What is more challenging, Immortal/Normal or Deity/Marathon?

[Beerchugger]

All other things equal, what is the harder game to win: An Immortal game on Normal speed or a Deity game on Marathon speed?

[Tachywaxon]

Some defined marathon deity as normal speed emperor.
So Immortal difficulty on normal speed is harder.

Anyways, marathon is barely a comparative given all units except settlers cost less than speed multiplicative (2x of normal speed instead of the should be x3).

[TheMeInTeam]

It depends on how you set up the game. Deity/mara under the right settings has the potential to be quite easy, but immortal normal can be cooked too.

[Seraiel]

Originally Posted by Tachywaxon

Some defined marathon deity as normal speed emperor.
So Immortal difficulty on normal speed is harder.

Anyways, marathon is barely a comparative given all units except settlers cost less than speed multiplicative (2x of normal speed instead of the should be x3).

Then these people don't have a clue.

I beat Emperor Normal even before I really knew how to play Civ, Deity Marathon is way more difficult from my perspective.

[EDIT]

Just had to lol again.

Immortal is a joke compared to Deity. When I see people scoring Oracle in the late 1000's, while it sometimes goes at 2500 BC but normally at a latest of 1800 BC on Deity. Getting Mids on Deity is also near to impossible on Deity if not starting with Stone, believe me, I've tried with settling 2nd city at stone. Then GLH, also, nearly impossible if one doesn't go all out for it or plays Incans.

And there are even things that are easier on normal speed than on Marathon, units being more expensive can be an advantage when a unit is a 2pop-whip instead of a 1pop-whip on Marathon...

I'm not arguing that Marathon is harder than Normal or the other way round, more that Deity is Deity and Immortal is "just" Immortal.

[EDIT]

And another point where Normal is easier than Marathon. Techs come faster. Ever tried to Oracle CS on Marathon? I've tried so with 3 Gold starts, tell me if you find a way to make it.

[shakabrade]

The whole point of normal being harder than marathon is significantly easier war. Wonders are non-factor here because on marathon, you can capture any quite easily with your cheap and marathon fast units. I can also say that I have won deity marathon while I was emperor/normal player, and thus didn't even count it as a pure deity win. It is as deity as duel deity conquest. Any game can be cooked so there's no point in comparing such a games.

Imm/Normal > Deity/Marathon

[TheMeInTeam]

Deity/mara with a cheese rush UU isn't that hard.

And there is absolutely no way you can make a case that normal is easier than marathon. Marathon is MUCH easier than normal if you're talking about just winning the game (or about finish date, mara will always be faster). It exposes the AI's weakest area.

The only reason this debate is even worth anybody's time is that the deity bonuses are so drastic. Even so, if one is good at diplo screwing the AI and has a powerful rush unit deity mara isn't hard at all...NOTHING like deity/normal. Is it harder than immortal/normal? That depends on the map.

Basically if one can rush out and/or secure #1 land on marathon then even deity probably isn't enough to be a serious challenge. If one can't, then deity/mara can take a turn for the challenging in a hurry.

There are some immortal/normal starts where the slightest mistake is an instant game over. I don't see how that's very different from deity/marathon.

[Um the Muse]

IMHO, it just depends on what you're used to. I think that I've just about got a handle on the transition from Mara to Normal. Admittedly, I don't normally play Deity mode on either speed. Also, I'm assuming that you're really talking about Mara/Huge and Normal/Standard.

Anyway, this is what I found: on Normal speed, things tend to happen at almost the same time: it's easier to manage your city to grow at the same time that the worker finishes the next improvement, you can more easily predict when to start building trebuchets so that the production will go towards cannons, etc. on Normal speed than it is on Mara. This is both a strength and a weakness because if you do it right, things are easier to manage and it's easier to see the respective payoffs in the short run, but you have a lot of things going on at the same time so you have to take more breaks in order to not get confused.

It also gives you more predictive power. You know more or less what the enemy has/ will have by the time you get to his cities. You can plan what kind of troops and in what numbers to bring better.

The clincher, though, is that your window of opportunity is smaller. Much smaller, judging by comments from Deity players. Only somewhat smaller for lesser difficulties.

