Is it just me or has this game got a ton harder?

[jblank]

It's gotten much harder. I use to roll the AI on king and now, I frequently lose and the strategies that were once money, now often fail. I don't have an issue with that though, I view it as progress.

 

[reddishrecue]

This.

I used to play King most of the time because it was a good, challenging balance. Now King and Emperor are a cake walk. I moved up to Immortal and won my first 2 games on that difficulty as well (a Science victory as Venice on a Huge map, and a Domination victory as the Inca on a Large map).

My only assumption is that it is easier, as I hadn't played for over 8 months per BNW and subsequent patch.

Nice, I have a similar story except that the 2 wins I had on immortal were both science and that they were both on standard map.

 

[Horizons]

I'm pretty sure he meant most of his games end when no one including him has gone through the modern era techs, the bottom of the tree anyway. Quite a few Prince players have complained about either this, some have even reported it as "a bug", or about the AI falling so much behind it's ridiculous (eg: all of them end up two full eras behind the human by Modern).


I played my first two BNW games on Prince to get a feel of the new features and I indeed found it slow, if not quite as slow as Horizons and others have described (I played on Immortal/Emperor on G&K, so I rather had the super-runaway human, super backward AI situation). On the King games I played before getting back to Emperor, I noticed it's already much better balanced, if still slower than pre-BNW and post-BNW on Emperor and above. But it's only back on Emperor that I really started to experience how the tourism/ideology systems were really designed to work, the TR from science etc. It's like King is the new Prince - with the new mechanics and a bit of advice to optimize the growth/science aspect of your game it's now easier to perform well on King and definitely more fun to do it on King than Prince, without the problem of the AI falling so much behind and giving you really boring games (unless you're satisfied with running away and playing in your sandbox toward the victory of your choice).

IMO, that might be a side effect of the new mechanics. On Prince players (human and AI) have zero science benefits from early Trade Route, so they go through Ancient and Classical eras much slower than it's done on higher levels, where the science lead of the AI carries you along (having saved you tons of research turns by the mid-game, while the AI also kept up). Depriving one of the AI of the GL seems to reduce the odds even one AI can become a runaway (and thus of at least one target for spying, and for RA, and beakers from TR), so the human takes a science lead very early in turn #, but by doing so to advance in the tree he must rely exclusively on his own beaker production (and occasional GS) for the rest of the game. The average human player also has little hope of stealing techs on Prince, by Renaissance there's very few ever available unless you follow the strategy of teching up the tree to let the AI research the bottom first, and even then.. it's so backward it's not that great an idea), and RAs are more than worthless on Prince (which doesn't stop the AI from spending its gold on that). None of this helps the Prince players advance fast in science, and rapidly their game fall behind the "historical times" (ie: they get Riflemen in the 1900s, tanks barely start to appear by the endgame etc.). It seems frequent on Prince that by the endgame (early by diplo win, or a bit later by culture, or even Time) many of the AIs have not yet picked an Ideology.

Other factors that don't seem to help are that the AI on Prince can't expand as much, because it doesn't have the extra happiness for it. It plays with much fewer cities, but not necessarily following a good tall-tradition strat but going Liberty or Honor (and as a side effect, on large maps this means games in which the warmonger penalties will be very steep: not enough cities for each AI, not enough cities settled on the map until very, very late game = much higher penalties than on higher levels where the large map is full by mid-game). None of that helps the AI much with its science Culture-wise, the AI can't have many buildings for GW, for lack of cities, and on Prince it's almost a fluke that it gets Wonders, so in most games the AI has low tourism, which trivializes the whole Ideology system (it's easy to win it even without the Internet) and the teching is so slow it's normal the game ends with a few AI not even having picked an Ideology. All that also means the AI runs out of options to increase its happiness: no Wonders, few cities = few buildings plus it techs too slowly to get the late game ones, the player also doesn't let it keep CS allies for long.


