I don't know what difficulty to play at anymore...

It's been known for a long time, that wonders are a gamble on Immortal / Deity. Don't build your strategy around wonders, it's silly. The AIs get huge bonuses on these difficulties, and if they want to get a wonder, it's mathematically nearly impossible for you to beat them.

ntr0py said:

It's been known for a long time, that wonders are a gamble on Emperor / Deity. Don't build your strategy around wonders, it's silly. The AIs get huge bonuses on these difficulties, and if they want to get a wonder, it's mathematically nearly impossible for you to beat them.

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Thats not correct.

I used to get most wonders on Emperor.

On Immortal I used to be able to pick a few key wonders, like Stonehenge, Petra, Machu Pichu and from Industrial+ I was back to making most wonders.

In BNW my play style is completely broken, I never catch up in science, I can't get a religion and thats without building an army.

I would suggest to invest more into science. If you research the technology first you can usually build the wonder, especially now since the AI does no longer get the huge production boni.

Depending on difficulty you should be able to get your key wonders. On Deity it will take longer to overtake the AIs, on emperor you should get that shortly after universities latest, as the AI is not very good with their scientist slots.

It also helps to drag the AI into wars to keep them to buddy up and fire research agreements left and right.

I played King on G&K but now i can't beat it. I need to change my play style i guess; usually at G&K, i fared well on an early war, then i would peace out, build up, and start marching out again at Dynamite. But now, when i stop expanding, i can't tech out fast enough. I feel like there's just not enough happiness, so i'm often forced to tell my empire to stop growing while my cities are at size 10-12, while the AI skyrocket multiple size 20-25 towns. Yet i played a Prince difficult last night and it was so easy i had to quit. King it is. There should be a Crown Prince difficulty between Prince and King

Miravlix said:

Thats not correct.

I used to get most wonders on Emperor.

On Immortal I used to be able to pick a few key wonders, like Stonehenge, Petra, Machu Pichu and from Industrial+ I was back to making most wonders.

In BNW my play style is completely broken, I never catch up in science, I can't get a religion and thats without building an army.

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Sorry I meant Immortal / Deity. You can sometimes get wonders on Immortal, but not reliably, atleast not the early ones.

Doviello said:

I played King on G&K but now i can't beat it. I need to change my play style i guess; usually at G&K, i fared well on an early war, then i would peace out, build up, and start marching out again at Dynamite. But now, when i stop expanding, i can't tech out fast enough. I feel like there's just not enough happiness, so i'm often forced to tell my empire to stop growing while my cities are at size 10-12, while the AI skyrocket multiple size 20-25 towns. Yet i played a Prince difficult last night and it was so easy i had to quit. King it is. There should be a Crown Prince difficulty between Prince and King

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You have to play the AI against each other.

Doviello said:

I played King on G&K but now i can't beat it. I need to change my play style i guess [...]. Yet i played a Prince difficult last night and it was so easy i had to quit. King it is. There should be a Crown Prince difficulty between Prince and King

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Hahahaa, "Crown prince"
I agree completely, it happened the same to me. I used to play Emperor on G&K and won most of the times, so I decided to start as the Aztecs on Warlord when I bought BNW because I've read the learning curve was steep. But I found it TOO easy. I almost got a Culture victory without really struggling for it and, in the end, I sent a spaceship to Alpha Centauri by the 1930s, when most of the other civs were entering into the Modern era.
I felt so dishonest I erased the record from the Hall of Fame

But now I've started on King, which used to be an easy level to me. Chose India (admittedly a weak civ) and started strong, having early tourism. But by the time I met the players from other continents, they controlled completely the World Congress and had a much larger army. Additionaly, Persia had a super-strong culture and a solid tourism.
I haven't finished the game still and I think I've managed decently my empire, but I won't win. Persia is just too powerful on culture and tourism, I don't play any key role in the WC and, although my science production is great, scientific victory is off. And it's 2020 already.

In sum, I'll have to adapt to the fact that the AI is much smarter for its peaceful development and is REALLY trying to achieve cultural and diplomatic victory. By the way, I haven't witnessed a single civ with a weak army, as happened with the OP.

Sequm said:

Do what I did. Start with a difficulty you can beat. Beat it ONCE and go up a level, then beat the next level and go up again. I went from Prince to Deity on G&K. First I used Tabernak's guide, then Sadato's OCC guide and eventually beat Deity. If you keep playing on the same level you don't improve as much as if you go up a level. With BNW (downloading now) I plan on starting on Immortal and going up to Deity

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Where are those guides? I'm stuck in Prince (in part because I hate the AI taking the early wonders from me , but I really want a different strategy)...

And what are the AI's "advantages" in superior levels? Is there a thread about that?

Prince is still the flat difficulty correct? Everything above it just gets bonuses but no additional cycles or AI algorithms? Just wanted to double check this. And I would always play at least one game at this level to get a baseline on the AI.

I got more wonders playing Emperor than I did on Prince. I have played prince for many years now. Prior to release of BNW, I started upping the difficulty. I had won on both king and emperor. So BNW came out, I popped back down to prince. After several frustrating experiences with missing key cultural wonders I never would have lost before, I was like, may as well go back up. My emperor tourism game on a small pangaea as assyria where the only wonder I lost was Broadway has settled the issue. Emperor is better for me.

