I have managed to win a number of games on Monarch on randomly-generated archipelagos and been finding this quite fun.
However whenever I get a start on an pangaea or an island with other civs I get slaughtered. I understand the basic strategy in BNW is 'grow a large population or lose' and that ancient warfare has been relegated to barb-hunting, so the strategy is to expand and grow and forget about warfare until at least the Renaissance right?
Well the 'small' bonuses the AI gets on this difficulty seem to me to be utterly enormous. The entire game is made up of choices, i.e. you can either have a building or a unit, and technology in general progresses much more quickly than production so you will always be late to build some buildings and you'll never get to have many units until the late game.
The AI however doesn't have to make choices. It can spam out cities, grow them all without worrying about happiness, get city state allies, and even build units all at the same time.
You can't outgrow the AI because it gets happiness boosts. You can't outproduce. You can't attack with an army because it will be several techs ahead of you (owing to large population growth), and because tech shoots past so quickly by the time you've built a few swords and catapults it will have walled cities, composite bowmen and pikes running around.
I mean ... it's horrible. How is this fun? What's the missing secret that I don't get even after all these years? (Civ4 was equally horrible at the higher difficulties.) How do you win against an AI that is stacked up with such huge boosts even if it is stupid?
I literally don't see any opportunity for war until at least the mid game ... is that intentional? Is warfare supposed to be disastrous and unviable for most of the game? (Why did they bother making so many different units when you can't get any use out of them? Why bother having longswordsmen why by the time you can build two of them the AI has moved on to musketmen?)
So in short, the human at higher difficulties is faced with severe opportunity costs while the AI can do everything ... culture, production, growth, enough units to defend itself.
What am I missing? Is it time to uninstall and forget about this franchise? Or stick to playing in the Prince sandbox with a punchbag AI?
However whenever I get a start on an pangaea or an island with other civs I get slaughtered. I understand the basic strategy in BNW is 'grow a large population or lose' and that ancient warfare has been relegated to barb-hunting, so the strategy is to expand and grow and forget about warfare until at least the Renaissance right?
Well the 'small' bonuses the AI gets on this difficulty seem to me to be utterly enormous. The entire game is made up of choices, i.e. you can either have a building or a unit, and technology in general progresses much more quickly than production so you will always be late to build some buildings and you'll never get to have many units until the late game.
The AI however doesn't have to make choices. It can spam out cities, grow them all without worrying about happiness, get city state allies, and even build units all at the same time.
You can't outgrow the AI because it gets happiness boosts. You can't outproduce. You can't attack with an army because it will be several techs ahead of you (owing to large population growth), and because tech shoots past so quickly by the time you've built a few swords and catapults it will have walled cities, composite bowmen and pikes running around.
I mean ... it's horrible. How is this fun? What's the missing secret that I don't get even after all these years? (Civ4 was equally horrible at the higher difficulties.) How do you win against an AI that is stacked up with such huge boosts even if it is stupid?
I literally don't see any opportunity for war until at least the mid game ... is that intentional? Is warfare supposed to be disastrous and unviable for most of the game? (Why did they bother making so many different units when you can't get any use out of them? Why bother having longswordsmen why by the time you can build two of them the AI has moved on to musketmen?)
So in short, the human at higher difficulties is faced with severe opportunity costs while the AI can do everything ... culture, production, growth, enough units to defend itself.
What am I missing? Is it time to uninstall and forget about this franchise? Or stick to playing in the Prince sandbox with a punchbag AI?
