Random Ancient ruins

[Slin]

This is a thread discussing ancient ruins and their randomness.

First before anything else I want to acknowledge that I know that you can disable ruins. This is a nice option to have but I feel that the ruins are to important to the early game to disable. Most importantly they make the early game fun. They also add to early game balance (build monument/worker vs warriors/scouts) and they give players more choices with their early units. Now what do I not like about ruins? I don't think the victor of a strategy game that takes several hours to play should be determined by a random number generator. Some variance in power level between ruins is fine but the difference between a good ruin and a bad one is huge. Ruins are already naturally random because the maps are not symmetric and even if they were symmetric scouting directions can be random. I don't want all the ruins to be the same, that would be boring, I just want to lessen the gap between the useless ruins and the extremely powerful ones.

The worst ruins right now are the barbarian and the map ruins. Sometimes they can almost be somewhat borderline useful but they can also be 100% useless when you get a map of an area you've already scouted or when you get barbarians with no new ones nearby. The best ruins right now are the first +faith ruin you get, the +1 population ruin, the +1 technology ruin, the scout->archer ruin or a very early culture ruin. The technology ruins can also be almost useless if you get a tech that you have very few turns left on. We are talking a lot of turns of faith/food/science/production/culture vs nothing. The absolute biggest problem ruin right now is the ruin that grants faith. In my opinion one of the players who rushes a shrine in his capital should be the first to select a pantheon. Right now it is a much better idea to build extra scouts early if you want that first pantheon, especially on slower speeds than normal. It is also not fun to get a useless ruin. It is like getting a blank lottery ticket you at least want to win something when you find that precious ruin.

How should we fix this?
1. Reduce the amount of faith the first religion ruin grants. Make it give no more faith than what is required to form a pantheon -1 -what you get from meeting a religious city state. This way rushing a shrine would be the correct play to get the pantheon you want.

2. Remove the barbarian and map ruins or somehow merge them with each other and the lackluster gold ruin. Maybe you get to see all barbarian encampments + a map of some area + the gold amount you get from ruins today, still not as good as any other ruin (except maybe warrior -> spearman in some cases or 1-2 turns on a tech) but not useless.

3. Make the science ruin not pick the tech you're currently researching + take one of the techs that takes the least amount of time to finish. This will eliminate the risk of a nearly useless science ruin + also eliminate the randomness from getting a tech much faster than what should be possible. Or you could simply make the ruin give a bonus to science.

4. Culture ruins should scale a bit. The culture ruin is only good very early. You get too much culture/turn very fast and I think it should somehow scale with how much culture you're currently making.

[Disc78]

I agree with some of what your are saying, Mostly about the map reveals and barbarian camps. They should be merged together with a gold bonus. The rest i think is fine, maybe would be good to not have the tech unlock the tech you are already researching.

1. It is fine for me, TBH still not even had a Faith ruin, in 4 marathon games, still yet to get one. But it's ok, lots of pantheons can be founded, not the same as founding a religion, and you will still need to build a shrine to get you faith points per turn.

2. agree, merge barbarian & map reveals with a gold bonus, should be 200g aswell.

3. agree with not picking the tech your already researching, beyond that it should random.

4. Culture is good as it is. TBH the scaling thing is not needed,by the time you get your first policy, most of the ruins would hvae been discovered already, save those that could be on inaccessible islands. But the scaling would be very very rarely needed. SO may as well leave it alone.

But i disagree that ancient ruins are game changers, even with the early SP or Tech boost, it is still pretty easy to catch back up. And like i said it is very rare that you will get a serious leap on anyone as you still need to be going for the correct buildings to boost your Faith Culture and Science beyond the inital boost a ruin will give you.

[alcibiades]

I think merging map and barb camp ruins is a good idea. Maybe they could also show unpicked ruins? That would actually be really useful. Or give hints on where city states and other civs are. Or just reveal a larger map area than they currently do. I don't think Gold ruins are bad, we just need more Gold from them. Being able to buy quick influence or a quick Worker from Gold ruins could be really useful, but the 60-90 Gold we get currently doesn't really contribute that much.

