New Diplomacy and Culture are really cool. I like Tourism, and the World Congress has lots of strategy (that devolves into the vote who wins/loses game mechanic). I also like all the changes to policies and new units. Trade routes make money-making a bit too easy, though.
I've played one game so far. Normal difficulty. Picked random everything, got Germany on continents. I steamrolled America within like 40 turns and ended up crushing everyone. I ended up doing the space victory, but I was so far ahead I could have done whatever I wanted. I launched to Alpha Centauri when everyone else was running around with pikemen. Maybe I need to step up the difficulty 3 or 4?
I tried Chieftan and India got mad because I built a city near their capital. A few turns later about ten elephants and numerous warriors attacked me. Several turns later they were mostly dead and I was untouched. India then gave me lots of money to end the war.
When I saw the mass of units I about shit a brick! Having the Great Wall helped.
So, having played since Civ5 came out, I think I can give a fairly decent run-down of what you need to progress to each difficulty level.
Settler - You must have basic computer skills, so that you can install Steam, purchase the game, install it, and run it. The AI won't attack you unless you provoke the ever loving shit out of them, and even then, they probably won't have units. You get tons of bonus happiness and resources, and the cost of doing everything is significantly reduced. You can win by just picking buildings and techs at random.
Chieftain/Warlord - You will probably need to build a military unit. Maybe two, if you spawn near a particularly aggressive AI.
Prince - You need to either 1) Have a basic idea of what you're going to focus on; science, culture, military, etc. Or, 2) Build a second, or even a third, city.
King - You're going to need to build cities. You're going to need to know what makes a good city location, and how cultural borders work. You're going to need to know what Happiness is. It'll help immensely if you know what circumstances your Civ excels at. The Mayans are great if you build tons of tiny, worthless cities, and are good at tech victories. The Babylonians are also good at tech victories, but they're better if you build a few very strong cities. The Greeks can go either way on number/size of cities, they have a super strong militaristic early-game, but are better suited to actually winning diplomatically. And so on. These aren't set in stone, to be sure, but they're strong advantages to keep in mind.
Emperor - You're going to need some strategy, and some forethought. At this point, AIs will actually start competing with you for Wonders, they'll be able to keep up with you in tech, and will begin attacking you with sufficient force that you'll need to worry. They'll recognize what victory condition you're going for and attempt to oppose you with reasonable competence. You can even start getting fancy and switching the "focus" of a city, so that it specializes in production, or gold, or something. You don't have to. If you've been micromanaging your city up until this point, know that it's totally not necessary. You can win consistently on King or lower just leaving all your cities on Default.
Immortal - Time to micromanage! You'll need to worry about fiddly things like maximizing Great Person points per turn, balancing Global vs Local Happiness caps, and picking optimal promotion trees for units. At this point, the AI's bonus resources begin to show. They start with multiple cities, have thousands of extra gold, and spew out tons of units at a time. If you don't recognize every advantage, and leverage them all as hard as you can, you will fucking die. This means recognizing some non-intuitive stuff like how you shouldn't ever build workers. Steal them all from city states early-game, because the time you spend building workers means than you won't have enough military to survive all of your neighbors bum-rushing you the instant they find you. Which they will. If there are more than three AIs, don't expect to get any Wonders. Just, don't even bother. Not unless you're Tradition Egypt with Marble.
Deity - It's more or less a puzzle game at this point. If you don't have your every action planned down to the turn, you'll just be farting around with muskets when some non-warmongering Civ sends 40 Gatlings Guns at you. Assuming you survived Alexander's Companion Cavalry rush on turn 20. And then you have to look forward to Babylon or Korea winning a tech victory on the other side of the world circa the 1700s, because the AI has enough bonus money, growth, and happiness to support multiple dozens of 20-30 pop cities in the mid game. Not exaggerating.
I have to leave for NYC early tomorrow morning. Technically speaking it is now 4AM in NYC. They are getting ready to start a new day that I am just about to finish. I should stay up all night playing Civ V so I can live that day. Then when I get on the plane, I will go to sleep around the same time that NYC people are going to sleep.
