A new approach to difficulty in CIV

[civilizationfanatic2000]

I think that the CIV series should acknowledge that the player is a nigh-omniscient (knows all or most of history, knows their population, climate, and can see all revealed areas at once) nigh-omnipresent (can issue commands to any unit anywhere), and immortal (lasts thousands of years). That is so far off from real-life historical leaders it's not even funny. The game assumes the same for the A.I leaders, too and builds its difficulty features around that.

To me, to get closer to how the world really was and how it really would be, CIV should have more in-depth difficulty scaling. You could choose to have the human player be like the average Civ player, while the A.I are like real world leaders. Or the reverse. Or have them both be realistic or supergod immortals. This is a much better way to add difficulty than simply tweaking numbers. Players should decide whether they want to feel as if they are fighting in a constant uphill struggle, fighting amongst equals, or steamrolling the opposition.

 

[Saxo Grammaticus]

I do not think I have all that much to contribute on the general topic of difficulty, but your last sentence did catch my eye. To me, "fighting amongst equals," suggests multiplayer odds, where theoretically there would be a 1/n chance of winning where n represents the number of players, but in practice certain players would dominate and the vast majority would get used to losing most of the time. That would be pretty exciting to experience against an AI!

Clearly Civ VI's difficulty is predicated on guaranteed exceptional performance for the human player at any level, i.e. "steamrolling the opposition." As for "fighting in a constant uphill struggle," I am not sure what this would look like, as I imagine a difficulty level with multiplayer odds of victory would feel like that for most players. While I admit to being ignorant to the technical side of difficulty, part of me feels it would be very cool if after hundreds of hours with the game, playing my best I would still be outmaneuvered by the AI at its best some of the time.

 

[Putmalk]

I'm having a difficult time understanding what the OP is suggesting in terms of practical suggestions to achieve "while the A.I are like real world leaders".

AI are not human, cannot think like a human, any attempts to make them act like a human results in a flawed simulation.

 

[civilizationfanatic2000]

As for "fighting in a constant uphill struggle," I am not sure what this would look like, as I imagine a difficulty level with multiplayer odds of victory would feel like that for most players

okay, you only have knowledge of what a real world leader would have, which is to say you have to actively check on things to know about them (population censuses, armies have to send scouts back and forth to report on battles and territory lost/gained, you don't know what tech lies ahead, etc). you also have a much harder time commanding troops.
your a.i opponents behave like regular civ opponents
Now play

I'm having a difficult time understanding what the OP is suggesting in terms of practical suggestions to achieve "while the A.I are like real world leaders".

AI are not human, cannot think like a human, any attempts to make them act like a human results in a flawed simulation.

read above statement

 

[Henri Christophe]

I think civilization series is already pretty hard to win a game (on deity mode). Civ 5 I never wins a deity without cheating. Civ 6 I manage to win a deity game with Sparta without cheating (because I do not know how to cheat in civ 6) and was pretty hard. I was planning to win a domination victory with Sparta but I can't defeat the Zulu, they are always advanced in technology and have tooo many coorporation, meanwhile I was playing without coorporations. So I managed to conquer all other civilizations of continent map and converted the Zulu to my religion, so I won a religious victory on Deity. So I stoped play civ 6 since then, some times I think to back in this game just to see if I can defeated Shaka with some nukes and giant robots.
I never used a nuke before in this game, I always conquer everthing before be able to nuke a city.

 

[Putmalk]

okay, you only have knowledge of what a real world leader would have, which is to say you have to actively check on things to know about them (population censuses, armies have to send scouts back and forth to report on battles and territory lost/gained, you don't know what tech lies ahead, etc). you also have a much harder time commanding troops.
your a.i opponents behave like regular civ opponents
Now play

read above statement

This is basically how the AI behaves today; it has limited understanding of the world around itself, and doesn't look ahead in the future to make plans (although once again, we cannot 100% confirm this behave without the Civ 6 DLL, but this is how it worked in Civ 5). I don't see how these changes do much of anything, and handicapping the AI further does nothing to improve its competitiveness (which is abysmal today)