could get a Hot, Arid, Low Sea Level, Continents, or a Temperate, Wet, High Sea Level, Archipelago. Always a surprise waiting!

I played the expansion for about 4 hours last night and I have to say I'm liking it - a lot - so far. The whole religion aspect gives a new dimension to the game, though one I don't fully understand yet. But still, it's a new "arrow in the quiver" and a pretty large on at that. I'm just now getting to some espionage, but that looks a little more tacked on since you don't even play that from the regular map. But given the annoyances with spying in Civ 4, maybe that's not a bad thing. The new tech tree offers some good choices so I don't feel as constrained as before.

But it's not just the new toys. It's the whole host of tweaks that matter the most. Like the free settler bonus in the Liberty tree. Because it's buried deeper, it's no longer the "chop rush/Oracle" strategy of Civ V - you know, the automatic one you lead off with every time. Or that siege units don't take resources, allowing a resource-poor nation to actually mount an attack. Or the new bowmen, which fills a needed gap. Or the unit HPs being increased to 100 - it's not THAT different, but it does change things somewhat - battles feel a touch more epic. Siege weapons are now awesome against cities, but so unbelievably weak against regular units. You got to get them in, set up and you will lose one or two during the course of a city siege. All of those little changes make sense and improve the same in a myriad of ways. I don't think I've stumbled across one yet that I didn't think improved the original game.

REX has been the dominant strategy in every Civ. I think Civ V probably gives players the most options if they don't want to REX than any in the series. And for those of us who like to build large, expansive empires, at least it's a little easier now. Before, with happiness so damned scarce, anything more than 4-5 cities was often impossible. But resources are still grouped, so REXing still requires trading partners to pull off. That requires diplomacy and having some friends, something that wasn't always necessary in prior versions of the Civ series. So you still can't expand willy-nilly, but it is a bit easier now. That helps for those of us who really like city specialization.

The AI still isn't great, but I think it's improved. Suleiman launched a very early attack on one of my cities. It happened that the city was relatively undefended, so I got to watch him set up his units around the city. He set up everything right. Of course, what he didn't count on was my units coming from other cities on the flanks of his attacks (my units happened to be above and below that city, so I didn't come from behind it as any opponent would expect). When I simultaneously hit him on both sides, he was in big trouble and I quickly decimated his units. He was smart enough to pull back and sue for peace before I launched a counterattack - gave me some gold and some resources and then quickly asked for a statement of friendship. I thought that was pretty decently smart of the AI - it knew that it was in a bad way and decided to cut it's losses before I could counterattack and make things much worse. And since I was worried about the Austrians to my north, I took the deal.

But it's still not great. Later on, I took on the Austrians and they were pretty pathetic. I pretty much rolled them. Of course, they had been in a few conflicts and with only a couple of cities, there wasn't much they could do. The AI had a couple of chances to take out a couple of my archers, but then again they'd have lost those units the next turn, so I'm not sure if that was just bad AI or just a very weak opponent.

Overall - I'm having a great time. I liked Civ V (I had 100 hours in it after all), but this just feels more "complete". I have more choices and I don't feel locked into one or two paths. I can REX again, but I'm still limited by the happiness. I'll need another 20 hours or so to make a final determination, but so far so good.

Austria's Unique Ability sure comes in handy. I'd just finished a Golden Age so I had a lot of gold on hand when I finished researching the technology that reveals aluminum on the map. Despite having the second largest land area of the remaining five civilizations (began with eight) I didn't have any in my territory or any in a nearby area that could be settled.

But with that UA I just threw some money at Belgrade to become their allies then paid the 500 gold for the diplomatic marriage and like that, I have a new, size 13 city with no unhappiness penalties for annexation that has an 8 aluminum resource in its radius. This might be a bit too powerful really.

Bought Gods anf Kings this morning, but I don't see anywhere on Steam to download it. It is like my games list didn't get refreshed after I bought it.

Anyone ever have that problem?

EDIT - Nevermind. Since it is DLC, I have to access it from within the game.

Big Fo, Austria is turning to be nice overpowered for the reasons you gave. The Huns too if you can get a quick start on ramming.

Overpowered?


I was able to build a super city in the desert.

I founded Philly in a nice spot in the desert, very very hilly with a couple of mountains, two flat desert hexes with flood plains (one of which I founded it on) and two wheat hexes on the outskirts of the cities reach. I also had some iron and I think some stone within reach. Well, I mined the heck out of those hills, built a couple of farms to feed folks, and overall had a decently productive city and more importantly, iron which I didn't have anywhere else.

Then I noticed the Petra wonder...dunno if it's new or if I just forgot about it as I hadn't played CivV in awhile. But man...after building Petra in that city...it's freaking epic now.

I know Civ 4 is a great game, but I'm not sure I could ever go back after playing one that doesn't have unit stacking. It's one of the things from the old game that bothered me to no end.

