My impression of GAK so far

[Adam Hall]

I am still in my 1st game but so far my thoughts on this expansion are very positive. I have seen only two things that I would outright call bugs:

1) One time the menu interface stopped working. Meaning I could not open any menu no matter what I did. Luckily I restarted the game and I was fine. So that was no big deal.

2) I told a CIV that I would not attack them when my troops were close. A few turns later I changed my mind (too bad for the Celts). The thing is that gave me a hit on diplomacy for all other CIVS forever! I think I should take a hit, I went back on my word, but when will this expire? I can't imagine this was intended to be indefinite.

My absolutely biggest complaint of CIV 5 vanilla has been the military AI. So far I think it is better, maybe not perfect but better. I saw it do something very cool. Persia declared war and started attacking one of my cities. When he started my army was not close and not as large. But I was able to quickly get over there in time to clearly beat him. He actually pulled back when he saw what I had coming! And not just some troops, he pulled back all of them. He withdrew. I swear the vanilla AI would have sacrificed one or two troops at a time as I wear him down to nothing. That was very cool.

I am starting to form an agreement about complaints on the diplomacy AI in GAK. I never really had a complaint about this in vanilla. It may be too early to say it sucks or it's broken but certainly my observation so far is you cannot stay friends with anybody. Denoucing is done all the time. I am not even half thru and every CIV I know has denouced every other one including me at least once, usually multiple times. I think there is room for improvement in this area.

I think this is a great expansion so far. I love both the religion and spies additions.
Thanks Firaxis!

[Integrity]

I find, as far as diplomacy goes, usually some point mid-game everyone goes a bit insane for no apparent reason (I had people that I was DoF'ed with denounce me for no reason), but they usually return to sanity late game. Then again I tend to skirt the edge of what is diplomatically acceptable to other civ's in my games, so I usually understand why they do the things they do.

[dennylc]

The reason they still hold a grudge for so long is because you lied to the civ. If you had been honest and told them you were going to attack the other civs would not have held the grudge as long as they have. If one of the civs did that to you would you trust them anymore? Probably not. I have noticed that how you react and what you say has a much bigger inpact on the game. I like it more.

[GhostReaperSix]

^^
I remember a long time ago looking at the xml files. Civs will develop grudges if you build wonders they want; expand too many times; if you engaged in warfare; if they think you are going towards the same victory condition as them etc. Also once a civ denounces you, you take a hit diplomatically to all civs and that can be enough to cause a chain react of denounces and ultimately a world war.

[Adam Hall]

^^
I remember a long time ago looking at the xml files. Civs will develop grudges if you build wonders they want; expand too many times; if you engaged in warfare; if they think you are going towards the same victory condition as them etc. Also once a civ denounces you, you take a hit diplomatically to all civs and that can be enough to cause a chain react of denounces and ultimately a world war.

The thing is the denouncements go away after time. Some things like going back on your word about not attacking, they stay forever, the whole game it seems. Its a minor thing I guess though seems kind of silly to hold a grudge for 400 turns.

I am still in my 1st game and I am still finding it much harder to keep the AI from hating you in GAK. Maybe its my current style of play, not sure.

[Miravlix]

The thing is the denouncements go away after time. Some things like going back on your word about not attacking, they stay forever, the whole game it seems. Its a minor thing I guess though seems kind of silly to hold a grudge for 400 turns.

I am still in my 1st game and I am still finding it much harder to keep the AI from hating you in GAK. Maybe its my current style of play, not sure.

It's your play style, I'm 739 turns into a marthon game and everyone wants to be my friend. As long as you limit your expansion and how many cities you take, they wont hold grudges much.

Diplomacy bad behavior:
1: Taking/Making cities too fast.
2: Having a weak army.

Diplomacy good behavior:
1: Spreading your religion. (This one gives a huge positive modifier)
2: Keep your army strong.

All in all G & K is way easier than vanilla. On King I have a close to exclusive monopoly on wonders +286 gold pr. turn, happiness out the ying/yang, 187 culture and +55 faith. I'm strong enough I could wipe out every other civ. That way better than pre-expansion where I usually lost out on science and score.

Population was my downfall in the pre-expansion games, my pop growth was awful, most likely due to happiness shortage at several points, but now without using faith to get happiness I've been number one approval most of the time. If I played something like Darius and went for happiness faith boosters, I bet you could have 3 digit happiness pr. turn.

