Hey all, I was just wondering how many people play on the highest difficulty levels, Emperor, Immortal, and Deity. Naturally enough you hear alot of people talking about the lower diff levels cause this is the place to come when your learning the game, but I want to hear the elite players sound off.

Do you play Emperor, Immortal, or Deity difficulty?
Whats size map do you play?
How many people do you put on the map?
What is your fav trait combination?
What era do you start in?
What victory conditions do you play?

To start it off:
I tend to play on Emperor or Immortal.
I like tiny and small maps.
I tend to double the default amount of civs on a map size.
My favorite traits are philisofical and financial.
I start most games in moder or future era.
And I use domination, diplomatic, and conquest vicorties.

I am a very terrible player, I can only play on the lower levels. (go ahead laugh at me :lol: :lol: :lol: )

...

Do you play Emperor, Immortal, or Deity difficulty?
Whats size map do you play?
How many people do you put on the map?
What is your fav trait combination?
What era do you start in?
What victory conditions do you play?

...

I've worked my way up to Emporer - I've yet to win in 4 games.
Standard or large
Default # civs
I play as random leader
Ancient
No domination/culture

Emperor: I win about half my games, the others being abandoned when it's clear that I cannot possibly win, usually quite early.
Large, pangaea or continents (Huge takes me far too long)
Default number of civs (random opponents)
Usually as Roosevelt, renamed Bert of the Bertish Empire
Ancient start, always
No domination; culture very rarely, just for a change. Most wins by conquest.

i started playing emperor recently. Standard maps. Usually pangaea. Usually with 8 or 9 people. 7 is too few. Always ancient era. My favorite leader is Ragnar. Wang Kon is another favorite. Mostly space race and diplo victories so far. On monarch i could win domination victories, no problem, but i'm having trouble winning military victories on emperor.

I win fairly consistently on Emperor, and play mostly on Immortal. My favourite traits are Aggressive, Organised, Creative and to a lesser extent, Expansive. I play standard games (7 civs, ancient era, all victories enabled) on Standard size Fractal or Hemispheres maps, Epic speed. I almost always go for a Domination/Conquest victory.

See this is exactly why i rarely go on emperor.

i hate not playing on huge maps and i cant stand anything non continential.

if i play in emperor (never gone higher) i always play world map and pick an asian country, either china korea, india or khmer, but honestly i don't find it that entertaining. the last time i played khmer was good because there was a fair balance, but i still get nagged at the fact that the computer has an advantage, i want it to be 100% fair for both sides, playing with handicap for the other players makes me feel like i'm playing a babies game or just wasting my time.

I was playing Emperor and Immortal some when all I had was Vanilla, now I am back down to Monarch with BTS. Once I get the hang of all the new features in this expansion, I plan to push back up.

Some maps are easier than others, and some leaders are more powerful than others, so those choices can highly influence the "true" difficulty of some maps. Also, some players own personal style can be stronger or weaker depending on map, leader, etc.

I have started playing Emperor for a month. So far, I can only win if I have a decent starting location.:blush:

I mostly play huge, archipelago maps, on Epic speed.
I leave everything on default, except for: Raging barbs, aggr AI, no tech brokering, no vassals.
I play a peaceful builder's game.
Favorite traits: creative, industrious.
Favorite leader: Louis.

Home rule: I abstain from all the "tricks" that some people recommend on higher levels: queue swapping, pre-chopping, oracle gambits, tech beelining with tech brokering intent, early rushes, worker stealing etc.
That's probably why I'm still struggling... :D

Home rule: I abstain from all the "tricks" that some people recommend on higher levels: queue swapping, pre-chopping, oracle gambits, tech beelining with tech brokering intent, early rushes, worker stealing etc.
That's probably why I'm still struggling... :D
I guess I dont understand why you are calling these things "tricks". Most of them are pure micromanagement game skills. Mastering your build queue and your chopping/whipping go a LONG way to being fast enough to keep up with the AIs. Those who struggle at higher levels have less of an idea of how to maximize these techniques.

