[GS] A new player in Civilization 6. The difference in difficulty between the Prince and the King.

[Oldlamehand]

I am a veteran of Civilization 4 BTS, mostly a monarch / emperor level player. I completely skipped Civilization 5 and bought Civilization 6 + a few dlc, now it's available for Android.

I only played a few games, but in my third game, when I understood the basic mechanisms of cililization 6, the prince level ceased to be a challenge. Even without the micromanagement of the populatim and some efforts to optimize my steps, I bombed knights and musketeers of the most advanced opponent with jet aircrafts.

I decided to try a higher difficulty and it seems that the difference between the king and the prince is huge.
One opponent really ran away in terms of technology. As for combat, AI opponents are as incompetent as at a lower level, but it seems to me that their research is much faster than at the prince level.
In the end, I did an invasion, crushing my opponent almost without any casualties on my side, but I was unable to conquer him before he made his last step for science victory.

 

[MrRadar]

You can find more about the AI bonuses on different difficulty levels in the wiki.
Basically King AI gets +8% bonus for science/culture/faith generation and +20% production/gold bonus, in comparison of +0% such boosts on Prince.

If King AI manages to win science victory, that means you let the game drag on for far too long. Even for Deity AI it is exceptionally rare to win some kind of victory before t300 on Standard speed, so if you can close the game somewhere on t300-350 on standard size&speed games, that will pretty much guarantee you a victory on King. Although if you play on Android, you probably have the vanilla version, where AI was somewhat faster. Or did you get expansions as well? (R&F and GS)

Try to get as many eurekas and inspirations as you can - it saves a lot of science and culture input for your progress. There are some very good policy cards to boost district adjacencies or troop training, etc.. Reach envoy thresholds in city states - another gold mine for all kinds of yields. Get more cities and districts. And if you need something built quickly - chopping and harvesting of features and resources in Civ VI kinda replaces slavery whipping in Civ IV.

 

[Oldlamehand]

I have both RF and GS. I saw the bonus table, but I still feel that the difference was bigger than it looks on paper. Maybe I made the mistake of being too peaceful, because I usually play a more aggressive style that gives me a lot of territory. Here I tried to avoid war and settle nearby islands instead. In the end, I had quite a lot of land, but I didn't have time to make the cities on the islands really productive.

 

[MrRadar]

Sometimes AI civ just get a very lucky break and snowball beyond control, so maybe your case was an exception rather than the general picture. Who was your run away civ, btw? And did they use some laser stations to speed up their rocket?
Early aggression can help a lot to gain a strong position, however, entirely peaceful games and victories are also very much possible.

 

[Oldlamehand]

It was Lautaro. I gave up when they completed Launch an Exoplanet Expedition. There was no way I would get another victory before their spaceship arrived. Shaka was quite strong and at a comparable technical level to me, so conquest would not be an option.

 

[TCBB]

If you’re still learning the ropes at higher difficulties, you could try choosing AI opponents who are known to perform poorly. For example, have a look at the results of this elimination thread from a while back (pre-NFP):

https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...he-hands-of-the-ai-elimination-thread.656981/

As you can see, Lautaro is generally considered an above-average AI. If you want easy opponents, pick someone like Norway, Mali, or England, all of whom do consistently bad for whatever reason or another; and avoid opponents like Mvemba, John Curtin, Seondeok or the early game warmongers.

 

[MrRadar]

Launching an Exoplanet Expeditions starts 50 turns counter to SV. This time can be cut considerably shorter by multiple boosting projects, but during all these years I only saw AI do it once, on Deity, usually they leave it to travel at 1 ly/turn. And in 50 turns, with aircrafts and nukes and maybe GDRs you can certainly take out a civ. Or you could even launch your own rocket and boost it so that it overtakes AI's spaceship. Don't give up so easy next time

 

[Oldlamehand]

I guessed he was going to build lasers because he had about 4 space ports.

 

[newbie2]

Dude, just wait untill you go from King to emperor. thats probably the bigggest gap where the early game is very decisive.

As for (non domination) victories, it's a matter of becoming more efficient at them, and that takes a few games. Aside from the obvious stuff (better district planning, prioritising certain techs and civics), you have also a few tricks you can do. My favorite example is buying the spaceport with reyna instead of building it. that saves you 10 turns at least.

 

[MrRadar]

I guessed he was going to build lasers because he had about 4 space ports.

