Apollo difficulty ?

[Selereth]

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 ?

Thankfully that analogy is hypothetical and therefore will never be the case, so I don't need to worry about such things. I'm actually happy that I'm not good enough to beat the AI on Deity since that would quickly make the game boring (for me at least). Plus, the way you have to play on Deity is very rigid, at least from what I've read and seen. On Deity there are play styles that you MUST follow in order to achieve victory, for me that takes away some of the freedom, which is to me the most important part of playing this game. I don't want to feel locked into any one particular strategy every time I play simply because I need to gain advantages over the extreme bonuses the AI receives.

Besides, it seems like a lot of people here have forgotten that the build Maddjinn is playing in his streams are outdated at this point, possibly by a month or more. Do you really think that Firaxis hasn't made ANY major changes to the AI since that build was published? If so, then yeah, I guess that does suck for Deity players.

At the end of the day though it's all still speculation at this point. We haven't even seen Maddjinn win a game yet; he's come close but so has the AI. I think waiting for someone to start a brand new LP on release day and watching it through is a much better basis for establishing facts about the game, just a suggestion.

 

[Jimbo30]

Well I haven't been watching as much of MadDjinn's playthrough's as I should have been, but given what I have seen I'm pretty sure it's harder than Emperor.

He's got about 40% of Brasilia's points in the ARC game for the first 100 turns (haven't watched further). Now Brasilia looks really powerful and is pushing people around, but I basically never see that kind of points deficit to the AI on Emperor so early. He has some nice starting areas as well from what I've seen.

Even at 180 turns he's on half the points of the leader AI. I guess it ends like a typical Emperor domination victory with a strong industrial player catching up and winning by mowing through all the AI's near the end. I don't think another settler or worker is what the AI needs in this case, nor would it have made any difference to the end result, he's gonna win regardless because of his start more than anything.

My personal opinion is that if you want to make the game harder, petition firaxis to fix the stupid stuff like internal trade routes, balance quest rewards so that they are actually a choice and make the aliens actually worth worrying about.

 

[Acken]

Thankfully that analogy is hypothetical and therefore will never be the case, so I don't need to worry about such things. I'm actually happy that I'm not good enough to beat the AI on Deity since that would quickly make the game boring (for me at least). Plus, the way you have to play on Deity is very rigid, at least from what I've read and seen. On Deity there are play styles that you MUST follow in order to achieve victory, for me that takes away some of the freedom, which is to me the most important part of playing this game. I don't want to feel locked into any one particular strategy every time I play simply because I need to gain advantages over the extreme bonuses the AI receives.

It's true to an extent. Most of what you describe as being a problem is linked to game balance though.

Besides, it seems like a lot of people here have forgotten that the build Maddjinn is playing in his streams are outdated at this point, possibly by a month or more. Do you really think that Firaxis hasn't made ANY major changes to the AI since that build was published? If so, then yeah, I guess that does suck for Deity players.

I'm often pessimistic regarding those thing.

At the end of the day though it's all still speculation at this point. We haven't even seen Maddjinn win a game yet; he's come close but so has the AI. I think waiting for someone to start a brand new LP on release day and watching it through is a much better basis for establishing facts about the game, just a suggestion.

Of course, final verdict is in 2 days. Forums discussion before hand, regarding both positive or negative feelings always have a part of speculation.

 

[MechMedic130]

I'll be interested to see how it plays out in the long game, but not getting buried early seems like a nice thing. I've only beaten Deity once in Civ V(as Venice), but I typically play between Emperor and Immortal as a nice challenge. I think reexamining the difficulties down the road will be beneficial and figuring out the best way to manage it. Having a Tech Web versus Tree kind of hampers that, but maybe giving the AI two or three free leaf Technologies would be a way to balance it out?

 

[joncnunn]

I'll be interested to see how it plays out in the long game, but not getting buried early seems like a nice thing. I've only beaten Deity once in Civ V(as Venice), but I typically play between Emperor and Immortal as a nice challenge. I think reexamining the difficulties down the road will be beneficial and figuring out the best way to manage it. Having a Tech Web versus Tree kind of hampers that, but maybe giving the AI two or three free leaf Technologies would be a way to balance it out?