I've started on emperor last week. Last game I MoV'd 9 CS so I moved up to immortal. In my first game, I am China's only neighbor, the rest being on the other side of some CS. I'm not sure I will be able to survive if/when she attacks.

On my first game on a regular sized map I STEAMROLLED the AI, stumbled into a culture victory by the Industrial era just because none of the 5 civs left had really focused on culture. My current one on a Large (bumped to 14), even only on Prince has been a really odd game. Normally I'd expect to walk it, but I was getting beaten to wonders left right and centre. I was dominating financially but got dogpiled on by three weaker ones to break all my trade routes, and somehow they managed to get an opposing Ideology as the preferred world one, so I've had to work on nullifying that instead of cruising to victory. Even with a huge culture focus I'm never going to overtake all of them that way.

The start was the strangest though, similar to whats been described by others - I started out on a continent with Indonesia and Polynesia, Gajah zerg rushed Honolulu and later successfully managed to take a fairly isolated city I'd placed to build Petra with my Liberty engineer... but after I'd taken out hsi 3/4 Kris, 2 trebuchet and a pikeman, he literally had nothing left at all guarding his 4-city medieval empire. It was like playing a real human min-maxer who'd decided to just go all out on zerging his continent and figured he'd fill it in later, he had zero plan B once his army was down in the field and his cities had no defences on them at all.

I would suspect that with so many different things to juggle, some civs are taking some more risks in order to focus on one particular thing. For me Gajah DID have a religion in addition to his Kris rush, so maybe that was just his focus and defence fell by the wayside? Likewise if someone was focusing on wonders and trade routes, they might not get a standing army up to defend it.

i agree AIs are less serious about army in BNW but they're 'smarter' in many ways, i just won a King-level game by destroying my AI neighbor who built a lot of wonders and annexed its cities tn benefit myself; so i felt somehow ridiculous like you coz the battles were not challenging anymore. I'm trying on Emperor level at the moment and let's see if the same thing will happen. Right now I'm reaching the Mediaval Era & i'm behind the AIs in every aspect of the game so it's been challenging enough so far

I would say try King as a weaker early-game civ, or try emperor as a stronger early one (like Maya or Egypt).

Or pick your opponents, Boudica and Isabella make interesting early game neighbors, who don't tech or build so hard. Assyria is a fun one to fend off early on, they have consistently started early wars in my games, though they really don't leverage the siege tower enough.

Reducing the number of civs is a nice way to get more granular also with the difficulty. e.g. 5 civ standard emp < 8 civ standard King in difficulty, often enough.

Lastly - and this is a cheap but effective way to bootstrap your way up into Emperor, just reroll the map until you like your start. I know, I know, it's a terrible habit to develop, but at least you can do a bit more leveling of the early game playing field so that you can, as you put it, "be consistently challenged throughout the game," and experience a stronger start. That's how I eventually crawled my way up to Deity in G&K, starting on a hill with river, maybe an coastal luxury and 4-5 others nearby.

Anyway, try some advanced start granular settings until you find a happy medium and then work your way up the ladder like the other fellow said.

Nickel_lion said:

Where are those guides? I'm stuck in Prince (in part because I hate the AI taking the early wonders from me , but I really want a different strategy)...

And what are the AI's "advantages" in superior levels? Is there a thread about that?

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Here's a great guide from a very strong player for Poland. By following along this approach using Poland I have huge advantages playing Emperor level.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=501378

neilkaz said:

Here's a great guide from a very strong player for Poland. By following along this approach using Poland I have huge advantages playing Emperor level.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=501378

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Thanks...

I would say that you should probably stick to Emperor and work on your skills. Don't back down to King. You might need to change your build/tech order a bit since the AI prioritizes wonders a little differently than it did in G&K, but you should be able to get all of the important ones on Emperor. Wonder-spamming has worked just fine for me on Immortal so I'm sure it can be done on Emperor too.

ntr0py said:

Sorry I meant Immortal / Deity. You can sometimes get wonders on Immortal, but not reliably, atleast not the early ones.

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You can get anything you want on Immortal, reliably (except Great Library, which is like 50%). You just can't get multiple things reliably.

But I agree, you shouldn't have a "required wonder" for your playstyle, you should have "targets" and then be able to adjust. I'm in a game right now where I literally got beat to 3 different wonders (one by 2 turns! and wasted hammers on) in Ancient/Classical and ended up with none. I'm super behind, have no religion, no military, and it's turn 100, but I'm trying to turn it around peacefully. I think I can pull it off, I'm close enough to science parity. Definitely switched from going for a cultural victory to going for a science/diplo victory though. Planning to follow someone into an ideology for the first time in BNW. Hope my neighbors don't all go Autocracy.

I find Immortal the best. During the first couple ages you might find yourself in last place with no wonders and a mediocre army. You might be saying omg this is too hard. But stick with it. eventually your ability to out think and out plan the AI's bonus's will have you moving upwards to a victory, or not. Fact is I love this level because I can find myself a total failure, a total victor, or anywhere in between.
Lower levels I find to easy and win almost every time if only because you can build wonders almost at will. This makes planning a specific victory pretty easy. Diety I haven't tried yet since the new expansion but before it I got steam rolled most times.
My vote is Immortal

I typically play on Emperor as well. I don't like to min-max or closely manage my cities, so I don't really like playing on Immortal or Deity. I definitely had to restart a couple of times before I got the hang of BNW and beat a game. Gonna do at least one more at Emperor before I try Immortal.