Really enjoying G&K. Definitely freshens up the game and fixes some things that bothered me.

I totally agree. I love Civ 4. There are few games, if any, that I spent more time playing. The idea of going back to unit stacking, however, holds absolutely zero appeal.

I just finished my first game last year. It was a small map with 6 nations and 12 city-states on prince level. I ended up as China. I ended up steam rolling my opponents winning before I even researched railroads. That was even when my first settler was captured by the barbs.

I ended up finding the 1st religion and very quickly almost all of city-states were allies. Once I got a dominant position I won every question about most culture, faith or technology. I played pretty similar to the base civ game which I hadn't played in a year. Basically, I expanded quickly and allied with as many city-states as possible. Also, once I got a couple of puppets they really help bring in the gold.

One thing that was odd, was that after I conquered Maya which was the 3rd civ I beat, there were two wheat hexes that weren't improved.

I also ended up with so much faith I didn't know what to do. Is it a benefit to convert your opponents to your faith. I would assume the get the benefits, but what does the founder get?

Next I need to try a game with some more civs, because small civ games can be easy because there are so many wonders you don't have a huge risk in trying to build one.

The Huns are just silly early game with the battering ram.

With excess Faith points, it all depends on the beliefs you chose. In all cases, you can buy a GP wihen finishing any of the last 4 Social Policies. As far as beliefs, choose the ones that allow you to buy stuff with Faith, as oppose to the happiness or cultural ones. Being able to buy military units with Faith is cool, for example.

RainMake, HB: I came to that conclusion right after Civ5 came out. I used to play a lot of tradition wargames and that's the exact template they used. Despite the glaring weaknesses of the initial release, just trying to navigate the hex-based terrain was not only challenging, but immensely fun. What it would take a SoD two turns to bulldoze a way into a capital, now can take many turns in a dense area.

Saw this posted elsewhere.

I think the best way I can sum up the improvement (to me) with the G&K addition is this - before, I would start a Civ, play for maybe 100-150 turns and it was pretty fun. Would save, go back to 'life'. Then next time I fired up Civ, I'd invariably say, eh, screw it, and start a new Civ. Now, I feel very compelled to return and complete. It has much more of the 'one more turn...' feel to it now.

Hopefully they can take care of some of the lag, though. Turn times have definitely amped up.

Wanted to open a discussion on what your favorite civs are. Everyone seems to hate America but I love being able to buy tiles at half price. Polynesia is also a favorite as I can get out and explore right away.

America, I believe, started out one of the weaker civs upon release but then got much more popular when they realized the importance of buying cheap tiles and scouting. Then, they discovered some great strategies for bombers and America has the best one, so it vaulted to a solid mid-range civ.

I did Polynesia once on an archipelago map but found that beyond popping ruins (which had diminishing returns), there weren't much I could do with them. They probably play better on other maps, plus I think archipelago is not an easy map to play.

France is my favorite civ, but in civ games I'm generally a culture whore.

I think archipelago is the easiest maps to play because the AI never builds a sufficient Navy. They hang on to outdated units far too long and you can storm through them gaining valuable experience.

I would think G&K makes a difference since they increased/changed naval builds and combat substantially.

Ironic.

I like America and France. I started with the Celtics with the expansion.

My problem is, I can't seem to get beyond the mid game without starting over.

Man, this game is SO much better with the new expansion. Just a lot more options available. I feel like I'm able to play better with the new options because I can control the direction of my civ a bit more than in the original version.

A patch has just been released

[PREVIOUS SAVES]
Older saves with DLC leaders (including Genghis) will no longer "shift" when loaded into the patched game.

[CRASH FIXES]
If a user does not have a religion, and receives a religion from another Civ, setting the "automated faith purchase" option could previously cause a crash when the purchase tries to fire for either the player, or the AI.
Fixed an issue where a user could click on a city banner during the AI turn, and the game could crash depending what AI process is happening at the time of the "click".
Into the Renaissance
If an AI player has open borders and a friendly relationship with another Civ, they would sometimes send a Great Admiral to park in their city. If the city tries to purchase a civilian unit while the Great Admiral is parked there, the game could crash. This is corrected.
Scenario hang
There was a chance that when you won a scenario, the game could hang. This has been corrected
Fixed an issue where any user with special characters in their Windows name will be unable to load saves.
If a player has Steam in "offline mode", and clicks on Mods, into the modding area and then backs out, the game could crash. This is now corrected.
Game Hang on turn 0
After patching, many have reported being unable to interact with units or end the first turn. This is now corrected.
Game could previously hang on "Unit Needs Orders" after the player clicks next turn. This has been corrected, and the camera snap has been fixed.
A crash that could occur in Hot Seat if the game core threading had been disabled is fixed.

