Should I just stop playing on King? It seems too difficult.

[CivAddict2013]

I wonder if I should just stop playing on King. It's too difficult for me. The AI will always be ahead no matter what. If you build wonders, you're behind in soldiers. If you build soldiers, you're behind in money.

It seems like it's too hard to keep up with the AI. You try to have as many soldiers as them? You're in debt. You try to build wonders? They always beat you to it one turn before. You have a high population? Your population is unhappy.

The AI in King seems to be able have a huge empire, build every wonder, while having hundreds of soldiers, while being in the lead in science and having tons of GPT. I just can't seem to emulate this as a player.

Basically seems like, if you're ahead in something; you're behind in something else.

I mean, I've had a few good games on King; but I might just play on Prince. The AI advantages are just too vast.

I'll get the Great Library and the National College but still be behind in tech. I'll build a market in every city but still have low money.

Or do I just suck?

If so, how can I as the player, have tons of gold, tons of happiness, build every wonder and be ahead in tech?

 

[joncnunn]

Well, #1 is stop trying to emulate the AI; the AI plays on "AI handicap bonus" in BNW, which is similar to Warlord level as far as happiness is concerned. (If by chance you are either on Vanilla or G&K, AI plays on Chieftain level there)

AIs in Civ V are flavor driven; set for each civ; very few of them have settings that are actually any good.

Only reason to be #1 in the troops rating in or before midgame is if you want to go conquer someone. If you are conquering someone you don't need to build World wonders as you'd get whatever wonders your victim had built.

If all you're interested in is being able to defend yourself; a few ranged units will do for quite some time.

Gold problems: Sell resources you aren't using to AI. If you can't trade a spare luxury for another luxury; sell that to AI as well. Build market places. Improve luxary tiles and work them. Don't build more troops than you need unless you are going to use them. Design your road network to minimize total number of tiles needed to connect all your cities. Don't start building a road to a new city when it's only size 1.

Science problems: Build libraries, universities, public schools, etc in every city and run every science specialist.

World wonders: Starting on King; AI starts with extra techs; and the first of them is Pottery which means they are only one tech away from Writing. In addition, starting on King, AI gets production & city growth handicaps. Don't try to hand build a world wonder if there's a high risk of being beat out to it (world wonder & difficulty level specific)

Great Library: This is the most popular one with the AI. If you succeed in building it; you need to unblock Philosophy while constructing it in order to select it as a tech and immediately start NC. Following this you'll need to catch up on your settler building by sending two settlers back to back if you already have escorts for them.

When not going for GL, then if you are on Vanilla or G&K, the easyist is to shot for 2 city NC; with BNW, it may be better to shoot for 3 city NC. (Either way, following completion of NC look for a city spot or two to bring yourself up to a total of 4 self built cities)

Tons of gold : Useless unless you put it to work; cash buying things usually best; especally food / science buildings along with last copies of buildings needed for national wonders.

Tons of happiness : You don't need tons of it; you just need to stay positive.

Build every wonder : You don't need to build them all; in fact it's easiest to win if you don't try to hand build any.

Ahead in tech: Focus on science buildings and run every science specialist.

 

[mrwho]

On the higher difficulties you're essentially never going to be no.1 in everything. Especially not once you move up to above king. One of the things you have to learn about the higher difficulties is accepting stuff like this.

As Joncnun said, you definitely shouldn't be trying to build every wonder. Try to play one or two games where you don't build a single wonder, to teach yourself how to play the rest of the game better. You also don't need tons of happiness, only enough to keep you positive. Of course, the more happiness the better, so that you get more golden ages, but I wouldn't call it a priority by any stretch. Science is king. If there's one thing you should want to be no.1 on, it's science (without completely neglecting other areas of course).

 

[mclericp]

what civ would you prefer to play on? There are many guides you can check, but the best is to keep on playing

 

[Memoryjar]

Please, put a picture of one of your game : T100 or after. Or a saved game.

 

[beetle]

I wonder if I should just stop playing on King. It's too difficult for me. The AI will always be ahead no matter what.

It is winning at the end, despite being behind the whole game, that I find satisfying. That struggle might not be something you find enjoyable.

If you build wonders, you're behind in soldiers. If you build soldiers, you're behind in money.

As others wrote, don’t build Wonders. Getting them by burning Great Engineers is okay I think. Every soldier you build should see plenty of action. They are too expensive not to be used. Maybe there is a balance that keeps the DOWs away, but I have not found it! My “pointy stick” rating is like a quarter of the leader, but I can win at Immortal more than half the time. Don’t be intimidated by the numbers.

