Sid Meier's Civilization Series (Main Titles)

The names are meaningless for that purpose. All the civs could have the same city names, civ names, leader names, etc.

What matters is that each has a unique key in the XML the mod uses. Basically, its the modder's choice to overwrite an existing Civ or not. If they do its usually a pain to change it.

Some use a Unique Key and still get rid of a vannila civ in XML. They can get rid of Civs arbitrarily in mods.

edited 21st Aug '14 10:20:22 AM by StephanReiken

What the hell. I've tried to play on Prince but I simply can't. The god-bedamned barbarians are coming out of the woodwork. I'm so close to just turning them off, no matter what they swarm me and noone else en masse. At one point I had archers and brutes stationed everywhere in sight on the continent, and one magically popped into existence in my vinyard past all my soldiers.

It's like constant raging barbarians. A challenge is one thing but this simply isn't fun. I have to 'kill' the average barbarian camp three times because a new one will spawn just as I try to move in.

I also hope in the next game we're allowed to complain at the AI for having too many troops near our borders. Last game Austria swarmed my island with swordsmen and composite bowmen even though we had a pact of friendship. I preemptively declared war to save myself.

And the absurd early unit cost keeps me from having enough people to make sure there aren't barbarians around every single corner. I don't know how I did this in my first game, this is insane.

I'm gonna look up guides....

edited 22nd Aug '14 4:10:05 PM by Blackcoldren

Not dead, just feeling like it.

You need to clear out camps, not just defend borders. I Play In King Difficulty Now With Raging barbarians. They are annoying when they walk in to destroy improvements and I just deal with it, placing archers on luxuries if I need to if I'm low on happyiness. But I don't line more borders with troops

Also make sure your happiness level doesn't drop below -20. At that point barbarians can spawn inside your borders.

On a more personal note, YES! FINALLY! It took like 4 different tries but I finally beat those damn Khajiit (and by extension all other civs I guess) in the Elder Scrolls mod. I had to make sure to not set a single trade route with them the entire game (even when I would get a better deal out of it), prevent them from being friends with any city states, and immediately embargo them with the Elder Council/UN in order to cheese them out of money. I then had to more or less confine them to Elsweyr by settling all around it and fend them off whenever they declared war. Didn't do a whole lot because Elsweyr is loaded with luxery items but hey. The dang cat men still somehow became the (second) most powerful nation in the game but I was still able to squeeze out a diplomatic victory before he got his science victory again.

I'm a happy man.

edited 22nd Aug '14 6:28:22 PM by Spirit

#IceBearForPresident

I might play one more game before diving into mods. Digging through my previous saves, it seems there literally a full huge world game's worth of civs I've never played against. Among others: the Celts, Korea, Venice, the Huns, and Norway(Vikings?)

Might take them on with Japan or the Aztecs.

"But don't give up hope. Everyone is cured sooner or later. In the end we shall shoot you." - O'Brien, 1984

Guides helped. I've been playing this continents plus map as Hannibal's Carthage. Dido's in the game too so it was kind of an odd moment when Carthage sneak attacked Carthage, but Carthage won because Dido tried to attack a fortified jungle city, surrounded by crossbowmen, with longswordsmen.

Not dead, just feeling like it.

The easiest way to handle respawning Barbarians is to keep units all over the place to eliminate fog of war. Camps can't appear anywhere that within your vision, so just keeping a single Warrior on a hill without moving for a thousand years can be quite valuable.

One thing about barbarian camps is most players view them as resources and don't actually want to prevent them from spawning. They do a number of really useful things that a human player is much better equipped to exploit than an AI. One, they give experience to your early units (up to a point, you cant farm XP from barbs forever). Two, they help you farm city-state quests and gain allies. Three, they harass your enemies who often handle barbs more poorly than you and you can liberate captured civilians either as free workers for your own civilization or return them for reputation boosts.

edited 23rd Aug '14 8:10:43 AM by mrshine

I take a scorched-earth policy with them. Annoying little bastards.

As do I. I remember when they were far more devastating.

Man, the AI is just not equipped to deal with Venice, is it? I buy out people's allies and they don't care. I have a couple of city-states in my pocket, and my spies are rigging elections in others.

"But don't give up hope. Everyone is cured sooner or later. In the end we shall shoot you." - O'Brien, 1984

Barbs are a great deal less annoying in this game than they are in Civ IV (though in this game there's no Great Wall to deal with them entirely, which is a tradeoff), and they're very valuable for getting favor from City States without spending money (I consider the "take care of a barbarian camp" mission to be the easiest mission you can get for City State favor, and getting the "defeat an enemy on our borders" bonus ain't half bad either).

