Demi-god ? Sid?

I often hear of those difficulty levels and I was wondering how hard were they (relatively to monarch, emperor, deity) and how do you play them?

I am running PTW actually.
Back in the years I was playing on the mac 1.29 patch, I think there were those added difficulty levels but I was more warlord/regent player at that time.

I would really enjoy something more than emperor but less than deity.

Are these conquest's features?

they are c3c features. demigod is between emperor and deity, sid is the hardest

Can you patch PTW to have C3C or you have to buy civ again?
I guess I'll have to spend those 40-50bucks (is that how much it costs?) because of all the features I'm missing

Anything else that would make somebody buy/patch it?

It doesn't cost anywhere near 40-50 bukcs. Try 20-25.

It is hard to compare the levels for me just by their pure difficulty because i heavilly used the ring city placement and the forbidden palace in the original when i played deity.

So i can compare deity with those "features" to Sid without them.
The difference is really huge.

bob rulz said:

It doesn't cost anywhere near 40-50 bukcs. Try 20-25.

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US dollars cost alot

mine cost 10 pounds

Demigod requires a lot of endurance and organization...so if you don't want a game to last weeks then don't bother with Demigod!

Believe me.

The demigod level is a nice addition in C3C. There was a big gap between emperor and deity before. Demigod is very popular in the SG forum.

Sid is totally crazy. I won't touch it with a 5-inch pole in the near future.

demi god is one of the hardest AI difficulty leaps IMO

What cheats, err "bonuses" do the AIs get at demi-god and Sid levels? And has the AI improved since PTW?

I believe that the emperor-deity gap was there because civ1 inclued chieftian, warlord, prince, king and emperor levels. The deity level was added in civ2 in response to players complants that the other levels where too easy. Can anyone conferm this? I have only played civ3, PTW and SMAC

i played emperor at my highest level... it requires time and concentration.. i never gave it anymore than this.... though it can be an absorbing game

Babbler said:

What cheats, err "bonuses" do the AIs get at demi-god and Sid levels? And has the AI improved since PTW?

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I don't think that the AI has improved that much(if any at all). Simply put, the AI "cheat" is increasing as you move up on levels!
As for the Sid level, I only tried it once, and it was like the AI could support more than 20 units/per city. That's paranoid(although, some players can win at this level).
Even if I could win on Sid, I wouldn't go for it: it takes several minutes just to watch the incredible amount of units the AI has, to move to a single tile. Now, just imagine how many minutes you'd need to watch them marsh to your cities(that have big borders, due to culture).

What cheats, err "bonuses" do the AIs get at demi-god and Sid levels?

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Details will be wrong, but at demi-god, the AI has a 70% cost factor (so everything costs .7 * your_cost -- e.g. a swordsman costs 21 shields instead of 30). At DG, the AI civs also start with an extra worker and a few units (2 offensive, 4 defensive? Something like that) and I think gets a slight bit of free unit upkeep (4 + 1/city or something minor). This level does a nice job of bridging what WAS the biggest jump -- Emperor to Deity -- from pre-C3C.

Sid gives the AI a 40% cost factor (12 shield swordsman, which gets scary fast), plus a ton of bonus units at the game start -- 2 settlers, 3 workers, 6 offensive, 12 defensive, I think. The Sid AI also gets a fairly hefty free unit support. Again, the exact numbers are probably off (I don't have the editor in front of me, where all this is stored/shown), but it's something like 20 free units plus 8 per city, above and beyond govt. support. That's actually not high enough, as a fair number of Sid AIs will choke on their own unit support cost and hurt themselves. The Deity-Sid jump is now the biggest. Why not put in a 50% cost factor AI? <Shrug>

Both levels also encourage AI-AI trading, compared to Regent. At DG, an AI will take like 80% of the cost of something instead of the full 100%, which encourages trading. At Sid, I'm not sure, but there's a LOT of trading, which is both good and bad.

And has the AI improved since PTW?

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I think it's gotten worse. The barbarians are really stupid now. The city location algorithm is worse. The AI won't attack armies when it should and doesn't build/fill them intelligently. The PTW AI was pretty good, across the board. The C3C one appears to be a step backwards, which is really unfortunate.

I beat Sid pretty regularly now and deity is even more of a cakewalk than it was in PTW. Unfortunate, really.

Arathorn

Demigod was a really nice addition. It's that one level where the Ai is pretty competitive, but the player still can use self-imposed restrictions or odd themes with a decent chance to succeed. And games don't necessarily get to the usual Deity 'Human Artillery SoD vs. AI Inf SoD' in stacks exceeding the right-click pop-up.

btw, the biggest help for the AI is the extra Settler it starts with.

And DG is the level where EXP Civs are really shining, they have the highest chance to pop a city/Settler here.

...and deity is even more of a cakewalk than it was in PTW.

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