I tried some games in Immortal to get acquainted with the new changes, however what I've found out is that the AI is just crushing me science- and culture-wise at the very early game, and there's no way I can ever catch with them. Last time was particularly egregious, because I lowered the difficulty to Emperor and I've still got France 10 techs and 4 policies ahead of me - at Ancient Era. Is the game supposed to be THAT lopsided, or am I doing something wrong?
AI is snowballing at Classical Era
- Thread starter Obodongo
- Start date
It is quite normal for teh AI to be largely ahead of you, especially in tech. Generally you start to even out around Renaissance with good play.
Anarcomu
King
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- Oct 4, 2022
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- 609
There is a passed proposal this session aimed at changing that : makes AIs a little weaker in the early game, and stronger later.
This is supposed to be normal for vox ai sadly.If you just want to have fun at high diffs,forget wonders and play mongolia/songhai/sweden.The ai gets yields and bonuses just for farting and the snowball gets pretty ridiculous at higher levels.This leads to the scenario of never getting wonders like parthenon,oracle,statue of zeus 95% of the time,never being even slighly ahead of the ai early on even though you have good land and play well.Oh,but you start to catch up in Renaissance! In that case might as well start the game in Renaissance and skip playing sim city for the first eras.Is immortal+ diff beatable? Sure it is.Is it enjoyable to play?That depends on what civ you play,what start you get,ruins in early game if enabled and good neighbours.The game pretty much turns into a war game where you need to war in order to slow down and catch up to the 'cheating ai'.And may god have mercy on you if you adopt tradition/wanna play peaceful/play joke civs(Portugal/Spain/Shoshone).
thats weird, since in my immortal game when im the most behind its only around 6 techs and 3 policies, at around classical-medieval. or maybe thats just authority france with a bunch of barbs killing/cs bullying, idk.
getting oracle requires a lot of intensive planning beforehand (basically have to almost beeline for the tech) but i think its more than worth it, especially for progress civs. however there are other really good wonders (pyramids/stonehenge, terracotta army, hagia/boro) that are reachable even with a regular start, so from my experience getting these allow me to snowball and catch up pretty quickly.
also in vp (prince+) wars are basically inevitable, its just how much you are conquering. even with tradition i find myself at least taking the capital of my nearest neighbor just to have 1 less competitor in the end game, thanks to late game supply cap issues and (very likely) intensive nuking when ur about to win the game.
I can get the oracle on immortal in certain cases but it does require the right civs and the right start. There are starts where its simply not going to happen, and I have to plan accordingly.
That said, hopefully the new difficulty changes will help. The goal is for the human to feel they have a reasonable chance at certain milestones in ancient and classical going into medieval, but then they won't feel that comfortable "I'm starting to trounce the AI" feeling that often begins in Renaissance, as now the AI will get a new surge of power.
If you feel better with one less competitor (for Wonders, territory, etc), why not start the game with Advanced Settings and erase one of the slots for Random AI Player? I do that sometimes, maybe increasing the slider for City-States.
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