[platypusBart]

I don't think the victor of a strategy game that takes several hours to play should be determined by a random number generator.

Well first of all many more even more important aspect of the game are random generated -map, location, resources and even to some extent, combat encounters.Role of the player is to adapt to those and play accordingly.

As for ruins, ok i agree, it can be very helpful at the beginning of a game but i don't see how having/not having specific ruin type can decide about wining or loosing the game. I think you are overreacting ; )

As far as I'm not happy to discover part of a map (especially when my friends receives culture of tech) i acknowledge this a part of the system. I don't believe it should always be in your favor.

Option to disable ruins should be enough for everyone who is not happy with this part of a game. Often use it with friends and no one is complaining.

it's still better than Civ IV system where you had a chance that taking village (ruins) with warrior will spawn few barbs around you : )

[alcibiades]

As far as I'm not happy to discover part of a map (especially when my friends receives culture of tech) i acknowledge this a part of the system. I don't believe it should always be in your favor.
(...)
it's still better than Civ IV system where you had a chance that taking village (ruins) with warrior will spawn few barbs around you : )

I think you sort of contradict yourself here, but that aside, the premise of goody huts in Civ 5 seems to be that they should in fact always be in your favor, and when you have something that is completely random like they are it actually does have a very significant impact on balance and game evolution as we are talking a bonus that is not weighed towards what the other factions get.

I also don't think your analogy with the map is valid - map location is not at all random, it is balanced with regard to location and resources corresponding to the dificulty level that you choose, and while some conditions may seem more or less favorable, in this case you can adapt to it accordingly.

[Slin]

I agree with some of what your are saying, Mostly about the map reveals and barbarian camps. They should be merged together with a gold bonus. The rest i think is fine, maybe would be good to not have the tech unlock the tech you are already researching.

1. It is fine for me, TBH still not even had a Faith ruin, in 4 marathon games, still yet to get one. But it's ok, lots of pantheons can be founded, not the same as founding a religion, and you will still need to build a shrine to get you faith points per turn.

2. agree, merge barbarian & map reveals with a gold bonus, should be 200g aswell.

3. agree with not picking the tech your already researching, beyond that it should random.

4. Culture is good as it is. TBH the scaling thing is not needed,by the time you get your first policy, most of the ruins would hvae been discovered already, save those that could be on inaccessible islands. But the scaling would be very very rarely needed. SO may as well leave it alone.

But i disagree that ancient ruins are game changers, even with the early SP or Tech boost, it is still pretty easy to catch back up. And like i said it is very rare that you will get a serious leap on anyone as you still need to be going for the correct buildings to boost your Faith Culture and Science beyond the inital boost a ruin will give you.

1. Woah, do you not build scouts? I get these more than normal players since I mainly play multiplayer and with a lot fewer people than the map suggests but still we've never seen the first pantheon come from a shrine in 25+ games (on epic).

2. Hmm I think the gold should scale more on the speed 200 would be A LOT in quick. But I agree that 50 gold is nothing in epic/marathon.

4. Yeah culture is not that big of a problem but I still think it can be improved.

And they really can change games. Lets say you and an opponent gets 3 ruins each in a game. If you get 3x useless ones and they get 3x good ones then you won't be able to catch up if your opponent knows what they are doing. Thanks for the feedback!

[Slin]

Well first of all many more even more important aspect of the game are random generated -map, location, resources and even to some extent, combat encounters.

I agree that there are more random elements, I plan to get to many of the other aspects with new topics =)

As for ruins, ok i agree, it can be very helpful at the beginning of a game but i don't see how having/not having specific ruin type can decide about wining or loosing the game. I think you are overreacting ; )

I might be overreacting a bit, ruins most often don't decide games. However some of them can. Especially when you get multiple good ones and another player gets none. Also the real problem I have is how unfair, unfun and frustrating it feels to get a map of something useless from your first ruin when my friend I'm playing against gets his second +population.