I mean, I've had a few good games on King; but I might just play on Prince. The AI advantages are just too vast.

Are you playing your King games to the end? Or do you give up when it looks like the AI are too far ahead? If you are losing, what VCs do the AIs get?

I'll get the Great Library and the National College but still be behind in tech. I'll build a market in every city but still have low money.

That alone sounds like you are on track to thrive during the middle and end game. If you are playing at an appropriate difficulty level, you will be low on money and throughout most of the game. About what turn do you have the NC complete? How many cities are you typically founding?

If so, how can I as the player, have tons of gold, tons of happiness, build every wonder and be ahead in tech?

Play at a lower difficulty setting! The whole point of moving up difficulty levels is to keep things challenging. You may to change your mindset about what success feels like. Are you playing for anything other than the victory screen at the end?

 

[Carl5872]

I wonder if I should just stop playing on King. It's too difficult for me. The AI will always be ahead no matter what. If you build wonders, you're behind in soldiers. If you build soldiers, you're behind in money.

It seems like it's too hard to keep up with the AI. You try to have as many soldiers as them? You're in debt. You try to build wonders? They always beat you to it one turn before. You have a high population? Your population is unhappy.

The AI in King seems to be able have a huge empire, build every wonder, while having hundreds of soldiers, while being in the lead in science and having tons of GPT. I just can't seem to emulate this as a player.

Basically seems like, if you're ahead in something; you're behind in something else.

I mean, I've had a few good games on King; but I might just play on Prince. The AI advantages are just too vast.

I'll get the Great Library and the National College but still be behind in tech. I'll build a market in every city but still have low money.

Or do I just suck?

If so, how can I as the player, have tons of gold, tons of happiness, build every wonder and be ahead in tech?

I think the reality is that as you get higher up, you CAN'T have tons of everything. I think one way to succeed is to focus your gameplay on specific a specific victory condition. So if you chose to go for science, build primarily science wonders. Sure the Sistine chapel is nice, but the Porcelain tower would help your focus much better for this particular science path you chose. The reverse is true for if you choose a tourism win. In that case if you must build a wonder, build the chapel instead of the porcelain tower.

It's not so much that you ignore things for the other paths, but build them when necessary. Going for culture doesn't mean you never build military, just have a reason for each one you build. I will build soldiers to set up a line of sight along my trade caravans (or military ships for cargo ships). This boosts my military score, keeps trade routes safe, and also acts as reserve troops in case I get invaded. Also if I discover thorugh espoinage that So and So is plotting against me, I will build a few soldiers and place them near their boarder.

Another thing you can do if going down honor and tradition, is to leave a scout in each city as a garison. With traditions social policy, you pay no maintenance for the soldier while its in a city. It will slightly boost the firepower of the city. While each scout individually is negligible to your military score, their collective impact across an empire with many cities will give a decent boost to military score. From the honor social policy, they will each give 1 happiness and 2 culture. This is a dirt cheap, maintenance free for warmongers to get happiness and culture.

 

[ToothedBomb]

I think the reality is that as you get higher up, you CAN'T have tons of everything.

But the AI sure can. They can crank out wonders, religions and cities all around you, while you struggle to compete in even one of those areas.

I always play on King, but certain games are just more difficult than others.
It depends on the specific Civs, the land, weird AI stuff. There's so much randomness going on in this game that it can get very frustrating when nothing goes your way.

 

[danaphanous]

I don't think you guys should be completely discouraging him from wonders bc it sounds like he really likes wonders and they're a huge part of the game for him. Also, from experience they are very doable on King you just have to pick the ones you really want and be careful about not starting them too soon. If you want them civaddict, but they are putting you behind in other ways then I suggest not building any until I you can get your city to grow past 7 population just as a rule of thumb. Also, when you are building them, rarely, if ever do you want to take your city off close to the maximum growth rate early game. Large cities early will make a world of difference. Also, I, for one, will never build a wonder if my city can't build it in 16 or less turns. And I like to get the production up to where it's 10-12 if possible on standard. This requires workers early.

My favorite early wonders:
Great Library
Temple of Artemis
Oracle

although you are in for a helluva fight if you want GL on every game. Immortal I stopped trying. Like someone else said, the AI starts one tech closer than you and loves it. The only time I'll go for it is if I get a free pottery/writing tech from a ruin as I know I'm on even footing with the AI now. One game I finished pottery and popped writing a turn later. My capital was near salt and had great production so I switched to GL and got it. You will do better if you let a lot of the early ones go and focus on getting ahead in technology. Then you'll get almost all the later wonders.

