Sid Meier's Civilization Series (Main Titles)

I absolutely guarantee that Shadowloo (and any other fictional organization you can imagine) has been made into a civ by someone. Check Steam Workshop.

Note that a lot of mods will require Gods and Kings or Brave New World, so you might as well pick them up even if you got the core game for free.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Already picked those up. Waiting for the download to finish. <cackle> And just for kicks, when I play with my Brotherhood of Nod, I'm going to name my capital "Westwood" and have one of the AI countries be named "Electronic Arts".

... What? I'm itching for some cathartic payback!

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

You can name units, too (when they earn a promotion). Give titles to all of your redshirt squadrons; it's loads of fun!

In terms of fictional civs, I think I had an idea for a Cael civ at one point. Its UA ("Restoration Protocol") involved city capturing (pillaged buildings are immediately replaced; half population loss, no population loss when retaking your own cities).

Mmhmm. That's why I added the 'replace buildings' thing, so it wouldn't be as redundant.

edited 21st Nov '13 10:15:25 AM by Blueeyedrat

@Blueeyedrat: That UA would be obsolete with the latest Brave New World patch, or at least deprecated — high tourism influence on opposing civs negates some or all of the population and building loss and the unrest period when you capture an opponent's city.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Is pillaging buildings on city capture actually a mechanic in the game? My understanding was that those buildings are lost because the AI sells all the buildings in a city that they can, and if possible moves great works out of it right before the city is captured. I don't believe a UA can interact with that. Also, with my current goal to be to win on king difficulty as Ashurbanipal I'm starting to really dislike UA's that only trigger on city capture. It's such a win-more mechanic (letting you win an already-winning game harder, but useless for turning around a game where you are even or lagging behind).

Unrelated: the mod Strange Religions on steam workshop includes Brotherhood of Nod as a possible choice. Names/icons of religions are purely aesthetic though and have no impact on gameplay. It will give all your cities that follow the religion the cool-looking Nod logo, though.

edited 21st Nov '13 10:46:44 AM by mrshine

No, the AI does not sell off buildings before capture. It does try to move Great Works out of cities under threat, I think, but I have never tested that — one would need to place spies in most of a civ's cities prior to capturing any.

The act of capturing a city kills 50% of its population, destroys all military buildings, and causes each other building to have a 75% chance of being destroyed. The city enters unrest for a number of turns equal to its post-capture population. I think those are the numbers, anyway. Having a significant amount of Tourism with the enemy culture reduces the population and building loss rate significantly, to the point where there is no loss at all with a Dominant status.

edited 21st Nov '13 11:47:05 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Interesting, didn't know that.

Does it remove all cultural buildings too? I seem to remember that. Or perhaps not in BNW.

Only the sun has stopped.

I don't recall the exact mechanic. Religious buildings typically stay, but cultural ones may not.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Change of plans: After I go through the tutorial, I'm going to tackle the juicy Madoka Magica, Fate Stay Night, and One Piece civ mods that I've just found. All shall bow to the eutopian Holy Queendom of Madokamiland and its staunch protector the Mage-Knight Order of Saint-Militant Akemi Homura! Behold the glory of King Arturia Pendragon's British Empire! The seas shall tremble in the wake of the Whitebeard Pirates' armadas! Mwahahahahahahah!

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Knock yourself out. I'd think you'd want to play at least a game or two without mods to get a feel for the base mechanics, though. Otherwise it's hard to tell what's balanced and what isn't with respect to the modded content.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

True, true. Did a test run after the tutorial, and apparently I was being a bit too conservative in my approach to the game from the get-go if I wanted to militarily smack down my immediate neighbour civ.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Depends on the difficulty. You have to try fairly hard to lose at the lower ones, but it's still important to stake a territorial claim early. Population is crucial; it drives almost everything else. Let your opponents outgrow you and you are very likely to lose.

edited 22nd Nov '13 6:37:38 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

In fact, its best to have a tiny standing military, then ramp things up when war occurs.

