Civilization V: Gods and Kings - incoming expansion pack.

[Malachi]

Fans of Civilization V have been begging me for an answer to this question for quite some time: will Civilization V get an expansion pack?

Today I am extremely excited to tell you all that yes, it will! Sid Meier's Civilization V: Gods & Kings is currently slated for a late Spring 2012 release.

It will come as no surprise to those of you who are familar with expansion packs for previous Civilization games that Gods & Kings will add more techs, units, buildings, Wonders, and playable Civilizations. But what about the big brand new game elements that will change the way you conquer the world? Let me lay it out for you:

Tons of New Stuff. I know I just mentioned it, but I want to draw attention to just how many new things we've got here: 27 new units, 13 new buildings, 9 new wonders, and 9 new playable civilizations. Among the new civilizations are the Netherlands (William I, Prince of Orange), the Celts (Boudicca), and the Mayans (Pacal the Great).

Religion. That's right; quite possibly the most requested major addition to the game is coming in the Gods & Kings expansion. Using the new "Faith" resource, you'll be able to found your own religion and grow it from a simple Pantheon of the Gods to a world-spanning fully-customized religion.

Reworked Combat System. The expansion has a reworked combat system along with an AI that places more emphasis on balanced army composition. Among the changes to the combat system is the addition of melee naval units, which will force you to really rethink the way you execute your naval assaults.

Enhanced Diplomacy, with Espionage. In addition to being able to establish embassies with your rival civilizations, spies will now be an important part of how you conduct your foreign affairs. Surveilling foreign cities, stealing advanced techs, and garnering influence with city-states are some of the things you'll be able to do with this new powerful mechanic.

New City-States. With religion being added to the game, it only made sense to introduce Religious city-states which will interact with your religion in special ways. In addition, Mercantile city-states will be attractive for those of you who love to grow your civilization's treasury. All city-states will use the greatly expanded quest system, making city-states more dynamic and diplomatic victories more challenging, while decreasing the importance of gold when dealing with city-states.

New Scenarios. Three new scenarios will be coming in Civilization V: Gods & Kings. Experience the fall of Rome, explore the medieval era, and my personal favorite: a unique scenario in a Victorian science-fiction setting.

Linky: http://www.2kgames.com/blog/civiliza...pack-announced

Personally, I'm very excited about this. It seems they're adding A LOT of stuff, especially the things that have been considered "missing" compared to the previous games. I've been playing CIV 5 quite a lot with my RL buddies since I got it at the Christmas Steam sale.

What strikes me as odd are "melee naval units", but this probably refers to some kind of boarding mechanic?

[Cortlendt]

Sigh, I've should have got it on the steam sale...

[Rotlung]

So if I'd waited a little longer...

No, I know I couldn't wait. Quite interesting, I'd love to see how this turns out.

[Octopus Rex]

Looks like a sweet exp pack. Will probably end up getting this. Religion gives the game so much flavour. Not fussed about the scenarios personally as I never play them (I get plenty out of the regular skirmish features really).

I notice they're still improving and re-structuring the AI for combat (as opposed to tweaks) - that's good news of course, but shows how lacking it might have been to begin with.

[Malachi]

Well, as it stands now, the AI can't fight for shit. Just yesterday, I defended a choke point city against an 8 unit medieval era AI controlled army with a single Legion and an Archer.

[the_living_god]

The guys over at Civfanatics have a full roundup of all the information here. A lot of high res screen can be found here (in the spoiler tags).

Well, as it stands now, the AI can't fight for shit. Just yesterday, I defended a choke point city against an 8 unit medieval era AI controlled army with a single Legion and an Archer.

If you think it's bad now, you should have seen it at launch - it's actually significantly improved. I'm glad they're improving it even more though, like you said.

What strikes me as odd are "melee naval units", but this probably refers to some kind of boarding mechanic?

In ancient times, naval combat revolved around ramming into enemy ships with your own, and/or boarding them. The fact that that trireme has a ranged attack in Civ5 is actually historically inaccurate. I would be surprised if there was also a privateer unit added to the game which can steal gold from enemy ports and board enemy ships perhaps.

