an opinion of civrev

[MrgameTheory]

Its sad how this game is unacceptable even in the areas it was supposed to be dominate in and that’s the really unfortunate thing about all this. I was really expecting the game to at least have no connection issues and play smoothly, now I see that the same issues that plagued Civ 4 MP are affecting Civ Rev and people new to the franchise can see first hand how minimal attention the Civ Franchise puts towards Multi-players. Keep in mind that Civilization is a game with a majority of funding going towards single player games. Firaxis is notorious for releasing games with lots of MP bugs in it and they simply don't have the motivation to allocate resources towards the MP side of the game, even for a game that was designed to be the best ever MP Civilization game in the first place. Civ fanboys will talk trash to me for saying this, but ultimately they will be the ones complaining the hardest once they see how things really work.......

Here is an R rated article I wrote for the true Civ multiplayer’s at Civplayers.com, I obviously turned it into a G rated article because the moderators will attempt to edit and take down all threads that show with concrete evidence how unbalanced this game is and how damaging the Rome strategy is to the entire game and how “No” other game combination can even complete with it remotely thus turning Civ Rev into a laggy unbalanced game. I can easily get an economics victory between 500 and 1000 ad and ultimately it takes at least 2-3 players sacrificing themselves to postpone the victory a few turns after 1000. Even on Deity its easy to get an economics victory before 1250AD.

Behold the Rundown on Civ Rev:

3) There is only 1 good leader in Civ Rev and that leader is Rome. Rome = Vanilla civ4 Gandhi*2. In Civ Rev in order to make a city you need at least 3 population and 20 hammers to build a settler. When you build it, it will take 2 population away from the city and the settler is born. Rome starts with the Civic/Government named republic which enables you to build a settler for only 1 population. Due to the fact you can hurry anything with gold and the game is packed with lots of huts, Rome starts with an advanced tec called code of laws which can be sold to Ais for 20-40 gold giving even more gold on top of what you get from huts. You can easily expand to 10-20 cities before your opponents can get 3-6. In Civ Rev you get all of your tec for the most part from oceans (95%) and what you do is you expand like crazy and work the oceans with your new cities, because its so difficult to get to the next population and buildings are too expensive in this game you can get 3 3-4 population cities before your opponent can get to a 6 population. Now it’s possible to make it to code of laws in like 30-40 turns but by the time a player does it the game is already over and you have expanded to all the free land and taken all the bonuses that matter. The trick to the strategy is you create 10-20 cities that give you that early tec lead and than you turn them into population factories that only get to 2-3 population and because its easier to go from 2 too 3 population than to go from 5 to 6 population, you can make a new settler and attach that settler to 1 city your trying to get to 31 population and than you build all the important buildings in that 1 31 population city and you don't need any buildings in any other cities....Game, match, point..

4) In Civ Rev you get a bonus for being the first to discover a tec. So if you are the first to discover industrialization you get +5 gold in every city. The goal for the most part is a race to industrialization, plus with the Rome strategy that’s a bonus of 100 gold a turn. Some tecs give free great people, some give units, some give +1 tec in all cities, +1 culture in all cities, +1 gold in all cities, and +1 pop in all cities. By using Rome and getting an early lead on the tecs by expanding and working that ocean tile you can easily tec quickly and grab the early bonuses and spiral out of control making it impossible for your opponents to catch up especially when you have each city getting (+3 culture, +5 gold, +3 hammers, +3 tec, +2 population) on top of whatever else you are getting from the city you are guaranteed to have an advantage your opponent can't catch up too.

5) Without a doubt the easiest victory in the game is economic victory and I can get an economics victory almost every time before 1000 AD which is 60 turns into the game. In Civ Rev the population max is 31 population and you can make a settler in 1 city and transfer that population to another city, with Rome using republic that transfer is 1 for 1, with any other civic/government its 2 for 1. You want to hurry and get the population to 31 because the way Civ Rev works you (((((((Don't suffer from starvation))))))))) so even if your opponent occupies every one of your squares in your city grid you can work inside your city and never lose a single population.... This is how citizens are worked when they are in your city:

1-6 C = 1Hammer
7-11 C = 1 Hammer 1 Tec
12-16 C = 1 Hammer 2 Tec
17-21 C = 1 hammer 3 Tec
22-26 C = 1 hammer 4 tec
27-32 C = 1 hammer 5 Tec
33 C = 1 hammer 6 tec

As you can see they even reward you for not working your actual land. All you build in your cities is ( Market = 2x gold, Bank = 4x gold, Courthouse = work all tiles like a normal Civ 4 city) ((In Civ Rev you can only work the surrounding 8 tiles not the full cross, that’s why you get courthouse in your 31 population city)) Than you get the trade fair in your best tec city and bam you can make 1200 - 2000 gold a turn in 1 city by the time its 40-50 turns into the game. I suggest making 2 31 cities and you should have no problem getting to 20,000 gold before 750AD and than you build the world bank in the best 31 population city and it takes 2-3 turns and game is over before anyone gets tanks. Unlike Civ 4 where you cant generalize a strategy, in Civ rev you can for the most part because every game starts as an epic, and all land is pretty much the same. The only thing that can prevent this strategy from working is a player or 2 starting with shaka and doing “nothing but suiciding” you from the first turn, even than you can eventually take them. But if the entire map teams up on you it’s possible to have the opponents not dumb enough to suicide you to have a chance at winning.

6) If you start the game on a tiny island you instantly lose the game no matter what. There is no way to come back, because you will have 0 goody huts while your opponents are getting lots, plus you can't leave till navigation and it will be too difficult to get to that tec because growth takes too long in Civ Rev. There is no leader even Japan and Spain which are pro water civs will instantly lose. In Civ Rev luck plays a huge factor and determines everything. If you get that lucky great builder you get the East Indian company which makes every ocean square worth 3 tec instead of 2 which pretty much turns your Civ into the equivalent of a Civ 4 leader with financial trait, the difference is that in Civ Rev there are no cottages so all of your tec comes from ocean and that means an overall boost in tec by at least 50% which is the whole game. You are going to want to save your first great sci to buy the industrialization tec to get the +5 gold in each city. attach a great artist to a 31 population city and build the religious buildings in it ( Cathedral and temple) and you can get great people really quick, but with the above strategy its not even needed and you win very quickly even without more great people. Attach great merchants to your cities that are 31 population to get economics victory even faster, you can use a great artist to instantly convert your opponents city you believe has lots of units in it and the city flip kills all of their units instead of moving them.

7) You can adjust a handicap, the lower your handicap the less it costs to build units, buildings, wonders... All pro players play on 20-40% handicap because they want the game to go faster, it just so happens that this makes Rome even better, and even if people played with no handicap Rome is still amazing to a level better than any other civ by a ridiculous amount.

8) In Civ rev you can double move at the end of each turn, but because you cant stack attack you can't manipulate it like Civ 4. You can fill any ship with as many units as possible, but there is no point in hiding great people or units or anything do to the fact that in Civ rev you can't look inside opponents cities unless you have a specific promotion which is hard to get. So people don't know if you have 100 units or 0 in a city. In Civ Rev the legions you get after 2 tecs very early on can kill the tanks you get 30 tecs later. The game is very unbalanced and was created to give an advantage to defenders making the economic victory strategy even better.

9) You can buy units, buildings, and wonders from the beginning of the game without the use of a specific civic/government. There is no Slavery. There is no cultural defense only normal fortified defense, but you can use a spy to disrupt the city to make the units lose their defensive bonus to help in the attack, but it’s still very hard to attack and the attacker almost always has a disadvantage on the attack when attacking a city.

Continued to next post becuase its too long...............

[MrgameTheory]

10) Great people are created from culture points and you have absolutely no control over which one you get, its random all the way.
1) Great builder - build anything in the game instantly including all wonders(Minus victory wonders like the world bank.) or +50% production. ( You will either attach this to the city you are going to build your victory condition in or hurry the East Indian Company.)
2) Great Sci - Instantly learn any tec you are currently researching. or 50% research in a city. Use it to get industrialization instantly
3) Great humanitarian +1 population in each city or 50% population growth, just get the 1 population
4) Great Artist = attach it to a 31 population city or use it to instantly flip a city that you believe has 100000000000000 units in it and it will instantly kill all the units lol.
5) Great Economics dude = put in 31 population city to get economics victory faster.
6) Great General = worthless, you just got friged with a terrible gp.

11) Make sure that you defend your oceans from people trying to board your 31 population cities, but because they can't destroy your cities after they take them over, you can easily buy units once you take a city and take that city back.

12) You can instantly buy roads between any of your cities at anytime. The way cities work is if you have 2 cities that are 10000000000000000000000 tiles apart from each other, but there are no cities touching the road between those cities, besides those 2, you can move between them and all it costs is 1 movement point per city you touch. Also your opponents can use those roads just like you, so if they take a city with units with 2 movements they can instantly use the road to take the city behind that one 10 tiles away (but only if a road is connecting it to the conquered city). Roads are also good to transport settlers to the cities you want to get to 31 population. You can obviously see the pros of 3 movement tanks and how well they can take over an entire civ in a few turns especially since you can combine 3 units at anytime that are the same type of unit to merge them into 1 unit with 3x the strength and defense. In Civ rev units have strength and defense and not just strength like in Civ 4. The strength is the damage you do when you attack, the defense is the damage you do when you are defending. At any time you can flee from an attack you initiated, but its not even worth it because it auto promoted the unit you attacked. There is 1 of 100 loopholes I discovered in the game and the main 1 is in a 2v2 or 1v1v1v1, all you do is find a partner quick and agree to attack each other units and flee giving your units a free 1000000 promotions . Also because the economics victory is soo deadly you can get it before your opponents get tanks.......... Spies may be able to take some gold and when you take a city you lose some gold, but once your 31 population cities are going its over and your making 2500-4000 gold a turn and nothing can stop you especially when you put some spies in that city to defend against their spies taking your great people and all you need to defend are those 1-3 cities with 31 population. After you have made 1-3 31 population cities in republic you switch to democracy which is a 50% gold production/ 50% tec production bonus and your set. Keep the following in mind, that’s 50% production, not just bonus. so if you are working 10 gold pieces now your working 15 with democracy, than you build a bank which gives 4x the gold so that city went from making 40 gold a turn to 60 gold a turn by just switching governments. All the other governments are worthless besides democracy and republic except if you were going a military strategy than communism would be good, but because you can win every game in 50-75 turns with an economics victory there is no point and the game is over before anyone can even get that civic/tec or enough tanks to do anything.

13) In Civ Rev you cant have a straight up 1v1 game or mirror match game, you have practically no control over the options and no control over the map. You always have to play every game with 5 civs so if you want a 1v1 versus a friend its a 1 v 1 v ai v ai v ai so there is always the super luck variable. Plus you sell tecs to the ai and buy tecs from the ai at anytime so there is tec trading and you can spiral out of control getting the right tecs first and selling them to ai making your opponents have no chance to get extra gold and pretty much guaranteed to lose.

