Caltrops - Sid Meier's Civilization V





	[quote name="Fortinbras "]Pro: For most of the game I was running an economic surplus instead of being constantly bankrupt. Con: The worker auto-AI prioritizes population growth, so as soon as the modern age came around my workers flattened most of my money-making trading posts and converted them into farmland, putting me into a -100 gold PER TURN deficit. Pro: Specialists are based on buildings. Build a bank, you can slot two specialists in it. Build a market, you can slot one. Con: Food seems tight. I'm not seeing the explosive growth I'm used to in a Civ IV game where in less than 100 turns I have a city of 14+. You can't just make a shitload of specialists to make up for lousy resources anymore. Pro: On lower difficulties the AI is not a goddamn son of a bitch who will fuck you in the ass at the first opportunity. The unit-stack-of-death at the border before declaring war is non-existent. If you start prepping for invasion it'll show on your tiles. "Pacts of Secrecy" and "Pacts of Cooperation" remind me of Alpha Centauri diplomacy options as a nice middle ground between WAR/PEACE. Con: Diplomacy is simpler. The AI "YOU NUKED MY FRIEND!111" indicator tooltips are gone, so you can be at a complete loss as to why civilizations get cranky with you other than a blanket "You're George W. Bush". Tech trading is gone. Tech extortion is gone! Trade pacts with other civs are gone. Map exchanges are gone. IT'S 1950 AND I STILL DON'T HAVE A COMPLETE MAP OF THE WORLD. WHAT. THE. FUCK. Some of the crazy conflicts that emerged due to religious/cultural differences are gone. Civs no longer go batshit insane because you exercise free religion or you're a Nazi or you're Jews and they're Muslims. Pro: Cash is no longer tied to research. Tech tree/unit tree simplified. Con: Tech tree is simplified. It's a little weird to advance to the modern age and have my cities bombard enemies with cruise missiles before I've even researched rocketry. Tech trading is gone. Tech extorting is gone. Tech gifting is gone. Pro: The closest thing I can compare the combat system to is Alpha Centauri. You always know the outcome before you engage. There's none of the keyboard-flipping probability what the FUCK moments that happened in Civ IV. Riflemen beat Musketmen. Musketmen beat longswordmen. If you're more than an era behind you have no chance of winning. Ranged units like archers, catapults, and artillery behave a lot like the artillery of Alpha Centauri, only they're capable of destroying units instead of just whittling them down to 1%. And they have HUGE ranges, 2-3 hexes. Cities have their own HP and defenses, no need to garrison anymore, making cities the best place to stick your vulnerable artillery. No bullshit single-turn captures of a city, bring 2-3 units at least if you have a tech advantage. Great Generals give a +25% combat bonus to all units within 2 tiles. Razing a city requires you to squat on it for however many turns the population holds out. I used to use the invade-and-raze strategy to counter the fact I was outnumbered constantly. Sure, I couldn't hold it, but it was a 14+ population city! Fuck you Civ 4 AI! Con: AI seems as dumb as Alpha Centauri sometimes. AI seems to not be able to weigh the consequences of aborting an attack midway adequately, resulting in units moving to my base, getting pelted, then retreating and being pelted further by siege/ranged and being wiped out completely. The AI still loves Medieval unit spam and its still obnoxious, industrial-era tech bonuses + cheap units means they can still fight you to a stalemate through sheer numbers. Naval combat takes way too fucking long between two evenly matched units. Why the fuck does their frigate have 30 strength and mine only has 15? Pro: Happiness is aggregated, instead of based in each city. Unhappiness only causes sluggish economy/industry instead of grinding your cities to a halt and burning them to the ground. Bonus happiness contributes to golden age counter. Golden ages predictable now instead of completely random. City upkeep and inefficiency are gone, removing the penalty to island/ocean nations. Con: Having to build a courthouse in captured cities to cure unhappiness is dumb and unbalanced, making medieval-era captures economically worthless without 25-35 turns of work. CAN'T HURRY PRODUCTION ON COURTHOUSES. Pro: Strategic resources now consume 1 per unit/building. You can only build 1 factory in a city per unit of coal you have. The AI is dumb as rocks on this point but in multiplayer I can imagine the bargaining getting pretty exciting. Being deprived of strategic resources issues a <b>50% combat penalty</b> to whatever unit is built with that resource. Con: Strategic resources now consume 1 per unit/building. Goodbye tank spam. Goodbye nuclear missile spam. Goodbye modern armor spam. Resource placement is bullshit on some maps. I control all of Europe, North Africa, and Western Russia and there's not a single fucking source of oil around me? Pro: Building effects are simplified. +Research, +Production, +Science, or +Econ. Oh and military training centers. Con: Building---uh, I gotta get back to playing it. Sorry. [/quote]