Anybody Else Moving Up a Difficulty Level w/BNW?

[redwings1340]

Yeah, in BNW I feel like I can beat Emperor regularly now, as before I was probably around .500 in that category. Moreso, I feel like I'm actually in the lead or right with the leading civs most of the time on the difficulty level, whereas before I could steal victories, but mostly because the computer just doesn't go for wins too well. I think civs are more peaceful in this game, especially before differing ideologies come in to play, mostly because trade routes provide a little bit more protection, as wars between neighbors now destroy both players economies.

I love a lot of the new features, but on emperor at least, I feel like diplomatic victory is kind of inevitable in some ways, just because I like to ally with all the city states anyway to control the world congress, because I feel really uncomfortable when I don't do so. I've won one cultural victory so far, but I only won the game that way because my Sheshone culture was so good it dominated everyone 17 turns before the first UN vote. Otherwise I've only won diplomatically, which is a little annoying in a way, because I don't have to do anything special to get that victory. I think liberty/commerce/patronage is generally the best upgrade path barring any special conditions (like, portugal needs exploration, or if you get a religious bonus you can pick piety), and this gets you a diplomatic victory every time. +2 happiness per luxury resource is just an insanely powerful policy.

 

[Uncle_Joe]

Yes BNW is far easier for me. I was 50/50 on King in G&K but I have won 4 in a row with no difficulty in BWN. My current game on Emperor is also looking to be a runaway victory.

For me, again, it comes down to the fact that the AI never even makes an attempt to stop me. Without that, I can just put my foot on the economic/tech accelerator and not look back. Boom! Easy win.

 

[Optional]

Even if you haven't moved up level you've moved up level, because the AI bonuses have been increased.
Looking at Immortal, the AI starts there now with all 4 first tier techs instead of just 3. They need less food to gain citizens than before and receive a greater hammer discount.

So I'm surprised people find this easier. I find that especially with techs it's harder to keep up. But I haven't had an awful lot of time to play. The AI is also much less aggressive, that could make the game easier. The human player will look at the best civs at the map, but the playing field will remain more equal with less wars, so less runaway civs.

 

[Cromat]

I've now completed three games under BNW and I find myself blowing out the computer on King (standard speed and standard size continents maps). I've won a cultural victory as the Shoshone, a diplomatic victory as Venice, and science victory as the Mayan. 2 of the 3 (Venice and Mayan) were sub 400 turn wins which for me is rare. The Shoshone victory probably could have been sub 400 if I had focused more on culture but it was my first game in BNW and I couldn't focus my strategy as I wanted to try out all the new toys.

Anybody else had a similar experience?

I find that many of the new social policies and the new tech tree layout (especially in the later eras) really allows you to super specialize like I have never been able to before.

I also had two relatively straightforward victories at Emperor using Venice and China (domination at turn 260, personal record).

It does seem a bit easier, specifically the trade routes and the ideologies seem to make me feel more comfortable in terms of happiness and money. However it may just be that I've improved my play as I now always do stuff right like going straight to the NC and rushing a neighbor with Composite Bows.

Regarding what the OP said, I think it might also have been due to your choice of Civs. Maya, Venice and Shoshone are all very good. The Venice game was possibly the easiest one I've ever played above Prince.

 

[PhilBowles]

My experience so far is that I started down a level (on Emperor) compared with G&K, as I usually do with a new expansion, and it took me longer to get back up to Immortal than it did in G&K. But now that I have the hang of the new mechanics I am having a fairly straightforward time winning on Immortal, as Siam (with, of course, the caveat that my recent Immortal win was a small map - 4 civs - so I could readily get every Wonder I needed).

I shall have to see what Deity brings.

 

[ahawk]

Here's what I notice on Emperor:

The difficulty is lowered by staying very small for a while, usually until the national college is up. Often, I now start with just 2, sometimes 3 cities, and work trade-routes as much as possible for extra science and gold. Then, after the national college is up, I start moving on to settling a 3rd or 4th city, or frequently have to puppet a city that got settled next to me. All of this helps mitigate the 5% penalty to science per city. If you expand out to even just 4 or 5 cities without having libraries up, the penalty to science begins to outweigh the benefits of extra land IMO.

The difficulty is increased by REX-based strategies, however. I tried Mayans on Emperor, went for a REX game where I'd spam the UB, and science quickly became a problem.