14) There are endless amounts of funnel points in the game so as you expand you can get to spots where there is only 1 tiles to pass through and you plant your city on it and road to your back cities and if your opponents attacks you with 100 bomber armies a turn which has for the sake of example 10000000000 strength and you make 100 warriors a turn and rush them up to that front city you can hold that city forever.................................

15) There is currently a glitch in the game that enables someone to build the oxford and it gives you the tec that gives the 1 and only nuke in the game which can kill 1 of your 31 population cities which will take 10-15 turns off your economics victory. For this reason its important to get oxford very fast to prevent this from happening until they fix the bug.

16) That’s all you need to know about Civ Rev, its unbalanced, there is lots of luck involved, there is only 1 great leader, 3 good leaders, but they suck compared to Rome. Also keep in mind that in Civ Rev there are things called Relics which are just super strong treasure huts, 1 gives 3 free tecs, 1 gives 2 great people, 1 gives 400 gold, 1 gives super units. Etc. pretty much whoever discovers navigation first gets a guaranteed 2-3 of the relics on the map which gives a huge advantage. The game is a really reduced version of Civ4 created to bring new players into the franchise that would otherwise get overwhelmed by a version similar to Civ 4 and not want to spend the time to learn a really difficult game. It’s pretty much a game versus yourself once you adopt this strategy, because even if you are the best and you were playing yourself, the first person to get the first 2-3 bonuses get such a huge lead that it keeps multiplying forever and the one who got those bonuses wins for the most part. I have played over 60 multiplayer games and have never lost a single match. Civ Rev is fun to play with your friends that couldn't make it to Civ 4 because it was too intense.........

I just got an economics victory by 500 AD on warlord with a 20% handicap and my record is 850 AD on Deity. So much for all the time and effort that went into the game after those first 25 tecs because after you get the right ones you can turn tec off for the rest of the game.

I have played the full game finally and nothing is being hidden from me. I have all the facts and am making aa determination based on those facts. if you have something to say than atleast make it constructive using logical points and facts from the game. Please don't say anything rude or negative and if you do for any reason disagree with what I have said that is prefectly fine, just please use facts to support your statments.

I don't know how much more I will be playing this game, but if I do take a break I will deffinitly keep up on the patches for the game to see if they will in any way shape or form make it more balanced and fun. I obviously don't believe they will fix the bug and crash issues because they couldn't in Civ 4 so only time will tell on that one.

The question is will this thread be banned or edited? Obviously I have said nothing personally insulting and have only stated facts about the game and strategies used to manipulate the game to make 80% of the game obsolete, but these are pretty game breaking on every respect so 1 of 2 things will happen. Either the admins will allow people to talk trash in here so they have a legitamate excuse to edit or take down this thread even thought they should just be baning the player in the first place or they are going to just close it and delete it with no excuse and break there own rules :D

Which one will it be?

[savoir10]

Yawn. I for one dont care. You dont like the game. We got it. Now go away.

[Altashheth]

1. What happens to your uber strat when you play on warlord or above?

2. What happens to your uber strat when you play against opponents and not cheerleader friends that wont attack you?

3. What happens to your strat when one of your opponents gets a cultural leader and instant flips your second city (cause you are the only one that has expanded so far)?

4. What happens if an opponent plays germany and goes all out offense early on?

5. What happens if your opponent realises your plan, grabs one of your citys and plunders code of laws and races you having spent the first few turns building veteran warriors that are now stationed on the grasslands around your pop factories?

Your strat has so many holes even I can counter half your uberwin arguments and I only have three games under my belt. Rome is strong, rome has a particular expansion str but it is by no means un-reproducable with the other civs.

Basically from what I can read your strat involves you going for a tech/military/cultural dominance whilst pumping all your resources into economic development whilst being in both a rebublic and democracy at the same time, developing production so that you can spam all the wonders with the production that is simultaniously building banks/markets etc.....damn your games buggy

[KrashKrunal]

6) If you start the game on a tiny island you instantly lose the game no matter what. There is no way to come back, because you will have 0 goody huts while your opponents are getting lots, plus you can't leave till navigation and it will be too difficult to get to that tec because growth takes too long in Civ Rev. There is no leader even Japan and Spain which are pro water civs will instantly lose. Playing as the English, and being stranded on an Island, if anything it made me win. I just built the samurai castle in the first 50 turns, managed to get a great general along with barracks. Researched Horseback, built three Horseman, each with different abilities, turned them into an army. Built a GALLEY for which I didn't need any tech what so ever, so the leaving only with Navigation is not true, since almost all the islands are always connected with shallow water ;). With my army, I started dominating the map, eventually having a choice between a cultural victory or a domination victory. So saying you instantly lose is not true at all ;)


I wont bother with your other points since I'm not really a MP player, so I'll let someone else counter them, but from what you've said, your just really going to play as the Romans in Deity, and win via Econ and leave it at that. You've obviously got the game, you've seen the trophy room, aren't you even the least bit interested in getting gold statues of every single civ as well as golden victory condition fulfilled icons under their statues? I certainly am, and for that you'll want to play as each of the civs and go for each of the victory condition ;)

[Edmund0Dantes]

Do you really think people are going to care enougth to read all that??

[dennis580]

If you start the game on a tiny island you instantly lose the game no matter what. There is no way to come back, because you will have 0 goody huts while your opponents are getting lots, plus you can't leave till navigation and it will be too difficult to get to that tec because growth takes too long in Civ Rev. There is no leader even Japan and Spain which are pro water civs will instantly lose

Once again you contradict yourself. The Spanish start the game with Navigation so they can leave right away. The Spanish would have to be considered a great Island Civ.

[Rastak]

Do you really think people are going to care enougth to read all that??

I got through the first sentence is all. I've heard enough drivil in other threads from this kid that reading anymore would have quickly become painful. Do suppose there are actually people on this forum who wasted 20 minutes of their lives to read this manifesto?

[KungFuStu72]

I'm at work so had plenty of spare time to read his manifesto.
Unfortunately my attention span didn't last that long and I had to give up part way through his second post, that wall of text bored me to tears.

He seems to be coming from a specific point of view that an all out win as quickly as possible is the only way to play the game. But that's not how most of us want to play. I play it as I believe Sid intended, picking a different civilization each time, growing your city and slowly spreading out when the time is right. Not breaking the game down to it's mechanics so that you can use some settler spamming exploits to win at all cost.

[Bald Monkey]

He seems to be coming from a specific point of view that an all out win as quickly as possible is the only way to play the game. But that's not how most of us want to play. I play it as I believe Sid intended, picking a different civilization each time, growing your city and slowly spreading out when the time is right. Not breaking the game down to it's mechanics so that you can use some settler spamming exploits to win at all cost.

Can't argue with that, the longer a game takes the better IMO.. :D

I like making precise strikes and keeping the other civ's in check whilst bettering my Civ or should I say the world. ;) Got this game on Friday.. Had to wait for the girlfriend to go to work Saturday but then it was on and I was hooked. :D 6 hours a game is my kind of style.. :o

[KrashKrunal]

Well I must say, that for Deity level, the settler exploit is certainly a good idea, and I'll probably try that myself, however from his own admition it really only works well with one civ - Romans since they get an early lead on things. I'll porbably try it with other civs as well, but that doesn't seem like the best way to go about for a cultural, domination or tech victory so I may pass on this method after a while.

And you guys are absolutely right. I dont want a quick victory, I want them to suffer a slow and humiliating death :D And that's what i essentially do in each game. I make it last as long as it possibly can.

[Numinar]

Mr Game Theory, you are clearly an awesome player. You remind me of those guys in my FPS days who spent half their time constructing awesome macros, or those people who abuse me and call me a scrub if I get put on their team because I am not level 45 in Halo with the ability to headshot people through walls.

Rev is clearly not a serious enough game for you, and if there are as many bugs as you say that stay as unfixed as they did in Civ4, then I will be upset. But surely someone of your calibre should be dedicating oneself to the task of defeating the uber strategy you created?

All that stuff with luck and randomness makes this game sound fun. If I want to play a game that is almost fai, I will play chess. Not even Starcraft is truly balanced. (Hides from the blizzard viral marketing troll squad)

[Remowilliams]

Like others, I'm skeptical about the uberstrat, win every time statements, but the Romans are pretty powerful, I'll grant you that.

The player collusion idea to get uber-promoted units is pretty cheesy. I haven't played MP yet, I'm in America and we don't have it. Seems like it would take precious time off your turn clock, if you're going for eco as fast as possible, you want that time to micro your workers, etc.

I played civ4 almost exclusively single player, because I dislike rushing. I'll probably play a bit more MP in civ rev. We'll see if I rack up an undefeated record with your strat.

[FadingBeano]

I skimmed through it. I can understand some of it. But I think it would be dull to play Rome everytime. I also think its dull to win everytime. So I am just going to play the game.

The only way your strategy will ruin CivRev is if everyone adopts it for online play. Then you would just have 4 Roman civs rushing to economic victory. I highly doubt that is going to happen. And someone will probably figure a counter to it or a better strategy.

Oh yeah, I went and checked out your post over at civplayers.com.

What’s crackin my ******, your hero and friend has returned after a long pilgrimage to the far reaches of Newbgea and I come bearing gifts. Along my journeys I came across a feeble and worthless race of Civers and I decided to conquer them with small pox and Loopholes and pillage their vaults of pleasure.

You got class man. I put the ****** in since I wasn't sure about that word and what people would assume.

Prepare yourselves for everything you need to know about Civ Rev!!!!!

1) I am without question the number 1 Civ Rev player in the world!!!!! Wink

2) But don't worry, that’s not saying much considering the game is overfilled with kids and adults with IQs = MMV's and lestat's love child.

[Boogiums]

Thank you for your opinion MGT. Your insights have proven invaluable. I still look forward to playing the game, once its available in the States.

Again thank you,

Boogiums

[kenjara]

MGT has obviously never played the game at a challenging difficulty level.

[matt1410]

im sure your strategy works and all, and if this game is soooo flawed as you say, why bother spending your money on it at all? stick to some other game and leave those of us who want to play the game the way it was intended be.

[FadingBeano]

im sure your strategy works and all, and if this game is soooo flawed as you say, why bother spending your money on it at all? stick to some other game and leave those of us who want to play the game the way it was intended be.

Because he wants to pillage our vaults of pleasure. :eek:

[mrbanjo]

Read This!!! its everything you need to know about MGT up to this point!!!!

He´s an annoying ****head :rolleyes:

[kurosawasghost]

honestly, you make a FEW points but as others have said there are so many ridiculous holes and counters to your argument that it doesn't even matter.

An AVERAGE player online would see through and cut into most of what yuo are doing (probably on chieftan).

Believe me, play a higher difficulty or play online...there are counters for every strategy in the game if used correctly.

Yeah, economic victory is easy if no one attacks you. So I'll just spam attackers and spies at you and steal gold, demolish buildings, and attack your cities. While you are trying to figure that out I will achieve a cultural victory because you are already on the defense and have no capability to mount an offensive.

There are 4 victory types but many ways to win....lol. I'm sorry you don't like the game, but for the rest of us it is a lot of fun.

