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Old 11-17-2013, 06:38 PM   #151
Talon87
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Also I watched the most recent episode from that Solar Gamer guy you linked. It looks like his game crashed and he has no auto saves. That's too bad, I was so looking forward to seeing him getting his ass handed to him, thinking he could get away with that lazy play on Emperor. He was going for Domination, but it was turn 200something, he still hadn't built his National College, had just gotten Education, and had only killed one civ. By the time he managed to kill everyone on his continent and fix up his happiness, it would be too late and Rome would be way ahead of him in tech. If you're going to neglect science that badly, you better do some REAL work like kill 3 civs in the first 200 turns. Otherwise, you'll be too far behind in tech and will never be able to kill the others in time. If it's turn 300something and you've only conquered half the civs in the game, you need to have a godlike, United States-esque military where you can go halfway around the world if need be and go kick the shit out of anyone you want the moment they begin building spaceship parts. That's the kind of projection power I enjoyed in my Aztec win, and it all comes from prioritizing science.
The last episode I'd seen was actually Episode 06, so that was a slight spoiler ^^; , but meh, whatever: allowed me to skip Episode 07 entirely and the first ten minutes of Episode 08 as well with nothing of value lost. Yeah, not to sound mean-spirited or something, but I'm inclined to agree with you: it would've been nice to have seen his lol-inappropriate level of newbish smugness get curbstomped by the A.I. But if his Brazilian campaign is any indication, the kid does have a remarkable knack for prolonging things -- I get the impression that even if the A.I. had successfully rendered him a non-winner (looking forward to the end of the game), he might've managed to stave off annihilation, existed as a shell of a state, and (naively and desperately ) kept on playing for another ten to twenty videos until finally the game put the last nail in the coffin by awarding one of the other civilizations victory. So in a sense, this was a sort of mixed blessing for all parties involved: he gets to restart at a skill level better suited for him, we get to see him (HOPEFULLY) improving at that skill level (i.e. I'd better not see another 16-hour King campaign -_-; ), and less time is wasted for all than would've been wasted on Emperor.

That stated, I am disappointed in him. It's okay for us to think he needs to go back down to King difficulty; but for him to be pining for it so whinily, it really bothers me. It's like, what? You can't have fun unless you're playing on your widdle Baby Mode like the baby you are? C'mon, dude. You're 20, 21, 22 (something like that; he said it in one of his episodes). You're old enough that you should be a little better of a sport at accepting challenges -- and early defeats! -- in the name of progress. Right now, your Civ V playing sucks. If that's how you like it -- because right now the vast majority of your subscribers are tuning in precisely because they derive pleasure from watching you struggle -- then go ahead, keep it up. But if you're kidding yourself that people tune in to see you kick ass and be a boss, then you should at least turn that joke of a belief into a self-made reality by getting better at the game. Yes, I personally think you need to go back down to King level to accomplish that. (Because, frankly, you're not even a very good King player.) But no, I don't think that it's right that you see it that way. I expect you to be the one who's saying, "No way, Coach! I can handle Emperor! Honest, I can! I'll get tough! I promise!" To see you throwing in the towel so easily, so pitifully, after only four hours in the boxing ring with it ...

Anyway, I don't want to rag on the kid too much. Like I've said before, he seems real nice. And I really do wish him the best. In life, with his YouTube account, with his Civ skills, all of it. I just ... it's frustrating, y'know? To see someone give up this easily at something he professes to be good at. It got so, so annoying hearing him blame his fuck-ups in the Brazilian campaign on the game, but at least there it didn't feel like he was ducking any challenges. On the contrary: despite a horrendous misplay early on that, were it me in his shoes, would've led me to reset the game and try again with a fresh start, he played on! No save state abuse, no excuses: nothing but steel-hard determination to win in spite of everything. That was awesome. That was part of the reason I kept watching him play Brazil. Partly because I didn't think he could do it but wanted to see him prove me wrong -- not only because that would be entertaining for me, but because it would be so, so great for him. Now, with Germany, I'm getting the opposite. While his play wasn't flawless, it was flawless for him. And yet despite this, he's turning tail and running (and blaming it on a corrupted save file, which may or may not be true) and eager to dive back in to what even he has to recognize is too easy of a win.