What they said about tech is true though: always strive to be #1. If you are it solves a lot of your military and wonder problems so this is usually my strategy. Gold is tough, especially the first half of the game. I take it if you're building banks and stock exchanges and still don't have good gold that you aren't running the merchant specialists? They give you +3 gold each which catches the multipliers for about 4-5 gold each. Have you tried putting cities on money emphasis in the governor settings? Also, if you want really early cash and trade routes aren't enough, found a strong religion with tithes and spread it. It always gives me loads of cash when I do this that scales as the game progresses. Initially after founding it's giving me only +2 gpt. After spreading through my core its maybe 6-7 extra gpt. Once through my whole empire if I'm modestly sized it'll be up to an extra +10 gpt. That's 10 extra units/buildings! As you grow it will continue to go up. Spread it to large AI capitals for an immediate +3 gold! By midgame I'm typically getting +40-50 extra gold from a religion. By late-game over 100 extra gpt. It makes a world of difference and is fun. Grabbing Pagoda to buy is 2 extra happiness, culture, and faith per city too which helps with your happiness problems early. There is a lot of fun things in a nice religion.

 

[beetle]

I don't think you guys should be completely discouraging him from wonders bc it sounds like he really likes wonders and they're a huge part of the game for him. Also, from experience they are very doable on King you just have to pick the ones you really want and be careful about not starting them too soon.

I understood the advice to be in the vein of developing habits that work as one progresses through the difficulty levels. My own experience is that giving up wonders made a huge difference. As I get better, I will hard build more of them at lower difficulty levels. Then as I advance a difficulty level, I give them up again. I find that a more relaxed play style at lower difficulty levels is fun too, but I also enjoy the challenge of more difficulty levels. It is all good. I think the same advice that works to let a player persevere at King works at Emperor and Immortal as well. Probably, it works well for someone struggling with Prince. I was never one to over build units, that seems to be a common bad habit too.

 

[Chum]

But the AI sure can. They can crank out wonders, religions and cities all around you, while you struggle to compete in even one of those areas.

I always play on King, but certain games are just more difficult than others.
It depends on the specific Civs, the land, weird AI stuff. There's so much randomness going on in this game that it can get very frustrating when nothing goes your way.

So lets go with your argument for a little bit, and see where it takes you, okay?

You and CivAddict here claim that it is impossible to win vs the AI on King, because you are unable to keep up your economy, infrastructure, military, and wonders, correct? (I realize that you're not exactly agreeing with him, but it sounds like you're in the same camp).

I personally can win on Immortal pretty easily. King and below presents no challenge at all, and I often can get both the great library and temple of artemis on King (which was actually my signal to move up in difficulty levels). Other people on this board can very consistently crush deity level, and often provide video proof to substantiate their claims.

If we assume your statement to be true, how can the second statement be true? How is it possible for other players to win on higher difficulty levels and find King to be trivial? I am genuinely interested in the answer from both of you to those questions.

See, because when I am having difficulties with a video game, the absolute last thing I do is post essentially a whine thread saying that the game is too hard and I can't win. What I do before that is read the forums of said game extensively to try to improve my gameplay. What am I doing wrong? What core mechanics am I misunderstanding? After that, if I'm still having trouble, I might look up videos of players who are more skilled than myself and watch them play, and see what they're doing that I'm not. What contributes to their victory? What am I doing that they're not, so I know what not to waste time with? Failing all of that, I would make one of my own videos or post screenshots and ask for specific advice on my particular situations so as to learn where I'm making mistakes and how I can improve. This is what confuses me. There are so many people willing to write off their terrible ability at the game by hiding behind "The AI gets advantages I can't counter." Yeah, well the AI will also embark a unit into a single tile lake where it can be one shot instead of playing intelligently. They'll also waste their time proposing silly embargoes instead of enacting policies that will benefit them.

Here's a little personal note to end this -- for awhile in vanilla I was playing on King, and losing maybe 50% of the time. I would get bored with the game, came back in G&K and suffered the same win rate. Sometimes certain civs would just runaway with the game and become too powerful and I couldn't overcome that. Then when BnW came out and I started playing that, I decided that there was simply too much in the game to learn on my own, I needed to find a better resource, and that's how I ended up here. I needed to know why my cities weren't thriving. Why my armies of horsemen and catapults were getting slaughtered. Why my science output was so low. That's how I ended up here. Literally a few hours of reading and sifting thru various information here, I went from a 50% win rate on king to it being laughably easy, and being able to win with any VC I desired with any civ I desired on any map I desired.

The game isn't too hard. You just don't know the rules of the game, and therefore when you get beat at it, you can't explain why you lost.

