Emperor, high level? You're wearing long trousers today then?
So, holding back from being accused of flaming, your post seems to imply that you're losing multiple units when you war on the AI?
Not my experience. I lose units. But not multiple. Early game I field one army of seven or eight units. Late game you need more, because of AI unit spam. - not wanting to sound like I'm trying to put you down, but at Emperor you can/ should be so far ahead in the tech game that 8-12 units will still cut it.
At immortal/ Deity - it's harder, especially by end game - but I'm sure the really top Deity players (much better than me), aren't micromanaging armies of 30 units to win a game. (actually, I'm not sure about that - I have no idea). I know for a fact that at immortal it isn't necessary.
So, my point being, rather than blame the game, ask yourself if you're actually playing the optimum strategy to get where you want to be. I have a feeling you might not be. You might find if you look into other strategies, that in fact, the game is......horror of horrors, fun
I play(ed) on Immortal/Deity, I quote "Emperor and above" as these seem to be most representative of the general challenging levels of play for the average player. I'm not sure what you mean by 'long trousers', is this some obscure witticism that I've never heard of? If you say you play on Immortal/Deity, without gaming the map to your advantage and can manage to not lose many units in fullscale invasions then I'd call you a liar. If you are playing a large map with multiple fronts, how pray tell do you manage to both fend off waves of invasion on your southern front, while attempting an invasion on the western front, as well as having a holding force for the northern front? On Immortal/Deity the amount of unit spam headed your way is almost never-ending and you can't remain in a defensive posture indefinitely, so you are forced into the position of playing both defense and offense if you ever want to get ahead. If you can manage to defend against a full-scale invasion, have a small holding force in a strategic bottle neck, AND have a full-scale successful invasion on the go with less than 15 units I would love to see how you manage it. Have you placed your AI opponents in the tundra perhaps, while giving yourself lush grassland? Nor am I trolling, but responding to the assumptions with my own.
I have played hundreds of hours of this game, I assure you it is not very fun. You may ask "then why did you play hundreds of hours", the answer being that the fun part of it was the fact I could play hotseat with my gf and after countless numbers of hours spent on civ iv we were looking for a change and gave CiV a chance, trying desperately over the course of those hundreds of hours to eek out some fun. Finally in completely abysmal frustration with such a shoddy game I took the time to look for better alternatives and finally found one and have been playing that since, never having looked back, until now that is, news of an expansion has ignited my curiosity, but looking at the notes it doesn't seem to offer anything very revolutionary.
You know a game must be pretty bad, when its lead designer goes so far as to admit it:
http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/02/14/j...-civ-v-explains-how-at-the-gates-will-differ/
Then again, whose brilliant idea was it to hire this untested clown for such an important role? No offense to Jon Shafer, I'm sure he's a swell guy, but really, you have a brilliant franchise and decide to hire a fresh out of college ex-modder to lead the design team, a literal kid? Please. We sure got innovation with CiV, a 'fresh perspective', too bad it SUCKS.
I guess Firaxis got their just desserts however, lil Jon shows some real lack of class in shafting the game whose failure he orchestrated, all in order to recruit donations for his latest game. It's like, I'm a big company, I have my hands on one of the most successful video game franchises in history, I decide I'll do a good turn and show some loyalty to the modding community by hiring one of their own, despite being untested, young and fresh out of college. The experiment is a failure and the game only generates sales on the loyalty of fans to the franchise, the young upstart is 'edged out', quits, is fired, whatever the real truth may be, goes and founds his own small company, talks smack about the game he created with the big company while explaining how his new game (which in many ways is very similar to the other game) is even better and will not have the same mistakes which he was the cause of in the original game. Anyone with half a clue would have known that you can't simply take panzer general's 1upt and blindly apply it to a Civ map, they're ENTIRELY different games, something he admits in that interview. Nor can you make enjoyable diplomacy by creating AIs which 'act like humans', or rather, like genocidal lunatics who annoying spam you with taunts and asskissing schizophrenically every other turn, again, as he admits in that interview. If Firaxis had hired someone with experience none of these problems would have existed and CiV could have been a marvellous game, taking advantage of increased computing speeds, for better graphics and higher AI intelligence, amongst other possibilities for innovative gameplay which didn't come at the expense of enjoyable gameplay. No one wants to move units tactically on what is essentially a strategic map! It's beyond any level of ******ation I've met with in a game.
you noob!