[BUG FIXES]
Fall of Rome Scenario
Golden Ages were switched to providing bonus culture earlier in project. We've removed the culture bonus from Golden Ages for the scenario.
Open Borders that do not exist
If the AI is trying to renew an open borders agreement, but has something more important to talk about in the queue, the system would still record the Open Borders agreement as being active (even though it is not actually in place). This has been corrected.
Military Caste (+2 culture from garrison) was not working correctly. Whenever a civilian unit embarks, bulbs, or is deleted, it subtracted 2 culture, and kept adding up each time this happened, leaving the city at permanent negative culture. This has been corrected.
The "Peace Loving" belief was not functioning. This has been corrected.
When cities bombard attacking units, death animations would now play correctly.

I just had a funny thing happen to me in the original game- I was playing as Nebuchadnezzar II, and was gifted a great person from Vienna through having that social policy active. The turn before, I'd convinced Genghis Khan to give them peace, one turn after he declared war on them. The funny part is that the GP they gave me was the Khan, Mongolia's unique great general unit. Don't know if it was random, or if Mongolia being the invaders had something to do with it (Vienna definitely didn't capture any units, that much I know).

I'm playing as Bismarck in the expansion pack and also got gifted Khan Great Generals. Genghis Khan isn't even in this game.

Yes, that's a feature where you can get a civ's UU from a city-state regardless if they are in the game or not. I think it's pretty cool. Also, if you mouse over the city-state, it will tell you what kind of UU or GP it can give you, I believe. For example, if you are deciding between two city-states to ally, look at which one can give you a better unit.

Any of you play a multiplayer game using GMR:

Want an easy way to play Civ V online? Say hello to Giant Multiplayer Robot! - Civilization Fanatics' Forums

Sounds like fun.

Any idea why I can't save my game in progress in Civ 5? There is no option on the menu screen. I did a file check via Steam and it did fine 2 files that it needed to reinstall, hopefully that was it.

I bought Civ 5 a long time ago and I finally have some time to dig into it a little bit over the next couple of weeks.

I'll start on the easiest level and then go up from there.

Edit: I'm getting Civ IV and Civ V confused

start game again, but with out tutorial being active... i did the same thing and by not enabling tutorial i was able to save..

I'm in if people are okay with a slow pace. How many people could we get in, do you think?

Yeah I did that last time, but will check just to make sure.

I'm getting ready to buy G&K but do most of you Civ faithful buy all the DLC too?

I see Steam has a map pack bundle for $4.99 is it worth it?

I bought Gods and Kings but haven't bought any of the DLC so far. If I do buy any in the future it will be extra civilizations and not maps.

+1

I've bought everything except the map packs.

I really do love the Gods and Kings expansion. I have noticed, however, that since I installed the expansion the time between turns in the later years really becomes quite significant.

I always play a random civ. And, for whatever reason, whenever I get Ghandi I always end up playing one of my most warlike and aggressive games. I don't mean to, but it just seems to happen that way. Circumstances force my poor Ghandi into being a blood-thirsty warmongerer.

Thanks.. I just bought Gods and Kings.. it's going to be a late night/early morning again.

I just recently purchase Civ V along with all the DLC including G&K. My first and hopefully only game purchased through "Steam". I also had to buy a new video card and power supply.

I agree that an archipelago map is easy, at least at Prince difficulty. In my current, and very first, game of Civ V using a random start I got a large archipelago map. With a random pick of the Incan Empire, I have only built one military unit after 250 turns (last in military units of 10 nations). I am first in population and technology, that other nations keep stealing. I have six cities across two islands and maintain a small positive happiness, and currently generate about 225 gold, 100 culture, and 40 faith per turn.

The game has been a little boring the last 50 turns, but my spy has indicated that Rome is getting ready to attack someone. It might be interesting if I finally have to build some defense. Next game, I will have to jump to King difficulty.

Oh, you poor bastard. You really think you're going to be able to resist the biannual sales? :D

Yeah, Prince is fairly easy. King is a step up and you'll have to keep an eye on other civs much more. It also seems to depend a lot on who you have in your game and where they are. Alexander will go to war with me relentlessly over nothing. Seems like there is more war mongering on higher levels too.

I don't really like how the difficulty levels work for this game.

Since I hadn't played Civ V in so long before Gods and Kings came out, I did the fair level (Prince) at first and that was too easy. The AI gets slight advantages on King and I won a few games on that level. Once I was able to finish games with double the score of the second place AI civilization, I started playing on Emperor.

This was a lot more competitive and although I managed to win a Science Victory, I only had the third place score when I did so. It was a mostly peaceful game, perhaps playing on a map with a lot of islands had something to do with this. There were a few naval wars but I never invaded anyone nor was I invaded myself.

But the problem I have with the difficulty levels is that they affect the earlier part of the game more than the endgame, and the earlier part is what is more difficult even at the fair level. On Emperor the AIs get two free techs and a scout that the human doesn't and this can take quite awhile to catch up to since research is slower early in the game. The combat AI is far from great in this game but the imbalance between what a human and AI can do in warfare is less early in the game, when units are less capable, there are fewer options, and conditions are more favorable to defenders. Once the game advances to the point where ranged units can shoot three hexes away and air power becomes a factor the combat AI is really handicapped and a player with similar gold, hammers, beakers, etc. has a big edge.