 

[Tabarnak]

I made a brand new strategy article in the war academy. It explains in details the early turns and the advantages of going for a route or another but focusing on Tradition, early granaries and food transports.

With such start you will be able to compete in all important domains(food, production, gold, science) the AI from the Medieval era until the end. Take note that no early wonders are included in the build orders. Generally it's better to focus on growth early on and a fast National College in your capital before moving to Wonders.

The link is under my signature.

 

[pvtjava]

After you read Tabarnak's guide, I recommend that you check out this recent Game of the Month.
TSG 80

It is a One-City Challenge so you do not have to worry about when to build Settlers. I find this to be a good way to learn. Play around with different build orders and tech paths. Play it out to different victory conditions. Move Settler to different tiles to found your Capital. Experiment.

Here is the save.
TSG 80 Start

Here are threads devoted to discussion on the game.
Opening Actions - Early Game
After Actions - Finished Game

 

[SULOMON]

If you're going to go for early game it's more advisable to get the Hanging Gardens instead of the Great Library. Pop=science. And population helps with everything else too.
The King AI can be easily beat except in the very beginning when it comes to wonders, with more practice it will become quite easy to surpass them.
Currently, I find King for me just as easy as Prince was a couple months ago.

 

[tat501]

No! don't stop - try and get better. The only way to improve is to play and lose against opposition greater than you.

Watch some of Madjinn's and others letsplays on youtube. They helped me move up to Emperor - but also here's some general advice.

You don't need as big an army as the AI to hold your cities. Their tactical skill is terrible so you can hold them off with much fewer troops. This gets even easier if you build walls in at risk cities. Make them a priority.

Wonders? You don't really need them. Focus on one or two for the whole game maybe if they're intertwined with your strategy - otherwise focus on improving your happiness through hooking up luxuries and trade. Trade and caravans should give you a good income - get some CS allies for food, culture and happiness and you'll be away AS LONG as you remember to adequately defend your frontier cities.

Obviously - if you spawn next to Shaka its a bit different. He is coming at you and he WILL have a lot of units so your priority is different. You're bee-lining to crossbows and building lots of units and castles etc - so you see each time you play you should be adapting your style a little bit.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

I hate to say it but Chum's post is right-on. A little harsh, perhaps, but you've probably seen much, much harsher on these boards .

Look through the guides and keep these things in mind:

1) Tradition is awesome
2) 1 Worker/City (at least) -- oh, and worker-mugging is awesome

And, um ... yeah, that's about it, actually. I'd say that's almost literally all you need to know to win on King with relative ease. That and maybe always using a build order initially of something like scout-scout-shrine-worker-granary.

 

[McBean]

I used to like to try and wonder spam. I was a Great Library whore and thought I needed it every game. Now I hardly go for any early wonders. I find it better to concentrate on building stronger cities through other buildings instead of focusing a lot of hammers on wonders. I'm usually good to go if I can get 3-4 cities and National College by turn 100 or so. And I may still be behind in science then, but if the cities are strong and growing I should take the lead. I've learned it just takes patience and I realize I can't have it all early in the game. I've also come to realize that this is a very situational game and have come to not follow any prescribed tech paths and build orders.

Play a game as England on small continents and go for domination. Seriously, you can build no wonders (except national College), have a small nonexistent military early and still win the game. I've done this four times in a row on emperor and each and every time I was behind in everything early on. By navigation I was usually the science leader or very close to it. After Navigation I was never number one in military right away, but in numbers those ships of the line are amazing. Now is the time to get those early wonders I missed out on .

BTW, go watch some youtube videos. Lately I've been watching the Let's Play vids from Marbozir. I've learned a number of things to better my game.

 

[mrwho]

I'd also recommend Marbozir. He's the only guy I can find whose doing ongoing BNW deity LPs. Obviously, the strategies for Deity and King are different, but he'll still help a lot.

 

[docbud]

How about just playing for fun and to heck with the victory?

Right now I'm having a blast playing on King, Pangea, and as Mongolia. The Zulus were my immediate neighbors and we've been at war for half the game.

My Keshiks are kicking the Impi's butts and I'm just having a good old time.

I built GL and a few wonders, and while I was doing lousy money-wise and happiness, I'm just enjoying the game.

And my gold is only 15 or so per turn, and happiness at 6, but I don't care. I'm having fun.

NOTE: I'm playing defensively because Shaku won't accept peacea and if I invade I can't afford to take one of his sweet cities.

 

[notyourtypical]

Please, put a picture of one of your game : T100 or after. Or a saved game.

If you are truly interested in besting King, then please do this. Specific feedback is what you need; without constructive feedback it's hard to learn. This is true in all areas of life, not just Civ 5.