Now this idea and complaint came from a conversation I had with a friend.
Both him and me can win games on a relatively frequent basis on Deity (say 40-50%), but win the vast majority of our games on Immortal.
Now the problem and the point of the debate comes here, we both did not enjoy Deity at all compared to Immortal even though we are both very competitive of nature, and we wondered why.
These are the conclusions we came upon what the problem is with Deity:
1. Potential strategies are very limited
2. Some world wonders are impossible to construct, and at best you will be able to build a select few
3. In the early game you have to play a defensive game the majority of the time
4. Obtaining a worthy religion is only viable for a select few civs
5. City states relations are incredibly difficult to maintain
6. Some games are potentially unwinnable from the start
Now before I go deeper into each point, the summary is that on Deity you basically are playing Civilization 5 with barely half of its actual content.
Now to clarify the first point, I am not talking about Victory Conditions, because pretty much all VC's are still viable on deity (with the exception of diplomatic which can be a cointoss sometimes).
The problem is that the majority of the games you have to do a NC start, you have to take the tradition tree, you have to take rationalism, you have to focus on certain techpaths first, etc etc.
Sure you can have small divergions here and there, but the overall picture and broad strategy of the vast majority of your games will be the same.
The second point is more of a niche, but still is an important part of the game. The sad part it is almost completely taken away from you.
On immortal you have to make sacrifices to get certain wonders, but at least they are in your reach. On Deity most ancient/classical wonders are out of your reach. Next to that the wonders in other era's are often unreachable unless you get lucky with a GE pop AND the overall techpace of the game is slow for the AI's.
The third point is also extremely detrimental for the play experience.
There is almost no way to get a sucesfull attack on an AI before turn 90 at earliest.
Sure there are some games where you have a civ like Darius, you get a lucky start, a weak AI and you have about a 10 turn window where you can pull of a relative succesfull attack. But the majority of the games you can NOT be offensive in the early game.
The fourth should be clear for most people. Investing in a religion is already a costly endeavour, and on deity where all your resources are literally worth their price in gold it better pays off.
So unless you have the celts, or get incredibly lucky with a goodiehut or 2 subsequent early religions CS, you basically can not get a religion before 5-6 are founded before you.
Founding a late religion makes religion extremely lackluster, and not only that but with all the multipliers Deity gets, they can much easier harass you with missionaries/GP's.
Now as the mayans or the ethiopians, the investment in religion is relatively redundant, but this basically makes it only for a select few civs viable to go the religion route.
Now for the city states. On Deity the AI will have about 10x-20x your income. If they set their eyes on a city state, you can just forget about it, you wont compete. Not only that, but with all the other multipliers on everything, you will loose all the quests related to the generation of certain resources, and also the quests to pop certain great people (part of that is also due to the wonders). So basically most of the quests go to the AI's, and moneywise you can not remotely compete.
Now the last point is probably the hardest to push through. Ofcourse there are god amongst us men here in these forums, and they by far outpace my skillevel.
However, there really are some games that are almost unwinnable.
Lets say you play a continents map, and you have a runaway AI on another content, it is sometimes to late before you can hinder them.
Or sometimes you get a bad start, and some terrible neighbours, f.e. spawning on a continent with Monty + Nobunaga. Not only do you have little trading partners, there is a good likelyhood they will prevent you from properly building your economy, and therefor you getting even further behind than the other civs.
And these are just simple examples, but some games are just unsalvagable.
Now I think potential solutions will be reducing some of the bonuses Deity gets.
I used to know the exact bonuses Deity got in Civ4, but there is no clear chart/statistics of all the bonuses they get.
However, the gap between Immortal to Deity is too big.
Maybe remove the techs they get for free. This will allow for a bigger window to attack (AI' will get civil service slower, some slower than others). Also it opens up at least some wonders to be constructed by the player, because the AI has to actively research some of the tech paths, and might skip some techs early.
Change the starting units. The combination of an extra settler, 2 workers, all the early worker techs is just a very nasty combination. Combine that with the insane multipliers they get on all base resources, and you got one perfect recipe for earlygame disaster.
The other solution will be cutting on some of the insane multipliers Deity gets.
There is really no reason to give them reduced upkeep AND higher income, reduced happyness penalty AND growth bonus, unit cost AND train rate, etc etc etc.
Alot of the bonuses overlap/amplify eachother and not only that they also get even higher than on immortal PLUS the extra settler + worker + techs..
And these are the things I even know of deity gets, some bonuses that get mentioned are incredibly vague. Do bonuses still scale with era's like they did in civ4 f.e.?
So to conclude this post before it turns enormous again, some changes need to be made to Deity difficulty because the change is too great with immortal and subsequentially takes about half the content away in the game.