That sounds awesome. One more turn. I think you would have to go wide or warmongering in order to avoid to many of the make one or two moves and then end your turn parts of the game.
https://www.humblebundle.com/ Sid Meier Humble Bumble, can he like read our mind? 15 dollars for all Civ's and a bunch of random other Sid Meier games.
https://www.humblebundle.com/ Sid Meier Humble Bumble, can he like read our mind? 15 dollars for all Civ's and a bunch of random other Sid Meier games.
If you got no Pirates! you'll get no booty from me.
Comments
Though I probably wouldn't have been able to order it anyway. Steam's store page is still intermittently down for me.
EDIT: [moved this discussion to the general steam sale thread]
When I saw the mass of units I about shit a brick! Having the Great Wall helped.
So, having played since Civ5 came out, I think I can give a fairly decent run-down of what you need to progress to each difficulty level.
Settler - You must have basic computer skills, so that you can install Steam, purchase the game, install it, and run it. The AI won't attack you unless you provoke the ever loving shit out of them, and even then, they probably won't have units. You get tons of bonus happiness and resources, and the cost of doing everything is significantly reduced. You can win by just picking buildings and techs at random.
Chieftain/Warlord - You will probably need to build a military unit. Maybe two, if you spawn near a particularly aggressive AI.
Prince - You need to either 1) Have a basic idea of what you're going to focus on; science, culture, military, etc. Or, 2) Build a second, or even a third, city.
King - You're going to need to build cities. You're going to need to know what makes a good city location, and how cultural borders work. You're going to need to know what Happiness is. It'll help immensely if you know what circumstances your Civ excels at. The Mayans are great if you build tons of tiny, worthless cities, and are good at tech victories. The Babylonians are also good at tech victories, but they're better if you build a few very strong cities. The Greeks can go either way on number/size of cities, they have a super strong militaristic early-game, but are better suited to actually winning diplomatically. And so on. These aren't set in stone, to be sure, but they're strong advantages to keep in mind.
Emperor - You're going to need some strategy, and some forethought. At this point, AIs will actually start competing with you for Wonders, they'll be able to keep up with you in tech, and will begin attacking you with sufficient force that you'll need to worry. They'll recognize what victory condition you're going for and attempt to oppose you with reasonable competence. You can even start getting fancy and switching the "focus" of a city, so that it specializes in production, or gold, or something. You don't have to. If you've been micromanaging your city up until this point, know that it's totally not necessary. You can win consistently on King or lower just leaving all your cities on Default.
Immortal - Time to micromanage! You'll need to worry about fiddly things like maximizing Great Person points per turn, balancing Global vs Local Happiness caps, and picking optimal promotion trees for units. At this point, the AI's bonus resources begin to show. They start with multiple cities, have thousands of extra gold, and spew out tons of units at a time. If you don't recognize every advantage, and leverage them all as hard as you can, you will fucking die. This means recognizing some non-intuitive stuff like how you shouldn't ever build workers. Steal them all from city states early-game, because the time you spend building workers means than you won't have enough military to survive all of your neighbors bum-rushing you the instant they find you. Which they will. If there are more than three AIs, don't expect to get any Wonders. Just, don't even bother. Not unless you're Tradition Egypt with Marble.
Deity - It's more or less a puzzle game at this point. If you don't have your every action planned down to the turn, you'll just be farting around with muskets when some non-warmongering Civ sends 40 Gatlings Guns at you. Assuming you survived Alexander's Companion Cavalry rush on turn 20. And then you have to look forward to Babylon or Korea winning a tech victory on the other side of the world circa the 1700s, because the AI has enough bonus money, growth, and happiness to support multiple dozens of 20-30 pop cities in the mid game. Not exaggerating.
http://www.polygon.com/2013/11/25/5144218/civ-5-mod-creates-d-d-world-of-faerun