I think it'd work better if the AI got fewer bonuses at the beginning of the game but their research, gold, and production got more of a boost as the game advances through the ages. Like if you could play on Prince through the Classical Age, King through the Industrial Age, and then on Emperor from that point on. Or something like that at least.

Is MultiplayerRobot down for anyone else? We're trying to start a game, and when signing in on the site we get:

The conversion of a datetime2 data type to a datetime data type resulted in an out-of-range value.
The statement has been terminated.

Not sure if I need to try a different browser, or if they have a server issue. No note on the main page of the site.

We have a current game going. I'm able to log on just fine as of a couple minutes ago.

I logged into Steam on Firefox just fine as well.

I can sign into Steam fine, just not through multiplayerrobot.com. Ah well.

What browser are you using?

Tried IE9 and Firefox, but it's working this morning.

For what it's worth, huge G&K patch coming this Fall:

BUG FIXES
General
Mod Browser - The "Get Mods" button is now hidden if the user has disabled the steam overlay.
Civilizations and Traits
Ottoman naval upkeep is now fixed. Save games that were started before the fix will not be corrected.
German UA and Oligarchy social policy now work together correctly.
City States
Mercantile CS now only get a unique luxury for their first city (and not the cities they conquer). Unique luxury is removed upon capture (players can no longer get it by taking over a CS). Unique luxury is given back upon liberation.
Prevent double counting of resources when an improvement is gifted to a minor civ, then the minor civ techs up to activate the improvement.
Diplomacy
Research Agreement code was previously giving double-credit to research "overflows" (i.e. when you finished a tech and the extra research was being applied to the following tech). Now the credit toward a RA will be based on Science earned that turn.
Corrected an issue that caused the AI to attempt coups too often, when chances of success were too low. Also implemented a new factor: Attempting a coup in a location where there is no defending spy (the current ally does not have a spy there) is >=2x as likely to work as it would if there was a spy there.
Resurrecting a player will have both sides forget any denouncing that happened before resurrected.
Don't treat player as a deal breaker just for going to war with a player again.
Exploits
Do not let a player earn the 2 free techs from the Rationalism Finisher twice. Also removed the +1 Science from Libraries from that finisher.
If you intentionally starve your city by reassigning all your citizens to be unemployed, you won't end up with more citizens than you have population.
Religion
Fix Found Religion screen so you can't find out about civs you haven't met by mousing over the religion icons.
Correct "Peace Loving" belief so it doesn't negate other happiness benefits from religion.
Rebuild religious pressure in case it was corrupted in older save games.
Clarify Interfaith Dialog so it mentions that Prophets earn you science too (not just missionaries).
Scenarios
Removed notifications that appear at the beginning of the Fall of Rome and Mongol scenarios about lacking the proper strategic resources.
AI
Dutch now will build farms before polders are available.
Do not allow Carthaginian units to spawn on mountains.
Do not allow Carthaginian Workers to end turns on mountains.
AI will now build more workboats and will improve oil plots in the water.
Automated workers that don't have anything to do will not consume all their movement.
Allow rush built units to trigger the operation they were built for to proceed into Gather Units phase.
Fixed an issue where automated workers evaluated danger incorrectly and consequently behaved incorrectly.
Fixed an issue where citizen management focus on Production (and possibly others) could lead to starvation.
Clicking on an unemployed citizen to set them back to work does not "unlock" locked citizen assignment.
The logic to recommend Artist improvement placement now does not count plots where improvements can't be placed, e.g. oases.
Units
Fix unit de-selection so the mini-map indicator clears.
Better “Next Unit” selection. Previously, the camera would jump great distances to select the next unit that needs orders, when a closer unit was available.
Unit cycling improvement: when a unit is promoted, do NOT cycle immediately off that unit.
Change minimum area size for all naval units to 10 (from 20). That allows them to be built in the same cities as harbors, seaports (and great admirals) -- i.e. on any body of water not considered to be a "lake"
Fix advanced promotions for melee naval ships.
Restore missing Cover 2 promotion entries so it is available to units again.
Fix a hang if a (melee) unit advanced across the world wrap seam after a combat.
Correct Great Admiral AI placement bug that prevented it from selecting a valid coastal city of yours.
Unit list now re-sorts itself correctly when a unit is promoted.
Subs are no longer visible (all the time) in Hot Seat mode.
Don't give GG points from Barbarian ranged attacks.
Helicopters now take damage when ending their turn over mountains.
Interception promotions now help the right unit (had previously been reversed).
Evasion promotion helps the right unit (had previously been reversed).
Two top-of-screen messages added to explain what is going on with intercepts (one for if the attacking air unit is eliminated, and another if he is just damaged).
Fixed a unit movement issue that broke melee attacking from more than one hex away.
Janissary heals 50 instead of 100 when killing enemy units.
Supply promotion now heals 15 HP outside friendly territory; matching text (was 25 HP).
Added a check to make sure that after a city is disbanded (ex. razed), the units remaining on the plot are allowed to be there. If not (ex. naval units), then they are moved to the nearest valid plot.
Fix for barbarians that would not move the turn after they spawned.
Have Great Engineer pick both the wonder and the city it needs to be built in (the bug was that the AI could repeatedly try to build a wonder in a city that it couldn't).
Optimization
Many performance improvements, particularly in the renderer.
Pathfinder fixes and optimization.
Text Bugs
Fixed several text bugs.
Misc
Fixed rare crashes that could occur depending on hardware.
Only the “alive” civilization capitals are tested for majority religion in "We are family" achievement.
Added missing Polish Dawn of Man audio.
Advisors: Messages concerning your people being unhappy/livid now display correctly (a bug was causing this to fire at the wrong time).
Economic Overview: Don't list diplomacy values as an expense and an income at the same time.
Fix auto-scrolling between turns. If a user was scrolling when a turn ended, or when combat ended, it would occasionally get “stuck” and continue scrolling.
Fix unit de-selection so the mini-map indicator clears.