The new Civilizations (so far confirmed) are:

1. Dutch
2. Celts
3. Byzantines
4. Mayans
5. Carthage

That leaves four, my bet is on:

6. Ethiopia
7. Zulu or Zimbabwe
8. The Hittites or Sumer
9. Majapahit/Srivijaya/Indonesia or the Sioux.

I would have liked to see Portugal (considering their influence on the world and their former huge empire) but it seems there is a city-state named Lisbon in one of the screenshots. Perhaps in a future DLC?

Mali, Khmer and the Holy Roman Empire have been in previous Civ games, but they are kind of ruled out by the presence of the Songhai, Siam and Germany (has the landschnekt).

[Brenil]

3. Byzantines

Sold.

My biggest problem with C5 was that, the AI generally was bad and none of the factions appealed to me. Being able to play as the Byzantines with possible better AI (dubious) makes this pretty much an instant purchase for me.

[cf_nz]

I'm not sure what to think of this. I've played a lot of Civ V and I really enjoy it, though I've not touched it for a few months. Under normal circumstances this would be the spark to rekindle my interest, but I'm left uninterested by the idea of having religion and espionage again. I realise they were popular concepts, particularly religion, I just can't help but wishing there was something a little more original (for want of a better term). My impression is clouded by the fact that I didn't think much of the implementation of espionage in Civ IV.

We'll see if future information closer to release changes my mind. I'm sure I'll pick up the expansion at some point but at this stage it'll be a Steam sale.

[Elerium]

Reworked Combat System. The expansion has a reworked combat system along with an AI that places more emphasis on balanced army composition. Among the changes to the combat system is the addition of melee naval units, which will force you to really rethink the way you execute your naval assaults.

My god, glad to see now they're working on it since er.. Civ 2?

Alpha Centauri's combat system was really good, wonder why they never implemented a similar system to be honest, when Civ 3 came out that combat system was so laughably bad.

Veteran(!) Roman Legionnaires on hills getting slaughtered by Warriors and Mayan javelin throwers, Warriors killing Musketmen, single Hoplite fending off about 10 or so Swordsmen and Barbarian Horsemen (all Civ3), Battleships dying to Phalanx (Civ2):

[Malachi]

Actually, my main beef with the combat system in Civ 5 is only multiplayer oriented. The fact that the person who happens to experience a lag (not a rare thing with the game's horrible networking system) can just lose a major, game-deciding battle because of it is simply the worst fault in the entire game. I hope they introduce some kind of optional seperate turns system or something, when you can just take turns when in combat.

[Integrity]

YES RELIGION IS BACK

Here's to hoping it's just as amazing as I think it is, and that we can name our customized religions. I want my militant Hindu Carthaginians back!

[Weavern]

I was never fond of religion and espionage in 4, so i'm curious as to how this will be implemented. The fact that religion will be more of an additional layer ontop of culture with it's own tab is a positive step. Given you can play the game as atheist is also a good sign, so it is all about how it is implemented and not just the race for the religion and spread it for extra gold that it was in 4.

Espionage seems like a twist as you have 1 spy and you have some sort of macro espionage game.

My biggest glee from this news is that combat health is going from 10 to 100, no longer will archers or barbarians hinder my giant death robots!

[cf_nz]

The financial benefits of religion were great in Civ IV, I always rushed for a religion and spread it far and wide as well.

It's going to be interesting to see what effect religion has on diplomacy, I've read more than one article that suggests it will be factored into what other civs think of you. Whether these are accurate at this stage is debatable of course. IIRC the impact religion had on relationships in Civ IV was one of the reasons it wasn't a feature in Civ V on release.

[Ammon Ra]

oh god oh god oh god! /me gets excited




About damn time i say.

religion was a huge factor in civ4. historically religious leaders put more emphasis on religion than others, so they'd like/hate you more than others if you had the same/different religion. i.e. spain liked you more than, iirc, washington if you had the same religion and hated you more when not. fighting against common enemies also had a lot more benefits to certain leaders.

