If Civ V is so easy, why isn't everybody winning on Emperor?

[Lord Parkin]

So the Stack of Death has been replaced by the Barrier of Death. And the move to one unit per tile accomplished what, exactly?

 

[Zechnophobe]

One of the nice things about Steam -- and, full disclosure, I'm a fan -- is that it allows you to see what people are doing by awarding achievements and publishing the related statistics. This is why the early achievements are so trivial: If 12 percent of the people haven't founded a second city, ever, you know most of them just have the game sitting around on their computer, pretty much unplayed.

Now we can use these statistics to check the claim that Civ V is "too easy" and "dumbed down". Let's look at the numbers about victory levels:

Baby Steps (Settler): 10.2 percent
Taking off the Training Wheels (Chieftan): 15.3 percent
The Alexman (Warlord): 6.6 percent
Charming, Really (Prince): 4.8 percent
The Once And Future King: 0.7 percent
The Golden Path (Emperor): 0.3 percent
Flawless Strategy (Deity): 0.2 percent

Obviously there are a lot of people not finishing their games, but we already know that (personally, I tend to quit any Civ game when I either get too far ahead or too far back).

If Civ V were really as easy as the detractors here claim, I would expect the percentage of wins on Emperor and Deity to be a lot higher, with people ramping up the difficulty to try to make the game enjoyable. It's not like everybody is leaving in disgust, either, as you can see by the number of players on the Steam Stats.

(Personally, I'm trying to tell my sense of self-respect I should at least win one game on Settler just to get the achievement...)

Well, I think most people are really claiming it is 'easier' than civ4, since difficulty in a vacuum is clearly arbitrary. And since we do not have similar stats for civ4, then no comparison can be made. Right?

 

[TyloniusFunk]

That's 0.2%/37% meaning 0.5% of people who beat the game beat it on the hardest difficulty level. After < 2 weeks. Thread closed.

 

[aimlessgun]

Ok, posted in this thread earlier that I would go beat diety to buff the stats.

It was pretty damn easy.

I made a deity club thread since I was kind of pumped, but to repeat a little, just beat it on a standard size map with OCC handicap and a self imposed "no offensive war" handicap, via Greek diplomatic victory. The AI attacked me once the whole game, and that was because of a stupid mixup with a city state they liked, I could have gone through the whole thing without a single war.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I could have gone through the whole thing without a single war.

This is what I've been noticing as well. It's pretty much the only reason I survive til the end at Deity - I just avoid annoying any of the AIs. All of those responses like "Get Over it" I wonder why anyone would choose.

 

[sgrig]

Well, I beat Civ5 on Prince level twice without any difficulty. In fact it was such a walkover that I decided to try Deity on a large continents map (same settings as my Prince wins). However I found it impossible to keep up with the AI - the Iroquois expanded very quickly and then declared war on me. I only had 5 small cities, while they had about 15. After a long siege and killing countless Iroquois units I lost my border city, and soon hordes of musketmen will surely annihilate my civ - I only have hoplites and archers... But seeing PoM's screenshot, I'm kind of happy that I won't make it into the modern age...

 

[falconne]

To re-iterate what must have been said several times in this thread, veteran civ players rarely finish the game when they know they're going to win. The end game slog is usually drawn out, boring and offers no intellectual stimulation. You may as well go do something useful. Mostly it's the players new to the genre, playing on the easy levels, who want to see it end.

The second point is, there's a difference between simplification and being easy to beat. Chess is way simpler than Civ but much much harder to win against a good AI or skilled human. On the other hand, chess may be simple, but it's interesting. This new Civ V has taken out many of the interesting decisions you had to make. Now the game mostly involved hitting End Turn repeatedly, very occasionally getting to make a decision.

 

[Earthling]

To answer the OP - everybody who isn't a complete newbie or otherwise really bad at any sort of strategy game, pretty much is winning at Emperor+ already.

The vast majority of people purchasing the game appear to be like with any other game of course - people who are absolutely horrid and can never beat anything but the easiest settings. But the majority of anyone good and anyone on a site like this is easily beating high civ5 difficulty levels - it is much easier.

(Though again, I am explicitly ok with civ5 having easier difficulty and prefer it that way. To the casual gamer who may someday work up to actually winning Deity for once in the civ series that's nice. And higher difficulty levels/AI bonuses are NOT needed for anyone else, patching broken stuff is great of course, but if they kept it so Deity was pretty easily/regularly beatable that's fine, players can adjust settings further to suit what they want or mess around with mods)

 

[Louis XXIV]

snip

Very fascinating post. You should start your own thread with this (or post it in one of the AI feedback threads). Really something more people need to see.