BALANCE CHANGES
General
Reduced Happiness a bit from Mercantile City States. You no longer get +1 bonus happiness going from Friends to Allies (since you already get the luxuries then). And eliminated the +1 Happiness entering Industrial era.
Ballistics now requires Railroads. This will force the AI to get railroads before getting too deep in the tree.
Pillaging tiles now awards +25 hit points to the pillaging unit.
Tweaks to culture border growth:
Should get coastal resource tiles a bit sooner.
Should mildly steer towards tiles that are near unclaimed resources.
Should get resource tiles in rings 4 and 5 a bit sooner.
Austrian UA balance changes:
Increase the cost of a City-State by at least the amount of gold you will get from scrapping their units.
Must be ally for 5 turns before you can undergo a diplomatic marriage with a City-State.
"Yoink!" achievement is now: "As Austria, acquire a City-State with 15 or more units through Diplomatic Marriage."
Religion
Pilgrimage belief now gives +2 Faith per foreign city following this religion.
Follower and Pantheon beliefs provide Local Happiness; Founder beliefs provide Global Happiness
Faith output per city is now listed in the economic overview - general information panel. Note: Faith output per city is hidden if religion is disabled.
AI: Buy Missionaries in city with Great Mosque as TOP priority (even over Holy City if different).
Tall/Wide Religion Balance Change: Add Grand Temple (National Wonder).
Diplomacy & Espionage
New peace deals. Now 9 AI levels instead of the previous 5 (so one new level added between each of the earlier ones). Peace levels are now:
0: White Peace (give up nothing)
1: Armistice (1/2 gold, 1/2 of max GPT)
2: Settlement (all gold, max GPT)
3: Back-down (all luxuries, all gold, max GPT, open borders)
4: Submission (all resources, all gold, max GPT, open borders)
5: Surrender (one city)
6: Cession (1/4 city value, 1/2 gold)
7: Capitulation (1/3 city value, all gold)
8: Unconditional Surrender (all but capital, all gold)
Peace deal code now prioritizes both cities that are close to winner's capital AND cities that were originally built by winning player (previously it was distance only).
Reduced espionage notification spam. Will only be notified of election and coup activities if you have met them and (have a spy in the city or are friends with them or have a relationship with them that is above the resting point.)
Added ability to liberate cities that are not owned by their founders or originally owned by the player. The player will receive a diplomacy bonus with the liberated player for liberating up to three cities. This liberation is not part of the "recalled to life" resurrection of a once annihilated civ. This functionality only runs if the city liberated is owned by a player that is alive. There are two ways to lose the diplomatic liberation bonus are:
Declare war on someone you have liberated cities for. You have to be the first player declaring war. This does not count defensive pacts or someone you liberated declaring war on you.
Capturing a city from someone you liberated. This case comes into play if A liberated a city of C's, then A & B have a defensive pact, C declares war on A & B, then A captures a city of C's. C will forget that A liberated any of their cities.
The AI will now liberate cities and resurrect players. There are notifications when the AI resurrects players and cities. An AI will resurrect another (non-human) player when they are trying to win a diplomatic victory. An AI will return a city if the original owner of the city has a defensive pact with the player and they are both at war with the previous owner of the city, or, the AI and the original owner have a declaration of friendship and the AI is going for a diplomatic victory.
Diplomacy: Peace treaty duration scales with game speed.
Quick: 10 turns
Normal: 10 turns
Epic: 15 turns
Marathon: 30 turns
Diplomacy: Declaration of Friendships/Denouncements now scale with game speed.
Quick: 50
Normal: 50
Epic: 75
Marathon: 150
Changed diplomatic globals:
The opinion thresholds (unforgivable/enemy/competitor/favorable/friend/ally) have been pushed farther apart. They were initally 50/30/10, now 80/40/15.
Diplomatic intrigue bonuses have been lowered by 1/2, from 20 to 10.
"Asked Stop Spying" penalty dropped from 20 to 10.
There are a number of changes to the duration of city-state interaction penalties, greatly reducing their duration.
Diplomacy overview improvements. Now displays "your open borders/embassy", "their open borders/embassy", "shared open borders/embassy"
With making deals, AIs will notify you when they're not willing to give enough on their side to make the deal work. This addresses some issues where you ask an AI to propose a deal and they say "we can't make a deal" and then you propose a lop-sided deal and they accept it. They will say "we aren't willing to give you enough to make this a fair trade."
Other civs won't warn about expansion unless the player has founded a city in the last 10 turns.
"We attacked your protected City-State" statements are now triggered by damage done (ex. killing a unit) rather than simply being at war. As a result, the statement should no longer be triggered by a quick succession of DoWs (such as those done automatically by a CS changing allies).
The AI will no longer ask other players to join in a war when they are already involved in at least one.
Units
Unit Balance Changes:
Drop Ironclad to 45 combat strength (from 50).
Remove +33% vs. Cities from Battleships.
Drop Gatling Guns to 30 Combat and Ranged Strength.
Make sure Air Ambush 2 and Air Targeting 2 work for fighters and bombers.
Carriers now get naval melee promotions instead of naval ranged.
Prize Ships Balance Change: 50% chance of converting ships with equal intrinsic combat strengths. Scales up and down (between 28% and 80%) based on relative intrinsic combat strengths of the two ships. Conversion chance if you do sink the opponent is shown in blue text on combat preview window.
AI attackers will now pillage.
Promotion balance change: make the +200% vs. Cities promotion go away on upgrade.
Promotions: Push back Air Logistics promotion for Fighters and Bombers so it requires Bombardment 3 (not 2) or Air Siege 3 (not 2).
AI
AI adjustments to Wonder build priorities.
Tactical AI Improvement: Spend more gold on defense. AI will now spend gold at their cities where tactical dominance is EVEN (before it had to be enemy-dominated). AI will now also spend money on naval and air units for defense in such cites (before it was only land units and defensive buildings).
Changes to AI settling:
Expand the ring search.
Flatten the value of rings a bit so that tiles in the further rings are worth a bit more.
Make the default preferred spacing further for players not going for extreme expansion.
Lower the value of tiles a bit so that the AI is a bit pickier about settlements.
AI will try to reclaim lost settlers and builders.
AI will no longer wait forever for a settler escort.
Minor tweak to settlement location.
More aggressive offshore expansion.
Do not give priority to bonus resources in rings 4 and 5 when deciding next tile to grow towards.
Tweak to AI settle to reduce bonus of tiles in rings 4 and 5 if already owned.
Small change to make Haile Selassie less keen to expand wide.
AI will now consider annexing cities it has conquered.
The AI will not consider annexing if it is trying to win a culture victory or their empire is currently unhappy.
Increased happiness flavor for circus to match Colosseum.
Tactical/Homeland AI Improvement: Do not heal if under enemy ranged fire (that is making you lose more HP per turn than you can heal).
Allow AI to capture civilians more than 4 hexes from their cities.
Have AI build its units for sneak attack at a slightly higher priority if at high difficulty levels.
Have AI weight Biology a bit stronger especially if liking tanks and airplanes (unlocks oil).
AI tweaks to help coastal based civs:
Change to settlement (cities beyond the first also prefer coast).
Buildings that help coastal Civs have flavors adjusted (they didn't take some rules changes into account).
Do not force high Naval civs to build a large navy (15+ ships) in the first 100 turns.
Make Dido deceptive (as historical).
Tweaks to allow cities to make better use of extra tiles from previous change:
On average on extra worker or two will be built.
Slightly less prioritization of connecting up luxuries (still the highest priority).
Allow one tile islands to be settled (if they have a resource on them).
Slightly more prioritization of production tiles.
Builders will emphasize the capital so that it will always be a nicely developed city.
City Governor AI:
Prevent focused city AIs from starving as much.
Make a wonder that has already been started in this city a higher priority.
Lower the value of food for the governor when you have a large surplus.

