Apollo difficulty ?

[Acken]

A vast majority of Civ players don't play on anything near Apollo/Deity difficulty. so I doubt it's cost effective for them to focus resources on such a small percentile of players who do. In fact I'm betting they probably toned down the difficulty to cater to players who think Civ5 Deity is too hard. People like feeling like they're beating games. Do we really need 50 threads about this? Vocal minority is vocal.

These players would never skip a game because they thought deity was too hard in the previous game that's non sense. Nor is imagining that somehow making them win easily in the next game will somehow boost their sales. Players stuck on a level are usually satisfied with the difficulty and will blame whatever for not trying to beat the next but I fail to imagine their customer decision is based on it.

What makes sense is to not devote too much resources yes. However, top players are still a part of your customer base so while not devoting all of the resources to them is obvious, devoting none would be as stupid. Also, yes it's a vocal minority so what ? Core fans are and always will be more vocal because they are your fans by definition and will represent the main portion of people making your game live after the initial release. They are also those making most of the reputation of a game years later. Pissing them off is not necessarily such a smart move in the long run.

 

[rastak]

These players would never skip a game because they thought deity was too hard in the previous game that's non sense. Nor is imagining that somehow making them win easily in the next game will somehow boost their sales. Players stuck on a level are usually satisfied with the difficulty and will blame whatever for not trying to beat the next but I fail to imagine their customer decision is based on it.

What makes sense is to not devote too much resources yes. However, top players are still a part of your customer base so while not devoting all of the resources to them is obvious, devoting none would be as stupid. Also, yes it's a vocal minority so what ? Core fans are and always will be more vocal because they are your fans by definition and will represent the main portion of people making your game live after the initial release. They are also those making most of the reputation of a game years later. Pissing them off is not necessarily such a smart move in the long run.

I hear what you are saying but when I hear players complain that they can't win if they get a bad in initial city spot in Civ 4 & 5 then somethings wrong. You fire it up and play what you are given. Anyway, top players are part of the fan base and I would hope the top difficulty would challenge everyone.

 

[Acken]

I hear what you are saying but when I hear players complain that they can't win if they get a bad in initial city spot in Civ 4 & 5 then somethings wrong. You fire it up and play what you are given. Anyway, top players are part of the fan base and I would hope the top difficulty would challenge everyone.

I'm not sure if you're disputing some point or not

And finally, even people on Prince think the AI is bad anyway.

 

[Matthew.]

Highest difficulty should never be comfortable. If Apollo is indeed closer to Emperor, that is not only comfortable but below many player's previous comfortable level of Immortal.

I think rastak was more talking about how AI cheats can make a game feel loss before a player even has a chance. For example if all three of your Deity AI neighbors forward settle their free 2nd settler towards you. Feels cheap when a broken rule (free settler) greatly impacts your game in a negative way. Cheats are better when they are in the background, not as obvious to the player.

Ideally I would have liked to see cheats more focused on AI end game. Well Ideally AI that doesn't need cheats, but realistically... AI is already set on the first half of the game, so loading on more cheats just makes it feel cheap. The problem has always been for the AI to be able to close out a game it should be winning. You could see this with Deity. AI rushes to Renaissance then stalls out and takes forever to "accidentally stumble on a win", despite its major starting advantage.

 

[jokii]

They should put option in game- aliens always in red- aggression. From the start to the end. They should also lose the purity one bonus, and make it so that only higher level of harmony can bring the alien aggression down.
That would make the game more interesting and harder.

 

[Haggbart]

I asked about game difficulty on the AMA the devs are doing now. Question and answer below:

"What can you say on the difficulty levels compared to Civ5? They are reduced from 8 to 6, but does it include one that would compare to deity in Civ5?"

[–]FXS_WillAndDaveCo-Lead Game Designers 1 poeng 2 minutes ago
It does indeed -- Apollo is the BE analog to Deity. The different is mostly seen at the lower levels: Sputnik as the lowest setting is considerably easier, and Mercury is now the default or "normal" difficulty


If this is correct, it's indeed good news. But lets wait and see.

 

[Gort]

A vast majority of Civ players don't play on anything near Apollo/Deity difficulty. so I doubt it's cost effective for them to focus resources on such a small percentile of players who do. In fact I'm betting they probably toned down the difficulty to cater to players who think Civ5 Deity is too hard. People like feeling like they're beating games. Do we really need 50 threads about this? Vocal minority is vocal.

Cost effective? Resources? Adding larger amounts of the bonuses the AI already gets at the top difficulty and coming up with a couple of names for higher difficulty levels would hardly be much of an expenditure.

 

[Acken]

I asked about game difficulty on the AMA the devs are doing now. Question and answer below:

"What can you say on the difficulty levels compared to Civ5? They are reduced from 8 to 6, but does it include one that would compare to deity in Civ5?"

[–]FXS_WillAndDaveCo-Lead Game Designers 1 poeng 2 minutes ago
It does indeed -- Apollo is the BE analog to Deity. The different is mostly seen at the lower levels: Sputnik as the lowest setting is considerably easier, and Mercury is now the default or "normal" difficulty


If this is correct, it's indeed good news. But lets wait and see.

I'll believe Maddjinn and what I've seen on lets play before the designers selling their own game.

Anyway answer in 2.5 days

 

[TLHeart]

Watching maddjinn play, and going with his statements that he is not playing optimally, Apollo looks like emperor difficulty...

 

[Browd]

One of the main things that makes Civ V Deity so challenging is that the AI starts with 2 settlers and extra units. Not so in BE, near as I can tell, although Apollo may confer other bonuses, of course. Once the game unlocks we can dive into the XML handicaps file to see what's what.