In Civ V, the AI did get one free tech for every level the human was above Prince.
That was the mildest part of the handicap for overall gameplay. (It primarily made getting early wonders more difficult)

BE though features the human arriving first, so the AI would need free techs just to compensate from that on top of whatever additional techs get thrown at the AI for the human starting above the equivalent of Prince.

 

[Haggbart]

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

Me too, but what I really wanted to know was that if the apollo difficulty was INTENDED to be equal to deity. In that case they can always patch it until they achieve that [emoji2]

 

[Haggbart]

Well I haven't been watching as much of MadDjinn's playthrough's as I should have been, but given what I have seen I'm pretty sure it's harder than Emperor.

He's got about 40% of Brasilia's points in the ARC game for the first 100 turns (haven't watched further). Now Brasilia looks really powerful and is pushing people around, but I basically never see that kind of points deficit to the AI on Emperor so early. He has some nice starting areas as well from what I've seen.

Even at 180 turns he's on half the points of the leader AI. I guess it ends like a typical Emperor domination victory with a strong industrial player catching up and winning by mowing through all the AI's near the end. I don't think another settler or worker is what the AI needs in this case, nor would it have made any difference to the end result, he's gonna win regardless because of his start more than anything.

My personal opinion is that if you want to make the game harder, petition firaxis to fix the stupid stuff like internal trade routes, balance quest rewards so that they are actually a choice and make the aliens actually worth worrying about.

Yeah, I agree that it would be effective to nerf trade routes (which are hard for the AI to use optimally) and also making more severe health penalties would make a huge difference. Why? Because one of the easiest boost you can give to the AI is huge bonuses to health, but since the penalties are so small, this bonus will hardly matter. I also question why a huge part of health bonuses/penalties are tied to espionage. I guess it would be nice for MP, but do the AI really take advantage of it?

But there are a wide variety of other bonuses that can be adjusted; reduced maintenance cost, reduced xp for leveling up military, free or discounted affinity levels, faster production of military units, health bonuses, free or discounted virtues and techs, free buildings in each new city (trade depot, anyone?)

 

[MasterDinadan]

You say that Apollo is more like Emperor, but you said Apollo can win in the early 200s. Emperor AI in Civ 5 can't win in anything close to this... Are victories just a lot faster in BE?

 

[Haggbart]

You say that Apollo is more like Emperor, but you said Apollo can win in the early 200s. Emperor AI in Civ 5 can't win in anything close to this... Are victories just a lot faster in BE?

Yes it has been suggested in LPs that BE is slightly faster than CiV.

Seems there is no need to empower the AI to win earlier, but rather to take away some of the player's tools.

 

[Jimbo30]

Another reason why the human player might be having an easier time is that with no city states taking up so much space, there is a lot more room to expand in to. You might actually get a tougher game on a smaller map with the same number of AI's.

 

[sherbz]

Not really what the thread was about :/

Only thing I will add is that Civ 5 overall gameplay has changed significantly over the years. You would rush Deity AI with horsemen on vanilla release. No doubt that BE's Apollo will go through just as many changes.

Yep, I remember in vanilla civ 5, the absolute best starting strategy on deity was to go honour, rush horse archers, and then wipe out your continent. It was remarkably easy to do. I think the problem with strategy games for developers is that as games get more complex, strategies get wider and more complex. You also get players who are good at “breaking” the game. Certain rushes are viable tactics at some levels, and you have to compensate the AI in order to nerf these. A quechua rush, for instance, on deity was a viable tactic in civ 4. But if you give the AI a load of free techs, and a worker, they are that much closer to axeman. And once they get them, its almost impossible with the free gold they get.

Horseman in civ 5 were significantly nerfed from vanilla. I expect the game to be somewhat broken on release. When devs playtest these games, they usually use individuals who formulate strategies on their own. When they release to the wider market, people like you and me go on forums like this, discuss optimal strategies, and then employ them. Its like mass collaboration on the part of gamers. Collaboration that the developers can then address through patching.

Sulla wrote a good piece on this saying that nerfing is the sign of a bad game (or bad game design). I have some sympathy with this view – in that really what you should be doing is rewarding players for good play rather than nerfing them for exploits. Unfortunately I just don’t think the AI is quite up to scratch on Civ 5, and I suspect exactly the same situation in BE. Fundamentally speaking it cant cope with 1upt. It will be interesting to see how it copes with affinities.