POLISH
UI
Add in a UI overlay that shows which AI is processing its turn.
In the detailed view of a mod in the mods browser, additional required mods will display their title if it has been provided instead of the ID of the mod.
Add an “Exit to Main Menu” button to the player change screen in Hotseat.
Added "Restart Game" option to game menu. This option lets you restart the game and generate a new map using your current pregame settings. It's only available at Turn 0.
Advanced settings are now persisted across multiple single player games.
NOTE: This feature can be disabled by setting "PersistAdvancedSettings = 0" in Config.ini
The top panel now displays the month of the year if the game speed is so slow that it actually matters.
Messages about a player losing their capital and regaining it are now included in the replay log.
Messages about a player being resurrected are now included in the replay log.
Fixed an issue causing the replay graphs to be corrupted when a player was resurrected.
Display currently active mods in the single player screen.
Add a separate graphics option for enabling/disabling the GPU texture decode.
Fractal added to the map short list and random map types.
Garrison ring properly disappears when unit moves out of city.
Resource icon stacking. At lower resolutions, the resource icons clip into the date display along the top. We now hide the part of the list that clips if it�'s too long, and instead, the player can mouse-over the list to see all the resources.
Better timing for pop-ups (finding ruins, etc.).
Auto unit selection improvements:
On load, only cycle to the next unit if the currently selected unit is not ready for selection.
Swap the direction that the CycleRight and CycleLeft buttons move the selection in the cycle list.
When closing the city screen. Re-select the last unit that was selected.
If the player has auto-unit-cycling off, don't auto-select the unit that is blocking the end turn.
Further refinement to pop-up reordering. Pop-ups should now "feel" correct each turn (in the right order, at the right time).
Don't prompt the player when removing fallout. Just do it. The prompt incorrectly referred to the action as removing an “improvement”.
General
Switch a number of Great Merchants to Great Admirals. Add Great General: Hannibal and Great Merchant: Jakob Fugger.
Optimized overlay system (culture borders, etc.). This system is now making half the draw calls that it did before.
Flavored all the civs for anti-air and air-carrier.
Modding: Fix the hard-coded length of the promotions boolean array.
Modding: Provide a way for Lua to query if the UI is in "Touch Screen" mode UI.IsTouchScreenEnabled().