As far as I'm not happy to discover part of a map (especially when my friends receives culture of tech) i acknowledge this a part of the system. I don't believe it should always be in your favor.

Why not?

Option to disable ruins should be enough for everyone who is not happy with this part of a game. Often use it with friends and no one is complaining.

Good for you! But don't you wish you could add some early game spice to those games?

it's still better than Civ IV system where you had a chance that taking village (ruins) with warrior will spawn few barbs around you : )

No arguments there that sounds horrible.

[xSooners]

If you disable ruins, in my eyes the game becomes boring. I like a littlw excitement

[platypusBart]

I think you sort of contradict yourself here, but that aside, the premise of goody huts in Civ 5 seems to be that they should in fact always be in your favor, and when you have something that is completely random like they are it actually does have a very significant impact on balance and game evolution as we are talking a bonus that is not weighed towards what the other factions get.

I also don't think your analogy with the map is valid - map location is not at all random, it is balanced with regard to location and resources corresponding to the dificulty level that you choose, and while some conditions may seem more or less favorable, in this case you can adapt to it accordingly.

Map location is balanced? I had way too many situations when I either started with one luxury in my starting location or with three. Also just look around how many ppl are complaining about iron and other strategic resources. There are even examples when there is only once source of iron on whole continent. How is it balanced?
And don't say that instead of it I should have access to more luxuries, because it's not happening always. Had situations when I couldn't find any new lux. nor iron in 10 hex radius and had situations when I got to place 3 new cities 4-5 hexes away, every one with new lux. one with iron. Balanced, sure.

I'm not saying that those are no-win situations. Just trying to make a point about random factor in map generation.

Also, sorry but i cannot see where do I contradict myself.

[alcibiades]

Map location is balanced? I had way too many situations when I either started with one luxury in my starting location or with three. Also just look around how many ppl are complaining about iron and other strategic resources. There are even examples when there is only once source of iron on whole continent. How is it balanced?
And don't say that instead of it I should have access to more luxuries, because it's not happening always. Had situations when I couldn't find any new lux. nor iron in 10 hex radius and had situations when I got to place 3 new cities 4-5 hexes away, every one with new lux. one with iron. Balanced, sure.

I'm not saying that those are no-win situations. Just trying to make a point about random factor in map generation.

Starting position is not random. Period. There is a script that ensures that your starting position will have a value within a certain range depending on the difficulty level you choose. I don't know the details of what counts in this - Luxury, Strategic and Bonus resources obviously do, things like Rivers and perhaps Ocean access probably also do. There will always be a range of variation, so you may be more lucky sometimes than others, how much this is I don't know - it can well be that an "unlucky" start simply have many hidden ressources like Uranium, Aluminium, Oil, Coal and Iron - we can't tell, if we don't play the game. The map script seems to have certain quirks, like there is almost always one resource on each continent that is very scarce and/or sits with City States only, cf. the Iron discussion - this frequently also happens with Coal, Aluminium and Uranium. I reckon it is made so to prompt exploring and trading which I think is good.

All that being said, there are obviously random factors also - Marble is great if you want to Wonder hoard, being on coast and river is pretty crucial if you want to go Cultural, etc.

Also, sorry but i cannot see where do I contradict myself.

First you said that goody huts didn't always have to be in your favor, next you said how bad it was in Civ IV because sometimes something bad like Barbs spawning happened. Just seemed a bit of a contradiction.

[tfordp]

I think it is balanced in a certain, random way. That's the whole point, really, and the reason there is an option for a strategic balance on the advanced set-up screen. You never know what you're going to get, to steal a quote.
Balanced in so far that I've had all types of games; I've discovered ridiculous amounts of iron right next to my capital, next game I have none. I've travelled all the way around a peninsula to find a goody hut I would have got fifteen turns earlier if I'd only gone the other way. I've had a fjord a few tiles away with a monopoly on whales, and I've been landlocked with two lux and nothing else for fifteen tiles.
As far as the ruins are concerned, it can be very annoying finding a map on a single hex island just after you've learned about satellites (yes, this has happened to me), and a mix with barbs and gold would be ok. On the other hand, I've found a map in my first goody hut before now, and other goody huts in the area are revealled. This all belongs to the random balance of the game.
The free tech is completely overpowered, and should only give you a boost to science equivalent to the faith and culure huts.