 

[aguliondew]

Watching maddjinn replays the AI does not make good choices even with the advantages. Some do not have tile improvement on all of their city by midgame on Diety it is normal for the AI to do that. The AI does not seem to focus a lot on trade routes which are a huge source of everything.

 

[joncnunn]

Watching maddjinn play, and going with his statements that he is not playing optimally, Apollo looks like emperor difficulty...

One of the main things that makes Civ V Deity so challenging is that the AI starts with 2 settlers and extra units. Not so in BE, near as I can tell, although Apollo may confer other bonuses, of course. Once the game unlocks we can dive into the XML handicaps file to see what's what.

Yeah, if on the highest difficulty level the AI isn't getting an extra settler it's going to feel at most like Immortal. If the AI doesn't even get an extra worker, it's likely to feel like Emperor even if the AI starts on the same turn the human does.

Now if on the highest difficulty level, the human landed AFTER all the AIs, then even without AI bonuses it could feel tough.

 

[Gort]

An extra settler might not be so useful with the amount of aliens there are at the start of the game.

 

[MadDjinn]

An extra settler might not be so useful with the amount of aliens there are at the start of the game.

that entirely depends on location.

I have seen AIs wandering colonists without protection (not the case in BNW). That would get them eaten.

The AI does start with an decent army if they land later (6+ units that I've seen, mostly combat rovers). So it may be an issue of 'expect them to always land later, so we give bonuses to landing later' vs 'give bonuses to being on Apollo, no matter when they land'.

Likely a fast simple mod would be to give them affinity level 1 in all affinities (to not skew them into any one direction). That would make their soldiers stronger (and strong enough to handle bugs) and give them some leeway wrt exploration.

 

[Makaz]

Seems like I am not the only one worried about difficulty level and challenge in Civ BE.

I would like to stress the fact on how important it is in that type of game to have a challenging mode. Civ is not like your traditionnal game where you follow a main quest and that you "end" at some point, which you replay if the experience was satisfying enough to do it. Then put on a digital or material shelf to "look nice"

Civ is a game in which one of the reason to replay it is only to improve yourself to beat the next difficulty level.

Imagine a driving game with a couple of tracks where you end up first on the hardest difficulty setting on your first try. How many times are you going to play that game ? There is no incentive to surpass yourself since there is no challenger to compare yourself to.

It is the same if Apollo in Civ BE = emperor in Civ V. After you win each of your very first games on a pangea, a continent and a small island map with a supremacy, a purity and an harmony faction with a few random starting settings. What is left to do?

On contrary, if you get your ass handed over to you, then you try again, harder, rethink your tactics, look on forums for some tips and spend hours theorycrafting on the tube to work in order to get the correct and expected results

I do sincerly hope to find myself in the 2nd category. And although it might be never possible to fix the AI so that it beats you by being more clever, I also hope the advantages it gets are not too obvious to make these look silly

 

[rastak]

On contrary, if you get your ass handed over to you, then you try again, harder, rethink your tactics, look on forums for some tips and spend hours theorycrafting on the tube to work in order to get the correct and expected results

Man, that sounds like a job. Screw that. I'm playing a game.....not researching a cure for cancer. I agree if it's a walkover every time playing with whatever style choices I feel like using for a particular playthrough then that's bad.

 

[MadDjinn]

Man, that sounds like a job. Screw that. I'm playing a game.....not researching a cure for cancer. I agree if it's a walkover every time playing with whatever style choices I feel like using for a particular playthrough then that's bad.

and that's why there are multiple difficulty levels. People can play at the level they feel comfortable with.

 

[Jimbo30]

The problem is that "difficulty" is inherently tied to capacity for micromanaging.

Then some people complain that free workers and settlers is "cheating", then some other people claim that it's too easy when they are taken away. So who is right?

If, by removing the free worker and settler, Firaxis are actually forced to improve the AI by other means, this would clearly be a good thing to all you Deity players (and everyone else), right? So why ask for the same CiV settings you already played for years?

Note that I do not believe for a minute that Firaxis will do anything positive regarding AI with what is basically the "end of the series" game - however just asking for the same settings and difficulty levels of CiV isn't exactly going to move the series forward either.

 

[Selereth]

I play the game mostly for fun, not to study tactics and strategies like it's a Math textbook or something. King difficulty in Civ 5 is sufficiently challenging for me. It's not guaranteed that I will win every game at that level since how I do is also affected by the Civ I choose to play as.

 

[Acken]

The problem is that "difficulty" is inherently tied to capacity for micromanaging.

Then some people complain that free workers and settlers is "cheating", then some other people claim that it's too easy when they are taken away. So who is right?

If, by removing the free worker and settler, Firaxis are actually forced to improve the AI by other means, this would clearly be a good thing to all you Deity players, right? So why ask for the same CiV settings you already played for years?

Note that I do not believe for a minute that Firaxis will do anything positive regarding AI with what is basically the "end of the series" game - however just asking for the same settings and difficulty levels of CiV isn't exactly going to move the series forward either.

Because like you said we "do not believe for a minute that Firaxis will do anything positive regarding AI". Therefore cheats/bonuses (whatever someone wants to call it) are better than nothing.

I play the game mostly for fun, not to study tactics and strategies like it's a Math textbook or something. King difficulty in Civ 5 is sufficiently challenging for me. It's not guaranteed that I will win every game at that level since how I do is also affected by the Civ I choose to play as.

Different difficulty levels for different tastes. If you want an analogy, imagine King got cut off and now the hardest game you can play is Warlord. Would you be happy with such news ?