How can I level the playing field with a less-experienced friend?

Seabastian Civ · May 20, 2013

Hello all,

I really love Civ and have gotten pretty good over the years. I can beat Emperor handily, and given the right start, can beat Immortal. I'm not here to brag though (if you can consider my above-average skill brag-worthy), I'm here to figure out the best way to level the playing field in hot-seat or semi-MP games (MP games where there are more AIs than human players).

I would like to be able to play with someone who is relatively new to the game without running away from everyone. I've tried just styming myself with bad civs, terrible build orders (warrior-warrior-trireme-warrior-scout? oof) and poor research paths (beeline steel? Sure!), but it takes the fun out of the game knowing I'm playing with one hand tied behind my back.

Does setting their difficulty lower in MP affect anything? Say I play on Immortal and they play on Prince or King, how does that affect things? Can anyone suggest better ways for me to let them keep up with me?

Kazdum · May 20, 2013

Why don't you play OCC? Dont puppet anything and see if you can still manage to win

ense7en · May 20, 2013

Seabastian Civ said:
Hello all,

I really love Civ and have gotten pretty good over the years. I can beat Emperor handily, and given the right start, can beat Immortal. I'm not here to brag though (if you can consider my above-average skill brag-worthy), I'm here to figure out the best way to level the playing field in hot-seat or semi-MP games (MP games where there are more AIs than human players).

I would like to be able to play with someone who is relatively new to the game without running away from everyone. I've tried just styming myself with bad civs, terrible build orders (warrior-warrior-trireme-warrior-scout? oof) and poor research paths (beeline steel? Sure!), but it takes the fun out of the game knowing I'm playing with one hand tied behind my back.

Does setting their difficulty lower in MP affect anything? Say I play on Immortal and they play on Prince or King, how does that affect things? Can anyone suggest better ways for me to let them keep up with me?

Humans get large boosts for any of the difficulties below prince.
I'd say play at your normal difficulty and let them play at Chieftain i guess?

The QC · May 20, 2013

I used to play Hot Seat Civ IV with my wife. Honestly, the best option is to play as allies, either in a team or informally. This allows both of you to look at what the other one is doing, so you aren't bored waiting. It also allows you to teach them to play (But try not to take over their civ! Just explain the options). And... you won't have to worry about playing too well.

There's really no way to quickly level the playing field to the point where you can play competitively one against the other. It takes time to learn a game like this.

(And as for the individual difficulty levels... They were there in Civ IV as well and I'll be damned if I ever understood what they did. My guess is that the AI behavior is set by the main player's difficulty and that the setting of the other player only affects the various game parameters that change from difficulty level to difficulty level, like base happiness. But I'm not sure!)

LoneRebel · May 20, 2013

As I understand it, the player's difficulty level in Civ affects both the bonuses and penalties the player himself gets, and the bonuses and penalties the AIs get. However, the AIs have their own difficulty level - they always play on Chieftain. So I assume that the AI modifiers of the player's chosen difficulty level stack multiplicatively with the bonuses of the AI playing on Chieftain.

If it is a semi-MP game with both AIs and more than one human player, then I think it is the modifiers of Player 1's difficulty that are applied to the AI. The other human players will only be affected by their own difficulty level.

Unfortunately if this is true, then if Player 1 picks Immortal while the other human player plays on Prince, then the AI will get the enormous bonuses they get when the human plays on Immortal, not their Prince-level bonuses.

Putmalk · May 20, 2013

LoneRebel said:
As I understand it, the player's difficulty level in Civ affects both the bonuses and penalties the player himself gets, and the bonuses and penalties the AIs get. However, the AIs have their own difficulty level - they always play on Chieftain. So I assume that the AI modifiers of the player's chosen difficulty level stack multiplicatively with the bonuses of the AI playing on Chieftain.

Not true...the AIs have Chieftain starting happiness (10), but they only receive their bonuses based on the human difficulty level.

I'm not sure where the idea started that the AIs play on Chieftain, but unless I've missed something obvious, I've seen absolutely nothing in the code that supports that. Yes, they receive their normal percent reductions from playing on higher difficulty, but that's about it.

LoneRebel · May 20, 2013

Putmalk said:
Not true...the AIs have Chieftain starting happiness (10), but they only receive their bonuses based on the human difficulty level.