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

This guy ends up with 900+ GPT by the Modern Era. He swarms the AI with bought out city states and enough units to drop him down to 400 GPT.

Been playing a game as Morocco, with my two neighbors being Assyria and Korea. Very early on Assyria moved a siege tower close to one of my cities, I declared a preemptive war and destroyed it with two brutes and an archer.

Assyria later called for peace as they had an agreement with Japan to war with Korea. He then became friendly but refused to agree to a declaration of friendship, I assumed he didn't want to annoy Japan.

Suddenly he declared war on me and instantly had 3 siege towers, 2 brutes and a composite bowmen appear around my newest city. He took it in 3 turns, all the while I harassed with chariots.

He razed poor Fes to the ground, I became enraged and proceeded to swarm his cities with chariots and horsemen. I burnt Nimrud down, took Nineveh, and covered Assur in roads and forts before gifting it back to the now in last place Assyrians.

Not dead, just feeling like it.

The Great Wall still pretty well cripples Barbarians anyway; 1 Movement Per turn means even my weakest militias can usually mop them up. Though, it's usually a pretty low priority wonder.

@Mr Shine; Another huge benefit is early Gold. I'm often playing Wide, where this is a huge boon. Especially in games where I mess around as Songhai; Gold then is multiplied significantly and I can start buying units early on with razed camps, giving me a sizable rushing army.

@Blackcauldron, re:Barbs: I often rush Culture and Science to the detriment of my military [I'm used to "Friendly" Multiplayer where Pv P war is seen as a little unsportsmanlike, similar with Diplomatic victory] so I can sympathize with the Barbarian problem. On Prince however, it is rare that any invaders will have the capability to actually capture a city; my response in the worst case is to hole up and build and archer [or a Special Unit if the Civ has one available for that era]. It will delay your economy about 5ish turns usually, but that is rarely fatal and sort of a luck of the draw thing. Assyrians and Huns are a different matter and the bane of my existance when I'm not rushing for Dom myself.

One question for the rest of you lot though; How do you guys really capitalize on Wide Empires? I have a few very niche builds that I can convert towards victory but just as often, I find myself around 1600-1800 with no clear victory path but a fairly sizable empire (with admittedly few wonders). Is this a weakness of my own building? Should I put more effort into Rushing wonders to make Science/Culture viable more early or is there advice you could give there?

edited 24th Aug '14 11:18:45 PM by Fauxlosophe

Mé féin ag daṁsa faoin ngealaċ seanrince gan ċeol leis ach ceol cuisle. DS FC: 4141-3472-4041, feel free to add me.

In IV it prevented barbs from entering your land borders (they could enter by sea, but couldn't drop off units) at all, and was a bit more useful because cities couldn't defend themselves and were One Hit Point Wonders on their own. Plus improvements were wiped out entirely.

If you were good at diplomacy (which wasn't too hard, as unless you were next to the Aztecs or something your closest neighbors tended to be your best friends, and when push comes to shove less cooperate Civs weren't too hard to placate, at least in the early game), this was even more of a blessing than it seemed - as it generally meant you could go through the first few ages with the bare minimum of military production without worry, and since especially Ancient-Medieval Civ is a game of sacrificing building X to build Y, it allowed you more options.

In IV it can give a surprising edge in the earlier game in terms of building important buildings, and especially wonders. In V, it comes later and is less useful in that specific sense (in V it's a lot more useful with certain unit types and/or certain other bonuses, and is a lot more useful in a universal sense).

---

In other news, I was this close to getting a massive Ideology slingshot in my current Mayan game, but it fell apart. I was early to Industrialization, but as luck would have it no part of my pretty sizable lands (or any land around it, which would have at least been alright since I had a Great General in tow) had coal in it at all. Luckily, everybody hated Venice, and I got the invite to join in the 4 vs 1 onslaught. Venice only ever had one city besides it's capital (the AI wasn't doing too well with the whole "Merchant of Venice" thing), which, as luck would have it, had exactly three coal. And the World's Fair was coming. And I was producing creativity like crazy.

The plan went "get city in surrender -> get access to the coal -> buy/produce three factories in quick succession -> get world's fair bonus and legitimate social polity all at once -> plus free ideology tenets, be Order Champion." Even taking into account that I had to play a little speed chess and annex the city instead of puppeting it (and ultimately demand tribute exactly once) for it to work, I actually ended up capable of having the three factories on the turn just before I would have gotten my next Social Policy.