This is all a bit counter-intuitive to the Civ series. In general, more land more quickly has always been good. But now, by the time you get that 5th city, you'll be getting a 25% penalty to science. Even worse, new cities in themselves generate virtually 0 gold yield except for on luxuries: no more settling on rivers and getting an instant gold return, anymore. Thus, the incentive to build new cities that will take 50 turns to get a library, granary, and market has been significantly lowered already by about the 4th or 5th city. And using trade-routes to move production/food is not always viable depending on existing maintenance costs and how much science you'd get sending the route to an AI.

 

[PhilBowles]

Here's what I notice on Emperor:

The difficulty is lowered by staying very small for a while, usually until the national college is up. Often, I now start with just 2, sometimes 3 cities, and work trade-routes as much as possible for extra science and gold. Then, after the national college is up, I start moving on to settling a 3rd or 4th city, or frequently have to puppet a city that got settled next to me. All of this helps mitigate the 5% penalty to science per city. If you expand out to even just 4 or 5 cities without having libraries up, the penalty to science begins to outweigh the benefits of extra land IMO.

The difficulty is increased by REX-based strategies, however. I tried Mayans on Emperor, went for a REX game where I'd spam the UB, and science quickly became a problem.

This is all a bit counter-intuitive to the Civ series. In general, more land more quickly has always been good. But now, by the time you get that 5th city, you'll be getting a 25% penalty to science. Even worse, new cities in themselves generate virtually 0 gold yield except for on luxuries: no more settling on rivers and getting an instant gold return, anymore. Thus, the incentive to build new cities that will take 50 turns to get a library, granary, and market has been significantly lowered already by about the 4th or 5th city. And using trade-routes to move production/food is not always viable depending on existing maintenance costs and how much science you'd get sending the route to an AI.

I've actually been expanding more as a general rule in BNW. In my just-completed game I went with 6 cities, all founded in the first 150 turns or so. The main reason for this is that city connections are much more valuable as a source of gold income, especially early in the game, than they were pre-BNW. While as you point out you won't usually be producing gold from tiles aside from luxury resources (at least until Guilds), access to luxury resources for their tile output is itself more valuable as a consequence. It then becomes important to settle more, even for duplicates of resources you already have.

 

[ahawk]

I've actually been expanding more as a general rule in BNW. In my just-completed game I went with 6 cities, all founded in the first 150 turns or so. The main reason for this is that city connections are much more valuable as a source of gold income, especially early in the game, than they were pre-BNW. While as you point out you won't usually be producing gold from tiles aside from luxury resources (at least until Guilds), access to luxury resources for their tile output is itself more valuable as a consequence. It then becomes important to settle more, even for duplicates of resources you already have.

Good points.

Do you go Liberty then, I'd assume, to start? That way you'd get quicker settlers/workers as well as happiness right away for the connections. I've gone Tradition in about 3/4 of BNW games thus far, mostly due to the 5% science penalty.

Which brings me to my main question: I agree with you on what you brought up, but I'm still curious about what you haven't addressed from what I mentioned before: how do you deal with the science penalty with expanding that much that early? Trade-routes are too few to really give you enough beakers to catch up that much in the early game, so do you simply rely on RA's and Great Scientists? RA's do seem to be easier to get with the AI, so maybe that's how you do it. I'm honestly curious, because I've yet to settle/puppet more than 4 cities in the first 150 turns in BNW (except when just trying out the Zulu ).

 

[PhilBowles]

Good points.

Do you go Liberty then, I'd assume, to start? That way you'd get quicker settlers/workers as well as happiness right away for the connections. I've gone Tradition in about 3/4 of BNW games thus far, mostly due to the 5% science penalty.

I did in that game. I found the science penalty was more than offset once I hit Rationalism, since I had so many more specialists in the wider cities and, earlier in the game, the faster rate of overall population growth combined with the fact that 5% of science for most of the early and midgame is rarely more than 1-2 beakers.

Which brings me to my main question: I agree with you on what you brought up, but I'm still curious about what you haven't addressed from what I mentioned before: how do you deal with the science penalty with expanding that much that early?

I don't catch up that early usually, and I haven't really noticed the science penalty being much of a practical penalty. I'm used to games where I'll be behind in science often until the Renaissance or later. Post-BNW, I'll often hit the World Congress and propose Scholars in Residence in the first session.

As with culture in vanilla and G&K, the bonus you get from being able to build extra science buildings, and from being able to produce Great Scientists from two or three key cities rather than just one, more than offsets the expansion penalty.

