Any settings tips to make it more challenging?

[robbyextreme]

First I'd like to say the early game is the best strategy I've ever played in any game. It's very fun, well designed and challenging early game!

My issue is around medieval age when I can afford to turn down my research slider and I have over +100% military production I can just infinitely produce units and the game feels won and I only have to play out the turns. The AI cities puts up no resistance at this point.

These settings below are the ones I always play with, are there some I'm missing out on?

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

First I'd like to say the early game is the best strategy I've ever played in any game. It's very fun, well designed and challenging early game!

My issue is around medieval age when I can afford to turn down my research slider and I have over +100% military production I can just infinitely produce units and the game feels won and I only have to play out the turns. The AI cities puts up no resistance at this point.

These settings below are the ones I always play with, are there some I'm missing out on?

If the game looks too easy, I suggest you use Flexible Difficulty and Flexible AI (found in BUG options). Also, from the first image that map doesn't look "standard size" as is shown in the options screenshot; anyway standard size is a bit too small for this kind of mod. I always suggest playing between Large and Giant maps.

 

[robbyextreme]

Thanks, so just curious what's your reasoning with standard maps not being good for this mod?

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Thanks, so just curious what's your reasoning with standard maps not being good for this mod?

Many buildings, units an wonders necessary to fully enjoy a game. On standard and smaller maps for example some units, buildings and wonders might be skipped by players and AI because there's no place to build them.

 

[Samson]

If the game looks too easy, I suggest you use Flexible Difficulty and Flexible AI (found in BUG options).

I think the best option for a challenge is Flexible Difficulty ON but Flexible AI OFF. This allows successful AI's to get big without ending up at Deity difficulty, meaning they are more of a challenge.

 

[<Nexus>]

Perhaps you can turn Flexible AI OFF during the middle of a game, when some AIs have grown big but not yet on Deity, while the difficulty for the smaller civs have dropped already. At least I will try it. THX for the hint.

P.s: Would be nice, if there was a min/max difficulty setting for the AI too. Or a way to manually tinker AI difficulties during a game.

 

[Samson]

P.s: Would be nice, if there was a min/max difficulty setting for the AI too. Or a way to manually tinker AI difficulties during a game.

I second this suggestion. I think it would be perfect if you could set the max AI difficulty, so small civs could get a boost, but monster AI's still could build a large empire without being crippled.

 

[moviebrain]

Playing with Flexible Difficulty ON i noticed that the min/max settings are sometimes ignored and the difficulty drops below the min setting. As far as i can tell it makes no difference if i select the option on gamestart or later through BUG.
Even when i am struggling for a small period it should not do that. As this is not the first time that happen i generally do not activate the option.

Edit: It looks like i changed the "Current Difficulty" Setting in BUG, thinking it would affect only the AI, as it is just below the "AI Use Flexible Difficulty" checkbox...
Maybe i should have read the tooltip for the option...

 

[valergrad]

If game feels like too easy for you - you can try OCC ( One city challenge ) option. Beating this in deity on a huge map - it is a task!
P.S. Also you can add "High to low" option, but it is adding almost anything to complexity, just requires little bit more accuracy at the final stage.
P.P.S. Also you can turn off "Advanced diplomacy" option - it gives too much possibilities to smart human player and make game much easier.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

If game feels like too easy for you - you can try OCC ( One city challenge ) option. Beating this in deity on a huge map - it is a task!
P.S. Also you can add "High to low" option, but it is adding almost anything to complexity, just requires little bit more accuracy at the final stage.
P.P.S. Also you can turn off "Advanced diplomacy" option - it gives too much possibilities to smart human player and make game much easier.

Game is actually not designed for OCC so I strongly advise against it. It's playable but IMO you can't fully enjoy the game witg this option.

 

[valergrad]

Game is actually not designed for OCC - why do you think so?

I just finished the game with OCC ( scientific victory ) and it was really interesting, because win was right on the edge. I had to fight really complicated modern wars as one AI was really close to domination victory, and 2 another - to cultural, so I had to stop all of them by dogpile wars ( full war with them would be suicidal as they had 40 times more cities and 20 times more military ).
I had to say that nanite clouds/nanite swarm looks little bit overpowered - they can erase from map any city with radius 20 from your capital in one move, there is no defense from it, unless you will get 50 defence units in all your cities.


OCC prevents snowballing when you just conquer your neighbours at the beginning, get lots of cities and take an easy win.
With OCC you get automatic increasing the difficulty of the game ( as AI civs get more and more cities, so it is harder and harder to be in line with all of them, especially in military aspect ). This you can easy compare with "flexible difficulty".

 

[<Nexus>]

Game is actually not designed for OCC - why do you think so?

He meant that the MOD wasn't actually designed for OCC.
Sure, it can be fun just it isn't supported by the modders so don't expect it to be always the same fun.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Game is actually not designed for OCC - why do you think so?

Yeah, I meant the mod, not civ4. And I think so because being one of the developers, I can tell you the code hasn't always bern adapted for OCC. It doesn't mean that OCC isn't fun at all anyway.

 

[devolution]

Just play DAW (Deity Always War)

 

[<Nexus>]

LMA

Spoiler :

Let's Make Acronyms

 

[valergrad]

Yeah, I meant the mod, not civ4. And I think so because being one of the developers, I can tell you the code hasn't always bern adapted for OCC. It doesn't mean that OCC isn't fun at all anyway.

Interesting. Do you mean AI don't understand how to play against OCC? Or some features are not adapted? Could you give an example?

I now know only one example kind of bug: with Revolution mod, rebels from AI civ can suggest to join to your civ, and you can get 2nd city this way. I always rejected this proposals to avoid possible problems in the game, so don't know how game will work if you agree.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Interesting. Do you mean AI don't understand how to play against OCC? Or some features are not adapted? Could you give an example?

I now know only one example kind of bug: with Revolution mod, rebels from AI civ can suggest to join to your civ, and you can get 2nd city this way. I always rejected this proposals to avoid possible problems in the game, so don't know how game will work if you agree.

I suppose AI knows how to play OCC in a vanilla game, but it might run into troubles with the mod. You made a good example with Revolution. Other examples involve calculation done in the background, I can give you an example on how AI decides when to start a nuclear attack, which is based on number of cities, nukes and bomb shelters ratio between civs. Same thing for some UN votes. And many features were developed by Afforess before I started working on the project, so there are parts of the code I don't know but I'm pretty sure were not checked in OCC games.