Apocalypse: Dirge Of Swans.

Easier said than done, from my experience.

Status report: In the middle of a game with Arabia, with the AI players being Ottomans, Germany, Austria, Mongolia, Byzantines, Romans, and Russia.

Current time: Turn 200-something, Medieval Era.

Highlights:

• Poor me only managed to come into contact with the Ottomans, Germany, and Austria in the first 50 or so turns, before I had to pull back my scouts due to a Barbarian Encampment closing the only "out" path from the continent that I'm on, and two of the other AI nations effectively blocking me from going back with a Warrior unit or two later via border growth.
• Kept getting frustrated by other nations managing to complete Wonders before I ever had a chance to finish them.
• Around Turn 150-ish, I had my biggest WTF moment in the game: Germany bought a Tile that contained part of a long road between my capital and my second-made city, which I had short-sightedly decided to build rather far from said capital in partly misguided attempt to monopolize the Natural Wonder that I had discovered somewhat close to Germany's own capital (how they didn't discover it first, I have no idea). I think I threw a Cluster F Strike in my head while starting dumbly at the screen as the hefty bonus of the City Connection vaporized in the blink of an eye.
• Tried to see if I can force Germany to cede some of its tiles via war. Apparently it doesn't work that way; I'd have to seize Germany's capital in order to get that tile (along with all of the city's tiles). As I was in no condition to fight a protracted war at the time, I decided to cut my losses and return to the save that I had made just before the declaration of war (the DOW was just a "is it possible to do this at all?" test-run, after all).
• The Ottoman AI, whom I had made a point of cultivating a friendship with, decided that its neighbour Austria was a thorn in its side and wanted me to join it in a war against it (Gee, so you think it's OK to drag me into a war against a distant country, but when I ask if you can join me in a war against Germany, you refuse? Nice friendship we are having). I agreed, but asked for a 10-minute breather to build up my troops. Result: Annexed my very first city, Salzburg — and it was Austria who offered to cede it (along with some other stuff), not me demanding it.
• Apparently, the Romans seized one of the unknown nations' capital; why the game thought that it was OK to identify the Romans for having "the most original capital cities", I don't know.

All in all not a bad game so far. What I do wonder about, however, is whether the timeline is passing too fast; we're already past the 10th century by this point.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Great Generals can conquer tiles, if you happen to get one. It pisses off the AI though, obviously.

Great. Just freaking great. Should've kept that free Great General that I got from the Honor policy tree instead of wasting him on a Citadel in my capital that I've never got to make use of.

Well, at least the road-route problem was easily remedied: Cities can't expand their borders more than three tiles away, and that tile was on the very end of said range, so all I had to do was create on extra roud-route on the next tile.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

City cultural borders max out at a five hex radius, FYI, even though they can only work tiles in a three hex radius.

You should never build a citadel in friendly territory unless you're on the losing end of a war. They are far, far, more powerful when used offensively, particularly against an opponent who is entrenched in good terrain or has wonders/unique abilities that provide combat bonuses within their borders.

Using a Great General to claim tiles only works within one tile of your existing borders, though, so you'd have to be wedged up fairly closely to them for it to work in this manner.

Edit: A unit with the March promotion ensconced in a citadel is almost unstoppable.

edited 26th Nov '13 12:04:47 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

If you just ask another civ to declare war on someone they will almost always refuse unless they really like you or have already denounced the civ you're asking them to attack. However, try making a deal with them, choose "declare war on x" and ask them what they want for it. Then you can haggle them down a bit from whatever number they name. I've had games where my friend was Denmark, and he refused to go to war with me when i asked as a favour, but he agreed quickly to declare war on Turkey when i paid him... 8 gold.

... Yeesh, what a cheapskate. BTW, is there any status higher than "Friendly" for other Civs? City-States have "Allied", for example, and I notice that there's a "Team" mechanic in the game setup options.