Spoiler: show
Because let's face it: if he ended up winning as Brazil on King difficulty despite his many, many fuck ups, there's no fucking way he's going to lose on King difficulty now that he's learned his lessons and become a better player, even if only a marginally better one, than he was this summer.
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Old 11-17-2013, 08:28 PM   #152
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Yeah that made me lose a lot of respect for him too, when he was like, "You know what this sucks, I'm playing on King next time, it's just not fun unless I'm completely dominating and way ahead of everyone else." Where's the drama and suspense to see if he can pull out a win? He needs to keep playing on Emperor and learn a hard lesson, it's the only way to improve. Just like when I first went up to Immortal and got wiped out in my first few attempts, then subsequently identified and corrected my errors.
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Old 11-17-2013, 08:30 PM   #153
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WOW, Talon, I think you should actually play the game before you call someone out on playing "baby mode". Besides, Civ isn't the kind of game you can "play" by watching it on Youtube. There isn't a whole lot of story, action, or cutscenes; it's all about micro, which you won't fully experience in a video, especially if it's as bad as you claim it is.
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Old 11-17-2013, 08:31 PM   #154
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I like playing on baby mode because I lose every day in real life just being myself and I want to win at something.
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Old 11-17-2013, 08:44 PM   #155
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WOW, Talon, I think you should actually play the game before you call someone out on playing "baby mode". Besides, Civ isn't the kind of game you can "play" by watching it on Youtube. There isn't a whole lot of story, action, or cutscenes; it's all about micro, which you won't fully experience in a video, especially if it's as bad as you claim it is.
I played Civ 3 on King all the time. I recognize that I am very, very bad at Civ. It's Baby Mode.

(I should point out that when I played on King, I would probably win about 50% of the time without save state abuse and closer to 90% of the time with it. When I'd bump it up to the next higher difficulty, I'd get clobbered before I could get very far out of the gate -- just like what we saw happen here with the Solar Gamer and Germany.)
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Old 11-17-2013, 08:58 PM   #156
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I played Civ 1, 2, and 3 on Chieftan/Warlord AND abused loading the game all the time.

I think the first time I started being ashamed of doing stuff like this is when I saw that Touhou picture of girls saying that only elementary school kids play on easy mode.
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Old 11-17-2013, 09:56 PM   #157
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I DID IT, BOYS. Deity science victory a little after turn 300, proving that Poland CAN into space! (this phrase is a meme, apparently.) It wasn't even close. By the time I launched the spaceship, the others had only built a single spaceship part, the diplo victory leader needed 18 more delegates, and the culture victory contender still needed 50% more influence. There was only one point in the game when I was really scared, that was when an increasingly hostile Sweden started conquering cities that belonged to my friendly Siamese buffer civ and threatened to border me directly. He even parked a huge fleet of ships off my coast at one point and sent me threatening messages. If he had declared war, tore up all my fishing boats and plundered my cargo ships, that would have probably done economic damage too great to come back from. Thankfully, I managed to suck up to him really hard and diffuse the situation. Eventually I bribed another superpower, the Netherlands to go to war with him to keep him occupied while I cruised to a win. I always had a crack team of ranged units at the ready in case of emergency, but otherwise had a very small military and just skillfully manipulated diplomacy to prevent key civs from getting too mad at me.

