Well, obviously. In any game you have more flexibility against weak opposition. A chess grandmaster could play any nonsense opening against a D grade club player and win. Against another grandmaster he will play only lines that he believes are the best, with perhaps his own innovation at move 32. Complaining about this is complaining about reality.
The point IMO is : is it still interesting to play with low difficulty ? I guess it's not in Chess, but Civ is not Chess.
To make short I will take my own example : I don't play Prince anymore because Happiness is too limiting compared to what I could actually do. Wars, expansion are forbidden. So I watched LPs that showed me how to play. Now I just build a handful of cities and grow them to death. Still have problems with happiness (i really wonder how those players do without apparently carrying too much about it, even skipping happiness buildings), but at least it's the optimum way to play with minimal effort.
I have no problem in playing on lowest DLs, but in Prince I can't do anything ! I have a massive army, I can steamroll the AI whenever I want, but I can't do wars like i could do them. I have massive free land around me, same thing. I JUST CAN'T MOVE. It's what makes the game terribly frustrating. Global Happiness is a massive fail.
Not saying the different games unfold in the same way. There is not enough different factors that could make you feel you are recreating a particular part of History. The fact that you can start near Aztecs if you pick France is really damaging. Again, it's like a little reality show, not a grand history fresco. Playing continent is boring as well due to 1UPT and GH (so I never do). Plus, the map generator is too specialized. You can't pick continents and have 5 or 6 of them like in Earth, not talking about their original, surprised and whereas reality-feeling positions.
Not talking about too small maps (or too boring big ones, because after all all this space is useless), and this promiscuity feeling (you settled too close to me, i will declare you!), not to mention this awful anachronic globalization state, where everybody knows instantly what you did provided you have "discovered" them, and nasty chain denouncings that shouldn't sound right or usefull before mass media.
That's why i'm saying the only point of Civ5 is challenge.
Acken said:
if playing for fun is more important than playing right.
I wouldn't qualify highest difficulty playings like "right playings". The notion of "rightness" here is universal and unopposed, hm hm, it rings a bell. No, it's not about playing right.