This game is ABOUT micromanagement. Doing it better = more game skill = higher difficulty beatable. Nothing has increased my ability to beat the "next" level more than a more insightful understanding of the micromanagement techniques you disdain. Why WOULDNT you beeline a high level tech with the intent to trade it away? Why WOULDNT you want to master chopping and whipping to maximize your benefits from these features?

Some of the stuff you mention might be sketchy, but honestly, you seem to refer to game strategies as "almost cheating". I am willing to debate the issue further, as I am sure others would be, but please be a bit more definitive about whats "acceptable strategy" and what defines a "trick".

EDIT: As I re-read that, I notice its a very abrasive post. My apologies for that tone, morch, it wasnt my intention to come off as "hostile". Its just what you call "tricks" I call "skills".

I only win Emperor, Immortal, and Diety if i Quecha rush.

Lots of stuff
Well, this has been debated ad nauseam, but since you are willing to talk about it, let's go. :) And your post isn't that abrasive, considering my post was at least somewhat provocative. ;)

I like my games to have flavor, and for me flavor comes from doing what seems fit from a naive point of view, not what seems most appropriate in order to exploit the weak points of the AI. For instance, researching the techs my empire needs to grow has flavor. Researching the techs I know I can trade for maximum profit because previous games have shown that the AI makes them a low priority feels lame. I don't blame people who do it, and I can understand that you call it skill, but to me such skills are precisely what diminish the experience.
To take a comparison, if Civ was tennis, I'd rather play a beautiful game (with big shots and classic volleys) and lose, than winning by constantly slicing to my opponent's known-to-be-weak backhand.
I guess it's just a matter of personality.

Not me! I am a really, really bad player. I get my butt kicked on prince level :blush: !

Nearly all of my games are on Emperor, with the occasional on Immortal. Always Large or Huge and my favourite maps are medium/small and Fractal. I usually add an extra 1 or 2 civs to the default and always play AggAI. I never ever 'reload' for any reason, and would rather die. All of my games are either Epic or Marathon.

About 2 months ago I would have said I often win but usually lose on Emperor, but now it would be the other way around. Have only won twice on Immortal. Favourite leaders are Darius and Ghandi, rarely go anyone else, maybe the Incans occasionally. Never done anything but an ancient start, anything else isn't really civ, more like retardation. I prefer to win by domination, but often powerful enemies will convince me I should use my tech lead to go for space rather than war. I absolutely love this game!

Ive only done a handfull of emperor games and only won one. I only like high levels so you can run an effective spy economy, and often come out with high culture rather than large amounts of land. The win was cultural. I also feel that playing where either side gets % bonuses is playing a bit of a babies game, but the AI is bad so noble (thats the balanced default?) can get easy after a while. I win almost always on prince, and about half the time on monarch. Even in larger monarch games it seems inevitable to face stacks of over 100, and siting around building troops to prepare for that is tedious to me, so I switch up the difficulty level a lot between monarch and prince.

I play mostly on emperor or immortal. Almost always on huge maps because I like long games but I must confess Im very good but only with a very small spectrum of civs. I can obviously win with the Romans but for me they are not as easy as Germany.

I actually find that they are little too strong at high levels cause I can sit around and tank until the industrial era being in the bottom half and then just panzer rush my way to the top. Its really fun but a little easy.

Up until about 3 months ago I could only play monach and would only win 1 out of every 3 or 4 starts. The win was highly dependant on starting position and just plain fluke i guess. I then read Snaaty's guide to emperor and above and it helped me no end. I played a game after reading it and smashed monach. I then played two back to back games on Emporer and won them both. I then progress to Immortal and was back to winning 1 in 3 or 4 starts.

All of this on Standard everything, continents ETC.

Many of the strategies on here I am still learning, queue swapping for example I have no idea about. Snaaty's strategy does beeline rifling, but other than that it seems ok - I have found that it does fall over quite a bit depending on conditions on Immortal and Emperor.