I'm not sure where the idea started that the AIs play on Chieftain, but unless I've missed something obvious, I've seen absolutely nothing in the code that supports that. Yes, they receive their normal percent reductions from playing on higher difficulty, but that's about it.

"The AI plays on Chieftain" is a statement I've seen more than once on different websites, not least here on Civfanatics.

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ5/difficulties

If that information is incorrect, then it's incorrect information that's been around for quite a while. If it is incorrect, then all instances of it floating around the net should be modified accordingly.

Btw, if the AI doesn't play on Chieftain, what difficulty do they play on? Or is it that they don't have play on any difficulty and their bonuses/penalties are determined solely by the player's difficulty?

Putmalk · May 20, 2013

LoneRebel said:
"The AI plays on Chieftain" is a statement I've seen more than once on different websites, not least here on Civfanatics.

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ5/difficulties

If that information is incorrect, then it's incorrect information that's been around for quite a while. If it is incorrect, then all instances of it floating around the net should be modified accordingly.

Btw, if the AI doesn't play on Chieftain, what difficulty do they play on? Or is it that they don't have play on any difficulty and their bonuses/penalties are determined solely by the player's difficulty?

Their bonuses are determined solely on the player's difficulty.

For example, human players on Emperor. As per the AIUnhappinessPercent in CIV5HandicapInfos.xml, they receive an 85% discount in happiness.

Now we flip to the source code, in CvPlayer.cpp:

Code:

/// How much of our Happiness is being used up? (Population + Units)
int CvPlayer::GetUnhappiness(CvCity* pAssumeCityAnnexed, CvCity* pAssumeCityPuppeted) const
{
	int iUnhappiness = 0;

	// City Count Unhappiness
	iUnhappiness += GetUnhappinessFromCityCount(pAssumeCityAnnexed, pAssumeCityPuppeted);

	// Occupied City Count Unhappiness
	iUnhappiness += GetUnhappinessFromCapturedCityCount(pAssumeCityAnnexed, pAssumeCityPuppeted);

	// City Population Unhappiness
	iUnhappiness += GetUnhappinessFromCityPopulation(pAssumeCityAnnexed, pAssumeCityPuppeted);

	// Occupied City Population Unhappiness
	iUnhappiness += GetUnhappinessFromOccupiedCities(pAssumeCityAnnexed, pAssumeCityPuppeted);

	// Unit Unhappiness (Builders)
	iUnhappiness += GetUnhappinessFromUnits();

	iUnhappiness /= 100;

	// AI gets reduced Unhappiness on higher levels
	if(!isHuman() && !IsAITeammateOfHuman())
	{
		iUnhappiness *= GC.getGame().getHandicapInfo().getAIUnhappinessPercent();
		iUnhappiness /= 100;
	}

	return iUnhappiness;
}

As you can see here, the unhappiness modifier only applies based on the current difficulty the human is playing on. It is not "playing on Chieftain", it's using the handicaps provided for them on Emperor.

*85 / 100 = .85 * happiness = AI's happiness on Emperor.

I shall revoke my statement if someone shows me where I've made a mistake and points out to me in the source code where the AI plays on chieftain. (by the way, since Chieftain difficulty can be deleted by a modder, what happens then? Does the AI just crash? No...)

Moriarte · May 20, 2013

Seabastian Civ said:
Can anyone suggest better ways for me to let them keep up with me?

Don't play with one hand behind your back. Play at full strength. That way your friends will learn faster.

Fluffball · May 20, 2013

Well if your doing hot seat and actually wanting to compete against your friend then an advantage you can give might be letting your friend watch your turns, therefore they know exactly what your doing and they can learn from what you do while you don't watch theirs.

If your not looking to actively compete then play as allies. You can help them out a lot and teach them as you go then.

KMadCandy · May 20, 2013

The QC said:
I used to play Hot Seat Civ IV with my wife. Honestly, the best option is to play as allies, either in a team or informally. This allows both of you to look at what the other one is doing, so you aren't bored waiting. It also allows you to teach them to play (But try not to take over their civ! Just explain the options). And... you won't have to worry about playing too well.

There's really no way to quickly level the playing field to the point where you can play competitively one against the other. It takes time to learn a game like this.