[platypusBart]

Starting position is not random. Period. There is a script that ensures that your starting position will have a value within a certain range depending on the difficulty level you choose. I don't know the details of what counts in this - Luxury, Strategic and Bonus resources obviously do, things like Rivers and perhaps Ocean access probably also do. There will always be a range of variation, so you may be more lucky sometimes than others, how much this is I don't know - it can well be that an "unlucky" start simply have many hidden ressources like Uranium, Aluminium, Oil, Coal and Iron - we can't tell, if we don't play the game. The map script seems to have certain quirks, like there is almost always one resource on each continent that is very scarce and/or sits with City States only, cf. the Iron discussion - this frequently also happens with Coal, Aluminium and Uranium. I reckon it is made so to prompt exploring and trading which I think is good.

All that being said, there are obviously random factors also - Marble is great if you want to Wonder hoard, being on coast and river is pretty crucial if you want to go Cultural, etc.


First you said that goody huts didn't always have to be in your favor, next you said how bad it was in Civ IV because sometimes something bad like Barbs spawning happened. Just seemed a bit of a contradiction.

And what isn't scripted in the game? Location of ruins and chance of getting specific bonus also is scripted. What does it have to do with balance? Almost everything you wrote can be said about ruins as well. There will always be some kind of variation, when it comes to distance, amount and bonus of ancient ruins near your start location. Also sometimes you will be more lucky finding them and getting 'good bonuses' and sometimes you will be unlucky and get barbs location and map.

And i haven't wrote anywhere that your starting location is totally random. I'm just stating that concerning all start conditions i had in my games so far I won't call this part of the game balanced.

As for my 'contradiction'. Point about barbs spawning in Civ IV was only to show that in theory there could be worse things implemented than barb camps location (considering previous civs). That featured was never game-breaker for me nor was anything that would ruin whole gameplay experience.

[Druski]

I agree with the map/barbarian, but rather than nerfing ruins that have noteworthy rewards, I would love a greater variety of new rewards to create more diverse possibilities. For example:


-the ruins are actually built over top of some strategic/lux resource. - creating that resource in that tile after the ruin is explored
-exploring the ruins rescues a unit (a worker for example) for a nearby city state, you can free them for a relations boost, or enslave them with a strong chance of causing war
-exploring the ruin (using some quasi-believable reason) causes a new river to be created from that spot, running out to a nearby body of water and changes the landscape.
-exploring the ruin (using some quasi-believable reason) gives you a treasure map to go to a distant tile for a potential big reward. perhaps the tile in question is a undiscovered natural wonder (and it now gives an El-Dorado type bonus to discovery of that natural wonder)
-exploring the ruin results in a faith-inspiring encounter with a pantheon-diety, and spawns a faith-based natural wonder
-exploring the ruin causes a barbarian horde (whatever happened to those?) to attack, but with a twist: if your unit can survive its Alamo-esque encounter, it gets a unique promotion (likely something defensive)
-exploring the ruin gives your unit experience/unique promotions
-exploring the ruin gives an opportunity to make it a permanent historical site, creating a tile with bonus. Im thinking it could be a random combination of faith/culture/gold for example, so sometimes you get +1 of each, other times its +3 culture only. etc
-rescue a random great person
-discover an underground network of caves - player may choose to explore them and unit is randomly relocated to a different tile, potentially even on a different land mass, but given an incentive to go: perhaps a type of exploration promotion for the unit, discover treasure, etc.
-unit becomes permanently maintenance-free (no idea why, perhaps the unit saw a vision of divine purpose and as a result, serves the nation freely)
-exploring the ruins reveals a complex road network, generating a fair number of road-improved tiles (maintenance-free) around it.
-exploring the ruins gives a production bonus in a nearby city


Those are just a few thoughts that came to mind. the point is that to me anyway, greater variety can result in a more interesting game, and each game played is more unique from the previous one. I'd rather see random events and a larger number of possibilities from ruins than nerfing existing rewards

[alcibiades]

And what isn't scripted in the game? Location of ruins and chance of getting specific bonus also is scripted. What does it have to do with balance? Almost everything you wrote can be said about ruins as well. There will always be some kind of variation, when it comes to distance, amount and bonus of ancient ruins near your start location. Also sometimes you will be more lucky finding them and getting 'good bonuses' and sometimes you will be unlucky and get barbs location and map.