One comment i will make - there have been a number of articles on here about the AI cheating - seeing as my rise up the difficulty levels was rather rapid I did come across one thing that was quite noticable. The percenages of combat success as you go up the diffculty levels is just pain wrong. Checking the combat logs the AI will win MOST of the combats where odds are less than 50%, they win a significant number of combats where the odd are only 10%-20%, YOU WILL LOOSE A GREAT NUMBER OF COMBATS BETWEEN 50-90%. I know this comment will invite a multitude of comemtns from people who have tested combat in the world builder to death. They will also say that it is just my mind remembering the unlikely defeats - it's not. The higher up the more likely the odds will fall against you. I started taking notes - just obvious.
I wnet back down to Monach for some fun and it blew me away how many combats I expected to loose on that level that I was now winning.

Anyway my two cents worth........

Emporer in single player and monarch in mp (just that noone is screwed too early due to a bad starting position or something).
I/we win some and lose some (OK, usually not lose like worst player or defeated but you know), so I'm not THE most experienced player.
Usually I/we play on large terra world with 12 or 13 civs and always everyone on random. MP always on standard speed, SP on epic or marathon.
Right now I'm trying the 40 civs mod in single player on emporer with the greece.

Note: I don't mean the MP games I play with just humans (just to not sound like a liar if someone actually played me :) ). Of course these games are usually smaller maps and quick game speed on noble.

Emperor (rarely) & Immortal (mostly) + occasional Deity game
Standard size
Pangaea
Ancient era
Marathon speed
18 civs
Random leaders
All victory conditions

Like hack'n'slash games. :)

I'm playing my games on Emperor now.
Large Maps
3-4 extra civs
Random Civs/Random Leaders/Random Map/Climate/Sea Level (I like trying to make the best of whatever hand I'm dealt)
Epic Speed (I enjoy it, plus I probably need the crutch of a little extra time still at this level)
Ancient Era
All victory conditions - although I tend to be a bit of a peacemonger so usually aim for Space, Culture, or Diplo - will go for Conquest or Domination if the map and settings dicate.

I like my games to have flavor, and for me flavor comes from doing what seems fit from a naive point of view, not what seems most appropriate in order to exploit the weak points of the AI. For instance, researching the techs my empire needs to grow has flavor. Researching the techs I know I can trade for maximum profit because previous games have shown that the AI makes them a low priority feels lame. I don't blame people who do it, and I can understand that you call it skill, but to me such skills are precisely what diminish the experience..
I guess we are talking about apples and oranges. I dont research techs I know the AI will trade big for, I research up a tree with specific targets in mind (CoL for Courthouses, Liberalism for the free tech, Democracy and Rifling for obvious reasons), and the AI tends to hit the branches first, something I think is a poor way to tech.

With regard to the mechanics of queue management, whipping/chopping overflow, etc etc, I just see that as sharp play. I purposely grow my cities while building wonders for the "stick a unit in front, 2-pop whip back down" hammer overflow, because whipping Wonders themselves suffer a huge penalty. I purposely pre-chop some forests because I want to to supply something other than whats currently at the top of my queue, because I want that next something as fast as I can get it. I dont see this as taking advantage of the AIs weaknesses at all. I see them as smart, strategic game play.

Granted, there are many cheesy tricks that take huge advantage of AI "blind spots", but there are also many "tricks" that dont, they just make you progress faster.

Even though I dont know all the tricks and strategies that the best players seem to use , i far prefer playing emperor and up

If I play an easier level I actually find the game "harder".....Do I want to go to war? do I want to build this wonder? which of the ten available techs do I study? waaaaaaaaaay too many choices when it`s easy.

For me , the real fun is hanging by the skin of your teeth just to survive , maybe fighting an early defensive war and hanging on....After doing that its so much more satisfying to get a win.