Oh yes, I was quite wedged right next to them — probably at the max limit for either of our cities' border growth limits or one hex below it. the AI practically exploded with complaints about me settling right in his backyard, and I told him to shove it where the sun doesn't shine. He... didn't take it well, prompting almost 100 years of hostile relations and repetitive denunciations (didn't DOW me even once, though). Oh, and apparently the AI logic in this hostile state doesn't distinguish between cities made near him and ones made on the side of my capital completely opposite to his whole nation, far away from any border disputes with him, because he immediately complained about settling lands "next to [him]" when I made my third city. Weird.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

City-states have their own unique alliance system. It has nothing to do with the rest of the game. And also kind of implies that they have no agency, since they always favor the civ that gives them more money.

Incidentally, Great Generals building citadels to expand your territory makes somewhat more sense than Great Artists doing it.

Marq, the AI decides what territory it wants within its influence fairly early on, and if you claim any of it, it accuses you of invading right off the bat. It's very possessive of land it considers to belong to it.

"Friendly" is the best relationship indicator that I know of. Usually, it'll be that, Neutral, or Guarded. "Hostile" is when they really don't like you, and I've also seen "Afraid" when my military power vastly exceeds a rival and they've seen me go on the warpath.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Some leaders are deceptive and present themselves as friendly when they're not. Aside from noting which personalities (Napoleon, for example...) tend to be backstabbers, another possible indicator can be if one "ally" offers you slightly less favorable trade deals than the norm.

I tried out a team game once: Team 1, myself (Byzantium) and Rome; Team 2, Carthage and Greece; Team 3, Songhai and the Ottomans; Team 4, the Netherlands and England (naval power showdown, go!).

It was nice to know one nation would never turn on me, and research is shared, but unfortunately my partner got stomped on by Greece/barbarian hordes early on and never recovered to a point they could really help me. The real downside to this mode, I discovered, is that your partner can declare war or sign peace for the team without your consent, which you're forced to adhere to. This has just as much potential to screw things up as a bad defensive pact, and can additionally slow attempts at world domination.

edited 26th Nov '13 3:41:08 PM by montagohalcyon

Only the sun has stopped.

Hence why I like Europa Universalis's warleader system.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Status update

Turn 310-something. On my way to research into the Industrial Era.

Exploratory highlights:

• Finally discovered the second continent, on which the remaining civs were placed.
• Turns out Mongolia was under attack by Rome, and is down to its last city — which, incidentally, was a city-state (La Venta) that they had obviously conquered at some point.
• Meanwhile, it appears that both Rome and Russia are pretty much dominating the island and eyeing each other warily, while Byzantium is doing a bit well by staying out of the two powers' way in its own corner of the continent.

Military highlights: Had 2 wars with Germany; stole their capital and their second city Munich in the first, and seized their new capital and third city Hamburg after razing fourth city Cologne in the second (waged the second war because Germany dared to settle Cologne in a strategic point within my realm).

Diplomatic highlights

• ... I think I stared for a bit when I first saw Russia's ruler Catherine in our first diplomatic communique. And then kept doing so for several of the following diplomatic overtures. Really, just look at her◊; hot and elegant, IMHO. And did I mention that her soft voice is so nice to listen to? Theodora of Byzantium, eat your heart out, for your sultriness didn't elicit this response from me!
• Byzantium, Austria, and Rome denounced me for conquering Germany within the first 5 or so turns of my final blow to Bismarck. Yeah, sure, I'll just denounce you ba— Wait, what? Catherine had a declaratio of friendship with Theodora?! Aw, crap! Relationship with Russia ruined! TT_TT Must repair it ASAP!

... Yeah, I'll admit it: I'm attracted to Civ5!Catherine so much that I want to do everything that I can to keep her on friendly terms. Sue me.

edited 27th Nov '13 1:57:06 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.