Civilization V (part 2)

 Because for some reason I tagged the Civ 5 blog post as a part 1 so here is part 2, the screenshots are from this computer, while that blog was written with the laptop I retired in 2020.

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I played a lot of the Earth-style continent script maps for a while in 2021. Here I am playing the Iroquois in Europe, part of the World Map script.

Me winning as the Austrians on a gigantic map.

The Scramble for Africa scenario. I bagged a few of the easier achievements and one awkward one - having the English explorer and the Belgian explorer within a few tiles of each other. 

I can’t beat the Mongol scenario (yet) despite following some guides to achieve it. There are a pile of achievements that are tied to beating it by certain difficulties but you can get all of them if you beat it on Deity. Deity isn’t as difficult in Civ 5 as it is in 2 or 4 mainly because you as an intelligent unpredictable human can generally outsmart the AI who struggle to manoeuvre their units properly. There is nothing more satisfying in this game than holding back a tide of enemy units with a small number of elite troops with ranged attacks.

I played England a lot for a while because there was an achievement for killing 357 ships as the English. I had plenty of experience and enjoyment sinking barbarian (and other players’) navies all game so was not too fazed by the need to sink so many as the English. Being able to effectively bombard enemy cities and units with the likes of Galleons (ship’s wheel icon above) and then seize them with melee ships like the privateer (skull and crossbones icon) could win games easily.

Rome in the north-eastern USA featuring Claude Debussy.

2008 AD so only <50 turns to go and just absurd military to keep the world cowed.

I played a lot of gigantic maps to test the computer graphics card but often there were vast tracts of the world I never saw.

I have over a hundred units in my empire here. There is an achievement for having over 100 units, 100 great generals and winning the game 100 times. Of those three conditions it would be the 100 great generals that took the longest to pop, believe it or not.

Into the Renaissance is really good too. Here I am playing as the Byzantines. This is probably my first attempt at just winning it but was difficult to hold off the endless Arab assault

Fall of Rome was entertaining - playing as the Vandals and starting in Morocco and proceeding to conquer Rome and Byzantium for the Double KO achievement. Bonus points for taking Rome with a boat. Diary entry: “Nov 13th 2022 - Played loads of Civ 5. Did a few of the Into the Renaissance and Fall of Rome achievements, notably winning, taking Rome with a boat and Constaninople in a double KO with the Vandals.”

Viking Destiny 1066 was entertaining as well. I played it from every angle and beat it on various difficulties to acquire all the achievements. I mainly sleep-walked through on Settler with various civilizations so beating it on Deity was a satisfying challenge. 

Diary entry from 14th Nov 2022: “Monday - chill, loads of Civ 5. Managed to get every 1066 Viking Destiny achievement, as every Norse civ then even did the Deity one as the Normans. Managed to hold on and rely on the AI not being able to manage traffic properly. Did Immortal as well afterward.  100 Generals achievement popped while I was warring in Scotland.” 

November 15th 2022 - Tuesday - “finished off the Norman scenario with Emperor difficulty.” So the ‘win as…’ achievements were any difficulty, but there were specific difficult ones as well e.g. win on Immortal, win on Deity etc.

I briefly tried to beat the Fall of Rome on Deity without losing any cities and it all went to shit.

Returning to the Korea scenario to get the Immortal and Emperor achievements. You can pick any Civ for it and I had already beaten it before in Part 1 as the Chinese so I did it again twice in October 2023. Something about this map I really like, feels more like a board game rather than a computer game. That and just pushing the samurai out of Korea is always satisfying.

Immortal - OneDrive screenshot takes in the achievement popping as opposed to my usual screenshots via Steam.

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What isn’t captured is how I started playing Civ 5 for the first time in September 2019 and have been playing it fairly extensively in various bursts over the last 4+ years. While I largely played as the Shoshone and a few scenarios in the first phase from 2019-2020 I spent a lot of 2021-2022 playing each of the different civilizations to victory (there is an achievement for that). A lot of those were just Future start beatdowns of Venice but still, they count!