AI is very wasteful and unfocused. Yes, they build a ton of unnecessary spaceports and then do nothing special with them. Sometimes it seems that AI does a lot to stall their own progress to let the player to catch up and win.

 

[Futumch]

So much of the game is based on very small actions having long term gigantic effects. What I mean is - little things like optimising your governor screen, getting a good envoy spread, developing your start position - they all have big knock on effects in the late stages of the game.
You may have just had a less favourable start to your opponents. It doesn't take much. They might have had early access to Iron or a lucky goody hut. Makes a difference.
Just try again, and pretty soon you'll be itching to try Immortal or Deity.

 

[Oldlamehand]

I'm still learning. So far, I have noticed that AI is completely incompetent in warfare. They send unprotected embarked units within range of my fleet and bombers, ground troops in suicide attacks, etc. I also don't understand why they don't use the Air Force when they have all the resources and technology. Unlike Civilization 4, Air Force in Civilization 6 is no joke.

But still, the bonuses that AI has on king difficulty seem quite noticeable to me. That's a little disappointing. I would expect that 15 years after civilization 4 developers will be able to increase the level of difficulty with smarter AI.Instead, they use the cheapest trick in computer games, giving bonuses to the enemy instead of improving their ability to make decisions.

 

[MrRadar]

So far, I have noticed that AI is completely incompetent in warfare. They send unprotected embarked units within range of my fleet and bombers, ground troops in suicide attacks, etc. I also don't understand why they don't use the Air Force when they have all the resources and technology.

I would expect that 15 years after civilization 4 developers will be able to increase the level of difficulty with smarter AI.Instead, they use the cheapest trick in computer games, giving bonuses to the enemy instead of improving their ability to make decisions.

Yes, these dead horses have been beaten to death again and again multiple times on these forums. But it is as it is. Apparently the company can make decent profits by having barely breathing AI that can create just enough illusion of there being some sort of opposition.

 

[Josephias]

Launching an Exoplanet Expeditions starts 50 turns counter to SV. This time can be cut considerably shorter by multiple boosting projects, but during all these years I only saw AI do it once, on Deity, usually they leave it to travel at 1 ly/turn. And in 50 turns, with aircrafts and nukes and maybe GDRs you can certainly take out a civ. Or you could even launch your own rocket and boost it so that it overtakes AI's spaceship. Don't give up so easy next time

I would not be overconfident on that. In king I’ve seen Seondeok just waitng the 50 turns and allowing me to launch later and completing the race earlier, but also I’ve seen Laurier cut the timer drastically to 20 turns just after launching exoplanet expedition (and I was regularily bombing his spaceports, trying to stay for a score victory). In Emperor, Poundmaker did also speed the counter down from 50 turns when I started conquering his empire to 6 turns some (and not 44) turns later, avoiding me to anihilate him on time.

Probably, as with war (or, as I saw recently saw, religious conversion) AI suffers of the well-known “target amnesia”, that leaves units wandering idle (or staying right in the same place forever). The equivalent for space race would be launching up to X project, but forgetting to follow with more, including the laser ones.

 

[Kotofei]

If King AI manages to win science victory, that means you let the game drag on for far too long. Even for Deity AI it is exceptionally rare to win some kind of victory before t300 on Standard speed,

This. You're probably playing the game wrong. Head over to youtube. Potato Mcwhiskey's "civ 6 overexplained" videos are excellent.

I actually lost my very first Civ 6 game on King because the AI ninja'd an early religious win. Coming from playing 5 on Immortal/Deity, I was floored.

 

[Kaan Boztepe]

welcome to civ6 . yes the jump from prince to king is the first major hurdle that makes player stop and rethink their strategies. The King AI makes less bad decisions than on prince and with some production bonuses early AIs no longer get steam rolled by barbarians early which can be deadly for prince AIs or at least they get so far behind that a player can play at a leisurly pace.
the game starts to make more sense with an AI which can win. If you are unfamiliar with the power of raiding an enemy or if you are a peaceful player the additional resources you can get by trading with the AI ( also they are terrible at trading so you can get all their gold and stunt their growth that way too ) , try them. but remember the jump from king to immortal is at least twice harder than the jump from prince to king . I know that after a few games in king i went straight to immortal and got decimated.