Lot of changes but nothing game changing. Still enjoying the game a lot.

+1

I play Civ5 daily.

God this game is addicting. I actually didn't play much after i first got the game when it came out because I bought it to play the Windows version on my Mac, but had so many lags and issues I set it aside. A while back I realized I had access to Mac version through my Steam account, and reconnected.

Just had one of those dynasty-worthy epics. I was playing as Siam and simply proceeding without identifying a clear win scenario. I was doing well culturally, and was heading in that direction. Montezuma attacked me for no reason whatsoever, and I after I blunted his initial attack I launched a counterstrike and forced him to give me his gold (6,500). A little while later The Huns came along and wanted to attack Montezuma, so I finished the job. I started taking off from there.

Then Greece finished the UN and won the preliminary vote 14-6. I was the six, picking up America and France along with my four allies. What happened next was a perfect storm ...

I had just earned a great merchant so I set him off to win an ally from Greece. I had a source of dyes on an island near me, and a bunch of city states wanted dyes, so I bought a settler and sent him there. A lot of allies also wanted gold connected, so I made a lopsided deal with America to get their gold. At the same time, a couple of city-states were awed by my cultural and religion scores. On the last turn, I threw some money at any city state alliance I could buy for less than 500 gold.

Final UN vote was 13-11 in my favor. Never had a UN vote flip that dramatically in 10 turns before. On the same turn, Alexander declared war on me. Too little, too late.

Nice work!

Patch is out!
Fall patch is out - Civilization Fanatics' Forums

I've been really getting into this game over the past couple months. I've got an online game going with 4 friends that is super fun. It's taken us 45 days to get through the first 100 turns, so I expect we will finish sometime in the spring. The emails are so fun, though. "How are you build a city near my borders! *rattles sabres*". Great times :)

I guess you were right. I didn't even make it to five months before making my second "Steam" purchase. I picked up X-Com this weekend. I would have bought them elsewhere if that was an option. At least I purchased both Civ V and X-Com from Amazon and not direct from "Steam".

Steam is awesome. Best thing to happen to PC gaming in a long while.

While I do buy games elsewhere at times - Desura, Origins, Amazon, GOG, Direct Download - I much prefer to get my games from Steam directly and consider it a bit of a barrier (though a low one) when a game is not on Steam. For example, I don't own any Blizzard products released in the last 10 years or so (Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, etc.) primarily because they are not available on Steam.

Having a PC and refusing to use Steam is like owning a HD tv and refusing to watch programs in HD.

Not sure I understand your distinction between giving Valve your sale or Amazon.

Totally agree with this. I love gaming on my PC and will buy new computers regularly to play games solely because of the ease of use that Steam provides. I had little to no interest in PC gaming before I started using Steam. Now it's pretty much all I use on the PC.

I upgraded my new computer and rebooted my OS from scratch. All I had to do was copy over my Steam directory to my new computer and BOOM it all worked.

My Gamersgate, Direct2Drive and disc based games all had to be reinstalled manually, it was a huge pain in the butt. So yeah I'll pass on sales on smaller digital services and wait to buy it on Steam if at all possible.