[Antwerpo]

I don't think you should call MGT names. I think he has a right to tell us what he thinks of the game. At least he tries to explain what he doesn't like unlike that thread of Disappointed. I really don't feel the need to read all of his text, but it looks like he has done his homework.

I for my part am not so focussed on what's wrong with the game. I focus on to getting as much fun out of the game as I can and it works I think that was the main goal of Ci Rev and they did a good job in that. :p

Thank you MGT for sharing the tip that we always need to eliminate every player in multiplayer who plays as Rome as he or she would get too powerful ;)

[Yonezzz]

Its sad how this game is unacceptable

This is where I stopped reading. First sentence, too!

[LiquidJ]

Umm he just described the rise of the Roman empire. Too bad he didn't spend anytime concentrating on the inevitable fall. As history has shown, you spread yourself around like the OP suggested and eventually your own empire becomes unwieldy and unravels itself.

I would love to play him. Because I would just keep stealing his tech and wonders by taking over his little undefended cities. And as for the 31 pop strat, any civilization can pull this off. IMO, if you are playing MP and the other civilizations knowingly let you get to 31 pop then they deserve to lose.

This is actually my favorite part of Civ: Rev and RTS games. I like taking know-it-alls like this guy and breaking their spirit. I'll have Screenshots of me capturing his Settlers one by one if he can keep his rank high enough.

[KrashKrunal]

I don't think you should call MGT names. I think he has a right to tell us what he thinks of the game. At least he tries to explain what he doesn't like unlike that thread of Disappointed. I really don't feel the need to read all of his text, but it looks like he has done his homework.The problem comes from his constant need to claim that he is the best Civ player in the world. I wouldn't mind his post if he cut down on the arrogance. He may be good, but if your just arrogant, no-ones going to like you or your posts. That is the simple fact of the Interweb.

Also, you haven't even read his full post, trust me, just read his post and you'll see why people are calling him names. Essentially, he's saying that there's one way to win the game... which is fine, but he doesn't acknowledge that other people want to win with the various other civs, and not just with Rome. what he posted was a good strategy, and I'm going to try it myself, however he's made it out to be the only one, and then gloated many times in various threads that he's the best.

Arrogance has a limit, which he has passed. If your good, great for you, we don't care so just keep it to your self.

[Adam And Eve]

What is it with people whining so much o.o?

[FadingBeano]

I don't think you should call MGT names. I think he has a right to tell us what he thinks of the game.

But thats the thing. He HAS told us what he thinks of CivRev... many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many....

times.

Also, you haven't even read his full post, trust me, just read his post and you'll see why people are calling him names.

Or any of his other posts.

[Brookaveli]

I haven't played the full game yet and I appreciate his information, but I hope he is wrong about his strategy being unbeatable. In fact, I hope he puts some time into playing as other Civs and finding strategies that are just as good with them.

Meanwhile, is anyone else curious about what Elizabeth 2K edited in his original post? Hmmmm.

I can't wait for this game to come out. I haven't played Civ for a few years (played Civ 2, AC, and Civ 3) because it takes so much time to play an epic game, so I am happy that we will have a version with better multiplayer where games can be easily completed in 1 day.

[matt1410]

Because he wants to pillage our vaults of pleasure. :eek:

haha, i think thats still illegal in some countries... :D

[kenjara]

I haven't played the full game yet and I appreciate his information, but I hope he is wrong about his strategy being unbeatable. In fact, I hope he puts some time into playing as other Civs and finding strategies that are just as good with them.


Trust me his proposed strategies are only likely work if the game was in his favor and his enemy were either ai or people new to the game. To have just one strategy is a bad idea. To be really good at the game you have to change your tactics as the game changes around you. I have been playing on the highest difficulty and have done better by picking a basic strategy and then adapting as opposed to charging in with the attitude that my initial strategy will work with out any changes to the plan.

[2K Elizabeth]

Meanwhile, is anyone else curious about what Elizabeth 2K edited in his original post? Hmmmm.


I don't want to make my actions seem shady! I changed the title of this thread because is was borderline offensive, and definitely misleading, and then I edited to let people know that he claims he won his Economic Victory by 500 AD with a 20% handicap. He posted that information in a thread (that got closed) yesterday, and I wanted to make sure that the most accurate information comes across. Especially with strategy, embellishment and/or fibbing is not good, as while it makes you look good it won't help other players trying out your tactics, which is what I think in-game discussion is best at helping with!

[Jack D. Estacato]

i'll take that copy of crappy civ rev off your hands if you dont like it that much...

[savoir10]

His strat will only work in single player. It wont in MP because he wont have the time necessary to implement it. Once one player hits end of turn, the clock starts ticking. This game is not for Micro Managers.

However in the Game of the Week it should work to a point, if Rome is the Civ being played. We'll see how good he really is having to play as other civs.

[MrgameTheory]

I love how people forget I was the best in the world, I have trained the current and all the old bests in the world, and my clan just won the Civilization world championship once again 2 weeks ago.

All the comments, all the defense used to defend strategies, its just nonsense to hear it from you people, all of you are incorrect in your assumptions from the attack on my expanded settlers to the fact that I will be undefended. I have slaughtered the Diety difficulty on single player and have won every MP game so far, most of which I ask everyone to team up against me and go 3v1. How many people you think thought my strategies in Civ 4, "Which is 10 times more difficult and indepth as this game" were incorrect? This game is a joke compared to Civ 4 and I broke it down in a week and later you will all come back to these threads and say, OMG, he was soo correct, ohh well, I guess just another thing to add to my selective memory.. lol

Sorry for the break in all your empty trash talking, you may once again resume where you were.

[Disco]

I'm no pro and have only played the civ rev demo (I have played Civ4 single player hundreds of times), but his point #14 I believe is factually wrong:

"14) There are endless amounts of funnel points in the game so as you expand you can get to spots where there is only 1 tiles to pass through and you plant your city on it and road to your back cities and if your opponents attacks you with 100 bomber armies a turn which has for the sake of example 10000000000 strength and you make 100 warriors a turn and rush them up to that front city you can hold that city forever................................. "

During the demo I noticed that when my unit was vastly superior to the defending unit, the defender would run off and my attacking unit would get to attack again. And again. And again. So in fact that level 10000000000 bomber army (only one not even 100) would destroy his 100 warrier units in a single turn. In fact he could run 1000000000000 warrier units in and a single bomber army would destroy them all. I might be wrong but I believe that is how it works.

I also notice many other inconsistencies in the other points he made (such as the first to the 3 mega-goodies will win but since Romans don't start with Navigation they won't be first to those goodies, but yet Romans can't lose. Except if they're on an island or bad luck, etc.). I have no doubt the guy is a great player, but I bet he has closed his mind completely to Civ Rev and just wants to get back to his micromanaging formulaes of Civ4 again that he's perfected.

To me the micromanaging aspects of Civ4 just become too tedious. Not too hard, just too tedious. I might just prefer this Civ Rev. We shall see. My only real complaint is that resources only give bonuses and aren't truely required for producing certain units. I thought that was a fun aspect of Civ4 and I'd go to war over securing the important ones.

[MrgameTheory]

obviously you incorporated the timer into the 100 unit thing and see how its impossible to take the city when you continually move units into the city as your opponent attacks it, ohhhh thats right, you didnt lol

I never said first to the 3 goodies would win, only that whoever gets navigation first will get it, obviously your not even reading what is being written and just think your intelligent and think you have an opinion that is accurate when in reality your way behind. Same goes for the island, especialyl ones that start with only 7 squares. its impossible even for a civ starting with navigation because you lose all the huts and you have no solid base to expand and you end up bringing a settler near another solid civ and they will just take your cities knowing you came from an island.

Once again I could do this to every damn post for people, but its just a huge paste of time so I don't even bother.

I made an example when I first started and I will make an example as I leave.

[kurosawasghost]

why toot your own horn, I don't think it matters how good you are or how many "championships" you and your clan have won...you come off sounding like a jerk and that is why you are getting negative feedback.

Just chill, I'm sorry you don't like the game..,most people here do and don't care about how its not up to your standards.

[MrgameTheory]

i say it so people accept what as being said as accurate and not the opinion of some dude who doesnt know what they are talking about. All you people do is talk about pride and my ego when I only said the things I said to get credability in helping you all out, and instead of accepting the opinion and analyzing the facts, you just fell back in your mind to another persons opinion that doesn't matter. Now you will all suffer from it and have to learn the game the hard way. Nothing wrong with learning it the hard way, but it would of been fun for you guys to get all the facts right away and become perfect Civ Rev players faster so you could enjoy the game too its fullest by utilizing it to come up with new and exciting strategies, instead you guys rejected the knowledge and went on your ignorant ways like you were all gods of knowledge.

[Disco]

"I never said first to the 3 goodies would win, only that whoever gets navigation first will get it, obviously your not even reading what is being written"

Well, lets check what you really said then:

"Also keep in mind that in Civ Rev there are things called Relics which are just super strong treasure huts, 1 gives 3 free tecs, 1 gives 2 great people, 1 gives 400 gold, 1 gives super units. Etc. pretty much whoever discovers navigation first gets a guaranteed 2-3 of the relics on the map which gives a huge advantage"

Apparently you can't even read your own writing. You did in fact say whoever discovers Navigation first (WHICH IS NOT THE ROMANS BY THE WAY) gets a huge advantage. How could this possibly be if the Romans are indestructable? How is it a huge advantage to get Navigation first if that Civ is guaranteed to get crushed by the mighty Romans? Sounds like a big disadvantage to me.

If you wanted your post to be consistent just point out how the Romans are indestructable and leave off the random inconsistencies (hints at counter-strategies in fact if you weren't so blind with hatred for the game) and general complaints about lack of features that have nothing to do with balance. I can point out to at least 8 or so complaints that had nothing to do with balance or glitches.

There are stupid features in Civ4 too (and I am a fan of that one as well). Worrying about starvation in a city just because they don't have a farm within a stones throw? Thats plain unrealistic.

[BOSS NASTi]

This is for Theory:

Bra ima break dis shyt down to you rite quik. Dia ain't civ4, it's civ rev. Every strategy game takes it own amount of skill, strategy, and tactics to be used within the game. So trying to compare a PC game to a Console game really isn't the most intelligent thing to do. Just beacause PC have a lot more space for their games to be created and designed to be more in-depth. But for a console game, this game rapes. I think they did a great job on the game in making it close to perfect.

I do feel you though on the constant re-syncs that i get and my opponet gets a game, it's really ridiculous. I mean I don't get that many, but it still sucks, because then it glitches progress that you've made.

You still have to micro-manage your units in this game as well no matter if it was more sophisticated in the previous civ game. This will set the new bar, because if you believe that this game is so easy compared to civ4, then i'lll assume that a new bar will be set so called by you then. So when everyone's good at the game and they know everything, it will come down to who can out-think, stategize, and play their opponet/s. It just seems that you are looking at this whole picture to simple-minded.

But trust me when I say this bro. That if anyone's guna be setting the bar for competitve play in this game. It's gonna be ME and my boi Comp. I'll run anyone in the 360 demo. You can hit me up anytime. Well be runnin anyone who we come up against 1v1 or 2v2 when the game comes out for us over here in this dooke country.lol.

