How good do you think the average Civ player is?

[historix69]

[BNW] How good do you think the average Civ player is?

I think this is not a good question.

(It seems to reveal a certain lack of tolerance against other players' way of enjoying the game and an ignorance on how difficult to impossible it will be to (scientifically) determine the true skill of a player outside a tournament. Civ is played mostly as SP. It is not chess. It is not balanced. It includes random elements (map, resources, goody huts, neighbours). The player can choose map type, size and civ (UA,UU,UB) but also the opposing civ(s). (e.g. play arab and battle a maritime civ in a desert duel.) The player can save, reload, start and restart at will.)

People usually play (civ) games in their free time and in 1st place they play to have fun ... Some players may enjoy to play against AI with the enormous Deity handicap but most probably just want an entertaining game for the evening / weekend after hard work. They found a (small) empire, build wonders they like, have a small war ... (If you like building wonders, you do not choose a handicap where human player cannot build most wonders.) ... often they do not finish the game since there is no real reward for winning ... Usually the start and mid-game are more interesting until one achieves military/scientific dominance ... then the rest of the game is obvious and often skipped since it becomes repetitive / boring and free time is short.

Asking for the skill of average players is like going to the beach and rate architectural skill of people who build sand castles for fun and don't expect to be rated.

 

[Matthew.]

I think most play on Prince/King, but I'd bet most who actually play the game (as in, not just try it out win a victory or two and never touch it again) can probably play at Emperor/Immortal just fine, but choose not to.

AI cheats put off a lot of players. Even if they could still win, just the idea of an unfair match is enough to not play much higher than Prince/King.

I think the early game throws off a lot of players as well (kind of tied to cheats). Seeing Rome expand 9 times before turn 80 or some early wonders being built before you even research the tech you bee-lined to. All of this gives an impression you are losing when you really are not, so players give up and go back to Prince/King.

But seriously, it takes a long freaking time for Emperor and sometimes Immortal AI to ever get close to a win. As long as you don't die to an attack, it is pretty difficult to actually lose.

tl;dr: I think the average Civ player is good enough to do well on Emperor/Immortal, but choose to play most often on Prince/King.

 

[docbud]

Great posts, above, historix69 and Matthew.

@Matthew: Concerning quitting and returning back to Prince/King when those wonders are built so quickly--I still stick at emperor. But it is frustrating when the GL is gone on turn 52 on epic speed. Yes--Epic speed.

I'm a casual player and play usually on Immortal. I was on Prince for along time and then King. Which got me to thinking earlier.

Some folks here always say how easy the lower levels are and how you should win easily. But I wonder--did those folks ever start at a lower level and then worked to get to higher levels? By that I mean, did a diety player ever play on King or Immortal and stuggled until he learned all he could learn to advance?

If so, they need to remember that. It's easy for that person now, but what about back then?

 

[Matthew.]

That is why I mentioned players who actually play the game. If including anyone who touches the game, the average goes lower, naturally.

Also game version has a lot to do with it, something I have almost forgotten about by this point. AI snowballs were a thing, and even sometimes on like King difficulty, the right conditions could propel an AI way far ahead.

With BNW and several changes (tech cost per city, happiness tweaks, how AI settles new cities) I actually do think the overall difficulty of the game has went down simply because you don't get nearly as many of those AI snowballs.

So I guess with my above post I'd add the caveat of "BNW". In earlier versions, maybe take off the Immortal difficulty and throw in "AI snowballs" as an additional reason to stick to lower difficulties.

 

[wayneb64]

But seriously, it takes a long freaking time for Emperor and sometimes Immortal AI to ever get close to a win. As long as you don't die to an attack, it is pretty difficult to actually lose.

The game takes a long time to win by either AI or human, but I don't agree it's difficult to lose on Immortal. I played for years on Emperor and won pretty much all the games, but on Immortal I don't think I have really walked away with it yet. Many games I was within a few turns of losing, and yes the AI can 'snowball' pretty well if you play Continents as one AI often goes pretty unchecked.

I don't get bored any more with the end games until very near the end as there is always cultural pressure and more often than not an AI or two ahead of me tech wise. I think I have had only one game on Immortal where I managed to get four 'mega' cities and the techs where flying by so fast it felt like I was cheating somehow. Usually I end up with only three (non-puppet) cities and it's a tight race to the end.

 

[historix69]

... the AI can 'snowball' pretty well if you play Continents as one AI often goes pretty unchecked.

The penalty for snowballing is lower on large and huge maps, e.g.
"NumCitiesTechCostMod" (Integer) is 5% for all the smaller map types, 3% (?) for large and 2% for huge. The same holds for additional SP costs per city going down from 10% to 5%. (see CIV5Worlds.xml)

So if you want to stay small and give AI a penalty for snowballing, play on small or standard map size, if you want to snowball yourself, play on huge.