For anyone who has not bought it yet, Gods & Kings is on offer at Green Man Gaming for just over $3 using the code GMG30-DPLIM-DN831

Link is on the front page, and should be active until 12pm GMT (7am ET) on Monday.

http://www.greenmangaming.com/

I bought Civ V in the Summer sale and had started a game but only played it for maybe a couple hours back then. One interesting event has made me get back to it and I'm loving it.

I decided to offer it to my 15yo son for Christmas. See, he's really into the Call of Duty series of games but it disturbs my wife quite a bit that he kills people for fun in those games. He's really a non violent kid, just a gamer, but mom really isn't. Anyway, I thought that even though he'd never shown any interest for the Civ series that he might like it and it'd be a bit more positive type of gaming that he could mix in with his online deathmatch kind of games. Well, so far he seems to be loving it. He played one long game that he kept telling me back which civ did what and which civ he took over and such and such. So much so that it has made me pick back up my game and I'm discovering the subtleties of it...

I didn't wait for the indecent coupon from GMG but I picked up Gods & Kings a couple days ago went it dropped to 7.49 on steam and I just picked up the upgrade to GOTY for $5. So for $20 each, we both have Civ V GOTY with Gods & Kings and we're both loving it. Might try to get a multiplayer game going with him some day :)

ok, back to your regular programming. ;)

FM

This is still unplayable for me because of speed, and I'm wondering if it's because I never play Civ on anything but the largest maps available, or something else. I just ran a quick test.

CIV 4: Huge map, 18 civs, top-tier graphics: The first few turns process too fast for me to capture accurately with the stopwatch on my phone, less than a second each.

CIV 5: Huge map, 12 civs, BOTTOM-tier graphics: The first few turns took 12-14 seconds to process each.

My rig is a year and a half old quad-core that was close to the top of the line when I bought it, so a nice machine. Does anyone know of anything that I can do (fewer civs? smaller maps?) to speed it up? If the answer is "both..you gotta play with 6 civs and on medium maps" then I might as well just give up, I guess. :(

Hmmmm, smaller maps and less civs will definitely speed things up. I think the map size is the biggest factor. The huge maps can get real tough on my rig too and I've got a nice setup. I usually just play standard size.

Would Large be bad for you? It's 10 civs and still a pretty big map.

Also try turning Terrain Shadow Quality off in the video settings. This had a bigger difference for me than any other video setting (which I barely noticed on the others being changed). And the leader scene quality to low seems to help a bit.

I started playing with Quick Combat on too. The animations got old after awhile and it seems to speed up all the turns quite a bit and I didn't miss them at all. This is a bigger fix late in the game though.

I believe the expansion reduced turn times substantially, or at least the first post-patch. I have read those playing on large or huge maps being very pleased (it was tough pre-G&K). On standard, I get about 5 seconds at most beyond the first turn. Late game takes longer but not like before.

I posted the same thing over at the 2K forums and a guy suggested turning off HD paging. I don't even know what that is, but I'll give it a shot. ;)

Hmmmm....that's not an option that I see. Anyone know how to do that?

I believe it's in the ini file. This was the solution when they released final vanilla patch last summer. Are you still playing vanilla?

In my games/civ5, the civ5.ini file should have a line: gamecore threading. If its enabled (1), set it to 0.

No. G&K.

I'll look for that file.

I have config.ini, but not Civ5.ini...

I am not on my pc but if you see that line in that ini file, that would be the one.

Config.ini has two:

; Enables the game core to run in a separate thread
EnableGameCoreThreading = 1
; Set the game core thread to use the Job Manager, or its own dedicated thread
GameCoreThreadingUsesJobManager = 0

So wait, Buc said set it to 0, and you're saying set it to 1. Can we verify which one it is?

The opposite of what you have now. :)

When I get, I'll paste the pertinent post from the help forum.

I didn't say that, I just posted what was in my file so there were some specifics being discussed...

Oh yeah - I forgot about that too when you were asking me earlier, Ben (yes hi, I'm cuervo and I'm a Civ addict...). I did edit that in my .ini file, and have had much better results (delay in response was horrible before that).

Hope I remember this discussion when I get home from work.

Go to My Document/My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization 5/ and open config.ini in notepad. Look for the line EnableGameCoreThreading = 1 and change it to EnableGameCoreThreading = 0. Save and restart the game.

Danke.

So, do we need to kick off a new Giant Multiplayer Robot game?

I have G&K now, so I could take part!

I'd play if one started up.

Started a new game of Giant Multiplayer Robot:

Steam Community

Each link is for one player only. Send me a PM or post here, and I'll send you one. Note you have to have Gods and Kings.

We actually plan on finishing this one? I was all alone at the end (not that this is an unusual position for me).

We've had a work one going for 6 months, so I've got a track record of sticking around.

I'll stick around as long as everyone else does.