The best thing you can do to improve IMHO is to cop any start you get , never ever re load no matter what and play each game to a result even if you get hammered

I also avoid the early rush.not cause it wont work in fact it is the best way to get a good start........But if you only ever had one game of Civ to play and could never start again , would you REALLY put all your eggs in one basket and try a rush that would wipe you out if you failed ? Waiting for cats and REALLY pumping your neighbour hard is much more fun for me

Well, this has been debated ad nauseam, but since you are willing to talk about it, let's go. :) And your post isn't that abrasive, considering my post was at least somewhat provocative. ;)

I like my games to have flavor, and for me flavor comes from doing what seems fit from a naive point of view, not what seems most appropriate in order to exploit the weak points of the AI. For instance, researching the techs my empire needs to grow has flavor. Researching the techs I know I can trade for maximum profit because previous games have shown that the AI makes them a low priority feels lame. I don't blame people who do it, and I can understand that you call it skill, but to me such skills are precisely what diminish the experience.
To take a comparison, if Civ was tennis, I'd rather play a beautiful game (with big shots and classic volleys) and lose, than winning by constantly slicing to my opponent's known-to-be-weak backhand.
I guess it's just a matter of personality.

Your analogy comparing Civ to a sport about essentially not playing to win makes me cringe.... as a high school varsity basketball player... So I'm not supposed to take advantage of opponent's weaknesses?

Nice, very nice. I'm glad to see so many people playing on the higher diff levels. Keep it up and sound off if you got a pair of civ cohonaes. :)

Immortal
Huge Pangea or Large Big_And_Small, Low sea level (no big fan of naval fights)
Other mapsettings standard
18 civs (I love crowded maps, I love diplomatic/religious chaos, and I like struggling to get enough cities for oxford/globe, and I find landblocking rather lame)
Random Leader
Epic Speed
Ancient Era
All victories enabled (with 18 civs, diplomatic just won't happen though)

I play about 80% of my starting positions, only recreate if the initial BFC is completely surrounded by Ice/tundra

Win ~95% on Emporer, ~70% on Immortal

I can win about half the emporer games I play, and about 1/4 of the immortal ones. The settings that matter, are marathon speed, normal map size, and everybody has to be reachable using coast-hugging boats. (preferably all on one landmass though). There's only certain leaders I can do well with on settings harder than monarch....... mostly the ones with good synergy in their traits/uu/ub.

If I play faster speeds than marathon, I don't have enough time to warmonger away the AI's starting advantages, so I generally do badly. If the map size is too big, chances are they'll be somebody on the other size of the map who I can't supress easily..... so they'll usually beat me. Again..... the same problem if I have to wait for caravels to make contact.

My preferred way of playing is on monarch though. On the harder settings, I have to do so much micromanaging, it ruins the fun for me a lot of the time. I'd rather play monarch, and make the games harder by playing weird map types on huge, with 23 opponents, raging barbs and agressive AI.

If I play faster speeds than marathon, I don't have enough time to warmonger away the AI's starting advantages, so I generally do badly. If the map size is too big, chances are they'll be somebody on the other size of the map who I can't supress easily..... so they'll usually beat me. Again..... the same problem if I have to wait for caravels to make contact.

My preferred way of playing is on monarch though. On the harder settings, I have to do so much micromanaging, it ruins the fun for me a lot of the time. I'd rather play monarch, and make the games harder by playing weird map types on huge, with 23 opponents, raging barbs and agressive AI.
Very good post Jimbo, your situation is a testimony about what OTHER factors truly decide the "difficulty" of some games.

Map size/type, Number of Civs, Play speed, etc all play a role in determining the actual difficulty of that particular game.

I like to play Monarch as well, I find I can make a few mistakes and still wind up with a very playable position. Sure, my mistakes may cost me some of my "pet target goals", for example, in a recent game I lost the Library because I was forced to stifle my economy by keeping the Holy Cities of an AI on my continent. Not exactly going to win any races with my Science Slider at 0 and still a negative cash flow, forcing even further adjustments (running merchants under Caste, instead of scientists). But I managed to recover nicely, he had lots of forests up there, so I chopped out Courthouses and the Fobidden Palace, and went on to a solid winning position. I never did finish that game, LOL, I think I will do that today.