[twersx]

My absolutely biggest complaint of CIV 5 vanilla has been the military AI. So far I think it is better, maybe not perfect but better. I saw it do something very cool. Persia declared war and started attacking one of my cities. When he started my army was not close and not as large. But I was able to quickly get over there in time to clearly beat him. He actually pulled back when he saw what I had coming! And not just some troops, he pulled back all of them. He withdrew. I swear the vanilla AI would have sacrificed one or two troops at a time as I wear him down to nothing. That was very cool.

I am starting to form an agreement about complaints on the diplomacy AI in GAK. I never really had a complaint about this in vanilla. It may be too early to say it sucks or it's broken but certainly my observation so far is you cannot stay friends with anybody. Denoucing is done all the time. I am not even half thru and every CIV I know has denouced every other one including me at least once, usually multiple times. I think there is room for improvement in this area.

I think this is a great expansion so far. I love both the religion and spies additions.
Thanks Firaxis!

I've experienced both of these in vanilla. As of recent patches to Vanilla, the AI will withdraw if it sees you have a huge numerical advantage and aren't lagging too far behind in tech. It will still be stupid if you have a few modern units and they have a medieval army, but tbh, I'd expect a real person to have thrown his entire medieval army at my mechanised infantry if they turned up in the 13th century.

As for Diplo, it's always been a slippery slope. if you get denounced by a leader, the only way to improve relations was to ignore them and not antagonise them in the slightest for around 50 turns.

[tfordp]

The thing is the denouncements go away after time. Some things like going back on your word about not attacking, they stay forever, the whole game it seems. Its a minor thing I guess though seems kind of silly to hold a grudge for 400 turns.

I am still in my 1st game and I am still finding it much harder to keep the AI from hating you in GAK. Maybe its my current style of play, not sure.

I am in the same situation, and was looking for somewhere to put my thoughts.

I dropped back to Prince to get used to the new expansion additions. I started as Austria against all the other new civs, standard size pangea, epic speed and normal CS (I usually reduce them by half). Now coming up to the age of spies, and am wondering what I'm going to do with them.

The other civs appear to have stopped building cities. Gustavus has three cities, as does William, but only because he captured one of Dido's. In the demographics screen I am # 1 bignob in everything except military, but Dido is really having a hard time and only building units. She is last in everything except military.

Ras Tafari had to go early because he was sitting on two lux I wanted, but wouldn't build a second city. Avarice forced me to take out his capital which got me the warmonger hit with all civs who weren't my friends. Even the headbanging, warmongering civs like Sweden and Holland.

I founded a religion second after the Celts, although I had no faith income except two shrines in my first two cities, a pantheon for partying and two religious CS at meeting. There didn't seem to be a rush to grab a religion, anyway.

I now have seven of my own cities, four allied CS (I don't feel the need to puppet marry them as I am so far ahead in bonus' with them I might as well collect the extra food, jewellery and whatnot and spend my gold on other stuff) and have spread my religion to 12 cities. The Celts have three including one CS close by their two cities. I've also spread my religion to Attila's court, the big man seems to be content bullying CSs and isn't expanding or in fact doing anything useful.

Anyway, I digress. I'll be reaching renaissance sometime soon, which will give me a spy. But what to do with him? There are no technologies I could steal, no CSs I could win over, intrigue is a bit silly because a) I don't care how much the AI beats itself up and b) I don't need to be forewarned because I have my scouts in strategic positions and enough gold to buy an army quickly.

The only thing I can think of now is counter-espionage to stop any alien efforts to grab my techs. Any other ideas?

I haven't been denounced yet, and nobody is willing to start a war against me, but it is slightly more difficult to keep friendly, even at this easy level. I have two friends, one dead AI, two neutral AI and three guarded AI (all three a friendly block). I could probably bribe the two neutrals, but to what end if I don't need them? I could have fun and bribe them against the other block, I suppose.

One thing's for sure; my next game is back to Emperor.

[Keloo]

Here I'll share my experiences with the current diplo AI.

I'm playing as the Celts, I'm on the map with the mayans, incas, iroquois and the spanish. Started expending until I got 4 cities, but my army was weak, and the incas declared war on me around the 80th turn or something and he conquered one of my citites but I've built some pictish warriors and composite bowmen and I've managed to take it back.

We made peace and after 100 turns everything works like a charm. I'm friends with all except Spain. Spain denounced me and then the rest hated spain and we united each other against spain. Isabella denounced me probably because I've tried to spread my religion into her cities and she had founded her own religion.

But everything works well. I'm friends with maya, inca and iroquois for centuries, but even though they declared war on spain had weak armies and didn't attack her.