Going to take a break now, I've been playing this game way too much lately, damn. But I'll be happy to help out anyone looking to improve their play. If I try for a Deity domination win, I'm going to have to play someone crazy like the Mongols and try wiping everyone out with Keshiks.
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Old 11-17-2013, 10:37 PM   #158
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Congratulations! I can't even imagine how hard it must be to win on Deity. It's the sort of thing which, back when the Internet was still young and we didn't even have a computer in my house, I would have chalked up to being a difficulty setting that the programmers created on purpose to be impossibly hard, something that no human can beat because the game just cheats far too much. Of course these days we know within hours of a game's public release whether its most difficult modes are actually beatable by humans or not; and Civilization is no exception, with myriad players who can beat the game on Deity no sweat, many of whom even share their accomplishments on sites like YouTube for all to see. But that still doesn't change the fact that for me myself, Deity is a setting which is so hard, so presently out of reach, that it may as well be impossible. For you to have overcome that obstacle ... WELL DONE!

Oh! Also! I looked up the Civ difficulty levels and, unless things were different in Civ 3, I may have been mistaken about playing on King difficulty. I was under the mistaken impression that King was third from the bottom. I see now that, at least for Civ 5, it's much higher up than that. So what I meant to say earlier was that I could beat the game on the third from the bottom setting 50% of the time w/o save state abuse and 90% w/ it. If that was King in Civ 3, then no harm, no foul. If it wasn't, then whoops, my mistake.
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Old 11-18-2013, 03:05 AM   #159
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King difficulty is okay. In order to survive and prosper on it, you need a good understanding of how the game works, and this can be a feat in itself with all the little rules. Damn, I remember reading the instruction manuals for all the old Civ games cover to cover, and they were novel length. On Emperor you need to start cleaning up your play and understanding certain benchmarks that need to be met, like National College by turn 100. You need to know how important science is in general, which means also getting universities, public schools and research labs ASAP. If you're going for an early domination win, then you need to know which techs to beeline for ASAP, and the tricks you can do to get them quickly. For example: get the tech for composite bows after pre-building 4 archers, and save up enough money to upgrade them all the instant the tech finishes. I wasn't seeing that out of Solar Gamer. He did a slow, plodding invasion of Egypt and was way behind on tech because of it, so I didn't see him winning that game. I feel like Civ 5 difficulties are a notch easier than previous games though, so Civ 5 King = Civ 4 Prince, Civ 5 Diety = Civ 4 Immortal.

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It's the sort of thing which, back when the Internet was still young and we didn't even have a computer in my house, I would have chalked up to being a difficulty setting that the programmers created on purpose to be impossibly hard, something that no human can beat because the game just cheats far too much.
I don't know if you've ever heard of the documentary "The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters" but it's about these dudes playing Donkey Kong and trying to set a world record. A lot of old arcade games have what's called a "kill screen" where the game glitches out after you reach a certain level, because the programmers did not fathom anybody ever making it that far. So, these top players need to weigh the risk vs reward on everything they do, to try and rack up as many points as possible before the kill screen forcibly ends their game. Surviving long enough to reach the kill screen at all is considered to be extremely difficult and can only be pulled off by a few people, and not even on every playthrough.
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Old 11-18-2013, 09:00 AM   #160
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I actually have heard of that documentary as well as, separate from it, those two men. Had forgotten about the kill screen though.

Some of the problems with the Solar Gamer's play that convince me, despite Morg's chastising, that I'd kick his ass include ...
  • using defensive units to attack (e.g. pikemen) and using offensive units to defend (e.g. swordsmen)
  • attacking in the wrong order (e.g. attacking with melee units first and then long-range units rather than the other way around), costing him more melee units than it should
Mistakes like these are one reason I thought King difficulty must surely not be too far from the bottom of the pack. Because after all: if someone who plays as poorly as he does -- even poorer than me, and I play pretty poorly! -- can bumble his way through a game of King, then surely most anyone can. I'm still surprised to hear that King is in the middle of a long list of difficulty levels, but it does help a little, I guess, to learn from you that Civ V's difficulties are all one degree easier than the previous games' difficulties of the same name.
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Old 11-18-2013, 12:21 PM   #161
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I like playing on baby mode because I lose every day in real life just being myself and I want to win at something.
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Old 11-18-2013, 05:52 PM   #162
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Actually, there's no such thing as defensive strength and offensive strength anymore. You're confusing that with Civ 3, and the good ol' phalanx unit that used to be the typical city defender in the old games. Spearmen do bonus damage to mounted units, but are otherwise fine to attack a city with, especially if you don't have iron for swordsmen. Still ... his army was not ideal for a swift and efficient conquest. He had some trebuchets, and siege units just suck in Civ 5 before artillery. They're slow and clunky because of the need to spend a turn setting up, they're fragile, and on top of everything, they don't even do THAT much damage. They definitely need to buff siege units in a patch because they're just not worth building right now, he should have spammed more crossbowmen instead (and gotten them a lot faster).
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Old 11-19-2013, 12:34 AM   #163
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So... I tried my first match on Diety...

