What skill level do you play at?

What is your normal skill level you play?

  • Deity

    Votes: 15 9.4%
  • Immortal

    Votes: 33 20.6%
  • Emperor

    Votes: 41 25.6%
  • King

    Votes: 41 25.6%
  • Prince

    Votes: 27 16.9%
  • Warlord

    Votes: 3 1.9%
  • Chieftain

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Settler

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    160
  • Poll closed .
I've beaten every difficulty level at least once, and I have to say I prefer Prince. I prefer this level because I can play with any civ on pretty much any start and still win most the time.

I've also played on King/Emperor a bit, and can do pretty well, but even by those levels I find some mis-matches (Netherlands in jungle with only 1 luxury-type around; Aztecs in open grassland on a coast with no rivers; Iroquios with reasonable forest by the capital but no forest nearby) to be pretty rough, at least for me. And certain map types at Emperor especially are tough for certain civs... England on Highlands, Attila on Islands.

Beyond that, Prince also has a few hidden challenges. After all, the AIs have less gold to milk, and they often have a longer delay until they have multiple copies of luxuries for trade than they would at the higher levels.
 
Emperor is an enjoyable difficulty for me.

I have beaten immortal twice, but the tech advantage of the AI gives me the feeling that I have to exploit to stand a chance - and I hate exploiting. So I rather play emperor, but stop using all the cheesy stuff to make my game challenging.
 
Too bad I can't vote 2 times :)

Voted Immortal, as on this difficulty, the AI gives me a run for my money, regardless if I play OCC or normal. I always take it if I want some challenge.

I would have also voted for Emperor, as I find Emperor a very balanced level for fun play, and the level I played for a very long time. Here the AI develops ok, build wonders, attempts to stop your advance and so on.

Levels under Emperor are also ok, but they kinda allow you to do whatever you want and however you want it. Wanna have Fertility Rites, Tradition maxed, Temple of Artemis, Swords into Plowshares and Petra? Be my guest :)
 
I wrote immortal because that's the lowest level I play on, but most games these days are deity.
 
I much prefer the freedom to do whatever I want to with a game that comes with Immortal, but it's way too easy to get in a commanding position by turn 140-150 that the AI has no reasonable way of coming back from. Deity at least has the "enrage timer" of turn 270/280 where they will launch a spaceship on you unless you pursue your goal aggressively.

This is how I feel about Immortal. It's tough at the beginning, but the game is usually decided before the Renaissance era. I'd like the AIs to be competitive a lot longer, so I've tried Deity the last handful of games, but right now it's too much for me. I aborted my most recent game (which was actually going well, 5 cities + 2 puppets ~300BC) after a 50 BC longswordsman rush from Washington in the north combined with a Naresuan's Elephant rush to my East. Siam took back the puppets, and Washington, who is usually terrible, had taken 1 city and would have taken more. I really got mauled!

Gotta keep trying though, Immortal wasn't easy when I first started, either. Though, it wasn't this difficult. Also, I am playing Vanilla (why am I posting in the Gods and Kings forum?) which might make it more difficult because of the lack of happiness opportunities.
 
This proves my point in that the bell curve should peak at Prince, not at Emperor. I play at Immortal but I don't consider that easy at all (for me). But there are key changes (like making the AI opponents play harder to beat the human player) to move (most) everyone down two levels and then having to work/learn to play up the difficulties. The way they could go is to dumb down the game more so everyone can be at the Immortal level since many do not want a challenging strategy game but a peaceful building/empire simulator where there are no tough opponents. :(
 
I play to have fun. I play at all levels of the game, depending on what I want to do in a particular game.

Typically, I guess I find Emperor to be the most fun because the AI opponents can almost keep up with me and I have to think a little to win consistently. I have played a few games on Deity and do not find that to be as much fun even though I can still win about 50/50. It seems to restrict play options too much and the AI feels like it is cheating.

Sometimes I will play on easier levels if I am going to experiment, want to hunt for some achievements, or just want a sandbox empire building experience. I just finished a rather boring game on Prince set up in a small islands map as Constantinople to kill 10 Greek ships with my Dromon UU for the Greek Fire achievement. I ended up prolonging the game by about 100 extra turns after I won waiting for Alexender to build boats in Athens instead of just putting him out of his misery.
 
Finally getting comfortable with Immortal...it's a huge jump from Emperor. Very frustrating at first, feels next to impossible, but once you get into the rhythm of it, it is manageable and fun.

IMO it's difficulty comes from how important the mid-game is. On easier difficulties you tend to do well early and then run away with it, where I find on immortal you need to do well early AND execute well on the right plans mid game to stay ahead.

Once you expect it, you start to see that initial rush as a positive: tons of XP, a great general, and an opportunity to counter-attack a neighbour afterwards.
 
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