Thinking of the whole Civ games series as a micromanagement game is not quite right in my opinion. As the game has evolved, it seems the developers have tried to remove "small tricks" that had you micromanage... Like how in Civ IV either your hammers or your beakers don't get lost (which forced you to switch productions/production method or decrease your science funding in Civ III... if I remember well, just as a tech or a production was about to end).

I have posted about this a couple of days ago as food for thought, but maybe it was in the wrong thread, maybe I'll be allowed to paste it here again, correcting a few mistakes...

"A couple of recent posts about workers just led me to think about some sort of dichotomy that is present in the idea behind Civilization, in my opinion.

While the game is grand in scope, making you the leader of an empire to rule the earth, you still have to micromanage individual worker units on building improvements in a way that reminds me of smaller scale games, like warcraft or age of empires for instance, where it is understood that you are building a city in a small region somewhere in the world.

Of course, that seems obvious... But it lead me to think of ideas about the future. For me, I don't quite see the point of the worker unit. I would like to have more "world simulation" (à la "SimXYZ" (SimCity for instance)) in the game. If I build New York and Boston on a continent, I don't see why I, the emperor, should have to tell an individual bunch of workers to build a road. It seems that roads would happen by themselves as a result of having built cities near each other. Roads to other nations would develop after opening borders with them. Maybe later you would get the option of making these roads more "official" and more efficient. I don't know... Same goes for tile improvement. For me, it should be the cities' citizens job to do that. In the city screen, I could tell them to work a tile according to what I want it to be, i.e. "work tile X as a farm", "work tile Y as a mine", eventually, with passing years of working a tile as something, it would become better at what I meant it to be (depending on the type of land of course...). Come to think of it, cottages work like that too, but somehow you have to have a worker build it, and then if you change it to something else, it's pretty much lost.

Just ideas in the air, but for me, managing my empire at a larger scale is more fun than the small task of telling strange individual worker units what to do. Diplomacy and large scale managing is where I get my fun I suppose. Warfare too, and that we all agree needs a revamp in a similar way. Build "divisions" and "battalions" instead of individual units to micromanage... Create military fronts when at war... I haven't thought of that in detail really.

I was always the kind of person who liked to see my empire develop by itself due to broad decisions I made. For instance, when playing SMAC, I enjoyed the option of choosing what general path science should take, and the actual technologies that came out of my research were not those I specifically chose, but those related to the subject I told them to study.

I enjoy Civ IV a lot of course, I'm just putting food for thought here. I thought of these things in the past 10 minutes."

So, as this post shows, there are different types of Civ players, and the higher difficulty levels are geared at people who can make small "tricky micromanagement decisions" that, in my very humble opinion, don't reflect the pleasure I have of thinking of myself as the ruler of a civilization... in a game called Civilization. It just doesn't feel as epic when I have to move around small military units and make tiny decisions about "on what turn should I start to chop that forest". Most likely I will never play on Deity on Civ IV, but that's just me.

I must repeat Civ IV is one of my favourite games ever, I don't think that post shows it very well :)

It's extremely easy to play Deity games.

Well not at ancient age. The best period to play is future age, because you start on par with ai in tech, starting number of settlers and ai suck at making production a priorty. I can overrun all ai with production although they still get tons of bonus in anything.

Sounds like you need to try from ancient era then. Playing on immortal at ancient era, standard map, continents - there is nothing easy about that.

i can beat immortal fine, it's just that deity ai starts with an extra settler that I cant cope with

I'm currently playing Prince level with Standard map size, and standard speed, and default number of civs. I randomize everything else. When I win, I win big, but I'll often make some silly mistake and blow it early. I'm thinking of moving up to Monarch.

Question for those who play at elite levels: I noticed that nobody posted plays the standard map size, standard speed and the default number of civs.

Is it considered harder or easier to player larger maps, slower speeds and more civs?

I do, but only on Emperor and Immortal, haven't made the jump to deity as I'm bearly coping with Immortal. You really need to expose the AI's failings to beat it on standard everything. Beeline techs, using case system to extreme levels to pop exactly what you need and when etc. It's not that much fun to be honest.