Horizons seems to describe the type of Prince game played very casually without an emphasis on growth, with early bulbing of GS to needlessly start building Wonders you're certain to bag anyway - neglecting getting those 3 academies for the capital - or else too few Specialists, or the wrong ones, assigned. Also, opening Rationalism too late, not having enough early CS allies or neglecting to adopt Scholasticism, etc. Not playing a great sandbox science game on Prince seems to result in those ultra-slow science Prince games post-patch.

OTOH, Prince players who adopt the growth-science emphasis do keep up (ie: in reaching techs earlier, if not as fast as on the highest levels) but for lack of any AI competition they become totally overpowered by the Renaissance and have boring, slow or sandbox endgames.

So you HAVE to play this way or else science stagnates in the late game?

What's the point of having all those 'choices' then if only a particular few of them are 'optimal'?

See this is where I get annoyed ...

 

[PhilBowles]

So you HAVE to play this way or else science stagnates in the late game?

What's the point of having all those 'choices' then if only a particular few of them are 'optimal'?

See this is where I get annoyed ...

The choices aren't designed to be independent of one another, and the above description is very vague - you have to make some use of trade, some use of ideology, some use of specific techs, some use of Wonders, any of various tools to maximise population growth, and of other features of the game. Within each of those categories there are plenty of different ways to accelerate science, for instance, and meet the other win conditions.

Just as one example, the Great Library given as a "must" in the above is not a good strategy at higher difficulties - Emperor is the highest difficulty at which getting it is reliably achievable without sacrificing other areas, and while it starts GS accumulation early, you have to build it so soon if you want it at all that you can only choose cheap techs, minimising the gain you get from it. The same is equally true of AIs; they gain too little from it for denying it to help you much. A missionary or two with Interfaith Dialogue will achieve more (and denying IF to an AI is a good investment). And that's just one example of a ready substitution.

Science from trade routes is valuable, but based on game stage, other civs and your specific focus, you can focus on achieving this through extra trade routes with higher-tech civs, or by focusing on tourism and trading with civs that you're popular with (freeing trade for more financially profitable routes, or for domestic use to increase population via food trading).

Going tall for science is favoured by the science penalty for going wide, however going wide means faster population growth (the balance isn't perfect by any means - unlike culture buildings, which easily offset the penalty to social policies by going wide, there's no particular benefit to having multiple libraries vs. one, since their output is defined by population and they don't have a base science yield - 8 pop in one city with a library produces exactly the same science as two 4 pop cities each with its own library), however once you start to hit specialist buildings the extra specialists boost science in wide empires.

Civ selection also helps to influence strategy in one direction or another - Babylon wants Writing ASAP and will want the GS points from the Library in the long term; Venice needs it for the Great Work slots. Other civs can neglect it. Faith civs obviously benefit more from going the Interfaith Dialogue route if other civs have religions of their own. Morocco isn't going to maximise its UA by focusing trade on a single, higher-tech civ, so might prefer to get its science-through-trade boost from tourism. England can fall a little further behind in science safely because it can catch up with two spies in the Renaissance.

 

[redwings1340]

So, Horizons, what do you want to do in your game? In civ, there are certain things you have to do if you want to remain competitive, but there are a lot of ways to get to that point. The main goal in civ is to keep up in science. If you can't keep up close to the other civs in science you will become irrelevant in the world very quickly, but this is decently realistic, so it's something you'll have to accept. To do this you'll almost certainly need to keep up in food and get science buildings relatively quickly, but beyond this, you have a lot of freedom to make choices and play a lot of different ways.

There are lots of ways to get to the point of having high science on any difficulty level below deity. Next time you play a game start a thread with your goal in the game and how you are planning on getting to your goal, and we can figure out a way to help you get there. Lots of people on here are beating the game using many different strategies on emperor and immortal (and some on deity), so I think together we can help you beat King (or at least Prince), no matter what strategy you want to do.

Good luck!

 

[holywar]

This is what I find as well.... I typically play at the Emperor level. Early in the game now it seems the AI just won't attack...no guarantee, but it seems that way. In fact I'm finding that you can, though it is situational, often be quite aggressive with the nearby AI and they don't seem to be able to do much about it....