 

[Finvola]

I think I made the move from Prince to Emperor after trying a few MP games for the first time and also watching some of SaxyGamer's videos a year or so ago. Watching other humans play in MP gave me ideas that I wanted to try out, and Saxy's tips helped a lot. I remember my first King game as Kongo and I was afraid to expand at first because Alex and Chandragupta were my closest neighbors. Alex conquered/founded more cities than he could hang onto and many of them flipped to me so that was handy. I think I might have avoided war because Chandragupta and Alex were busy attacking each other. I did get a culture win but I got more confident after playing a few more games.

Eventually King felt too easy. Sometimes I'd have to double check to make sure I didn't accidentally select Prince. I never thought I'd see the day when I was able to steamroll anybody in any civ game. I always played on lower difficulties in previous iterations. Once King felt like Settler I made the leap to Emperor. That took some adjusting because of the extra starting bonuses and settler. I watch Saxy and Potato's videos regularly and I like hearing their thought processes. They have different playstyles but I've learned a lot by watching them. I've got my sights on Immortal next!

 

[Oldlamehand]

So I won my next attempt at King difficulty. But it seems to me that the only sensible way to win science victory is a very aggressive style of play in the first half of the game. I played Continents and Islands, a small map, as in the previous case. But I conquered 2 AI opponents, 3 city-states, and eventually had the entire continent with 24 cities and a lot of science buildings to myself.
For the rest of the game, I mostly avoided war, but had a decent army.
My only other war was elimination of Mansa Musa religious units by normal military units.
Surprisingly, Frederick Barbarossa, who had only 14 cities, did not lag too much in science.
He completed the Launch Mars Colony project.

I play with all the winning conditions turned on, but I never aim for a cultural or religious victory.
In Civilization 6, I'm quite a casual player, but I can't imagine winning a scientific victory with, say, 10 cities.
Warfare is AI's biggest weakness, and I feel that all other ways to achieve victory must be more difficult than getting enough land and cities by warmongering.

 

[HiRezAudio]

Personally, I find that King level is frankly a waste of time as is immortal - Emperor is a lot of fun as I learn to deal with the added bonuses of just about everything to the AI, and I am now at the point where I can beat the AI probably 9/10 starts regardless of my starting location on Emperor mode but Deity is still a definite struggle & a serious challenge as I always seem to struggle getting past the first 50 turns.
The biggest problems for me are crowding from the AI - I watch various YT channels, and it seems to me there must be a whole heap of off-screen restarts going on we don't see, as I seem to almost ALWAYS have an aggressive Civ within 6 to 10 tiles of my capital every single time unless I play on an islands or continents map & get stuck on a small island on my own with no way to expand - this inevitably results in very fast early war against me, and that can be very difficult to overcome. As I said, definitely a challenge at Deity.

 

[newbie2]

I play with all the winning conditions turned on, but I never aim for a cultural or religious victory.
In Civilization 6, I'm quite a casual player, but I can't imagine winning a scientific victory with, say, 10 cities.
Warfare is AI's biggest weakness, and I feel that all other ways to achieve victory must be more difficult than getting enough land and cities by warmongering.

Its definitly possible. I do it all the time on emperor. I don't like managing too many low pop cities, I'm more the tall player. I also dislike war, which is why I stay on emperor. On higher you often need to go to war to remain competitive.

Without concrete screenshots of your game (or even on which turn you won), it's difficult to give any advice. But when you struggle on King, I'm just gonna throw these ideas/suggestions around; specificly for a science victory:

-Are you making optimal use of the eureka's and inspirations to progress to the trees? Are you wasting turns on hard research?
-Are your districts decently placed with adejency bonusses?
-Are you spending enough gold? Gold in your account does nothing. you're best of spending it on builders, or things that give you eureka's. Only exception is later in the game when you save up to buy a spaceport instead of building it.
-Likewise, are you making enough money? Trade routes are very powerfull in the game and need to be prioritised. Also, AI's tend to overpay for luxuries at times.
-Speaking of AI, how are you handling them? Although a science victory is an internal victory, that doesnt mean they can't be usefull with research alliances. Unless you really agitate them, I find it fairly easy to befriend most AI's.
-A science victory is also about production. Do you prioritise it in the city with your spaceport? Preferably you also have the ruhr valley there, along with an encampment.
-Are you making good use of the policy cards and swap them around when needed?
-Although you don't need a religion, you'll probably be able to get one on king. At the very least you should go for a pantheon that is usefull (divine spark for example)
-Also, because you are going for science, don't neglect culture. you need it for powerfull new governments and policies.
-Are you befriending and making use of the city states?