I can only expect the same situation to apply to the expansion.

this expansion I want. yesterday. >

[Maktaka]

If you're looking for info on how religion and espionage will be implemented, check out the interviews and screenshots, particularly the screenshots showing the religion and espionage selection windows. They are massively enlightening and serve as much better enthusiasm generators than the actual announcement itself. Both look so much better than anything even dreamed of in Civ4, which I think handled both pretty poorly.

[Integrity]

...

Now I agree with Ammon. I want this yesterday.

[Ammon Ra]

delicious screenshots....

[Imperial Honour]

Byzantines and Carthage, well I'm sold. Hopefully either, or both, suit the way I tend to play in Civilization V better then Rome does. More by accident then design I seem to gravitate more towards science and culture rather then military dominance, which basically negates two of Rome's unique advantages so I usually go for Babylon or someone more suited to the Science or Culture approach.

[Nerdfish]

Yes Shinto is in !
I am so ready to troll as Japan

The way of the warrior is the absolute acceptance of donations.

economic buildup into samurai rush could be that much more potent with initiation rite backing it up. Hopefully Shinto have access to it.

oh btw:


Mystic Oriental "Love Consultation" Coming to a city near you

[Mantaray]

im still gonna be japan. units with 1 guy left fighting as if at full strength is genuinely hillarious and overpowered beyond belief.

[Nerdfish]

Heard somewhere that religions can be renamed.
Haruhism and Tohouism will be all the rage in any game where Japan is involved ><

[Rotlung]

Just had a thought - how is religion going to be balanced against a lack of it? I understand it affects how other civilizations perceive yours, but would that be largely positive or negative? If adopting a religion provides a tremendous benefit to little drawback, players who wish to go without it (ie going secular) would find themselves at a disadvantage.

[Maktaka]

Technically, your "religion" doesn't need to actually be one. Pick a symbol you like and name it whatever you want. Call it secularism, pastafarianism, Jedi, voodoo, cultural principles, whatever. There's also a sacrifice of opportunity cost to build the faith-generating buildings instead of a windmill, forge, etc, which is especially relevant in the early portion of the game when religion will actually play a role.

[Langy]

Call it the Cult of Stalin or whatever, maybe? Make the whole 'religion' about revering the Dear Leader, North Korea-style.

[Rotlung]

Fair enough about the opportunity cost bit. Now I'm even more stoked.

[scoiatollo]

http://www.gamestar.de/index.cfm?pid=1589&pk=66445

FINALLY, they have Austria in a Civ game. Luckily I bought it weeks ago and now I can't wait for it to be released. This video has some interesting insights for the new content, it's in English, don't mind the German website it's on

[Cortlendt]

I'm getting it from the local store, since I tend to play some Civ5 from time to time.

[Imperial Honour]

Looking forwards to trying out all the new civilizations, especially the new civilizations with unique traits emphasizing largely under promoted playstyles. Sweden and the Netherlands look like they will promote some interesting playstyles to get the best out of their unique abilities. Going to be hard to choose which civilization I play as first since they all look interesting in their own ways, but I'll probably choose Byzantium first since I've been waiting ages for them to appear in Civilization V. Ethiopia should be an interesting civilization to try out with it's enhanced survival based unique ability, great for those One Settlement challenges where you should almost always have less settlements then your enemies.

[Maktaka]

If you haven't played since the patch last week and aren't getting G&K, it's well worth checking out the improved tactical AI. They're quite nasty about keeping strike teams just out of sight in the fog of war, waiting to assassinate an overextended unit (particularly squishy siege units). Siege units are constantly holed up in cities making your life hard. In general, an invasion is no longer about beating 5-8 turns worth of poorly handled attacks followed by a steam roller through the empire, it's an ever-cautious advancement from city to city. It will be interesting to see the effects of the new naval warfare with this AI.

[Rotlung]

Wow, seriously? About time for me to try this out again. Thanks for the heads-up!