If they are close enough, it seems that sooner or later they are going to be a problem....either they will be denouncing you or they will be sending settlers into the area you wanted to expand into.

In my current game....back again as Spain...I founded Madrid near a wonder after exploring for about six or seven turns....I didn't know it then but Istanbul was within about five tiles.... And he quickly grabbed one of the luxuries, Cotton, that I had wanted..... So I was "livid"...

I noticed, though, that he had left the second tier tile open near his capital...I bought that tile and then decided to take the GG policy in Honour....I always take the Honour opener after the Tradition opener...mainly to strenghten my Scouts and Warrior against the Barabarians, and also for the culture points.... This time it made sense to get an early GG...

So now I had a Citadel which had grabbed two Cotton and another luxury. ... Sulieman denounced me...I built a second Archer and along with the Warrior and a Scout for the "final kill", I declared war and after about ten turns...[actually probably more like 15 or 16 turns]... in which the AI stupidly tried to kill of the Warrior in the Citadel...I ground him down and used the Scout to take his capital..... [The final three or four "shots" were after I had upgraded the two Archers to Composite Bowmen.]

I, of course, wasn't sure what the outcome would be, but it seemed safe enough to at least try what I did. Retreat would have been easy enough if I had taken too much heat. [I was even able to put a worker to work on the second luxury right next to his capital...partly as "bait" which he never took, he just kept trying to kill the Warrior which ended up with "double range protection" in the end ...]

I admire your backbone and I'm sure your people do too.

I am usually more passive in the early game. There is always that game-defining choice of what to do with that overly agressive neighbor who settles right next to you. I usually err on the side of peace in the early going. It's not until the late Renaissance that I get an itch for conquest.

 

[PhilBowles]

Well, after my last game I think I'll head back to Immortal for another try - I think I just didn't have enough of a handle on prioritising the new culture system before, however I just ended a game (diplomatically) with an Emperor game I could have won any way I wanted - I was science leader by some way (and with Hubble completed before anyone else even finished Apollo), influential with half the remaining civs, and with little stopping me from taking any city I wanted (I already held Venice, and took Akkad for no other reason than to give me something to do for the two or three turns before the leader vote).

 

[EK834]

The choices aren't designed to be independent of one another, and the above description is very vague

Indeed, it wasn't meant to be a strategy but rather comments on why the Prince level seems slower science-wise with BNW/post-patch than it was in G&K or Vanilla. I don't have a strategy to offer for Prince, I find that level too much of a sandbox. But King is an easy solution to that. Prince is perfect for sandbox/rpg style Civ, but for a bit of competition it sucks.

Personally I don't build the GL, that too was merely an observation that on Prince the AI rarely gets it (because few Prince players don't go for early Wonders), while on Emperor/Immortal it often contributes to helping one AI to run away. The AI's slow growth/lack of expansion on Prince is no doubt a much more important factor why AI science is so slow on that level.

 

[Quineloe]

I'm playing on Emperor and the AI usually isn't able to put itself in a winning situation at all. Just last game, Spain bankrupted itself to the point it had more debt than research and therefore was sitting at ~10 beakers per turn with a 12 cities ranging from 5 to 25 population. It only had 30 researched techs when I had 61. Even the Iroquois, whose Capital I took and exiled them to two pure desert cities had 32 techs researched. None of the AIs had tourism output, none of the AIs was anywhere near starting Apollo project and none of the AIs tried to buy the city states away from me. Also, none of the AIs held more than one enemy capital.

I am pretty much tempted to just build a few cities without going for victory and see if an AI manages to win before the time is up.

 

[PhilBowles]

I'm playing on Emperor and the AI usually isn't able to put itself in a winning situation at all. Just last game, Spain bankrupted itself to the point it had more debt than research and therefore was sitting at ~10 beakers per turn with a 12 cities ranging from 5 to 25 population. It only had 30 researched techs when I had 61. Even the Iroquois, whose Capital I took and exiled them to two pure desert cities had 32 techs researched. None of the AIs had tourism output, none of the AIs was anywhere near starting Apollo project and none of the AIs tried to buy the city states away from me. Also, none of the AIs held more than one enemy capital.