The difference is that there is, as far as I know, no scripted balance between what the individual players get in goody hut. Even if we assume that all players get the same amount of huts (or start within a certain distance of the same number of huts), I think content of huts is completely random. Thus, player A might get 3 huts with Barbarian camps, and player B might get 3 huts with a free Tech. Perhaps a somewhat extreme example, but none the less there is a not slight chance of very big difference between players here.

[Ikie]

Just pointing it out here, in Civ III getting a hut that spawned 3 barbs around you was kind of a good thing. Since the barbs were quite weak(they were on conscript level), your warrior was bound to kill all three barbs and get the experience from them.

[Hellogoodbye123]

Revealing map useless??? That is one of my high.prioriries in my new strategy... Along with upgraded warrior to spear and free gold.

What I would like is that barbarian emcampments give 50g ... Making them a bit nicer to actually go after, and making songhai..at least a bit better to play.. Since they dont really got top of the line bonuses.... 48g from barbs isnt good... And 2 extra culture is not game breaking .... There calvary is good but thats about it...

[Disc78]

Revealing map useless??? That is one of my high.prioriries in my new strategy... Along with upgraded warrior to spear and free gold.

What I would like is that barbarian emcampments give 50g ... Making them a bit nicer to actually go after, and making songhai..at least a bit better to play.. Since they dont really got top of the line bonuses.... 48g from barbs isnt good... And 2 extra culture is not game breaking .... There calvary is good but thats about it...

I guess you play on standard time? I am currently in marathon game, raging barbs on, and playing aS SONGHAI, gets 250g i think per encampment, so funny, my army is huge now, i have never had a better gold treasurary so early on in a game

[Hellogoodbye123]

I play quick!

Any civ gets 16g from an encampment which seems like a joke, because settlers are 370g, library 300g, a composite bowman is 240g even a warrior is 140g....

16g is not a game changer of any sort ! in civrev every barb that gave you money was quite helpful. If they were at least 25-40g they would be at least sort of worth it to go kill them. And if they were 25g-40g for average civ. It would be 75-120g for songhai, putting them a bit higher on the scale along with spain who also gets lots of gold early game, even if enemy finds the natural wonder first. 100g is a nice trade off for just scouting.

As the game progresses, sure no more natural wonders, but as the game progresses theres also less barbs and 16g (48g for songhai) is even more worthless...

but yeah my high priority is free gold, upgrade warrior from ruin, map sight, 1+ pop is nice but my strategy puts me at pop 8-10 at turns 30-35 ... WITH already a library.. making already double science then most players! I even catch up to babylon, they usually focus on great library instead of growing, and while my capital is growing 10-15 pop.. they got this 3-5 pop capital !! they might have gotten a free library, but at 3 pop.. it isnt really adding science.. now if you pillage their academy or kill their scientist, thats another story muhahah

[Disc78]

I should try a quick game, always play marathon, which is nice for me, i like to take my time. But not good for figuring out decent stratagies, as by the time i have finished one game, i have usually forgotten what i did in the early eras :P

Also i would like to Add songhai with the bonus from Honour tree, gold for killing units, also helps a little.

[alcibiades]

Normal game speed gives 25 Gold for a Barb encampment which is pretty useless. They could easily double this amount without breaking game balance in any way.

[Disc78]

Marathon gives 75g, which is frankly beyond pathetic, even scouts cost 350g i think.