That's what hubby and I did with Civ4 too. I was addicted and he wanted to learn, so we played together vs the AI (over local internet sitting next to each other instead of hotseat, so a bit more convenient). The other advantage is that the newer player can learn from you and may become more addicted than he would otherwise, or more quickly.

Altho now that I've picked up Civ5 again (it didn't hold my interest at first so I took a long break), he wants to play together and I'm like "dude let me learn it myself first" *giggle*

GhostSalsa · May 20, 2013

I find the difference between an annoying handicap and a good one is whether you can imagine it being programmed in as an actual play feature.

So, "beeline to steel" is a little annoying, but consider forcing yourself to finish all techs in each era before moving to the next, ie play with a "realistic" tech path. It constricts progress and gives the game an interesting feel. (Your opponent is probably already teching that way since new players mistakenly assume all parts of the tech tree have play value.)

Edit for typo

DarthSheldonPhD · May 20, 2013

1.) give him/her a head start - on turn 1, move your warrior to cover your settler, settler stays in place. end turn. No exploring, don't found a city (hence no research), turn click until you feel the handicap is sufficient, probably when their 2nd city is founded or a predetermined turn (turn 50?), and then get started. Might be more reasonable if you lowered the difficulty a notch or two from what you're used to.
2.) play as normal, except you're never allowed to build or buy any markets, monuments, shrines, coliseums, or their subsequent buildings. And/or all strategic resources you acquire are gifted to the other player.

Seabastian Civ · May 21, 2013

Kazdum said:
Why don't you play OCC? Dont puppet anything and see if you can still manage to win

I've thought of this. I will usually just take puppets instead of annexing to do a quasi-OCC, but maybe the real deal OCC will make things a little more even. I mean, I'd say my friends are usually about King level... not sure an OCC can stand up to a full fledged empire?

ense7en said:
Humans get large boosts for any of the difficulties below prince.
I'd say play at your normal difficulty and let them play at Chieftain i guess?

See, I'm worried that me playing on harder difficulties will make the AI harder for him. Whereas I can handle the early rush and reverse it to take cities, it would probably just wipe him out? But playing on an easy level will let me destroy all the AIs quickly.

GhostSalsa said:
I find the difference between an annoying handicap and a good one is whether you can imagine it being programmed in as an actual play feature.

So, "beeline to steel" is a little annoying, but consider forcing yourself to finish all techs in each era before moving to the next, ie play with a "realistic" tech path. It constricts progress and gives the game an interesting feel. (Your opponent is probably already teching that way since new players mistakenly assume all parts of the tech tree have play value.)

Edit for typo

This is a very good idea, thank you. I will definitely implement this strategy to keep things fun but competitive.

DarthSheldonPhD said:
1.) give him/her a head start - on turn 1, move your warrior to cover your settler, settler stays in place. end turn. No exploring, don't found a city (hence no research), turn click until you feel the handicap is sufficient, probably when their 2nd city is founded or a predetermined turn (turn 50?), and then get started. Might be more reasonable if you lowered the difficulty a notch or two from what you're used to.
2.) play as normal, except you're never allowed to build or buy any markets, monuments, shrines, coliseums, or their subsequent buildings. And/or all strategic resources you acquire are gifted to the other player.

Thanks for the suggestion, but this seems like I'd be having even less fun than just messing around with build orders and turtling. I am aiming for a game where the final outcome is in doubt by the time we get to industrial, not so much a game where I'm purposely playing badly, you know?

kirbdog · May 21, 2013

If you're playing without AI civ's, you could let them go on settler while you're on prince or higher. They'd get the bonuses of being on settler. (But if there are AI civ's, they get their setting based on the lowest setting a human chooses, which quickly neutralizes the other player's advantage if you're good at exploiting them.)

So, yes, if you want to play un-teamed, with AI civ's, you're going to need a device of your own to equal the playing field.

How can I level the playing field with a less-experienced friend?

Seabastian Civ

King

Kazdum

Chieftain

ense7en

n7

The QC

Quietly Confident

LoneRebel

Emperor

Putmalk

Deity

LoneRebel

Emperor

Putmalk

Deity

Moriarte

Immortal

Fluffball

Prince

KMadCandy

giggling permanoob

GhostSalsa

Emperor

DarthSheldonPhD

Warlord

Seabastian Civ

King

kirbdog

King

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