What Difficulty do you play on (most of the time)?

[aimlessgun]

LOL I just took Persopolis at about turn 260 of 500 and it was allready a size 24 city with 7 or 8 wonders !

Yeah the food bonuses on the higher levels are insane. My favorite example is in my last game, an OCC, a nearby Persian city was outgrowing my capital. I had 4 maritime allies, Persia had no maritime allies. And it wasn't even one of their core cities, they founded the stupid thing in like 2000 BC!

 

[Yngvi]

I play on Emperor. I don't want to go up until I can beat it at least once, post patch. So far I have not. I find it an interesting level; that is, challenging without being frustrating.

Always played on Monarch in Civ IV.

 

[eric_]

Been playing on King a lot, always competitively, sometimes I win.

Definitely like the idea of playing against an AI that doesn't get bonuses, but I was mopping up on Prince.

 

[bryanw1995]

always win on immortal, still need to beat deity

immortal is too easy, especially on smaller maps. deity is very challenging. I've only won 2 or 3 times on deity and got smoked 6-7. when I've won I started near ghandi/elizabeth/america, I've lost many times when starting near any of the warlike civs b/c they will just dow at turn 8 or whatever sometimes. those games can be lots of fun, though somewhat short

immortal becomes much more fun when you get into larger maps and longer play times ( I like epic a lot, was a marthon player in civ iv). deity is much harder on larger maps/longer games b/c it's just impossible to rush them all before they get too big/powerful.

I probably play more immortal than deity, haven't played anything else in weeks. I might try an AW with no cs's on emperor tonight, however. that could be fun.

 

[bryanw1995]

I have just stepped up to immortal from emperor and WOW at the big difference in difficulty. I play almost exclusively single land mass maps since the AI still isn't at all talented with naval use and invasions.

I also get a fun game without resorting to really lame exploits vs the AI. I find this to be much more fun than griping about how unfinished this game is and seriously laming the AI. I also will not take any kind of victory other than Domination unless I clearly am dominating the game and just want to end it. (Exception Cultural Victory which is not my style and I failed on Emperor and is such a BORING "next turn" fest).

Anyhow, it became trivially easy for me to win Emperor and quite easy even if I didn't make horse units with some civs so I moved up to Immortal for the first time. The difference is shocking as the AI's expand quicker and build up their cities lots quicker and have considerably more troops and techs. LOL I just took Persopolis at about turn 260 of 500 and it was allready a size 24 city with 7 or 8 wonders ! I haven't even tried to build a wonder and just have tried to survive. I have the game won now, but twice had to reload from an autosave, not realizing the need on Immortal to have a large army and to not leave big areas of my empire undefended while off in foreign lands fighting battles that are too slow to win.

I hope I've learned enough about tactics that I can win the next Immortal game without reloading.

Some day I hope to be good enough to compete on Deity and to me this is needed for me to up my skills for the hoped for AI improvements in further patches and add ons.

To each his own, but for me it is not fun to easily win every game nor to play endless next turn sim city on lower levels.

As I see it, if you can't lose at least sometimes, you're not playing on a high enough difficulty level.

.. neilkaz ..

I can see a reload if you just clicked a button too fast while watching tv or something, but that's not a victory if you had to go back to autosaves TWICE. Immortal is a lot more fun than emperor, however, and if you had fun that's all that matters anyway.

 

[andrewlt]

It depends on how competitive I want my game to be. It's mostly warlord when screwing around. I've beaten every difficulty except prince and king now. Well, after I'm done screwing around in my current settler game.

 

[sosueme]

King/Emperor most of the time since I'm having more fun playing around with sub-optimal strategies than I was falling back on horseman rush or ICS to be successful in the higher difficulties.

 

[Cordycep]

I've always played Prince, but I reckon I could move up to King or further if it weren't for those barbs harassing me and respawning 10 seconds after I move away from an area I just cleared. Combat with the other civs is fine, easy even (on Prince), but those barbs actually get on my nerves.

 

[Uniform Sierra]

I usually play on the "King" difficulty mode. I don't know what the advantages the enemy receives are with higher levels, so I don't want to fight them on higher levels until I complete a game on a lower level.