Edit: Interesting that AI fixes weren't mentioned in the changelog though.

[Maktaka]

The changelog seems to have been scrambled out the door amidst the G&K release, as it doesn't mention the fix to Courthouses eliminating per-city happiness for that city, or Scholasticism getting nerfed, or the AI improvement, or the fix to AIs hating you for resurrecting them. The implementation of toggleable animations for SP and MP also had some knock-on effects with gameplay, like you can now queue up attacks while the animations play for those you've already ordered.

[Weavern]

Man did they nerf great artists into the ground. Is there even a use for them anymore?

Finding the new base 100 hp system to be very interesting as it takes into effect the relative strength/era of the unit into combat far more then it did previously. Eg when your modern age units could not eliminate a strength 20 city without taking major damage, you can now walk over cities with significantly less strength, and if you are attacking a completely outdated unit you wont recieve that 1-5/100 damage, maybe 1 or 10 out of 100.

Not too convinced on religion/espionage yet. They way they did religion seems to have been at the expense of culture by ensuring that every other culture building now provides faith instead. It really feels like a lateral augmentation of the policy tree but it will take a bit more time to understand how to fully use it as it is not as straight forward as the policy tree layout is.

[Maktaka]

Having had a chance to play several hours of G&K last night (and staying up way too late in the process), I am thoroughly enjoying the new stuff I've seen thus far.

Religion is most excellent. My game as Songhai started me off much closer to a desert than I thought. And to the southeast? More desert. To the west? Also desert. But by founding a pantheon that gets +1 faith from desert tiles, combined with the new world wonder in the Currency tech (the name escapes me) that gives +1 food, hammer, and gold per desert tile, I've gone from what would probably be a screwed start in the base game to an Islamic cultural powerhouse. Of course, if some other civ had taken the desert faith pantheon belief, I would have still been screwed.

Religion is also a significant investment, especially since you can only have half as many religions as there are civs in the game, so you have to invest early if you want to ensure founding one with your preferred beliefs, or even founding one at all. My efforts in building wonders and buildings of faith torched by scientific endeavors, and I didn't start building Libraries almost until the Renaissance. Were it not for my massive city populations providing a high base science value (go go buffed Tradition giving free Aqueducts) I would have been in real trouble.

Wonders and buildings have been split off into faith-producing structures, with new cultural buildings being added in their stead. For example, the Temple is now a faith building (except for Songhai, where it's also still produces culture, booyah), and the Amphitheater has been added as the second level culture building. Stonehenge is a faith wonder, and the new Terra Cotta Army at the first stage of the Classical Are is the opening culture wonder (which some shmuck on a foreign continent swiped out from under me, the bastard).

City States are friggin' awesome. They give up to three quests, unique to each player, with lengthy but existent time limits before they get tired of waiting and revoke the offer. These can range from produce a great person of type X, to building a particular world wonder, or giving extra influence for gold donations (which actually just returns it to CiV-levels, gold donating is less effective in G&K). They can also be bullied by planting a few units next to them, then ordered to give you money at the expense of influence. Pledging to protect a CS increases the baseline influence with them by 10, which combined with the Patronage policy that increases it by 20, means that the baseline influence with any CS you protect is already at friendship.

In a nice combination of the above, I was able to take the Founder Belief for my religion that gives me +15 baseline influence with CSes which follow my civ's religion, which brings my base influence up to 45 out of the 60 needed to get them as an ally. With the big influence bonus you get for making your religion the dominant one in a CS (you can forcibly spread it to CSes with a missionary without penalty), I've easily pocketed the five adjacent CSes as allies and not had to dump overly much gold into the endeavor.

This all ties into diplomacy too. Civs are VERY eager to get you as a friend now (all three neighbors on my content offered embassies and friendship within 20 turns of meeting them) as you can't form a Research Agreement unless you've made a declaration of friendship. Civs are also willing to bully CSes for cash, even ones you protect and either you let it slide (and lose the protected CS's favor) or take the relationship hit with the civ to keep your protected CSes. Long story short, I kicked Germany's ass because they kept picking on my CSes.