I enjoy getting a random leader on Emperor, taking what I get for positioning and then trying to beat it. You get a Protective + Aggressive leader for example with a closed in starting position and you'll stuggle on settler level.

Question for those who play at elite levels: I noticed that nobody posted plays the standard map size, standard speed and the default number of civs.

Is it considered harder or easier to player larger maps, slower speeds and more civs?

Larger maps are actually harder than standard as it makes it more difficult to keep far away civs in line. Slower speeds and extra number of civs do make it easier however.

Emperor win 80%
Immortal win 20% (must try harder - LOL).

I play as English / Elizabeth on a normal size map, normal number of AI, continents and marathon.

The few games I lose at Emperor are nearly always because of a very bad starting position. Most of us can win on an average starting position, but a really bad starting position can be a killer at this difficulty level.

A typically bad start usually involves both of the following:

1) The only available Copper / Iron is so close to an aggressive AI that they always get it first. You can buy off aggressive AI and survive to Feudalism, but you are so weak by then that 9 times out of 10 they will come and get you in the medieval period anyway.

2) The aggressive AI and/or other AI settle so close to you that you can not stretch your borders close to key stone / marble / gold / ivory, etc that will help you build key classic age wonders at double speed. Yes you can settle a few isolated cities that are cut off from your civ to get at a resource, but those isolated cities will either flip or be attacked very quickly. The AI therefore get those key resources that you can't, and the cultural impact of their building wonders and having a larger civ in the classic period means your borders will collapse badly later in the game. If you can't / don't build wonders yourself, then the cultural borders of a neighbouring AI will expand enormously as they will usually build every wonder they can get their hands on, and this border expansion is a real pain at the higher levels.

I think the AI expands to fast in the classic period, both in terms of the number of cities they can build and the extra size of their cultural borders. The human player can not build as many cities during this period as the AI, because their economy will crash if they try. The human player is therefore limited to just building a few key cities if they are at peace during this period. They can however fund a larger civ via an early axe rush, as the loot they gain from captured cities is often enough to prevent a financial crash, but if they don't tech or trade to currency / codes of law / monarchy fast enough, and/or run out of cities to capture and loot, then their economy will still crash and burn.


----------------

The map size and settings are very important at Immortal / Emperor / Deity as adjusting them can make the game unbalanced. Someone playing a small size map at these levels, is basically playing a very easy game, (equivalent of circa Monarch level). Likewise, players can turn off victory conditions, that make the game easier to play, or turn things on that will make it easier to play.

The true test of how good someone actually is at these levels, is to leave everything on normal, and play continents or Pangaea maps against a normal number of AI. Don't turn on raging barbs, don't turn off cultural victory, etc. Just leave everything on normal and see how good you really are.

It is amazingly hard to win at immortal with all the settings on normal, and it really is an edge of your seat experience. You therefore need to weigh peoples advice in the balance, because those players who play at these difficulty levels, but adjust the normal game settings, are not really playing a normal game at immortal / deity level.

Yes, I know there will be howls of protest, but Civ will utterly slaughter most immortal / deity players if they tried to play the game with normal settings. The genuinely higher level players who earned their spurs the hard way freely admit civ is an absolute ball breaker at the higher difficulty levels, because if you play it as it was designed and balanced to be played, then it really is a ball breaker.

Regards - Mr P

I normally play emperor epic speed everything standart , map continents/pangea mostly , civ always random and I have to win with that civ before I can move on to a new game.

Favorite traits I dont really have , I just hate protective , all the others are fine in their own role.

After starting to play BTS about 6 weeks ago I had a pretty hard time the first 5 games or so even went back to Monarch but now im winning about 75% of my games on emperor , ive won a few on immortal but its more tedious then fun to me thats why I enjoy playing emperor more .

My most favorite games are AW prince games though , very challenging and fun imho.

Question for those who play at elite levels: I noticed that nobody posted plays the standard map size, standard speed and the default number of civs.