With the Songhai UA it seems maybe a little too much, which i guess is the point, i think on marathon they could give at least 150g which would tie in with your double amount, and it would feel about right. 3 camps would buy you a scout, 6 camps and you could buy a granary or a library or something.

[tfordp]

Working as intended?
Barb camps have two raison d'être: XP for new units early game and browny points with CS who feel threatend. That's it; if you destroy them for no good reason, the penalty is only getting a little bit of gold for your efforts. IMHO.

[Disc78]

Working as intended?
Barb camps have two raison d'être: XP for new units early game and browny points with CS who feel threatend. That's it; if you destroy them for no good reason, the penalty is only getting a little bit of gold for your efforts. IMHO.

But what about the the songhai UA then? I think the point of the camps is to destroy them, i don't think they were designed to be farmed for XP or CS alliance points.

EDIT: Also the good reason to destroy them is so they stop popping Barbs which could potentially steal your workers or missionaries or prophets or Great People.

[tfordp]

I haven't played the Songhai for well over a year, what's their UA again?

The barb camps were probably designed for even more that that. They certainly weren't designed just to be destroyed, that would be a waste.

The good reason to not destroy them is so they keep on popping barbs, which can be killed by your new, unexperienced units protecting workers or missionaries or prophets or Great People

[Disc78]

I haven't played the Songhai for well over a year, what's their UA again?

The barb camps were probably designed for even more that that. They certainly weren't designed just to be destroyed, that would be a waste.

The good reason to not destroy them is so they keep on popping barbs, which can be killed by your new, unexperienced units protecting workers or missionaries or prophets or Great People

But unless you play with the unlimited barb xp, then your new troops can only gain to promotions anyway, which can actually be negated by building baracks and others.

If you use the mod, then you are effectively farming, which is not what barb camps were designed for. Not saying it's a bad thing, i use the mod with raging barbs all the time, every game. It's fun, but i always kill the camps, never farm for XP

[tfordp]

But unless you play with the unlimited barb xp, then your new troops can only gain to promotions anyway, which can actually be negated by building baracks and others.

Yes, which is why I wrote 'XP for new units early game'. Until barracks etc. They can also be used even a little later as a replacement for barracks, which gives you time to finish that Wonder before someone else gets it, e.g.

If you use the mod, then you are effectively farming, which is not what barb camps were designed for. Not saying it's a bad thing, i use the mod with raging barbs all the time, every game. It's fun, but i always kill the camps, never farm for XP

I don't use that mod. I use the camps for nothing more than XP for my newly built, early game units, and if I'm lucky enough to find one near a CS I'll just kill the units coming out of it on the CS borders: almost unlimited browny points.
The only times I knowingly destroy a barb camp are to stop the AI grabbing the gold for destroying it (I have even been known to protect a barb camp from the AI), and if it happens to be in my borders when I build a new city.

[alcibiades]

Pretty sure intention of barb camps is to destroy them asap. I know many players don't do that to harvest XP and influence, but the original idea of barb camps (also from previous games) is that they are supposed to pose a danger if you leave them along for too long. Reason why this isn't working is that:
1) They don't develop defences as they did in Civ4, where they would grow into regular towns that could be quite bothersome.
2) They don't really seem to keep up with technological development, meaning that the units they spawn are always inferior even without the damage bonus.
3) They don't spawn units in high numbers on normal settings.

Personally, I would much rather see Barb camps pose a real thread when they pop up and then increase the gold outcome and even incrase the XP cap against barbs one level. In Civ4 I was frequently bothered by barbs sending in axemen pretty early game which could actually do considerable damage.

[Hellogoodbye123]

well if they were suppose to be harvested like you say tfordp raising the gold ammount you get would be a good "trade off" dont you agree?

either harvest or take the loot now!

[Slin]

Can we stay on topic please?

[Hellogoodbye123]

no muhahahah

PS: do not change ruins, they are all beautifully done, even barbs come in handy early exploration when you trying to not die(your scout)

different ppl see some of those bonuses differently, and are not game changers...

if you get free pop, so what, my aztecs going to out pop you..
if you get free tech, so what my aztecs going to out tech you...
if you get free faith points, who cares i dont use religion with aztecs !