Civ 5 last 29 21 20 19		18
general	africa scramble	korea	renaissance	wonders of ancient	mongols	fall o rome	england
1000 temples	rhodes colossus	manchu win settler	win as celts emp	take 3 wonders	mongol win king	keep cities deity	norway
100 great gens	win as boers	win on emperor	eng jeru emp	king	mongol win emperor		denmark
	win as turkey	win on immortal	turks deity istanbul	emperor	mongol win immortal		norman
			win as alohamads	immortal	mongol win deity		emp
			win as russia	deity			immortal
Notes:	Notes:	Notes:	Notes:	Notes:	Notes:	Notes:	deity
grindable, have save file	difficult	3 separate playthroughs; play as china/japan on emperor immortal as I have already done it with deity for them	difficult.	various. save file; deity unlocks all 4	doable?; deity unlocks all 4.	have tried; extremely difficult

These are all of the achievements I have left to do to correct as of 28th October 2023. 18 left out of what, ?

1000 temples unlocking. Chopping 1000 forests, building 1000 roads all were grand and came with time but this one was ridiculous. I checked the XML files and it said I had 950+ built so I loaded up this file I had where I had set it up so I had sold my 10-12 temples and saved right before they were rebuilt so I could just reload it over and over to get it to pop. So even after 4 years and 500+ hours of fairly intense play and maybe building an average of 10 temples per game I was at around 700-800 built and then I used this file to get to 950 or so. Once I realised that in September 2023 I did it a handful of more times and got the trophy. Tedium.

Scramble for Africa - Rhodes Colossus means building a continuous line of railroad from Cairo to Cape Town. Doable apparently but finicky. Winning as the Boers and Turkey both on Deity is apparently very difficult.

Korea - all I have left to do is win as the Manchu which can be done on any difficulty so Settler is the way to go but is a difficult task taking Beijing and Seoul simultaneously. I’ve definitely tried it before and only being able to move 1 square inside Chinese borders due to the Great Wall is tough.

Into the Renaissance - loads of them to get here. I did manage to get England to take Jerusalem by abusing the random script map version of this scenario. 

Wonders of the Ancient World - this is one I haven’t played much other than taking a few handy achievements. Winning on Deity unlocks all achievements to do with difficulty so will attempt that eventually.

Mongols - I mentioned this already and same as above, winning on Deity unlocks all achievements.

Fall of Rome - I also mentioned this - you need to retain all cities on Deity as either of the Romes. Difficult.

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Civ 5 is still great, not as good as 4 but has displaced 2 in my hierarchy of Civ games. I fairly played it to death over the last couple of years so with less than 20 of the 286 achievements to go I can say once again maybe soon I will boot up Civilization 6 and give that a go.

Love/hate #25 Civilization V (part 1)

I've been playing a lot of Civilization V recently. I was aware of it for a long time obviosuly but Civ 4 occupied much of my Civilization experience from roughly 2011 to 2018. I only booted up Civ 5 for the first time properly in September 2019 apparently, which is ridiculously late in the game. Civ 6 is out a few years now and 5 has been out since 2010, with its final DLCs coming out in roughly 2015. Oh well!

It's mostly been Civ 5: BNW. It's difficult to remember my first experiences with Civ 5 back in September 2019 but easy as well due to a common theme: I settled on the Shoshone as my go to civilization and they became my fave by far.

Yep, their capital is Moson Kahni. So lots of playing quite peacefully and being so indisputably powerful through land and tech that I just won naturally. They have an ability I loved in Civ: they started with twice as many tiles pre-bought when you settle a city. Thus your first city has huge potential and is ready to develop quick, with workers. Each city you found can just claim more valuable land than the enemy.

One of the toughest things is the switch from stacks of doom to one unit per tile (1UPT). It takes some getting used to and am honestly still getting around it. No more Waterloos to decide the fate of empires in one turn, no more glorious three pronged advances, no more tactical parties here and there while one big stack does the business. Nope, now its a whole lot of traffic jams. Seriously. It didn't affect me too much in my first playthrough back in 2019 as I played very peacefully. In addition to ending stacks of doom, it pushed the focus away from war. Huge.

The focus now seems to shift more toward diplomatic, science, cultural and if it comes to it, time victories. Conquest/domination by capturing all enemy capitals is less encouraged. Mainly the huge penalty associated with conquering cities. With a global happiness stat instead of by-city as it was in Civ 4,  you need to be just as careful if not more so. In 4 if happiness dropped in a city you could always just whip the population down or hurry a happiness building or whatever. Here it can be fatal empire-wide.