Is it considered harder or easier to player larger maps, slower speeds and more civs?
Standard speed is way too fast for my taste, frenzy pace, feels like I'm missing all the fun. Prefer 18 civs on standard size maps because all the action starts very early, diplomacy is important from the very start of the game. Usually by 2800 BC all map is populated, if I'm very lucky (meaning I find a good choking point to prevent AI to spread) I'll be able to get 2 towns + capitol. Capitol + 1 decent spot for 2nd town are good enough for solid start.

I guess I dont understand why you are calling these things "tricks". Most of them are pure micromanagement game skills. Mastering your build queue and your chopping/whipping go a LONG way to being fast enough to keep up with the AIs. Those who struggle at higher levels have less of an idea of how to maximize these techniques.

This game is ABOUT micromanagement. Doing it better = more game skill = higher difficulty beatable. Nothing has increased my ability to beat the "next" level more than a more insightful understanding of the micromanagement techniques you disdain. Why WOULDNT you beeline a high level tech with the intent to trade it away? Why WOULDNT you want to master chopping and whipping to maximize your benefits from these features?

Some of the stuff you mention might be sketchy, but honestly, you seem to refer to game strategies as "almost cheating". I am willing to debate the issue further, as I am sure others would be, but please be a bit more definitive about whats "acceptable strategy" and what defines a "trick".

EDIT: As I re-read that, I notice its a very abrasive post. My apologies for that tone, morch, it wasnt my intention to come off as "hostile". Its just what you call "tricks" I call "skills".


I've found that the game becomes work once I start to play on any level higher than prince, and that I'm not able to use it to relax/unwind. I'm sure when I first started on Prince I felt the same way, but back then I had a lot more free time.

Now Civ is just about relaxing and enjoying the free time. Damn adult life.

Do you play Emperor, Immortal, or Deity difficulty?
Whats size map do you play?
How many people do you put on the map?
What is your fav trait combination?
What era do you start in?
What victory conditions do you play?

Monarch is my normal level, but I have been playing quite a bit of Emperor lately. I win less than half my Emperor games. Starting position becomes much more important on Emp.

I play Standard maps, and add 2-3 civs for a total of 9 or 10.

On Emperor I find Creative and Imperialistic to be the best traits. The initial land grab becomes much more important at this level, and both these traits help in that department. I think Imperialistic is a bit underrated on the whole; its value goes up the higher the difficulty.

Philosophical is also quite good, as it is on any level. Strategic lightbulbing is a good way to get a leg up on the AI.

Is it considered harder or easier to player larger maps, slower speeds and more civs?

I think the main factor here is how many civs you get contact with prior to Optics. Any maps where you have land contact with most civs are going to be easier (e.g. pangaea, big & small) while maps which keep you separated (e.g. continents, hemispheres, medium & small) are more difficult. The reason is twofold: more contacts means more trading partners, which is good for the human. And being separated by ocean makes conquest/domination impossible prior to astronomy, and more difficult thereafter. (Since military matters favor the human these games are more difficult in terms of win conditions.)

- I play on Emperor
- Standard Map Size
- Terra Map
- 7-9 Civilizations
- All victory conditions
- Random Leader
- Normal Speed
- Ancient Start

Question for those who play at elite levels: I noticed that nobody posted plays the standard map size, standard speed and the default number of civs.

Is it considered harder or easier to player larger maps, slower speeds and more civs?

I play standard maps, normal speed, default civ number (Immortal level at the moment).

Generally difficulty rises as the map size increases, but the game gets easier when the speed decreases. If you want an easy Deity win, try the Incas on the smallest map at marathon speed with one AI. ;)

I have never played at any level other than Emperor. Now that it has become pretty easy, I think it is time to scope out the higher levels. Unfortunately, I don't think that I have the discipline. I just click the mouse instead of planning. I don't even make dotmaps. :blush:

I've tried a little immortal but it just doesn't seem to be much fun. Proof of my lazy ways, I suppose.