My hope in the future is that they either revert to stacks of doom for Civ 6 or devise a new strategy. Whilst in principle I don’t mind 1upt (and I even agree with its basic premise). I think that if the trade off is a worse AI, its better to have a simpler system (stacks of doom) that the AI can play better. In any case, all that you substituted stacks of doom for was carpets of doom, and that’s because it was the only way they could get the AI to properly compete with an intelligent human player.

 

[Gort]

I find the Civ 5 AI does pretty well with fewer units as long as you mod it to make their units highly-promoted. Doesn't matter as much if the AI only shoots its bows every other turn if all their archers fire twice at range 3.

 

[joncnunn]

I find the Civ 5 AI does pretty well with fewer units as long as you mod it to make their units highly-promoted. Doesn't matter as much if the AI only shoots its bows every other turn if all their archers fire twice at range 3.

I thought the SmartAI mod fixed that particular issue.
However even with it, the AI doesn't use ranged units well compared to the human, and so there are also mods that nerf human ranged strength.

Relating back to BE, we'll have to wait for release to see if their are combat bonuses to the AI / human combat penalties on the highest difficulty levels.

 

[Seek]

My personal opinion is that if you want to make the game harder, petition firaxis to fix the stupid stuff like internal trade routes, balance quest rewards so that they are actually a choice and make the aliens actually worth worrying about.

Yes, and not only that, but we really need the building quest decisions to be more balanced so that the AI doesn't have the opportunity to pick an absolutely terrible option.

 

[Gort]

Relating back to BE, we'll have to wait for release to see if their are combat bonuses to the AI / human combat penalties on the highest difficulty levels.

Will we? The build MadDjinn was using should be a good indicator of this. There aren't combat bonuses to the AI/human combat penalties on the highest difficulty in MadDjinn's build, so there likely won't be any in the final game.

Yes, and not only that, but we really need the building quest decisions to be more balanced so that the AI doesn't have the opportunity to pick an absolutely terrible option.

Not just the AI - the game shouldn't set traps for new players to stumble into either. This is why game balance isn't just for elite players or multiplayer guys - having all options be reasonably viable makes the game simultaneously more accessible, and more interesting in the long-term.

 

[m15a]

Me too, but what I really wanted to know was that if the apollo difficulty was INTENDED to be equal to deity. In that case they can always patch it until they achieve that [emoji2]

Yes. From the AMA:

Q: 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? Thanks!

FXS_WillAndDaveCo-Lead Game Designers: 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.

 

[Lucius_]

Yes. From the AMA:

Q: 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? Thanks!

FXS_WillAndDaveCo-Lead Game Designers: 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.

I saw this but wasn't clear on the lower comparisons. So Sputnik is considerably easier compared to Settler??? And Mercury is Warlord (that was default in V right)?

 

[Gort]

So, you reckon they just messed up and failed to make their Deity-equivalent as difficult as Civ 5's Deity?

MadDjinn reckons that you'll be fine on Apollo difficulty if you're capable of winning regularly at Emperor in Civ 5, which is two difficulty levels lower than Deity.

 

[sherbz]

So, you reckon they just messed up and failed to make their Deity-equivalent as difficult as Civ 5's Deity?

MadDjinn reckons that you'll be fine on Apollo difficulty if you're capable of winning regularly at Emperor in Civ 5, which is two difficulty levels lower than Deity.

Personally i find emperor easy on civ 5. I win about 95-100% of games. Immortal is slightly lower at 80-100%. Even in civ 5 i found the difficulties were much easier than 4 (immortal was more like 66%-100%). never really played on deity. Too much micro and gamey strategies involved like worker stealing (i like to have fun playing games).

 

[joncnunn]

I saw this but wasn't clear on the lower comparisons. So Sputnik is considerably easier compared to Settler??? And Mercury is Warlord (that was default in V right)?

In Civ V, Prince is the official normal difficulty level. But if you mean which level the AI has no handicap advantages at all over the human, there isn't any.
(AI played on Chieftain difficulty level in Civ V Vanilla and G&K, the new BNW "AI Default Handicap level" features AI with bigger discount on science than a human on Settler.)
Civ IV didn't have an even difficulty level either, (AI had a massive unit upgrade bonus compared to the human)