Which leads to combat, which is a good change. I'd say units take about 1-2 extra attacks to bring down now, but in turn healing is less effective, with the Medic promotion only giving 5% HP to adjacent units instead of the previous 10%. A second level of Medic is required to get the full 10% bonus healing. All units get defensive embarking by default, which seems to provide about half the unit's combat strength when they're on water. Unless you're Songhai in which case you get the full combat strength, and free Amphibious for all your units to boot. Which by the way is incredibly awesome, it's like having infantry that can strike with the speed of cavalry(with the embarked speed boost from Astronomy anyway).

I haven't had a chance to really play around with the new naval combat and I've barely gotten into espionage (I hit the Renaissance and got my first spy right before going to bed). It's worth noting that Triremes, Caravels, Ironclads, and Destroyers are all melee ships now and as such can capture cities. Cities are much hardier now however (you'll really want siege units if it's got defensive buildings as they increase the city's HP as well as strength), so even melee ships alone will not win you the day against coastal cities.

@Weavern Only Great Artists can start golden ages now, but GAs provide a culture boost for their duration as well as the usual gold and production buff. Oh, and on the great person topic, you can spend Faith to purchase great people by completing the policy trees in the second row (complete Freedom to buy Great Artists, complete Order to buy Great Engineers), which I'm definitely going to abuse the hell out of in my uber-faithful civ.

[Imperial Honour]

There are a few civilizations with handy unique buildings which produce culture and faith. The Ethiopian UB, which replaces the Monument at the start of the game, also produces faith and culture for example. The Ethiopian UB is quite useful in that regard as you can unlock social policies, grow your city borders, and produce faith early on to select a belief and found a religion. Also, was it possibly Petra Maktaka? That wonder, new to G&K, requires having a city next to a Desert tile and I believe it is unlocked roughly around that time and has roughly similar benefits. I could also be mixing up my wonders though, so I guess we'll find out later.

I have found Spying quite an interesting game mechanic too, which I believe kicks in as soon as anyone reaches the Renaissance. Spies can spy on the plans of other civilizations and inform you of their intentions, steal technology from other civilizations, sniff out other "hostile" spies, rig elections in City States giving you an influence boost, and possibly one or two other interesting useful things. The intelligence updates are a small but quite useful feature. For example, I sent a spy to Austria's capital in one game to steal technology and if my spy in the meantime unveils some interesting information my spy will inform me. One time my spy revealed that Maria Theresa was secretly plotting to start a war with me and invade, well I soon put a stop to that when I exposed her plot and established a formidable defense line on our mutual borders.

So far I have enjoyed Gods & Kings, and I would say it might take a while fully understand and appreciate some of the new gameplay mechanics added by the expansion. So far I have found religion to be a great and useful addition to the game, as long as you can get beneficial beliefs, but there is something to define or augment almost every playing style in my opinion.

[Cortlendt]

It unlocks tomorrow for me. Are you already playing it?

[Maktaka]

Also, was it possibly Petra Maktaka? That wonder, new to G&K, requires having a city next to a Desert tile and I believe it is unlocked roughly around that time and has roughly similar benefits. I could also be mixing up my wonders though, so I guess we'll find out later.

Yes, that was it, Petra. Lovely thing if you've got the desert to take advantage of it.

Also, Gandhi is a right bastard. He was playing the usual pacifist in my game which lead to Germany nearly wiping him out. I decided having India as an ally would be more useful than Germany still existing (plus the aforementioned CS bullying), so when I recaptured India's capital and one of its cities I gifted them back to India so that it would eventually be a viable RA partner. I may not be going for a tech win, but I still want to stay ahead in tech until I finish off these 5 policy trees. So things are going well, Gandhi has his capital back to rebuild, I form a friendship to pave the way for an RA (and keep him on my side), all in all he's getting back up to speed.