Thoughts, ideas?
Both him and me can win games on a relatively frequent basis on Deity (say 40-50%), but win the vast majority of our games on Immortal.
Now the problem and the point of the debate comes here, we both did not enjoy Deity at all compared to Immortal even though we are both very competitive of nature, and we wondered why.
These are the conclusions we came upon what the problem is with Deity:
1. Potential strategies are very limited
2. Some world wonders are impossible to construct, and at best you will be able to build a select few
3. In the early game you have to play a defensive game the majority of the time
4. Obtaining a worthy religion is only viable for a select few civs
5. City states relations are incredibly difficult to maintain
6. Some games are potentially unwinnable from the start
Now before I go deeper into each point, the summary is that on Deity you basically are playing Civilization 5 with barely half of its actual content.
Now to clarify the first point, I am not talking about Victory Conditions, because pretty much all VC's are still viable on deity (with the exception of diplomatic which can be a cointoss sometimes).
The problem is that the majority of the games you have to do a NC start, you have to take the tradition tree, you have to take rationalism, you have to focus on certain techpaths first, etc etc.
Sure you can have small divergions here and there, but the overall picture and broad strategy of the vast majority of your games will be the same.
The second point is more of a niche, but still is an important part of the game. The sad part it is almost completely taken away from you.
On immortal you have to make sacrifices to get certain wonders, but at least they are in your reach. On Deity most ancient/classical wonders are out of your reach. Next to that the wonders in other era's are often unreachable unless you get lucky with a GE pop AND the overall techpace of the game is slow for the AI's.
The third point is also extremely detrimental for the play experience.
There is almost no way to get a sucesfull attack on an AI before turn 90 at earliest.
Sure there are some games where you have a civ like Darius, you get a lucky start, a weak AI and you have about a 10 turn window where you can pull of a relative succesfull attack. But the majority of the games you can NOT be offensive in the early game.
The fourth should be clear for most people. Investing in a religion is already a costly endeavour, and on deity where all your resources are literally worth their price in gold it better pays off.
So unless you have the celts, or get incredibly lucky with a goodiehut or 2 subsequent early religions CS, you basically can not get a religion before 5-6 are founded before you.
Founding a late religion makes religion extremely lackluster, and not only that but with all the multipliers Deity gets, they can much easier harass you with missionaries/GP's.
Now as the mayans or the ethiopians, the investment in religion is relatively redundant, but this basically makes it only for a select few civs viable to go the religion route.
Now for the city states. On Deity the AI will have about 10x-20x your income. If they set their eyes on a city state, you can just forget about it, you wont compete. Not only that, but with all the other multipliers on everything, you will loose all the quests related to the generation of certain resources, and also the quests to pop certain great people (part of that is also due to the wonders). So basically most of the quests go to the AI's, and moneywise you can not remotely compete.
Now the last point is probably the hardest to push through. Ofcourse there are god amongst us men here in these forums, and they by far outpace my skillevel.
However, there really are some games that are almost unwinnable.
Lets say you play a continents map, and you have a runaway AI on another content, it is sometimes to late before you can hinder them.
Or sometimes you get a bad start, and some terrible neighbours, f.e. spawning on a continent with Monty + Nobunaga. Not only do you have little trading partners, there is a good likelyhood they will prevent you from properly building your economy, and therefor you getting even further behind than the other civs.
And these are just simple examples, but some games are just unsalvagable.
Now I think potential solutions will be reducing some of the bonuses Deity gets.
I used to know the exact bonuses Deity got in Civ4, but there is no clear chart/statistics of all the bonuses they get.
However, the gap between Immortal to Deity is too big.
Maybe remove the techs they get for free. This will allow for a bigger window to attack (AI' will get civil service slower, some slower than others). Also it opens up at least some wonders to be constructed by the player, because the AI has to actively research some of the tech paths, and might skip some techs early.
Change the starting units. The combination of an extra settler, 2 workers, all the early worker techs is just a very nasty combination. Combine that with the insane multipliers they get on all base resources, and you got one perfect recipe for earlygame disaster.
The other solution will be cutting on some of the insane multipliers Deity gets.
There is really no reason to give them reduced upkeep AND higher income, reduced happyness penalty AND growth bonus, unit cost AND train rate, etc etc etc.
Alot of the bonuses overlap/amplify eachother and not only that they also get even higher than on immortal PLUS the extra settler + worker + techs..
And these are the things I even know of deity gets, some bonuses that get mentioned are incredibly vague. Do bonuses still scale with era's like they did in civ4 f.e.?
So to conclude this post before it turns enormous again, some changes need to be made to Deity difficulty because the change is too great with immortal and subsequentially takes about half the content away in the game.
Thoughts, ideas?