[FadingBeano]

All you people do is talk about pride and my ego

Wrong. All YOU do is talk about your pride and your ego.

***Edit*** I deleted my post, I don't have the energy anymore. Talking to a brick wall people.

[Dire Wombat]

MGT clearly has a massive ego on him, along with a positively toxic personality (at least online, the internets have a way of bringing out the absolute worst in some people). Friend, you could do well to tone down the condescension and lofty prose ("Pillage their vaults of pleasure?" Really? Danielle Steel, is that you? I didn't know you even played Civ!)

The kicker is that he may well be right. Well, okay, not necessarily about everything, but quite possibly about the notion that massive city sprawl with Rome, followed by mega-city building, essentially constitutes an incontestable "solution" to the game once the proper method is perfected. Admittedly, I haven't pushed the method to its limit, but even from my limited experience I've seen that this achieves any desired result far faster than anything else I've seen or heard of. Is defense an issue? Sure, but not all that much more of an issue than for any other strat, and once your defense is taken care of, this approach still provides the quickest path to victory.

More time with the full game may produce an effective counter, but my guess is that said counter won't hit this strat much harder than it will any other... again, this could be wrong, but I have yet to hear/see anything to convince me otherwise.

Lucky for me this isn't going to be much of an issue in my case. I'm interested in CivRev because I want a Civ-type game that can be played on my couch in the limited bits of time that my life currently affords me for playing games. That means lots of single player for me, and I'll already be making lots of little challenges for myself to keep things interesting (one city, play Gandhi with no attacking allowed, etc.). If this turns out to really be as overpowered as it seems, I can always just opt not to use it. If true, it would still wreak some havoc on the multiplayer scene, though.

(Disclaimer: Just to reiterate, while I tend to agree with MGT that he may have found a serious exploit, I don't in any way condone the abusive tone towards other posters, the dev team, or anyone else)

[FadingBeano]

Well said Dire Wombat.

Its not the complaints against the game that bother people. It is his tone. Yes, he could be right, but what puzzles me is what was he expecting? That we take his insulting tone lying down? That we were to thank him for pointing out a possible exploit while at the same time bashing the dev team and the community?

I don't understand whats so hard about showing us the exploit without the arrogance and boasting.

[BOSS NASTi]

Yo overall can someone give the summary of what mgt said in his 2 post essay please, because I could not for the most part get any of it. But pretty much what I did get out of it is that you win every game by a certain time in the game by following exactly what he did and in turn hoping that everything goes your way all the time. Is this correct? But also if someone could summarize his so called rape strat, that'd be great. Thanx.

[Disco]

Ignoring the boasting, random complaints about features, and asides from his main point, basically he says there is an unbeatable technique (unless you are Gilligan) as follows:

1) Play Rome
2) Spam several small cities along coasts initially for science
3) Drive towards Industrialization while grabbing goodies and mega-goodies and trading science for money to AI's
4) Purchase settlers from said money to start growing your mega-city and build/purchase science/money enhancing buildings in this gonna-be-mega-city
5) Once you're on your way turn all small cities into settler factories and complete the mega city
6) Once industrialization reached turn off science completely to pure gold
7) Some smaller tactics around wonders, buildings, use of great people, etc. to make this more efficient/optimal

It's of course a good strategy that is fairly obvious to most (although he seems to think he invented the mega-city). However, the fact that computer AI's most likely have trouble with it and the noobs in multiplayer right now can't beat it doesn't convince me just yet it is invincible...

[Disco]

Then there is a simple way for the Messiah to still play the game. For some reason he hasn't thought of this: I guess his vision was obsured by the puffs of steam that were coming out of his ears as he was inventing the mega-city.

1) For single player games he can, drum roll please, not choose Rome as his civ! Ta da! The AI's won't be smart enough for this technique even if one chooses Rome so he has nothing to fear, especially since every move he makes is theoretically optimal

2) For multi player games the Messiah says he plays with his friends mostly. Again, drum roll please... They can all choose not to play Rome! Ta da!!!

Your welcome...

[joeymaree]

THE TOP 10 THINGS I GOT OUT OF THAT LONG ARTICLE

1. I win too fast
Take off the damn handicap... a "pro" can play without that

2. Romes to good
Play as someone else...

3. I can get an economic victory before the game even starts!!!
arent there 3 other victory types? how good are you at them?

4. It's not fair when i get put on an island so i quit
umm... try a different strategy... part of the game is being flexible to your surroundings...

5. I can dominate my noob friends!!
find some better friends

6. Its all based off luck!!
isnt life based off luck?

7. Pop factories arent fair but its the only way i can win
yup nuf said

8. Great generals are worthless!!
ya its because youre to dumb to figure out how to use em

9. Oxford is a Glitch!!
or its part of the game???

10. I have no life so i play this game all the time then complain about how easy it is
find $10... find a girl... go on a date... fight for your life back

[JBAdams]

I'm at work so had plenty of spare time to read his manifesto.
Unfortunately my attention span didn't last that long and I had to give up part way through his second post, that wall of text bored me to tears.

He seems to be coming from a specific point of view that an all out win as quickly as possible is the only way to play the game. But that's not how most of us want to play. I play it as I believe Sid intended, picking a different civilization each time, growing your city and slowly spreading out when the time is right. Not breaking the game down to it's mechanics so that you can use some settler spamming exploits to win at all cost.

That's like saying you wish every baseball game was decided in the 9th inning. Why not just make every game 1 inning long? Seriously, it's stupid to be HOSTILE to using STRATEGY in order to WIN a strategy game...

[BOSS NASTi]

OMG!HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, WHERE'S THE PWND SIGN ON THE SMILE BOARD CUZ I CAN'T FIND IT. RAPE. BRA U GO SUPA HARD! DIS SHYT IS FUNNY. My responses are in bold.

THE TOP 10 THINGS I GOT OUT OF THAT LONG ARTICLE

1. I win too fast
Take off the damn handicap... a "pro" can play without that

I'm sorry but this is pretty much the only thing that I just kinda don't agree with you on, but the thing you gott look at is that if everyone runs handi then the game is fair for everyone because everyone is in the same position. Some reasons why I think more people prefer handi when they actually figure out what it does, is because it allows the game to get started off quicker, your building costs are cut in half, and you can produce all units 1/3 times faster. So for me personally since that's all it does, I perfer it because it starts you off to be more efficient.

2. Romes to good
Play as someone else...

3. I can get an economic victory before the game even starts!!!
arent there 3 other victory types? how good are you at them?

4. It's not fair when i get put on an island so i quit
umm... try a different strategy... part of the game is being flexible to your surroundings...

5. I can dominate my noob friends!!
find some better friends

6. Its all based off luck!!
isnt life based off luck?

7. Pop factories arent fair but its the only way i can win
yup nuf said

8. Great generals are worthless!!
ya its because youre to dumb to figure out how to use em

9. Oxford is a Glitch!!
or its part of the game???

10. I have no life so i play this game all the time then complain about how easy it is
find $10... find a girl... go on a date... fight for your life back

Bra I literally laughed at every single one of you points(except for #1). I like #8 and #10 especially, just because for #8, honestly if you think their worthless, you must not really be as good and knowledgable in this game as you claim to be mgt. But bro if you have the demo on 360, I would love to play you and spank dat azz. Or we can wait till the game comes out. It really doesn't matter, but I would really love to show you how bad you are though.

[JBAdams]

MrGameTheory could totally own everyone here in Civ4. He could also probably own us all in the "No Life" category as well.

[Bulldog_PS3]

MGT seems like he is legitimately passionate about Civilization. And his opinions about Civilization Revolution are not so popular, and he should be able express his opinions without 3 pages of flamers "with no life", flaming on. I admit I was pretty harsh on MGT when he first arrived, in the original "Strat loophole" thread, and for that I apologize. I also read his last post on here that was obviously deleted. The guy has been persistent, and consistent, and it obviously pains him to see that this game is in no way a real competitive online strategy game. I myself think it's odd that with all the posts about all the bugs/glitches that there has been no official acknowledgment of these problems, or any news of a patch. Furthermore I find it awfully strange, that no legitimate websites (i.e. IGN or GameSpot) have posted UK reviews of the game. The demo is extremely buggy, I have been playing it every day since it's release. I was hoping the final product that was delayed, and announced over a year ago, would be solid. I guess QA doesn't stand for Quality Assurance anymore.

[2K Elizabeth]

I myself think it's odd that with all the posts about all the bugs/glitches that there has been no official acknowledgment of these problems, or any news of a patch. Furthermore I find it awfully strange, that no legitimate websites (i.e. IGN or GameSpot) have posted UK reviews of the game. The demo is extremely buggy, I have been playing it every day since it's release. I was hoping the final product that was delayed, and announced over a year ago, would be solid. I guess QA doesn't stand for Quality Assurance anymore.

The dev team, me, and the producer are here on a daily basis and are reading everything here -- it's not being lost. There was a title update today, and if more are needed, they will come!

As for US reviews, I do believe they will be coming out around the time of the game's release in the US. the reason you are only seeing European reviews right now is because the game is out over there. Just a couple more weeks.

[kenjara]

I guess QA doesn't stand for Quality Assurance anymore.

Well its sad to see you have come to that conclusion without playing the full game. The demo played pretty fine for me as well. Alot of what MGT says he either does not make sense or is flawed, his claims of unbeatable tactics are very wrong.

[FadingBeano]

The guy has been persistent, and consistent, and it obviously pains him to see that this game is in no way a real competitive online strategy game.

What? pains him? Read some of his unfiltered posts over on Civplayers webpage. From his posts there, it shows he clearly enjoys trying to bring down the game. One of his threads shows him boasting and enjoying ruining the fun of CivRev.

Consistency is good, but not persistency in this situation. He made his (few) valid points but was very rude about it. And then continued over and over again.

Many people have found glitches or problems with the game and more so by the day. But they generally make one polite post. Not 10 rude novels on the same issue.

But to keep the thread on topic, the population factory strategy he came up with is the best strategy.... for the demo. And looks like it will be viable strategy against the AI. I do not know about online.

[2K Elizabeth]

hey guys,

while MGT may have had his problems here, his strategies and loophole discussion was always welcomed. right or wrong, exploit or not, all of that is welcome in this subforum -- that's what it's here for! i want people to talk about what they think can and can't be done in game, and the best ways to go about it.

please try and keep your conversations polite, and don't attack each other. differing opinions are good things, and what makes a game like this awesome.

[Sigmakan]

No doubt MGT knows his stuff. To try and argue that would be silly. Personally I believe him that hes one of the best Civ players, but many of his posts were written in a very destructive and condescending tone. Yes, many of the people on these forums are noobs, but instead of insulting them and telling them how they need him he should've tried to help them and breed more skill into the Civ community. He always claimed that he tried to help show people the tricks, but it was very hard to tell when the info was buried in a pile of condescending snide remarks.

[Bulldog_PS3]

The dev team, me, and the producer are here on a daily basis and are reading everything here -- it's not being lost. There was a title update today, and if more are needed, they will come!

As for US reviews, I do believe they will be coming out around the time of the game's release in the US. the reason you are only seeing European reviews right now is because the game is out over there. Just a couple more weeks.