And then the bastard forcibly converts my nearby city to Hinduism with a Great Prophet. GPs convert all foreign religious population to their own religion when used, and they can do this four times. Against the AI it'll piss them off royally, but there isn't a specific penalty beyond the diplomatic one. So Gandhi just takes advantage of my open borders with him, waltzes over and converts the whole Islamic population to Hinduism, flipping the city's dominant religion. The GP can do this FOUR TIMES, and my empire was only 8 cities. I can't cancel the open borders without declaring war, I can't stop the GP without declaring war, I'm friends with him and I can't wait for the declaration to expire before the GP has wrecked my religious control, and Gandhi is almost certainly going to follow the roads right back to my main empire with his GP, converting along the way. Screw that.

I declare war to capture and execute the GP (GPs can be captured but they retain their religion, so he would have spread more Hinduism, and I don't need the faith from settling him anymore). With me in the Industrial Era and Gandhi still in Medieval it was no contest, but declaring war on a much loved pacifist that I was friends with (which is a backstab) resulted in a prompt trio of denouncements. In order to keep the warmonger penalty down I didn't finish him off, so there's a fourth. Plus Russia already hates me and has a denouncement on my head, so that's five. The only civ that hasn't denounced me is Japan, the civ with one city right above the now-crippled India in score. Great, I'm friends with the gimp while the entire world is united in its hatred of me all because Gandhi couldn't keep his prophets to himself.

I've got two military CSes gifting me units all game long at this point and I have a full era advantage in tech over everyone but Russia (only a half-era there), but with the sheer number of foes I'm facing this could get dicey, and I still have one and a half policy trees to go as I finish off the industrial era. I may need to bribe the other continent into going at each others' throats to keep them occupied, assuming they hate each other enough to accept a bribe from their most loathed foe.

Just as a note for potential theorycrafting, you CAN stop GPs from converting your faithful population by planting a cheap Inquisitor on a city, which prevents the conversion from being possible, but I didn't have any, and he just would have converted all my CSes instead. Pacifist faith/culture civs just got a great offensive weapon to screw with you if you let them have open borders.


@Cortlendt It's already out in the U.S. Because America. Fuck yeah.

[Cortlendt]

I've never figured out what denouncement actually means.

[Imperial Honour]

I am not sure that Missionaries and Great Prophets are affected by whether you have open borders with someone or not. Before the technology that enables Open Borders I was able to freely move Missionaries and Great Prophets through anyone's borders, and I'm not sure if Open Borders unlocking changes that situation. If I am understanding your situation correctly that is of course. I had Songhai convert my religious holy center to Islam from Christianity in one go, but rather then start a distant war about the matter I just spawned an Inquisitor and flipped Addis Adaba's allegiance back to Christianity. It would seem Inquisitors work for the sake of whatever your national religion is, and not what the religion of the city he spawned in happens to be. Or at least that is what my limited experience with Inquisitors so far would lead me to believe, since I spawned my Inquisitor in Addis Adaba after it was converted to Islam.

[Ammon Ra]

wait what? G&K isn't released yet?

or...god damned staggered release dates :@

Available: 22 June 2012
This game will unlock in approximately 15 hours

[Weavern]

I'll say this but at present it seems like austria has the best racial ability of the new set that I have had the pleasure to deal with. Political marrige is so phenominally effective. Finally a way to gain control of city states without invasion! Just pay some gold and presto it becomes a puppet or city without any of the need to build a court house and any units they have instantly become yours!

The great prophet is basically an inquisitor/missionary in one, he will remove all negative religions when you use him and or spawn your own. Inquisitors as noted will remove any foreign religions. As I have not yet been in a situation where I have not got my own state religion do you gain benefits from someone else's religion?

Petra and some of the faith effects seem to make deserts now a viable settling choice other then "OIL BE HERE" for cities. I'm loving some of the new wonders too like nebehkenezer*sp the 2nd mountain wonder, instantly makes castles beyond awesome.