I am pretty much tempted to just build a few cities without going for victory and see if an AI manages to win before the time is up.

Wow, I haven't run into a disparity this large on Emperor - even the weakest civs tend to do better than that. What was the approximate date at this point (your 61 techs)?

Certainly if you do play to 'wait and see' the AI should do something - a couple of games ago I only won diplomatically, because Darius was close to science victory (if you do try the experiment, add Darius as an AI - Persia seems to be the all-round most capable AI in the game. It's always strong and will push for one of several win conditions; it's militaristic but is unlikely to get stuck and fall apart if its military push stalls, unlike say the Huns - who were, incidentally, remarkably peaceful in my last game). Production-wise, in that game I was soundly beaten to International Games (fortunately for me the winner was Ethiopia, who were no threat at all in tourism terms, rather than Byzantium who had formidable tourism).

In my last game, the Inca would at least have had a shot at cultural victory had I not been closer to it, and everyone was near level in tech with me for most of the game (even shortly before I popped Apollo I was at 57 techs to Suleiman's 56 - I pulled way ahead after that, having finished both Hubble and Rationalism).

 

[Quineloe]

I don't really remember and I overwrote all autosaves through the game, must have been 1800s.

What game speed does the AI perform on best? If I'm gonna go for a non-victory game, I'd rather do quick unless that pace cripples the AI

Persia seems to be the all-round most capable AI in the game

haha, I just started a game with a random leader, and got Darius. Better restart

 

[Adjuvant]

I don't really remember and I overwrote all autosaves through the game, must have been 1800s.

What game speed does the AI perform on best? If I'm gonna go for a non-victory game, I'd rather do quick unless that pace cripples the AI

The concept of "the nature of difficulty difference from game pace" stems from the idea "a human will make better decisions over a long term anticipating and situating elements accordingly". So, while the AI will "perform the same" at whatever speed, epic and marathon allow the human to compensate maneuvering for raw attrition.

 

[Walter R]

I tend to play G&K, offline. Recently (about three weeks ago) my game installation screwed up a bit so I had to log onto steam and get it running online; at the same time it downloaded an upgrade.

Well since then the AI has been even more aggressive and generally much more in-your-face; it can't be a coincidence.

Just won a game (on Emperor as England), and from the get-go the AI civs were a total pain in the ass, back-stabbing and DOW at the drop of a hat. Now I'm not the best of players but I'm no noob, so I can tell the difference. Previous games since the upgrade were exactly the same.

It's not a rant - I don't expect an easy ride on Emperor - just an observation.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

I think if you want to go science you should go very wide because you can get more pop that way in the long run because of the happines Buildings and policy.
You can only get 4 scientist max per city and how many of these you can get is very important if you want good tech.

You should probably trade post spam which was a common strategy of old Civ V to purcase the needed Buildings and to get RAs.
Gift them Resources to make them all want to be your friend, give them gold if they need just get the RAs.

Culture may be a problem, dont get traderoutes with civs that generrate alot of turism.
One of the advantage of getting alot of cities is that you can generate a good amount of Culture which can keep you safe and by industrial you can get the archaeologist which may be all you need in the Culture department.

 

[Laurwin]

BNW expansion pack is just so different... it's almost depressing how many changes there have been. I'm not sure I even like all the new changes.

Last time I played a proper game until victory if you will, on prince (I could win consistently on there), was in the release patch of G&K. I bought BNW last december (yay happy new year guyz)

Now I see caravans and cargo ships...

Now I see vanilla civs changed with their UUs and abilities...

Now I see policy tree totally reworked...

Now I see tourism and culture etc...

Now I see wide empires nerfed badly sciencewise... (o_O)

Now I see lack of gold...