The military AI is better, but I can't tell for sure since I didn't engage in war alot. But Spain uses tercios and trebuches, I got much weaker units so it's much difficult for me to defend myself. Plus as some noticed the AI withdraws it units if it doesn't stand a chance. Also the AI manages to place its units better, like range units in the back and melee in the front.

It's an AI anyway so it will never be brilliant as some want, I know that and thus I don't have any huge expectations from it. But for an AI is doing pretty good. So far so good. Much better then vanilla for me. Especially diplomacy, I can keep friendships for much much longer. Embassies and religion plays a big role in keeping your friendships.

[Miravlix]

Check who the guy hates and denounce those.

If he doesn't have a holy city, spread your religion to them with missionaries/great prophets.

Friend of a Friend is another positive one, but it can get to be a slipery slope.

In my current Marthon King game everyone keeps begging me to be there friend and with religion and denoucing one or two everyone hates. I can't seem to do anything bad enough to get them to hate me.

Light postive:
Embasy
You forgave them for spying.

Strong positive:
Your religion is there main one.
We have denounced the same leader.
You have shared intrigue with them.

Light Negative:
They want our land.
They asked us to stop spying.

Strong Negative:
Competing for city state.
Your spy was caught stealing tech.
They have denounced us.
We have denounced them.
You asked them to stop spying on you.
You have demanded tribute from a CS under their protection.

Examples:
Harun al-Rashid Friendly
Religion
Embassy
You asked them to not spy on you.

Maria Theresa Friendly
Religion
Intrigue
embassy
You have demanded tribute from city-states under their protection.

Catherine Guarded
They cover land that you currently own.
You are competing for the favor of the same City-Sates.
You asked them to not spy on you.
Those 3 resulted in "They have denounced us!"

Lizzy Guarded
Covert lands
Stop spying
Spy cought
Resulting in "They have denounced us!"

Edit: I should add this is ONLY TRUE when you have a big army. If your weak all diplo rules goes out the window as they will take you on because of your weakness.

[Keloo]

By the way I'm playing on king, and I've shared intrigue with Pachacuti, he also has my religion in all of his cities. After that one war that I had with him in early game, everything worked fine. I also was friends for a long time with Isabella but she denounced me, and since she was hated by the rest of the civs, we united each other against her. Another positive for going to war against a common foe.

[Adam Hall]

It is good to hear about other games where you can be friends with the AI. It may be the way my current game is going is why they all don't like me. Though its not just me. I see denouncung going one bewtween all CIVs, not just mine. Maybe this game is just a big HATE-FEST.

I do have a different religion than every other CIV. I read above that different religions can be a diplomacy hit. if so you'd think you would see it listed as a reason why they don't like you. I do not see that.

I am 3rd in military strength but 1st in score and a few other stats like Land. If score is being taken into account as well as military strength maybe that is a reason to hate me too I guess.

[tfordp]

Quick update on my game, I got my spy and set her to counter-espionage in Vienna. It didn't take long for the Maya to come looking for freebies; I caught and killed their first spy, and got denounced for asking them to stop spying on me. Maybe twenty turns later their second (!) spy stole a tech despite my spy and constabulary. The clouds of war are looming.

Boudicca was friendly and trading right up until she backstabbed me. Luckily, my well placed scouts saw her coming about 10 turns before she could be close enough to attack, and I was waiting. Also, plenty of time to make friends with Willem and sign a defence pact before she arrived. She left again quite quickly.

I went from guarded to friendly with Willem by: giving him my religion, bribing him with 1 iron, denouncing a common adversary, bribing him again with a good deal to his profit and a DoF. He even stopped calling me a warmonger.

Attila is a good friend, and has now built two more cities. I have been warned by Gustavus that Attila is plotting against me, but that was 12 turns ago now and there is no sign of him on the horizon.

The others are pretty much keeping out of harm's way. Occasionally news of a distant war will get through, and then a few turns later there is peace again.

Keeping other religions at bay is no big deal, I'm now almost up to enough Faith for my next GP, and am staying just below that threshold by buying inquisitors and missionaries and spreading the gospel. When I've got enough I'll just pop another GP and find something useful for him to do.

Now I've been to war with a reasonably large medieval army, I can state the combat is much improved, even to the point that it felt like the AI was making planned decisions. He prepared his invasion well, and kept his ranged units at the back. Obviously not knowing what was waiting over the border, when his units started collapsing, he made a sort of dignified retreat, right into my waiting navy.

All in all it's an improvement, and although this game is as good as won already, it is only on prince, so I'll knock it up a couple of levels and try it again. Looking forward to it already, but unfortunately I can't just leave a game until the end, win or lose.