Also in that game I took Messenger of the Gods, which kicks in at an early game stage before I'd have anything close to the 40 bpt needed for founding a new city to cost me as many beakers as I'd get from the road. Interfaith Dialogue is a possibility - I didn't use it in that game, but going wide gives you advantages with religion (more faith buildings) to help with quick missionary generation. Also, the AI pretty much never takes Rationalism now, so you can pretty much rely on having an advantage when you get to that game stage.

Compared with G&K and vanilla playing wide science is presumably more difficult (I tended not to play wide, and the generally favoured science strategies with Babylon and Korea were to play tall), but it's certainly competitive with going tall in BNW.

The reason wide empires need penalties to cap or at least constrain expansion is that their intrinsic characteristics - greater number of production slots, faster population growth for multiple small cities vs. few large ones, greater possible number of duplicate buildings of a particular type, greater numbers of specialist slots and GP production bars (in Civs IV and V), and greater overall number of tiles to work (and, in Civs 1-4, linking science to commerce and commerce to trade routes between cities) - can't be matched by tall empires without some kind of balancing factor. The science penalty for expansion isn't intended to make wide empires weaker at science than tall empires, it's intended to help tall empires become as good at science as a wide empire is intrinsically.

Though yes, RAs do seem easier to come by since the AI isn't as effective at spending all its gold as it was after the final G&K patches - when I'd quite often be limited in the RAs I could sign by the fact that only one or two of my friends would have enough cash, and I had to be on the ball to get them to part with it before they signed an RA with somebody else.

 

[ptoss1]

我不知道
沒有正確的大案

 

[neev]

I was a King player before getting BNW, so I'm far from being good at this game. I've played about 8-10 BNW games now, and :

- Diplo win on King is now *extremely* easy no matter who is on the map
- Diplo win on Emperor is pretty easy, but the 120 first turns can be somewhat challenging if Shaka/Attila/another warmongering psychopath is near my starting location
- Diplo win on Immortal is easy, but becomes very challenging if a warmonger is a neighbour
- Diplo win on Deity is manageable, unless a warmonger DOWs in the first 150 turns (which pretty much means game over for me, I'm simply not able to deal with the 30+ troops Shaka throws at me on turn 115.)

My point is, diplo win on BNW definitely is easy, unless you have a predator close to you. The fact I moved up from King to Deity in two weeks almost without breaking a sweat (well, until I met my favourite Zulu bastard) is, to me of course, proof that the diplo win currently is completely broken. I'm glad Europa Universalis IV comes out soon, to kill the wait until the forthcoming and extremely needed fall patch. Unfortunately BNW is currently unplayable, too bad because I like the additions a lot.

 

[ahawk]

Ah.

Yeah, World Congress is a huge aid to catching up in science. Scholars in Residence is a good proposal, but even Sciences Funding is also good in some situations to help you get GSes quicker.

Messenger of the Gods is also good. Even in G&K, a great strategy was to go Mayans, spam cities, spam the UB, and connect all the cities in conjunction with Messenger of the Gods in order to have a great early science game.

Completely in agreement about G&K RA's vs BNW RA's. In G&K, often I'd find that an AI had virtually no gold. Now, it's as though the AI's are sitting on piles of it for some unforeseeable reason.

 

[Gaizokubanou]

I moved up from prince/king (did well on prince but didn't quite master king) to emperor, but I think it has more to do with stick with a strat (wide with liberty-piety combo). Before I just sort of... played without any benchmarks or overarching plan than to just do stuff.

 

[sendos]

I was a King player before getting BNW, so I'm far from being good at this game. I've played about 8-10 BNW games now, and :

- Diplo win on King is now *extremely* easy no matter who is on the map
- Diplo win on Emperor is pretty easy, but the 120 first turns can be somewhat challenging if Shaka/Attila/another warmongering psychopath is near my starting location
- Diplo win on Immortal is easy, but becomes very challenging if a warmonger is a neighbour
- Diplo win on Deity is manageable, unless a warmonger DOWs in the first 150 turns (which pretty much means game over for me, I'm simply not able to deal with the 30+ troops Shaka throws at me on turn 115.)

My point is, diplo win on BNW definitely is easy, unless you have a predator close to you. The fact I moved up from King to Deity in two weeks almost without breaking a sweat (well, until I met my favourite Zulu bastard) is, to me of course, proof that the diplo win currently is completely broken. I'm glad Europa Universalis IV comes out soon, to kill the wait until the forthcoming and extremely needed fall patch. Unfortunately BNW is currently unplayable, too bad because I like the additions a lot.

This.

Diplomatic victory is way too easy once you get a good income going. In my second BNW game as Shoshone, I had diplomatic victory in the bag but I abstained in order to get a science victory.