I said UK reviews not US. IGN always posts their UK and AU reviews separate from US, and there are none. I know those guys actually play games longer than 30 minutes before writing a review.

[2K Elizabeth]

I said UK reviews not US. IGN always posts their UK and AU reviews separate from US, and there are none. I know those guys actually play games longer than 30 minutes before writing a review.

i don't know the dates of all the reviews, i wouldn't pretend to, but i asked my PR guy and he said they are coming. i understand completely wanting to wait until you read the reviews you trust.

[phr0ze]

I have been playing CIV since version 1. But I play casually so to MGT I must be NOOB. Thats fine. However I did read his post. It is good.

If the game can be won with a single strategy, and it will take some insane amount of resources to stop the strategy, then the game is broken. That's my opinion because I know all the other multiplayer games I've ever played, there are always a group using cheats and exploits.

Many didn't read and suggest he tries multiplayer. He says he did and he has never lost. He says he has all other players team up against him and he still wins.

I'm going to try this tonight in the demo and see how it goes. I want to see how easy this is.

Anyways. Since I believe MGT, I believe the game is broken. But no, I won't stop playing and I won't go online and play the same strategy 60 times over. How boring. I think that is MGT's flaw.

[Mike]

Ph0ze can you tell me where you played mrgametheory? I'm trying to find/play him and he's not on any leaderboards for game of the week or ranked matches and so I'm doubting he played ranked. But you said you played him.

[blackegull]

so like whats a tec

[phr0ze]

Sorry Mike. I never played MGT, nor do I know him. I re-read my post and I don't even see how I inferred that.

All I was trying to get across is his 'strategy' seems valid and the game seems broken because of that. I personnally would not play the strategy online, but I can see it ruining online play if even a small percentage do use it.

At what point does strategy become an exploit? That is a tough one. To me it seems they should just limit the amount of settlers that can be added to a single city to just one or two.

He also makes a point about how hard it can be to grow a city beyond an initial level. This should be fixed too.

[phr0ze]

so like whats a tec

A technology that you research or depending on how it's used it could be a science production in a city.

[MorteEterna]

I have read your two firsts posts, but i haven't read all this thread. I don't know if you remember me or not, whatever i have play versus you sometimes, it was difficult to understand how you could do somethings. Whatever i think it isn't so easy to win in about 60 turns. Someone could attack you when you are going to settle more cities. If you have only 2-3 cities for example when you are going to settle, and he attacks you with 2 armies of horsemen, it's difficult to settle more, and whatever you can't build troops to kill his armies very fast. If he is a neaghbour it is more difficult, because if he is 10-15 tiles from you and he take one of your city, he could road with one of his city. If you take back you city, he has roads to your city. You could attack, yes, but if he continue to block you it's more difficult. Then, while you are building defends and he has 1 army of legions and 2 armies of horsemen (for example), he could block you with them troops while he is building some galleys fast (using gold or cities with 3 people). If he blocks you on the sea and on your land, you have only 3-4 cities. He can continue to settle while you are blocked. When you kill his troops or galleys you will be maybe not so advanced. If you are playing one game as this, or about this i don't know how you'll win. Whatever it's the same, you can't build troops while you are going to settle, it's difficult to do all things maybe. And when 2 civs declare war to you and block you it's difficult, too. I have just tried it on difficult Emperor and i won on 1800 A.D. because i was blocked on a penisula. Rome was on the border and other cities only left of rome.
I don't know if you can understand it. Whatever in my opinion you always can't win using this strategy

[Schuesseled]

obviously you incorporated the timer into the 100 unit thing and see how its impossible to take the city when you continually move units into the city as your opponent attacks it, ohhhh thats right, you didnt lol

I never said first to the 3 goodies would win, only that whoever gets navigation first will get it, obviously your not even reading what is being written and just think your intelligent and think you have an opinion that is accurate when in reality your way behind. Same goes for the island, especialyl ones that start with only 7 squares. its impossible even for a civ starting with navigation because you lose all the huts and you have no solid base to expand and you end up bringing a settler near another solid civ and they will just take your cities knowing you came from an island.

Once again I could do this to every damn post for people, but its just a huge paste of time so I don't even bother.

I made an example when I first started and I will make an example as I leave.


wait let me get this straight, whoever gets navigation wins, and romans always win. So what about the spanish, they can't win at the same time as the romans.

[eireksten]

OK, you're quite a gamer geek and all that, I'll give you that. I won't even question that the strategy of yours is pretty awesome. I'll even assume that you are correct in that it wins every time.

But does this ruin the game? Perhaps for yourself and the others who are using the strategy. If the only thing that matters is winning every single time, and because of that you'll be playing the same way time after time, I'm sure that it gets boring after a while (if not, the game wouldn't be so crappy after all, would it).

Anyway, the vast majority of MP players aren't that hardcore (me being one of those). Most will probably not even be aware of this awesome strategy. What hopefully will save my gaming experience, is that I won't get matched up against people from your bunch (I'm guessing you'll outrank me). In that way I'll still be able to enjoy a multiplayer game. If I'm right in assuming that most gamers are closer to my league than yours, CivRev will still appear to give a fun and enjoyable multiplayer experience. I haven't tried MP yet, but I'm sure you're more picky than me about lagging as well (especially since I've never been bothered by that in Civ4 either) :)

That being said, I'll probably try the strategy in a couple of games.

(Notice that I didn't comment on your arrogant, "I'm the best" attitude ;) )

[TheMystic]

I just played a full game as the Romans on King difficulty. I agree that they do have extreme advantages with Republic early if they're left alone and have room to expand, and with their half priced wonders which makes it extremely easy to build them quickly. I do not comprehend how you claim you can get an econ victory prior to 1000AD though.

When you're blazing through 100 years at a time, then 50 years, even with a ton of cities, you're still going to be limited by your rate of research, and your gold income rate. I could have beaten the game around 1680AD or so, but no where near as quickly as you stated.

It's hard for me to decide right now if I think this is something that needs to be "fixed", or if it's ok as it is. If a Roman player has room to grow, he really can boom with a ton of cities. It'd be such a big chore for someone to take them out once they get going, and their rate of military generation with all their cities should they decide to push back would be very difficult to deal with. It's almost like the Mongols with their barb camp takeovers, but worse since they're actually not limited to barb camps. They can just city spam to death on their own terms, and rushing out settlers doesn't cost much at all.

This definitely needs more testing though. I'd hate to see online get dominated by Roman players.

[Remowilliams]

I just played a full game as the Romans on King difficulty. I agree that they do have extreme advantages with Republic early if they're left alone and have room to expand, and with their half priced wonders which makes it extremely easy to build them quickly. I do not comprehend how you claim you can get an econ victory prior to 1000AD though.


It's better than a claim. I've gotten a bunch of econ wins before 1000AD. I'm not nearly as good as MrGameTheory, and I think he's got some more tricks up his sleeve, but I've gotten as early as 900AD. I wrote a walkthrough on civfanatics, which you can find in the strategy section, where I got a win in 1175AD, and I've gotten better since then.

The walkthrough is out of date because the demo map changes every week, but the strategies in the walkthrough are fairly sound.

I did that with just 3 cities. If you build 5-6, and do some other tricks, and get lucky with a +50%GPT great person, and some other things go your way, a victory by 400ad is possible (and probably even before that).

Here is my old walkthrough, I plan to post a new guide, but perhaps not a walkthrough, because it gets obsoleted every Sunday.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=278670

[LiquidJ]

I just played a full game as the Romans on King difficulty. I agree that they do have extreme advantages with Republic early if they're left alone and have room to expand, and with their half priced wonders which makes it extremely easy to build them quickly. I do not comprehend how you claim you can get an econ victory prior to 1000AD though.

When you're blazing through 100 years at a time, then 50 years, even with a ton of cities, you're still going to be limited by your rate of research, and your gold income rate. I could have beaten the game around 1680AD or so, but no where near as quickly as you stated.

It's hard for me to decide right now if I think this is something that needs to be "fixed", or if it's ok as it is. If a Roman player has room to grow, he really can boom with a ton of cities. It'd be such a big chore for someone to take them out once they get going, and their rate of military generation with all their cities should they decide to push back would be very difficult to deal with. It's almost like the Mongols with their barb camp takeovers, but worse since they're actually not limited to barb camps. They can just city spam to death on their own terms, and rushing out settlers doesn't cost much at all.

This definitely needs more testing though. I'd hate to see online get dominated by Roman players.

Still waiting for US release :mad: , so correct me if I'm wrong.

But don't the map sizes account for this? I imagine that the room needed to grow would almost guarantee that the Roman civilization is going to encounter at least one other nation before they get the benefits from having all of those cities. And if you are that nation, then you know what to do...

- Get some help.
- Make sure those cities can't grow.
- Don't turtle

[Remowilliams]

Still waiting for US release :mad: , so correct me if I'm wrong.

But don't the map sizes account for this? I imagine that the room needed to grow would almost guarantee that the Roman civilization is going to encounter at least one other nation before they get the benefits from having all of those cities. And if you are that nation, then you know what to do...

- Get some help.
- Make sure those cities can't grow.
- Don't turtle

Well, as soon as someone beats MrGameTheory, we'll all have our answer as to what the strategy is.

I expect some nerfing to happen. He may be condescending, and so forth, but he knows his stuff, and 2K is not afraid to do some creative nerfing, as we saw with civ4.

[Killer of Hopes]

MGT does know how to play, but he is an overly competitive jerk and very... very arrogant.

His strat does work in single player and in theory, but in multiplayer, the Zulu could easily defeat it. How? Rush. Simple as that.

[KurtG85]

I have been a defender of civ: rev against more illegitimate, idiotic arguments in threads about "why this game sucks" than anyone else I have seen on this board. However, while I have no idea how arrogant the original poster may or may not be in real life, outside of a few things in his original post that I don't agree on he makes a lot of very good points that I have noticed as being major issues myself. He is also exactly right regarding the huge amount of close minded, defensive, un-contributory, pointlessly rude responses received in response to his post (for the most part, outside of a few respectful people who actually contributed worthwhile thoughts). Despite if you thought he was a bit overly dramatic or harshly condescending at some points in his post (which at a couple points I agree with) most of you all didn't have any intelligent debate to counter with and just resulted to substance-less responses (you know who you are if you actually contributed an argument rather than a childish insult). The fact remains this post has 800% more intelligent, debatable criticisms than any other 'heres why the game sucks' post I have ever seen on this board. Don't be emotional babies who can't even read through a post fully. Instead address his arguments (as well as any other comments you took to be arrogant or insulting in some passive way; which there were a few of, IMO) directly and intelligently, but don't just clog the thread with hate.

I'll number some of my thoughts about the original post.

1. I have seen only EXTREMELY minimal lag on my well over 60 hours on the demo on xbox. I have been DC'd/frozen maybe about 3 times total which is well under the average for any other game I have ever played in that same amount of time.