Eventually, the sheer number of cities on Mara/Huge can get overwhelming. It can get tempting to throw your hands up and just let the cities manage themselves.

Still, I suspect that the added complexity and other issues mostly stem from map size more than game speed. Take that as you will.

[Rusty Edge]

I think size matters in Civ. Probably more than speed, but that's just my sense of it.

[TheMeInTeam]

Originally Posted by Rusty Edge

I think size matters in Civ. Probably more than speed, but that's just my sense of it.

Rather than size, it's a combination of size + #AI. The more space any one AI gets, the more space it gets to apply its lulllergarbage bonuses in an effort to run away.

Fewer AI also increases the odds that one AI goes crazy on expansion and another doesn't expand much at all causes the expanding AI to run away.

I've seen standard maps where one AI gets 1/4 of the land (7 total civs), because on the same continent at opposite ends sury got 13+ cities to crappy pericles' 3 (he then peacevassal'd=PA to sury, essentially throwing the game so sury had better odds of victory).

The more crowded a map is the more likely you are to have more even land distributions, but that also means the AI suffers because it's bad at war even against other AI and it doesn't get to take advantage of its nigh-on zero maintenance to beat down the human with a huge land + production bonus lead.

To illustrate my point to the extreme, try a standard size deity map with 18 civs on marathon, and it won't feel anything like the difficulty of a standard 7 civ deity/normal .

[Seraiel]

is standart size 18 opponents even possible? In HoF, it's forbidden, so I don't know.

[TheMeInTeam]

Originally Posted by Seraiel

is standart size 18 opponents even possible? In HoF, it's forbidden, so I don't know.

HoF probably forbids it due to sheer cheese (I have beef with HoF rules logic, particularly in civ V where they basically chose to deliberately ruin competition for lulz, but in civ IV it's pretty good overall). I'm not sure what made them settle on a min/max # civs per map size. I'm guessing they picked arbitrary #'s that "felt" right and called it quits there (if everyone has the same rules, it's still a valid competition). This is one of the HoF rules I agree with. Stamping down on 18 civs almost regardless of map size would make it really awkward.

My main argument against HoF often has been that they deliberately allow settings that enable players to use "multiple attempts=success" to better effect than is ideal. You can't control surrounding land, but you can control mapfinder. However, you CAN'T completely control events, hut luck, and some lesser things like "does this map allow you to win domination on 1 continent". Those things represent a barrier to entry to people competing. It wouldn't be an issue if HoF didn't say it was a venue to show "who plays the best" under these rules. Right now, it should be "who plays the best while also having time to do multiple attempts until luck goes their way too" . I realize you can't iron out luck completely, but the more luck factors there are, the more iterations one needs to get a truly lucky outcome in a category that is heavily contested...though obviously some of those categories are barely contested at all lol. Only some though. Some are very hotly contested and the huts/events turn outcomes.

You can put 18 civs on duel if you really want to do it btw .

[vranasm]

^^ hehe was checking some deity small map religious victories and honestly how can I compete with game which got AH 3840 BC and writing ~3k BC without huts or/and enormous number of attempts?

If the comparison is made on same size of map then immortal/normal is definitely tougher then deity/marathon

If you will compare standard/imm/normal and huge/deity/mara my guts tell me deity is still tougher.

So the question "as is" is misleading to say the least.

[TheMeInTeam]

If you will compare standard/imm/normal and huge/deity/mara my guts tell me deity is still tougher.

But not necessarily if you run 18 civs on that huge map and have a good rush unit. Then maybe immortal/normal/standard is still easier. Depends on neighbors/resources too.

With standard #civs huge deity mara is definitely harder than immortal/normal unless you get some magic setting of "nobody will declare on me" type of cpu opposition.

[MilesBeyond]

Originally Posted by TheMeInTeam

You can put 18 civs on duel if you really want to do it btw .

18 civs on duel is one of my favourite games. Always Peace, Conquest only VC enabled, and culture-kill everyone else.

I've actually always found longer lengths more difficult - though this may be because I mostly play peacefully. Also, I'm not experienced with them, so I have difficulty gauging what a reasonable amount of production/research time is.