Didn't stop me from killing people!

Irresistable Shoshone. They were almost too good. Haven't played them at all in 2020, opting to play various different civs for experience AND the achievements, of course. The Shoshone get two unique units - a scout that can choose what benefit it gets from tribal huts (sorry, ancient ruins) and a cavalry that was decent but upgraded into really fast tanks.

Haven't seen this guy in a while. Seemed I was always fighting him before. Here he is bowing down to my culture. Way more fun to develop in this game by some margin compared to Civ 4, which was only fun for its challenge. 3 cities to max culture took a long time and care. Here, in 5, it also takes a lot but there are more routes.

Had to start playing a lot of Archipelago maps as the laptop was slowing even in 2019.

Getting Merchants of Venice as the Shoshone. Instead of civics in Civ 4 its all about policies and just like them they are my fave part of Civ 5! I used to always go Liberty but am seeing the benefits of Tradition as I get better and more experienced, but it is generally thought of as more boring and safe. I usually shun Piety but have had very fun games with Honor, killing barbarians for culture and later gold. Later I usually get Patronage to court city states, independent AI players on the map that provide a host of benefits if befriended. Exploration and Aesthetics are good trees too, but Rationalism like Tradition is considered S tier but I find it boring.

Ah, my Venice game. I tried to win a duel versus Germany and lost eventually. Note the smoking ruins of my improvements.

Gods, the citadel creep in the lower left by Germany. Disaster.

Attempts to play differently in 2020.

They did a really good job of replacing the events of Civ 4. I still miss them slightly, but they were a mixed bag. These are more take it or leave it. One replacement is the competition to build the World's Fair, International Games and the International Space Station. Nice rewards if participated in.

Killing spies. Good to see soem things never change.

Interesting ways to measure power and other stats. Like in 2 and 4, it pays to keep a close eye on demographics and these alerts.

I do really like the World Congress. I usually participate and take over as best as I can. Can be a bit annoying when all the good stuff is gone and you just spend your time proposing meaningless stuff. Can be extremely useful if playing more aggressively, I can see that. An embargo on one player you plan on attacking next could be huge.

Love the end of transport ships at last and replacement with embarkment. Makes way more sense. Feel like I saw it a long time ago. Empire Earth?

My Brazil game. Though a culturally strong civ, there's an achievement for going diplomatic. It seems I have 34 votes but need 35. I think this is the game I gave Rio de Janeiro to somebody so they'd vote me over the line on the last turn.

March-April 2020. Trying my hand at the scenarios. Here I am as Japan in the conquest of Korea.

Really cool as you start with a pile of units and Korea is empty. Reminded me of Britannia.

Trying to capture Beijing. They kept wiping out my melee units before I could get them in range. Eventually managed to surround and take it, winning the scenario.

April 12th 2020. I had to play as the Confederacy first. The Union let met sit outside DC and shell it without retaliation.

Played the Chinese side on Deity difficulty. Was never very tough but consistently challenging nonetheless. Lot of this - taking out Japanese embarked units with my navy.

Using my triremes to defend the Chinese coast, running Caravels through embarked units and slowly but surely reconquering Korea for the Koreans.

I managed to hold the line all game, even against this massive Manchurian attack. Liaoyang never fell but Seoul did, sadly, very late in the game. I won anyway!

One of the last scenarios I played for the moment is the Paradise DLC with 4 Polynesian civs vying for control. All you have to do is amass enough cultural policies (3 full trees) to win. The game devolved pretty quickly into just building the Moai improvement everywhere and as many cities as possible.

The almost-full trees.

My fave win in this was being constantly a policy behind the leader until I got the Honor one that lets you get triple culture from killing units. Just killed a load of enemy soldiers in a world war of sorts to win.

Moai everywhere on the coast. I got every achievement in this DLC anyway.

What does the future hold? This scenario, for one. There's also a rake of others I have to give a go. It is a whole new way to play: I tend to like the regular gameplay of Civ4 too much to bother with the scenarios in that. Also, the lure of achievements. Also also, tiring of Civ 5 regular gameplay a bit.

Though it's very good, Civ 5 still outshone by Civ 4. But there is plenty, PLENTY of great new stuff added. I have Civ 6 in my library so will probably end up giving that a go in a few weeks/months.