2. You're absolutely right about Rome being way too overpowered, IMO. It doesn't just help economic victory, it helps every other kind as well as you are able to not only expand twice (probably more than twice) as fast as other civs but you have twice as much production ability for mil. units, science, gold etc., which does very rapidly snowball if the other civ is not using the same strategy.
A strategy game is all about balance, meaning their are many alternate but equally viable paths to victory. Thats what makes great strategy games, strategy/action games, and strategy/anything-else games fun. When one strategy is massively dominant, it sucks much of the variety and replay-ability out of the game as well as its fun. I have not lost one of probably over a hundred games in the demo while playing as Rome. I win by an insane margin every time using the mega city strategy (yes I have been attempted to be mil. rushed many times) and frankly I am pretty bored of the game at this point because of it. I honestly hope they find some way to fix this because I don't think I will be buying the full game at this point because of it. I don't want to play a game where the only reasonably viable strategy for victory is the mega city strat as the romans. Also, I am not that experienced with it but the culture victory seems to be incredibly more difficult to acheive than the economic victory, making it pointless to mark it as your starting goal. I could be wrong on this but the econ victory seems to just be so advantageous in not only speed but also the ability to save your but very easily if you get mil. rushed because you can buy 10 units in one turn very easily to defend yourself. You also can buy every wonder very cheaply because of the half cost wonder roman benefit. The half cost road benefit for romans also makes the mega city strat twice as easy, four times as easy when you count in the immediate republic perk they get.

3. I can't really respond to civ 4 comparisons because I have only played civ 2, for about 10 years.

4. If you build a galley or galleon they have militia men which auto have the scout ability which lets you preview an attack/see if there is a unit in that city. If you talk to leaders they will usually tell you how many units are in a certain city/s which in many circumstances is much easier and even more advantageous than trying to get a spy across the map to scout how many units there are in a city like in civ 2. This does balance out the inability to scout a city with a spy to a large extent.

5. I also think the random great people thing is a bit foolish in terms of game design as 100 gold to the treasury, all 2 warrior units upgraded to veterans, and plus 50% to culture are all very unbalanced (refering to a early game situation) compared to an instant wonder which gives you exactly the huge bonus you choose (great builder).

6. I also agree with the unbalance/ over-advantage of democracy compared to other governments.

7. I think another poster shot down, no pun intended, your excessive units spammed to the funnel point issue. Then theres always the possibility of a surprise beach landing at somewhere else besides that funnel point.

8. What are you talking about a glitch that allows you to get oxford and unlock atomic theory? Thats the function of oxford: it unlocks a future tech. Are you saying that theres a glitch where someone can actually choose to unlock atomic theory instead of having it be random? That would be different of course.

9. I also agree about the stupid A.I and the exploitive nature of being lucky enough to make a ton of gold off of them by starting out next to them.

10. You are also right about being massively disadvantaged if you start on a small island.

11. I also don't think roads should be 0 movement points.

12. I don't concede that the roman mega city strat is invincible. It is just so over dominant that it really cuts down on the varied strategies that otherwise could be possible which are a huge part of what make civ games so fun.

[PrivateJohn]

I didn't really finish reading what you wrote but i do agree Luck play a big role in the game.

[Hodory]

im sure your strategy works and all, and if this game is soooo flawed as you say, why bother spending your money on it at all? stick to some other game and leave those of us who want to play the game the way it was intended be.

The question that I have to throw out is... are these really the way Firaxis inteded the game to be played as? THAT is what I want to know. If Firaxis can confirm to me that what MGT has said is indeed the way it was meant to be, then I will either not play this game or adopt to the game. I will definitely stop being skeptic and keep posting on forums.

[Hodory]

MGT seems like he is legitimately passionate about Civilization. And his opinions about Civilization Revolution are not so popular, and he should be able express his opinions without 3 pages of flamers "with no life", flaming on. I admit I was pretty harsh on MGT when he first arrived, in the original "Strat loophole" thread, and for that I apologize. I also read his last post on here that was obviously deleted. The guy has been persistent, and consistent, and it obviously pains him to see that this game is in no way a real competitive online strategy game. I myself think it's odd that with all the posts about all the bugs/glitches that there has been no official acknowledgment of these problems, or any news of a patch. Furthermore I find it awfully strange, that no legitimate websites (i.e. IGN or GameSpot) have posted UK reviews of the game. The demo is extremely buggy, I have been playing it every day since it's release. I was hoping the final product that was delayed, and announced over a year ago, would be solid. I guess QA doesn't stand for Quality Assurance anymore.

I agree with you. You made your point very elegantly and I appreciate your feedback.

[Hodory]

KurtG85,

Thanks for the read there. I actually read every single post in this thread, and I also happen to think that, even though the OP might have sounded rude, the core arguments that he was throwing at was making some sense to me.

I also believe that Romans/Super-sized city feeding through settler factories is a game-breaking element that should be addressed. What you said about what makes a strategy game a great strategy game... I agree 100%.

Civ4 never had balancing issue to the degree of this detriment. It had its own issues but none of those were so groundbreaking like this.

Right now, I am just not playing Romans and focusing on Egyptians. I really like the fact that they start with a wonder.

[2K Elizabeth]

The question that I have to throw out is... are these really the way Firaxis inteded the game to be played as? THAT is what I want to know. If Firaxis can confirm to me that what MGT has said is indeed the way it was meant to be, then I will either not play this game or adopt to the game. I will definitely stop being skeptic and keep posting on forums.

i cannot speak directly for everyone at firaxis, but i believe that firaxis made this game to be played in as many ways as possible. the beauty of a strategy game is that everyone has their own unique strategy. i personally am constantly amazed by the workarounds and interesting tactics those at the top create to make themselves the very best at this game.

i know that i have learned quite a few tricks that in the past year i would have never considered as my own strategy, however learning those strategies only make me a better player, because then i can take what i know and love and meld it with what has beaten me, to create an even better and unique strategy.

[a420and69er]

elizabeth would you care to elaborate on one or more of the strategies you feel is equal to the rome strategy posted here?

i am trying to find one, but so far have failed in every attempt due to a lack of intelligence, your insight into the game would really help us

thanks

[Hodory]

i cannot speak directly for everyone at firaxis, but i believe that firaxis made this game to be played in as many ways as possible. the beauty of a strategy game is that everyone has their own unique strategy. i personally am constantly amazed by the workarounds and interesting tactics those at the top create to make themselves the very best at this game.

i know that i have learned quite a few tricks that in the past year i would have never considered as my own strategy, however learning those strategies only make me a better player, because then i can take what i know and love and meld it with what has beaten me, to create an even better and unique strategy.

I know that you are being careful not to make any criticism of the game. I know that beauty of playing a strategy game is to come up with numerous different tactics that work well for me. Problem comes when those so called tactics are totally game breaking and out of balance.

Let's just say that super-sized city feeding through settler pumps is totally a legit tactic. If that is so, where does the balance come among different civilization leaders? It has been stated that earlier you get this set up and going, the more beneficial. Romans can get this started right away, having Republic available right away and half cost road building. Other civilization leaders don't have this luxury and have to wait a very long time to get this going. If in multiplayer, non-Roman players will have no choice but to try to all gang up on the Roman player to try to stop this.

The super city tactic is immensely powerful, and once it's set up and that player switches over to democracy, he/she will be churning out so much gold/science/hammer production per turn that it becomes very difficult to overcome for other players that are not Romans. In EVERY Civ games to date, the early turns are the most important. It has ALWAYS been important to get a strong head start to make the most out of what is given. And in this case, there seems to be no other discussions with civilizations other than Romans that can equally match the effectiveness of the tactics described above.

Like I mentioned in the stickied thread discussing game design, the settler pumps have to be limited to a point where a city cannot be joined by settlers beyond reaching a certain population point: 10, 12, 15 or something like that. Currently, we are seeing city sizes reaching max 31 population by the middle ages. With normal growth using surplus food, there is no way anyone can do this. It is only possible with continuous settler pumping.

What you have stated above sounds like as if you are adoring ANY tactics that will make people win, even if it is something so out of balance that a veteran Civ players like me feel totally out of place with this game. Civ4 NEVER had this issue to this degree. The bonuses were there different traits among different leaders, but they were not made so overpowering. They were a very subtle bonuses.

[eireksten]

The super city tactic is immensely powerful, and once it's set up and that player switches over to democracy, he/she will be churning out so much gold/science/hammer production per turn that it becomes very difficult to overcome for other players that are not Romans. In EVERY Civ games to date, the early turns are the most important. It has ALWAYS been important to get a strong head start to make the most out of what is given. And in this case, there seems to be no other discussions with civilizations other than Romans that can equally match the effectiveness of the tactics described above.

Like I mentioned in the stickied thread discussing game design, the settler pumps have to be limited to a point where a city cannot be joined by settlers beyond reaching a certain population point: 10, 12, 15 or something like that. Currently, we are seeing city sizes reaching max 31 population by the middle ages. With normal growth using surplus food, there is no way anyone can do this. It is only possible with continuous settler pumping.

First, I'm not totally convinced that this strategy will be all that dominant in MP yet. But that does of course not mean that I like it. It might be that it would be necessary to halten it a bit if too many started using only that strategy.

To grow a city in the usual way, you need more and more food generated. As the population increase with each population point increases (and that the bonuses for working the city tile increases), this seems to be a reasonable design choice. But when it comes to settlers (at least under the republic), this has no influence. A settler from a pop2 city is equivalent to the 31st population point in a giant metropol. Talk about baby boom!

What if growing a city got more and more expensive in all ways as the city grew? I'd found it more fair if cities were equivalent to an amount of food, and you couldn't add a population point with them if the food needed was above a certain limit (or you had several settlers).

I understand that it probably is too late to make a change like this (it is after all a console game), but I just wanted to put forward the idea at least.

[Leo]

ugh, why is it that people who are playing the demo, on 40% handicap are already deciding what the dominant strat is?

ive seen a number of player who are currently highly ranked on the multiplayer leaderboard, explain why this strat isnt dominant and how it is beaten.

still every day the same people, who i am sure have read those explanations post more about the rome mega city and how its unstoppable, using mathematically impossible examples (as has also been shown) as proof.

i dont know what to say to get you guys to help you understand that when you play on multiplayer you will not be facing rome every game, and when you face rome you have a perfectly good chance of winning. hell i havn't lost to rome yet, ive only played one guy in the top ten who played the mega city strat and i won.

every guy ive seen who posts on this board, that i recognise from the top 10 leaderboard has said the same thing, i guess you could say to yourself that its because no one currently playing actually knows how to play so no one has really had to face the 'mega city' in its true awesome glory, but we are all working off the same info and really its a pretty simple strat, very easy to do, also not too hard to shut down when you know what it relies upon to succeed.

if anything, when the game came out in europe, there were a lot more rome players, after people had read this board and decided to start with the rome mega city, i did too, but i dont see rome very often these days, the amount of rome players has decreased in my experience. rome is still good, but its not 'all that'.

the current leaderboard (head to head) top 20 shows the following 'favourite' civs (not in any order):

rome x4
arab x1
aztec x3
china x5
zulu x2
egypt x1
mongols x1
german x2
russian x1

the top 10 includes those civs from rome down to zulu. so that leaves us with 2 economic powerhouse civs, rome and china, and 3 mainly military civs, arabs, aztec and zulu. from this you could assume that the more successul players either play 'defend and boom' with one of the strong economic civs, or they rush and keep the pressure on with one of the early military civs.
only suprise in there for me is the lack of japan which i feel is a very strong economic civ (possibly my favourite right now).

just some info for the people who dont have a full copy yet.