how do people do it *whines*

it was a brutal onslaught, they all pretended to be my friends then backstab me, the whole continent warred me, and I was middle of the score board, mainly due to wonders

I really play Civilization casually/sort of role play my nation as it grows through history. Competitively I stink like manure.
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Old 11-19-2013, 02:22 AM   #164
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I'm impressed you managed to build wonders at all on Deity, lol. I didn't get a single one until Hubble Space Telescope, and I even tried really really hard to get Leaning Tower of Pisa.

You can't worry about them too much, the whole challenge of Deity is simply surviving the first 150 turns. The magic number of archers you want to get really quickly is 4. You may need a little more than this depending on how much danger you're in. Certain civs are more aggressive than others. If your neighbour is say, Montezuma, it's only a matter of time before he'll come for you, so be ready. Always keep a very close eye on how much green vs red diplo points all your neighbours have with you. If there's any reds at all, be worried. After that, concentrate on getting National College as soon as possible, then Construction so you can upgrade the archers to composite bows (you may even need to get Construction first depending on the danger level).
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Old 11-19-2013, 02:35 AM   #165
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I think the reason why Civ 5 difficulty levels feel one notch easier than Civ 4 is the new one unit per tile rule. The cheating at high levels is just as severe as it's ever been, but in Civ 4, if the AI sent a giant stack of doom at you, well ... there's not a whole heck of a lot you could do about that except get an equally big stack! One unit per tile makes the AI inherently dumb at warfare, and it allows you to defeat a vastly superior force by tactically outmaneuvering them. The meta in Civ 4 called for a production city dedicated exclusively to churning out highly promoted military units around the clock to help deal with enemy attacks, but in Civ 5, you can get away with building a small force of archers (and equivalent upgrades) and carefully positioning them to shoot down an invading horde.
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Old 02-05-2014, 12:43 AM   #166
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For anyone who's looking to get in on the Civ action!

https://www.humblebundle.com/
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Old 02-07-2014, 10:40 PM   #167
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ahhhh civ III

good times, good times
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Old 04-14-2014, 04:59 PM   #168
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Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth announced, due out in fall 2014

Who is he trying to kid?! Why not just call it Alpha Centauri 2?
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Old 04-14-2014, 05:34 PM   #169
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EA owns the rights to Alpha Centauri, so they can't do a real sequel.

I'm excited for it!
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Old 09-01-2014, 11:40 PM   #170
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http://www.vg247.com/2014/09/02/civi...h-how-to-play/

I like how the article says, "Civilization: Beyond Earth isn’t quite the same as the core Firaxis series" and then proceeds to show a video where the gameplay looks exactly the same as Civ 5 ... but in SPACE!
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Old 09-02-2014, 10:10 AM   #171
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Clearly he meant the core of the series was on Earth and now we're not on Earth.
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Old 10-26-2014, 04:02 AM   #172
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Civilization: Beyond Earth is out. The general consensus seems to be that it's bug ridden like Civ 5 was on release day, feels bland and too similar to Civ 5 (a fear I expressed in a post above after watching a gameplay video of it). You guys are better off waiting for a Steam sale and some patches. Or maybe just Civ 6!
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