 

[Warlord Sam]

If I'm not mistaken, Steam Achievements are only awarded if you're playing online. Hence any published data isn't really a valid way of surmising the player population, since I'd guess a significant portion (if not the majority) of Civ V players are new to Steam and play the game in offline mode.

 

[MAntoninus]

Just build some nukes, clear that horde out.

 

[MadRat]

Lower modes AI: *drool drool*
Higher level AI: *drool drool* ... we all declare war on you with 40 units 100 happiness and 8 cities on turn 50

.. then promptly surrenders

Rat

 

[Craftsman]

The only reason I haven't beaten Deity yet (well, at least this is what I like to think ) is the ridiculous advantages the AI gets in unit costs and the what-would-be extremely tedious task of slogging through this many units...

Spoiler :

There are so many reasons it's flawed to use the stats about Steam Achievements to assess the difficulty of the game, it's hardly worth going over again. It's already in the thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9690683

Wait. I have seen this image before. It was with much less eye-candy... Let me think for a while...

Of course!

Civilization II is back in all its Glory!

Ugh.

 

[WuphonsReach]

If Civ V is so easy, why isn't everybody winning on Emperor?

Because I get bored with Civ5 somewhere around 500AD and have yet to complete a game? Even out of stubbornness? There's just too many bugs and imbalances and I don't feel like wasting my time on a broken game until patches come out to fix the glaring issues.

Plus, even if you do play the game to completion, there's no turn-by-turn review of the game. No map showing your empire expanding (or shrinking drastically as you lose horridly) as time goes on.

 

[cualpa]

If Climate Change is true, then why is there winter?

 

[Makaz]

This is what I've been noticing as well. It's pretty much the only reason I survive til the end at Deity - I just avoid annoying any of the AIs. All of those responses like "Get Over it" I wonder why anyone would choose

Unless when you meet 2 Ai turn 4 and turn 5 they both switch to hostile due to the fact that your army is too weak... at turn 5....

 

[skrewler]

I didn't understand what everyone was complaining about, I thought prince was pretty hard. Then after a few playthroughs I figured out how to play, skipped to Emperor, ended it early because it was too easy, then just beat a Deity game.

Deity was difficult mainly because the AI somehow made it to the Future era when I was still in Industrial. I had to load from an autosave several times as Catherine completed the space ship really fast.

Other than that, the AI is just really dumb, once you figure out some basic tactics it's not hard.

The main tactics I'm thinking of are things like blocking key tiles off with units, fighting at a bottleneck (either from terrain or your own units), etc..

 

[The Leviathan]

Honestly I play at king and I find a significant enough challenge in the game when I don't plow through civ after civ by rushing them in the classical era.

I think most veterans are crying because they're so used to rushing the AI during the classical age and the AI in CivV simply cannot handle that. So the player gets an easy win.

If you actually give the AI some time to develop, while they're still not brain surgeons they can atleast put up a decent fight and keep up with you in tech, land, population, etc

 

[DNK]

So, most vets are crying because they have to intentionally play poorly in order to make it a challenge?

Not the first time I've heard this excuse...

I agree with your first sentence - the higher difficulty levels should have the AI playing smarter, not cheating harder.

Not sure if this is serious, but you want game developers to create multiple AIs for a game? This seems extremely unlikely, both in time needed to develop each AI and time needed to fix the bugs with each separate AI.

That's 0.2%/37% meaning 0.5% of people who beat the game beat it on the hardest difficulty level. After < 2 weeks. Thread closed.

Why? That seems like a reasonably small number for the highest difficulty level in a game. 1 in 200 is a pretty select group...

 

[funny.man]

From many of those post I get impression that you expect AI to put a good fight without any bonuses - that's insane. It's only AI made for video game - very very complex video game so no one should expect smart AI that's why it has to have bonuses. Even AI for MUCH less complicated game as chess can be beaten simply by figuring out how algorithm works.
What in my opinion is broken is that for some reason AI usually doesn't build enough army at the beginning and have some aversion to cavalry which (at least at the beginning) is by far the best unit. There either should be some defensive bonus for defenders like +50% when fighting inside borders or army in ancient and classical era should have absolute priority for AI.
Because now when you want to have some challenge (not be able to just roll over all civs with 3 horsemen) in ancient era you have to go above emperor, but after classical era when AI starts to keep up its bonuses becomes to big advantage.