[Skullcap]

Only a few more hours to waaaiiit, quite looking forward to playing this expansion, it looks to really give what I felt was missing originally from Civ V after playing Civ IV. Could have me playing it as much as I used to play Civ 2.

Think I'll be giving the celts a spin first time around, quite liked the sound of faith being obtainable via killing enemies, which somewhat fits in with the celtic druidic beliefs they had.

Somewhat interested to see what the medievil scenario/mode is like to.

[Maktaka]

I've never figured out what denouncement actually means.

You take a sizeable relationship hit with the civilization denouncing you and if you're an AI, they take a sizeable hit with you. Any civ that is your friend will dislike your denouncer. Civs that denounce the same target get a relationship boost with each other. The primary tool of a denouncement is to draw a line in the sand, declaring that it's you or them. It can rally allies to your side without needing to pay anything.

Denouncing a friend is especially damaging to both parties. On top of the above penalties, the other civs view the denouncER as a traitor for turning on their friend, while they view the denouncEE as untrustorthy for being so bad that their friend denounced them. Be careful befriending a civ that likes to be duplicitous (Russia, Montezuma), the potential denouncement out of friendship can prevent you from getting allies right when the traitor has turned on you.

Denouncing is very much a "look before you leap" situation though. Denounce a civ that you thought was less liked than they are and third parties will denounce you instead of form bonds against you. I'm really regretting denouncing India before declaring war, as I forgot that even if some civs may have had a predatory eye on the weak civ, they weren't going to seek allies against it by denouncing them: they would be entirely unnecessary against India's tiny and outdated military and would just divide up the few pathetic holdings during conquest. I am, however, a juicy target for allying against as I'm strong enough to take on multiple other civs at once so they're inclined to join up against me. Stacking a denouncement on top of declaring war while in friendship really made me look like a tool who deserves to die.

It's worth mentioning when you have a declaration of friendship with a civ, they're willing to overlook quite a bit that you do while friends (warmonger, traitorous denouncements, land coveting, building wonders they were working on) while the DoF is in place. And of course DoF is now required to get a research agreement, which combined with all the new techs to get through slows down teching significantly; 1700-era artillery should be much less common.

[Cortlendt]

Thanks for the clarifications, Maktaka, gonna play the expansion this evening.

[Trizzdog]

So far all I can say is that I've been doing terrible, terrible things with the custom religion names.

[Ammon Ra]

the "they covet land you own" modifier is still retarded imo.

i.e.
Washington starts close to me and i'm focusing on exploration, culture and capitol with one city while washington has 4 and somehow he covets the few hexes i have... dude, there's an entire frikin continent out there, and you desire my few hexes? >:[ (banaans, horses, cotton and fish iirc)

[Maktaka]

It's not surprising actually. Map seeds generally try to make starting locations pretty good spots for cities to help the civ get off the ground (often a nearby or adjacent river, two luxuries, one of them commonly marble). If he's got the spare happiness to expand, your capitol would make a great place to expand into were it not for the whole you being alive thing.

[Skullcap]

Anyone else find it funny that in my game this morning the entire world of nations has denounced greece and declared war on them...but greece happens to be a economical powerhouse in my game >.>

Also, establishing religion early on is made of win, its rather fun watching your own religion take hold of a entire landmass, plus the benefits from the bonuses is quite nice, especially when you can grow a cities population every 3 turns >.>

[Brenil]

So far all I can say is that I've been doing terrible, terrible things with the custom religion names.

I can verify this, as my nation is currently infected with his terrible religion. I have begun a purge with my own inquisitors in an attempt to quell the zealotry that seems to thrive in the inner cities.

[Trizzdog]

Now you know Brenil's pain.

Edit: I've been keeping it up long enough for there to be a tech dividing line...

[Brenil]

Trizz is a perfect example of how certain religious traits can be broken by virtue of randomness being on the side of the natural troll. He picked the religious trait that boosted his faith for every wine under his control. That would normally be fine, except for the fact he started with six wine vineyards near his capital. Since then it has been a rolling ball of his awful religion spreading across the globe like an unstoppable juggernaut.