Spoiler :

<Row>
			<Type>WORLDSIZE_STANDARD</Type>
			<Description>TXT_KEY_WORLD_STANDARD</Description>
			<Help>TXT_KEY_WORLD_STANDARD_HELP</Help>
			<DefaultPlayers>8</DefaultPlayers>
			<DefaultMinorCivs>16</DefaultMinorCivs>
			<GridWidth>80</GridWidth>
			<GridHeight>52</GridHeight>
			<MaxActiveReligions>5</MaxActiveReligions>
			<FogTilesPerBarbarianCamp>27</FogTilesPerBarbarianCamp>
			<NumNaturalWonders>4</NumNaturalWonders>
			<UnitNameModifier>20</UnitNameModifier>
			<TargetNumCities>5</TargetNumCities>
			<NumFreeBuildingResources>5</NumFreeBuildingResources>
			<BuildingClassPrereqModifier>50</BuildingClassPrereqModifier>
			<MaxConscriptModifier>25</MaxConscriptModifier>
			<TerrainGrainChange>0</TerrainGrainChange>
			<FeatureGrainChange>0</FeatureGrainChange>
			[B]<ResearchPercent>110</ResearchPercent>[/B]
			[B]<NumCitiesUnhappinessPercent>100</NumCitiesUnhappinessPercent>
			<NumCitiesPolicyCostMod>10</NumCitiesPolicyCostMod>
			<NumCitiesTechCostMod>5</NumCitiesTechCostMod>[/B]
			<AdvancedStartPointsMod>100</AdvancedStartPointsMod>
			<EstimatedNumCities>52</EstimatedNumCities>
			<IconAtlas>WORLDSIZE_ATLAS</IconAtlas>
			<PortraitIndex>3</PortraitIndex>
		</Row>
		<Row>
			<Type>WORLDSIZE_LARGE</Type>
			<Description>TXT_KEY_WORLD_LARGE</Description>
			<Help>TXT_KEY_WORLD_LARGE_HELP</Help>
			<DefaultPlayers>10</DefaultPlayers>
			<DefaultMinorCivs>20</DefaultMinorCivs>
			<GridWidth>104</GridWidth>
			<GridHeight>64</GridHeight>
			<MaxActiveReligions>6</MaxActiveReligions>
			<FogTilesPerBarbarianCamp>30</FogTilesPerBarbarianCamp>
			<NumNaturalWonders>6</NumNaturalWonders>
			<UnitNameModifier>10</UnitNameModifier>
			<TargetNumCities>6</TargetNumCities>
			<NumFreeBuildingResources>6</NumFreeBuildingResources>
			<BuildingClassPrereqModifier>75</BuildingClassPrereqModifier>
			<MaxConscriptModifier>50</MaxConscriptModifier>
			<TerrainGrainChange>1</TerrainGrainChange>
			<FeatureGrainChange>1</FeatureGrainChange>
			[B]<ResearchPercent>120</ResearchPercent>
			<NumCitiesUnhappinessPercent>80</NumCitiesUnhappinessPercent>
			<NumCitiesPolicyCostMod>7.5</NumCitiesPolicyCostMod>
			<NumCitiesTechCostMod>3.75</NumCitiesTechCostMod>[/B]
			<AdvancedStartPointsMod>110</AdvancedStartPointsMod>
			<EstimatedNumCities>80</EstimatedNumCities>
			<IconAtlas>WORLDSIZE_ATLAS</IconAtlas>
			<PortraitIndex>4</PortraitIndex>
		</Row>
		<Row>
			<Type>WORLDSIZE_HUGE</Type>
			<Description>TXT_KEY_WORLD_HUGE</Description>
			<Help>TXT_KEY_WORLD_HUGE_HELP</Help>
			<DefaultPlayers>12</DefaultPlayers>
			<DefaultMinorCivs>24</DefaultMinorCivs>
			<GridWidth>128</GridWidth>
			<GridHeight>80</GridHeight>
			<MaxActiveReligions>7</MaxActiveReligions>
			<FogTilesPerBarbarianCamp>35</FogTilesPerBarbarianCamp>
			<NumNaturalWonders>7</NumNaturalWonders>
			<UnitNameModifier>0</UnitNameModifier>
			<TargetNumCities>6</TargetNumCities>
			<NumFreeBuildingResources>7</NumFreeBuildingResources>
			<BuildingClassPrereqModifier>100</BuildingClassPrereqModifier>
			<MaxConscriptModifier>75</MaxConscriptModifier>
			<TerrainGrainChange>1</TerrainGrainChange>
			<FeatureGrainChange>1</FeatureGrainChange>
			[B]<ResearchPercent>130</ResearchPercent>
			<NumCitiesUnhappinessPercent>60</NumCitiesUnhappinessPercent>
			<NumCitiesPolicyCostMod>5</NumCitiesPolicyCostMod>
			<NumCitiesTechCostMod>2.5</NumCitiesTechCostMod>[/B]
			<AdvancedStartPointsMod>120</AdvancedStartPointsMod>
			<EstimatedNumCities>132</EstimatedNumCities>
			<IconAtlas>WORLDSIZE_ATLAS</IconAtlas>
			<PortraitIndex>5</PortraitIndex>
		</Row>

I'm not sure if the fractions are really evaluated since I had 2% Tech increase in my last game instead of 2.5% on huge. (Type is Integer)

 

[Gregorius il]

Emperor/immortal is maybe the average
(I play on immortal)

Inviato dal mio GT-S5570I con Tapatalk 2