[alcibiades]

PS: do not change ruins, they are all beautifully done, even barbs come in handy early exploration when you trying to not die(your scout)

Your oppinion. Barbs are not completely useless, but far inferior to the other bonuses, so combining them with one of the other ones like Gold or general map woulnd't hurt.

[Hellogoodbye123]

Well I agree with you guys on map + barbs but its not to call ancient ruins game changers!! Thats going too far

[Disc78]

Well I agree with you guys on map + barbs but its not to call ancient ruins game changers!! Thats going too far

This! They are not game changers, and i have never played a game with the default amount of teams, where i got 3 ruins that gave me techs.

Also i think with the higher difficulties do the chances of getting a Pop or tech reduce? or is this just my imagination

[Hellogoodbye123]

Well some guy told me ruins gave him the last tech for his spaceship... I had destroyed his capital with nukes, it was.40 pop so his science was.pretty.destroyed... And he managed to still win....

[Slin]

The faith ruins is definitely a game changer in some cases. If you can grab Desert Folklore with a flood plains start then no one can stop you from getting the first religion. Anyway, lets not focus on them deciding games. I feel that ruins is a part of a larger collection of random things that can outright decide games, games are very seldom decided by ruins alone. I don't like the very big variation on them and my main problem with them in their current form is that they ruin my fun.

[alcibiades]

The faith ruins is definitely a game changer in some cases. If you can grab Desert Folklore with a flood plains start then no one can stop you from getting the first religion. Anyway, lets not focus on them deciding games. I feel that ruins is a part of a larger collection of random things that can outright decide games, games are very seldom decided by ruins alone. I don't like the very big variation on them and my main problem with them in their current form is that they ruin my fun.

Well put.

[Hellogoodbye123]

The faith ruins is definitely a game changer in some cases. If you can grab Desert Folklore with a flood plains start then no one can stop you from getting the first religion. Anyway, lets not focus on them deciding games. I feel that ruins is a part of a larger collection of random things that can outright decide games, games are very seldom decided by ruins alone. I don't like the very big variation on them and my main problem with them in their current form is that they ruin my fun.

1. Faith from ruins is not a game changer, even if you get your pantheon/religion first, OTHER players can still get their pantheon/religion as well..

2. Religion isnt for everyone, when I go tall, I dont even bother getting a religion, pantheon yes because its a nice boost. But other players religion will come to you.

and if your going to say that the enemies religion got a head start and its influence is all over the map, that happened to me just a few hours ago, i made 10 cities as austria, I killed the celts :P but their religion was in all my cities, when I got my religion I founded a religion, then I saved the following 2 prophets to convert my 8 cities and my capital was 9th. the 10th city was pressured by my cities and I quickly took control of the religion on my continent.

3. ruins dont decide games, every player will eventually get their share of ruins, you are talking like 1 guy got 5 ruins all free pop/tech while the other guy got 5 barb locations, thats never going to happen, you might get a barb location sure, but so will the enemy.. you might get a good ancient ruin and the enemy might get a good one too. and dont forget all ruins benefit you. you might not like revealing the map, but other players might want that one apart from others. The only one i will admit isnt as great is the barbarian location, but you arent going to get that 100% of the time...

[Disc78]

The faith ruins is definitely a game changer in some cases. If you can grab Desert Folklore with a flood plains start then no one can stop you from getting the first religion. Anyway, lets not focus on them deciding games. I feel that ruins is a part of a larger collection of random things that can outright decide games, games are very seldom decided by ruins alone. I don't like the very big variation on them and my main problem with them in their current form is that they ruin my fun.

Religion only gives you bonuses, it's no game changer. I have won many games on emperor without even founding a religion.

[Hellogoodbye123]

Religion only gives you bonuses, it's no game changer. I have won many games on emperor without even founding a religion.

I have won the past 5 games online with aztecs without a religion as well :P

[Disc78]

I have won the past 5 games online with aztecs without a religion as well :P

Someday i hope you will share your Aztec tactics :P