And then the Fair completed literally one turn too earlt, not only giving me double creativity (forcing me to get my policy that turn instead of the next), but my free social polity as well. It was then that I found out that even if you have three factories, the game doesn't give you your ideology until the turn after if you purchased the third one. Curses.

Alas, the price you pay for being a chessmaster. <says the one who is still the most powerful Civ on the planet>

edited 24th Aug '14 11:36:32 PM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

Thinking of going Japan on a Pangaea map. Not sure if I want to go for a conquest victory. I enjoy warfare but I've never actually been one to be extremely militant and wipe out opponents.

"But don't give up hope. Everyone is cured sooner or later. In the end we shall shoot you." - O'Brien, 1984

Due to mods I have America (Washington), America (Lincoln), and America (FDR). I'm very tempted to load them all at once and see them duke it out.

Not dead, just feeling like it.

Lincoln totally has that fight. :p

At one point I thought it'd be a neat idea for someone to do a mod with every US president, with a unique ability/units/buildings for each of them based on their time periods and such.

The random thing that first got me thinking of it was wanting a USA Civ with the Pony Express as a unique Caravan (has combat ability (albeit weak), has to be attacked to be plundered), which is unlikely to be chosen for a general USA Civ as apposed to anything else.

Put then, what would you do with William Henry Harrison? I guess you'd have to dip into his pre-presidential career for inspiration or something.

edited 26th Aug '14 1:41:35 AM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

Loaded up all my modded civs to count them so I could do the Civ Randomizer; 101 civs later I rolled 5 games, here's the results in Civ-Map-Size-Speed-Victory-Modifier order:

Aztecs, Archipelago, Huge, Epic, Science, No Barbarians

Peru, Archipelago, Standard, Marathon, Cultural, No Espionage

Shoshone, Continents, Standard, Quick, Cultural, No Barbarians

Mongolia, Archipelago, Small, Choice, Diplomacy, No Espionage

Japan (Hideki Tojo), Archipelago, Standard, Epic, Diplomacy, One City Challenge

Let it be known, I hate archipelago, this is going to be fun....

On Reddit someone commented how their game had three remaining civilizations, one was about to be crushed and he asked how he could keep peace. A commenter responded by gifting units. Can you even gift units to another civilization?

edited 27th Aug '14 4:05:09 PM by Blackcoldren

Not dead, just feeling like it.

Yep. Mosey into their borders and gift them like you would to a city-state. I'd assume it gives a relationship boost, but I don't know for sure.

In my experience, archipelago games tend to be a lot more peaceful, or at least less hostile. It always seems to go down like this:

• Nation A invades B
• Everyone denounces/attacks A
• C attacks B
• Everyone denounces/attacks A/C
• C and A denounce/attack each other
• Forever.

edited 27th Aug '14 5:55:39 PM by Ringsea

The most edgy person on the Internet.

So far Germany has declared war on me twice yet we remain friends, heck I remain friends with everyone. The only other natural (none payed for) war so far has been Japan against Songhai, which is about as natural as it gets in my games. Catherine is my biggest concern in the way of my Tech victory, she seems to be going for cultural though.

Does Songhai ever do well?

edited 27th Aug '14 6:43:47 PM by Blackcoldren

Not dead, just feeling like it.

I've seen a dominant Songhai a few times, yeah.

Trying the mod that changes the civs names as the game goes on. It has its issues, for instance I was looking through the encyclopedia and I noticed that it listed Enland as 'English Tribe' or some such, so I knew they were in the game.

I've started a game with no victory conditions to see what'd happen. I am and my opponents are: King Pocatello of the Shoshone Kingdom, Ruler Timur of the Timurids, King Louis XIV of the French Kingdom, Despot Oda Nobunaga of the Japanese Despotate, Ruler Hiawatha of the Iroquois, Ruler Gajah Mada of Indonesia, Consul Lincoln of the Union Republic (I was surprised by that one), and Consul Victoria of the British Republic.

There is one more civ on Vicky's continent but it's a ways away from me.

Not dead, just feeling like it.

So I've been getting better over the last few weeks and I decided to list my noobish mistakes.

• Improving each and every single tile in my borders.

• Building all my wonders in a single city.

• Trying to wonderwhore before I have a second city or workers.

• No standing army making everyone think that I'm a pushover, and me constantly being invaded.

• Completely ignoring city states as jokes, only to be blindsided by a hostile one on my way to war.

• Putting manufactories on gems.

• And finally, pointless deforestation/de-jungling of a city that would better with them.

edited 30th Aug '14 12:41:43 AM by Blackcoldren

Not dead, just feeling like it.