 

[Blanchflower]

I play mostly on Settler because I don't like to lose. I know that playing on the lowest difficulty level most of the time won't improve my gameplay but I just can't help it!

Any advise here???

 

[Rittmeyer]

always win on immortal, still need to beat deity -[2]

 

[joyous_gard]

I play mostly on Settler because I don't like to lose. I know that playing on the lowest difficulty level most of the time won't improve my gameplay but I just can't help it!

Any advise here???

You won't lose on Chieftain and can still get most of the wonders. Same is true for warlord. That's what I've found at least.

Prince you start missing more of the wonders but if you build an army you won't lose.

King and above I go to war mode.

I guess Civ V I am Prince.

 

[Rudster816]

Immortal, the advantages on Diety are too much for it to be even close to fair IMO. By the time you can settle 4 cities (and still have not built any military units) they have 7 or 8 cities that are three times the size of yours. It just isnt very much fun when you can really feel the AI 'cheating'. On Immortal you can settle cities on a 1:1 basis in the earlier stages of the game, and it seems a lot less "unfair".

 

[Creepy Old Man]

Emperor is no fun, since it doesn't really matter what I do, I still win. However, the only immortal map I've won so far was an archipelago. So mostly I play immortal, and loose when my crossbows can't hurt the AI's infantry. (On immortal, the AI is always at least a full era ahead of me. On emperor, I lead tech.)

 

[UknowsI]

Immortal is usually not a problem, so these days I'm playing deity. However, I mostly play on 6 player maps, which makes it easier. My computer simply can't handle the big maps. If I could play huge maps I would probably go back to immortal.

 

[firecat318]

When I first got the game I started at Prince, but found out that was way too easy. I bumped it up to king and noticed a definite difference, although I mastered that level in a few days. I finally got the bravery (lol) to enter Emperor. It really wasn't that much different than King to be honest. It was a bit harder but I have gotten 2 science victories, 3 domination victories and 1 cultural and 1 diplomatic victory so far on Emperor. I recently tried a domination oreinted game on immortal, and boy is there an enormous difference. This is the first time I could feel the AI really cheating, as in they start with techs already researched, they build wonders at lightning speed, and their cities spread like wildfire.

I lost that attempt because I got rushed on turn 40 by two of the AI's when I only had two cities and a few military units. Right now I'm on the verge of winning a science victory with only one city as Hiawatha on Immortal. I've gotten DOW'ed quite a few times but Mohawk Warriors upgraded to rifleman with Drill III defending in Forest can easily beat mechanized infantry. I was quite shocked in my current game on Immortal when I saw a Persian mech inf wandering around at turn 170...

 

[eewallace]

In Civ 4, I worked my way up through the levels, trying to get every victory at a level before moving on. That didn't work for Civ 5--the lower levels are simply too tedious to play through except for short games with a military victory. I found prince level to be about where the game started to be fun.

 

[SirMaru]

I play Immortal as America versus the AI as Arabia without barbarians, city states or other AI's. Its a fight to the death for me and I enjoy every moment. The AI has the manpower and I have the hitech weaponry. It reminds me of the Afghan War right now.

Here was my latest game:

10/29/2010 7:36 PM

Start:
Human = America (216 points)
AI = Arabia (216 points)
No City States or Barbarians
Duel Map Size and Random Map Type
Immortal Difficulty, Standard Pace (500 Turns), Modern Era
Random Personalities
Victory Conditions: Time or Domination
Turn 325 - 1905 AD
Declare war on first contact with AI and never make peace.
Starting accumulated hours = 112

11/4/2010 9:20 PM

Domination victory capturing Mecca with 4,412 points. 129 Turns. Accumulated time = 119 hours.
Elapsed time to play game = 7 hours with 39% Achievements unlocked.

 

[eric_]

OK, so I'm back down to Prince, and I can't tell if it's because post-patch is more difficult, or because peaceful victory types are harder...or both? I'll have to try for another domination victory in my next game.

 

[Tylerryan79]

I play on prince most of the time. It's a mellow fun game, not too much to worry about etc. I can win on the higher levels, but I don't have as much fun. Every now and then it can be fun to play, but prince is just me building my huge @$$ empire and loving every minute of it.