As for difficulty, I am also experiencing that easy shift and I intend to try out emperor in my next game. Thanks for the heads up on deity, too.

 

[Fluffball]

I was a King player before getting BNW, so I'm far from being good at this game. I've played about 8-10 BNW games now, and :

- Diplo win on King is now *extremely* easy no matter who is on the map
- Diplo win on Emperor is pretty easy, but the 120 first turns can be somewhat challenging if Shaka/Attila/another warmongering psychopath is near my starting location
- Diplo win on Immortal is easy, but becomes very challenging if a warmonger is a neighbour
- Diplo win on Deity is manageable, unless a warmonger DOWs in the first 150 turns (which pretty much means game over for me, I'm simply not able to deal with the 30+ troops Shaka throws at me on turn 115.)

My point is, diplo win on BNW definitely is easy, unless you have a predator close to you. The fact I moved up from King to Deity in two weeks almost without breaking a sweat (well, until I met my favourite Zulu bastard) is, to me of course, proof that the diplo win currently is completely broken. I'm glad Europa Universalis IV comes out soon, to kill the wait until the forthcoming and extremely needed fall patch. Unfortunately BNW is currently unplayable, too bad because I like the additions a lot.

Diplo win has always been lame so i have always turned it off in every game of civ v i played after the first 2 way back when vanilla was first released.

If your saying bnw is unplayable because a lame win is even more lame then turn it off and go for something else.

 

[Maxym]

I can't go any higher than Diety.. and BNW seems to have made diety less dangerous.. They still get alot of bonuses, but diety feels to me alot like G&K emperor.

This,

I am still alive and fighting to win diplo despite being confined to small corner of a desert between Alex and Dido as Marocco with three cities. DoWed by Dido then Alex and runaway Rome. No Petra of course, no wonders at all in fact until Broadway and PT and BB and those are exclusive to SP. I would have not been around to see atomic era in either vanilla or GK with this setup.

First game was a total romp on immortal with Shoshone, only now I get to see the ideologies as that game was over way before they unlocked. Still interesting but very very forgiving.

 

[jtravers88]

There is still a big difference in difficulty between Emperor and Immortal.

I can play an excellent game on Emperor with any civ, given a good starting map. And when moving up to Immortal, just as before, I get DoWed by a neighbor, even a DoF neighbor with no reason to get aggressive, who proceeds to send a large army they couldn't possibly have built, to attack me. I was just playing a game where Dido asked me for a DoF, then proceeded to attack me for no reason with a ridiculously big army. I took out all the melee so she had to retreat.

But if every game on Immortal is going to be like that, then the AI has not been improved one iota. The problem with this is you have to anticipate it and head across the lower half of the science chart and build a number of units for defense. That gets boring.

Not much difference than before BNW that I can see.

 

[deity12]

Found myself going from a 'you aren't gonna be the strongest but you can just win if you focus your VC' King on G&K to 'You were going for a diplomatic victory but you decided to conquer 90% of the world in 100 turns, with zero troops losses just for the hell of it' on BNW King. BNW Emperor game in progress and Sweden is on the craziest runaway ever an everyone hates me, peaceful in third place, for some reason. I think I can just win if I focus science though So yea, moving up a difficulty level seems to have the same result as G&K for me.

 

[Heart Break Kid]

I'm having a very easy time on King, but I have gotten better and I understand more of the games mechanics than before. I'm going to move up in difficulty after 2 or 3 more games most likely.

I'm not sure if BNW is easier or not, but a lot of the buffs fit my natural playstyle more. I always wanted to make tall cities, I hated mass expanding, I love making gold and sitting on a huge treasure, all things that are generally more practical in BNW.

 

[neev]

Diplo win has always been lame so i have always turned it off in every game of civ v i played after the first 2 way back when vanilla was first released.

If your saying bnw is unplayable because a lame win is even more lame then turn it off and go for something else.

It's just that toying with the rules to make my game better (which turning off VCs is) feels incredibly lame, I feel I shouldn't have to do that (although I think you are right to do so). Before BNW, diplo victory was lame but I kept it on although I ignored it completely, just to give a chance for the AI to beat me. In BNW I just can't ignore it, most of the time you have to elect yourself World Leader and take the diplo win to prevent the AI from doing so (Emperor+). I could just delay the diplo win until I get into space or grab a cultural victory, but at this point I'm usually bored and all I want is to end the game ASAP (especially since the turns take forever, late game).

But anyway you're right, I'm just going to turn the thing off and go back down to Emperor. Such a shame, though.