[Hodory]

First, I'm not totally convinced that this strategy will be all that dominant in MP yet. But that does of course not mean that I like it. It might be that it would be necessary to halten it a bit if too many started using only that strategy.

There are great CIV players out there and I am sure ANY strategies will have a counter or two. However, that is NOT the point I am making here. I feel that there is a difference between players not choosing to play a certain way, and the game not giving the players the options to play a certain way to begin with.

To grow a city in the usual way, you need more and more food generated. As the population increase with each population point increases (and that the bonuses for working the city tile increases), this seems to be a reasonable design choice. But when it comes to settlers (at least under the republic), this has no influence. A settler from a pop2 city is equivalent to the 31st population point in a giant metropol. Talk about baby boom!

It becomes slower and slower to grow the population of a city as the size gets bigger. The effect is magnified each and every time the city grows, but the settler pump is the cheapest and the fastest way to grow a city. Since there is no feeding requirement of 2 food per citizens as we have seen in ALL previous CIV games, a city has a potential to grow to max 31 population without ANY single food producing files whatsoever. This very concept breaks that fundamental and the most basic CIV concept.

What if growing a city got more and more expensive in all ways as the city grew? I'd found it more fair if cities were equivalent to an amount of food, and you couldn't add a population point with them if the food needed was above a certain limit (or you had several settlers).

I am not too sure about that. It sounds a bit too complicated to implement at this point. I am more in favor of decreased settler cost in terms of hammers for Republic, or limiting the settler pumping at a certain city size.

I understand that it probably is too late to make a change like this (it is after all a console game), but I just wanted to put forward the idea at least.

Well, at least we are on the same page, so that's good I suppose.

[Hodory]

ugh, why is it that people who are playing the demo, on 40% handicap are already deciding what the dominant strat is?

Without the handicap, it makes the Roman strategy harder, yes, but it also makes the other leader's strategies just as hard, if not much harder.

ive seen a number of player who are currently highly ranked on the multiplayer leaderboard, explain why this strat isnt dominant and how it is beaten.

People will figure out counters to most tactics. But this is not my main point of argument. It doesn't matter if there is a counter to a tactic that seems broken to begin with. The very presence of the broken element of the game is what should be eliminated or fixed.

still every day the same people, who i am sure have read those explanations post more about the rome mega city and how its unstoppable, using mathematically impossible examples (as has also been shown) as proof.

I also believed that a lot of people were spoofing out mathematically impossible claims, but found out that some were actually legit. It surprises me to no end that such feat are possible in a CIV game.

i dont know what to say to get you guys to help you understand that when you play on multiplayer you will not be facing rome every game, and when you face rome you have a perfectly good chance of winning. hell i havn't lost to rome yet, ive only played one guy in the top ten who played the mega city strat and i won.

I don't care if I lose all my multiplayer games. There always has to be a winner and a loser. That is not my concern at all. My concern, as I have stated, is the elimination or revision of a concept that needs to be addressed.

every guy ive seen who posts on this board, that i recognise from the top 10 leaderboard has said the same thing, i guess you could say to yourself that its because no one currently playing actually knows how to play so no one has really had to face the 'mega city' in its true awesome glory, but we are all working off the same info and really its a pretty simple strat, very easy to do, also not too hard to shut down when you know what it relies upon to succeed.

This also means that when facing against someone who is trying to do this mega city tactic, the opposing player will have limited choice, virtually being forced to continuously rush and disrupt that player with military force. What if I don't want to play that way? What if I wanted to play a peaceful and cultural game? I could, but it will have consequences later, because leaving those players doing the mega city all alone and at peace will be detrimental. So here I am, in a CIV game no less, being forced to rush and disrupt this player militarily and not allowing me to have a chance at later stage in the game. It is like, if you want to win, you MUST do THIS. Since when did Civ games turn out to be this way?

You can't tell me that the counter to the mega city tactic is some peaceful expansion of your own, WITHOUT doing the same thing yourself. If you, or anyone can prove to me that there are a peaceful tactics as counter to the mega city gimmick, please enlighten me with your expertise so that I can be humbled shamelessly and shut my rambling down the toilet.

if anything, when the game came out in europe, there were a lot more rome players, after people had read this board and decided to start with the rome mega city, i did too, but i dont see rome very often these days, the amount of rome players has decreased in my experience. rome is still good, but its not 'all that'.

There is a difference between players choosing not to play a certain way, and the game not offering that very certain way to be played to begin with. A broken gameplay concept can be avoided by players as a choice, but that does not mean that it will not be practiced at all. If anything feels out of balance or broken, it needs to be addressed and revised.

the current leaderboard (head to head) top 20 shows the following 'favourite' civs (not in any order):

rome x4
arab x1
aztec x3
china x5
zulu x2
egypt x1
mongols x1
german x2
russian x1

the top 10 includes those civs from rome down to zulu. so that leaves us with 2 economic powerhouse civs, rome and china, and 3 mainly military civs, arabs, aztec and zulu. from this you could assume that the more successul players either play 'defend and boom' with one of the strong economic civs, or they rush and keep the pressure on with one of the early military civs.
only suprise in there for me is the lack of japan which i feel is a very strong economic civ (possibly my favourite right now).

just some info for the people who dont have a full copy yet.

It is good to see some variety in this list. I am a bit disappointed that the French hasn't popped up in this list though. There has been a lot of talk about economic, domination, and space victories, but not much in comparison has been talked about cultural victories. Since France is considered a cultural powerhouse, I was hoping that I would be seeing at least one in the leaderboard with Napoleon in it.

[Leo]

Without the handicap, it makes the Roman strategy harder, yes, but it also makes the other leader's strategies just as hard, if not much harder

i dont think this is true, the strength of a strategy done by other civs is not so bound by 'time' as rome appears to be (the worry people seem to have is the speed as which rome can achieve a currency victory). with the other civs and the current popular strategies, the impact of the handicap is far less relatively speaking (because they are playing a more balanced game, not rushing through to one particular victory while sacrifricing many things along the way).

People will figure out counters to most tactics. But this is not my main point of argument. It doesn't matter if there is a counter to a tactic that seems broken to begin with. The very presence of the broken element of the game is what should be eliminated or fixed.

every strategy game is like this though, every civ has a particular style of play that caters to it's strengths and if you are facing that civ you must play in such a way as to minimise those strengths, preferably with a civ that has strengths that benefit the style that counters your opponent. eventually this turns into a more balanced playing arena as both players plan many strategic and tactical moves in advance, playing on the basis that their opponent is going to counter what they will do next.

I don't care if I lose all my multiplayer games. There always has to be a winner and a loser. That is not my concern at all. My concern, as I have stated, is the elimination or revision of a concept that needs to be addressed.

this and your next couple of paragraphs are the real divide between players here. from what i can see you are essentially saying 'i can't beat rome if i play the way that i like to play, i acknowledge there is a way to beat rome but i don't want to play that strategy, therefore rome is broken because i refuse to play in a way that will defeat rome'.

if you want to beat rome in 'peaceful' ways, then you want to pick either greece or china and beat rome in the tech race, get the manhattan project and nuke his main city, you will have to be fast and against a practiced player you should at least try to curtail his expanding, im not going to say this is a counter to rome, it will be very very close time wise between the nuke and the currency victory, assuming rome recieved some pressure during the game, but it can happen.

the feeling i get from your posts is that you like to play long games and are worried that you will face rome frequently and be forced to play a style of game you do not enjoy. i'll just say that you won't be facing rome very often and you can play your long games against most other civs provided you use a good econ civ (not france, if u want to play long games with france, be prepared to lose a large percentage of games regardless of strategy). if i try to put myself in your shoes (and everyone else who is worried abour rome) for a second, and lets imagine that rome is nerfed at some point, does that solve the problem that you see? no it doesnt because you then have china and greece who will do the exact same thing to you just without using a mega city, and so on. all civs are not equal in all ways, they never will be, and some civs are just plain better and some just plain suck, you cannot play just one strategy every game and hope to do well, or even enjoy the game.

i cant comment on other civ games, i come from an RTS background not a civ background, but there is nothing unusual about this game so far as my strategy experience goes, other than the bugs and the annoying benefits given to defending units (well those are two really annoying things, but other than that...).

in short what im saying is, what we appear to have is two groups of people, group A think rome is broken, group B think not.

thing is, group A is almost entirely made up of players who's experience involves playing the AI or playing the demo with the handicap on (ie, not ladder settings). group B consists almost entirely of players who have the full game, play ranked multiplayer and in some cases are highly ranked (im just gonna hope to add some weight to my 'experience' i allude to in these posts by saying i am a top 10 player).

group A could be right, but if we are honest you have to say that it is unlikely. group B have the real experience, and group B says rome is not a problem.

[Leo]

by the way an additional point, another weakness of making a judgement based on the demo is that you are limited to only two civs, rome and egypt.

egypt is not a very popular civ in the full game, and we all know about rome.

if you use the demo you dont have access to any of the more dominant civs yet, such as zulu, aztec, japan, china, arab.

people may find that another civ is even more of a headache than they think rome is, or they may find that one of the strong military civs suddenly makes rome look much easier.

[PrivateJohn]

I think in order to counter the Rome megacity, early rush or cultural invasion is the way to go. (Just as my China strategy which is very vulnerable to culture aggresion.)

Even if you do not want to rush early, you can attack after medieval age. Just make sure your science is up on par with the Rome, or even after him which is possible with China or Greek. Talk to the AI from time to time so you know how many units the Rome have, what they are doing etc etc. Find the weak spot and start from there...or surprise attack 2 city simultaneously with navy support. Just make sure your ship can stay hidden until you are able to reach the Rome cities & unload your army under 1 turn.

Anyway i do hope more player can choose their favourite Civ & stick to it instead of following what's the most popular on leaderboard. I do love the variety and myself are looking into alternative now. Someday, maybe Russian.:D

[xbman22x]

am i the only one that reconizes MTG's genious? he has essentially "broken" the game in less then a week. dont flame him just because he is immensley better at this game than you ever will be. Hey 2K.....NERF ROME TO HELL AND BACK!!!

[Hodory]

Every strategy game is like this though, every civ has a particular style of play that caters to it's strengths and if you are facing that civ you must play in such a way as to minimise those strengths, preferably with a civ that has strengths that benefit the style that counters your opponent. eventually this turns into a more balanced playing arena as both players plan many strategic and tactical moves in advance, playing on the basis that their opponent is going to counter what they will do next.

Good point. A good strategy game is the one that encourages players to further utilize your strength while minimizing the weakness as much as possible. In a Civ game, once a civilization becomes a powerhouse in production and trade, the difficulty of overcoming that civilization magnifies. In a competitive game, it probably is more vital to put your opponents in check so that they don't reach that threshold of mass production of hammer and trade. Which brings to...

this and your next couple of paragraphs are the real divide between players here. from what i can see you are essentially saying 'i can't beat rome if i play the way that i like to play, i acknowledge there is a way to beat rome but i don't want to play that strategy, therefore rome is broken because i refuse to play in a way that will defeat rome'.

if you want to beat rome in 'peaceful' ways, then you want to pick either greece or china and beat rome in the tech race, get the manhattan project and nuke his main city, you will have to be fast and against a practiced player you should at least try to curtail his expanding, im not going to say this is a counter to rome, it will be very very close time wise between the nuke and the currency victory, assuming rome recieved some pressure during the game, but it can happen.

I just can't see how leaving Rome alone peacefully if that Roman player is using the mega city strat and you are well aware of it. Larger the cities, the more powerful and more efficient it will be. Since there is NO need to feed your own citizens with 2 food per citizens as per Civ4, I could even argue that growing a city is even easier in Civ Rev. Still, it takes a very long time to grow your cities especially at a later stage where your city size has reached double digits. Without forcefully increasing a city through pumping settlers, city growth will be slow. With courthouses and plenty of grassland and plains square (assuming you have a granary put up), I suppose you can help accelerate the growth, but it all comes at the expense of working other hammer and trade tiles. All in the meantime, all the mega city tactician has to worry about is initial settling of a few extra cities that will do nothing more than pump out settlers while concentrating every single hammer and trade bonus possible all packed in one city, accumulating massive bonus.

It is easily arguable that one 30-population city is better than 3 10-population cities. This magnifies when you have a concept where even if a city is not working any tiles around the city square itself, the game still rewards you by allowing a so-called "tradesmen" to give you hammer and trade bonus. Who cares about all the tile bonuses when you have massive population?

It is also easier to defend one huge city than to try to defend a group of few smaller-sized group of cities. One huge city only needs one bank, one market, one library, and one university to reap its reward, while in another case, you will have to build these buildings multiple times. That takes away time and more hammers that could have been put to use elsewhere.

Let's not forget Roman bonus of the cheaper wonder bonus which he can use to stack wonders on top of one another to accumulate massive bonus. Think of: Colossus, Trade Fair, etc. How would you counter that? These wonders work in percentage bonuses. More base trade the city has, more bonus. And it almost certainly will propel the Roman's mega city to a point where it can very well dwarf whatever trade you are putting.

the feeling i get from your posts is that you like to play long games and are worried that you will face rome frequently and be forced to play a style of game you do not enjoy. i'll just say that you won't be facing rome very often and you can play your long games against most other civs provided you use a good econ civ (not france, if u want to play long games with france, be prepared to lose a large percentage of games regardless of strategy). if i try to put myself in your shoes (and everyone else who is worried abour rome) for a second, and lets imagine that rome is nerfed at some point, does that solve the problem that you see? no it doesnt because you then have china and greece who will do the exact same thing to you just without using a mega city, and so on. all civs are not equal in all ways, they never will be, and some civs are just plain better and some just plain suck, you cannot play just one strategy every game and hope to do well, or even enjoy the game.

The beauty of Civ4 and Civ Rev is that now the civilizations are all made somewhat unique and different from each other. The difference between these 2 games is in the magnitude of the bonuses. Civ4's bonuses were somewhat subtle, whereas Civ Rev's bonuses seemed intended to give equally overpowering abilities.

The problem with the Romans comes with the evidence that Romans can get started with building a mega city right off the bat, while other civilizations will have to wait a long time to even get it started. For them, perhaps it will even be counter productive to try to do the same thing. However, if left alone, the trade bonuses that Romans will accumulate will only magnify significantly as his mega city reaches the max population, and as I stated, the bonuses from buildings and wonders giving percentage bonus only makes things worse.

I can't say that nerfing Rome will make the game perfectly balanced. Perhaps there will be some other unbalanced civs that will gain attention. What I am interested in is what is currently known now, and it is my analysis that having a Roman player devoted to a very sound mega city strategy will force the other players to have no option but to have an aggressive game of disruption and conquest.

I do like conquest and domination games. I just happen to be someone who appreciates more peaceful ways of winning the games than a lot of other people who seemed to prefer quick military resolution.

i cant comment on other civ games, i come from an RTS background not a civ background, but there is nothing unusual about this game so far as my strategy experience goes, other than the bugs and the annoying benefits given to defending units (well those are two really annoying things, but other than that...).

In Civ4, the presence of a certain opposing civilization had no bearing on your overall strategy of the game. It is known that the Malinese and the Incans are tech powerhouses, but their presence did not force anyone to automatically try to wipe them off, as long as you yourself had a sound strategy to keep up with their tech. Different leaders had different bonuses but they were subtle, and there were so many other tactics in the gameplay that anyone can benefit throughout the game, which made things seem fair.

In Civ Rev, the very presence of the Romans will mean that if I want to beat the mega city tactician, I will have to disrupt him and be forced to play a certain way, because leaving him alone and going head to head with him is just not efficient, if not detrimental to my victory cause.

I don't mind playing to rush, but consistently doing so will get boring and old very quickly. In my mind, a decision to rush someone or not should be dependent on the map and should vary accordingly from game to game. It should not be predetermined just by having a mere existence of a certain civilization in a game.

in short what im saying is, what we appear to have is two groups of people, group A think rome is broken, group B think not.

thing is, group A is almost entirely made up of players who's experience involves playing the AI or playing the demo with the handicap on (ie, not ladder settings). group B consists almost entirely of players who have the full game, play ranked multiplayer and in some cases are highly ranked (im just gonna hope to add some weight to my 'experience' i allude to in these posts by saying i am a top 10 player).

group A could be right, but if we are honest you have to say that it is unlikely. group B have the real experience, and group B says rome is not a problem.

Even if Group B had only played demo version of Civ Rev, a lot of these people have also played Civ4 and the prior versions of Civ through their PCs for years. I am one of them, and even by just playing through the demo, a lot of the gameplay elements become self explanatory. The gameplay element is so much more simplified, yet so familiar that the only advantage of having the full version of the game is to see the game beyond 1250 AD (which is enough to determine how well you have done)

For Civ veterans, just knowing the bonuses of the unplayable civilizations is enough, as long as they have played the demo and get the grasp of how different this game plays in comparison to Civ4. So to say that Group B has no expertise or less insight into this game is a gross misconception.

Anyhow, thanks for your input. Talking anything Civ with other players is fun.

[Hodory]

With all the time it must've taken to write all that, you could've worked out enough money to buy a different game.

Of course, right now I'm assuming you're like 12, so your parents just buy everything for you anyway.

This kind of post is exactly the type of posts that are unnecessary that contributes nothing to the discussion. What have you brought to the topic at hand? Leo, John, and others have made comments full of insight that are helpful, all the while you make statements with absolutely zero usefulness. On top of that, you make assumptions about a person you have never met.

Your post deserves NO responses because you are the type that is begging for replies and some attention. Since I feel sorry for you, I will take your troll bait and give you that little satisfaction. Hopefully you will enjoy it and cherish it.

[Hodory]

I think in order to counter the Rome megacity, early rush or cultural invasion is the way to go. (Just as my China strategy which is very vulnerable to culture aggresion.)

Even if you do not want to rush early, you can attack after medieval age. Just make sure your science is up on par with the Rome, or even after him which is possible with China or Greek. Talk to the AI from time to time so you know how many units the Rome have, what they are doing etc etc. Find the weak spot and start from there...or surprise attack 2 city simultaneously with navy support. Just make sure your ship can stay hidden until you are able to reach the Rome cities & unload your army under 1 turn.

Anyway i do hope more player can choose their favourite Civ & stick to it instead of following what's the most popular on leaderboard. I do love the variety and myself are looking into alternative now. Someday, maybe Russian.:D

I was thinking in the same lines as you: early rush or culture attack. I make no claims that Rome mega city strat is unbeatable. I also share your concern about the over popularity of Rome, though the other civilizations look just as fun as playing Rome. In my opinion, your favorite civ, China, (it appears to be that way, from my observation of your posts), seems like a very fun civ to play. It definitely is an upgrade from a Civ4 version.

[KurtG85]

Hodory, props to you for taking the time to cram info into people's heads (as well as to the others who present some respectable arguments/points). You mirror every concern I have 100%. Frankly I just don't bother spending the time due to the over abundance of unintelligent or immature people that I wind up having to waste my time with. I refer to the general 'population' of the internet, not this forum in particular, which is more 'civil' (RdRr) than many forums.

Honestly, if I didnt already say it in my original post, I have lost interest in this game due to the fragmentation and watering down of the gameplay I feel that is present as a result of the major balance issues, intentional or not. The strategy draw or 'rush' is just lost on me due to the balance issues and the lack of sensation is comparable to drinking a glass of really flat soda. I won't be purchasing it until I am sure that patches have addressed these issues.

Thanks for taking the time to respectfully explain these issues in detail to all these people. Just ignore the immature ones with nothing but insults. They are nothing but a waste of time.

-Oh, and Elizabeth, your moderating is top notch. ;)

[italiano]

MGT was a great player with great strats. I credit him with alot of my understanding of the civ 4 game. However, every strat has his flaw. For some reason the newbies of civ dont take to him kindly (he is a bit cocky). He however helped me out and has only blown up and called me noob once. Take listen to him he has great strategies and if you can contradict it with another strat to defeat please post. MGT can at times think hes the best. No one can win all the time. You may think you are the best but there is probably always a player that can defeat you at one time or another. Alot of civ is just plain luck. I cant tell you how many times I have lost games due to pure luck. Now MGT you should express strategies in special clan threads if you arent getting respect here. Btw does anyone here have a screenshot of the civrev ladder? id like to see the top players. Oh and MorteEterna, hi are you playing civ4 anymore?
I encourage others to also post their strats and accept criticism.

[Daigawn]

After seeing the Youtube video of MGT getting pwnd then blaming his loss to lag, i cant really take him seriously anymore. Hes a clown for me to laugh at.

[eireksten]

After seeing the Youtube video of MGT getting pwnd then blaming his loss to lag, i cant really take him seriously anymore. Hes a clown for me to laugh at.

link to that vid?

edit: OK, found the post :)

[Latty]

its pretty much a fact that rome is seriously overpowered. u 100% can get economic victorys before 1400 with rome so it need to be fixed. this is why i will never use it and neither should anyone else. lets keep the game fair and fun. a good fix for this could be to disable the abilty for settlers to JOIN cities. that would work wouldnt it?

[Miz isHere]

yes or capping the limmit to which you can make a settler join a city.

For example once a city reaches a population of 8 a settler can not be used on the city. Seems like a simple fix to me......

[eireksten]

Now it seems that they've (tried) fixing it by letting settlers add 20 food instead of a whole population point.

I just hope that 20 food is enough to still being able to build mega-cities (just not at the huge rate of speed the romans have done it until now). I find that i.e. the indians are suited for such a strategy, only on a slower rate (and a little later in the game).

[xbman22x]

ALL HAIL MR. GAME THEORY ALL HAIL MR. GAME THEORY. come on, thats what he wants us to do. if we give him what he wants he might go away.