BNW needs patch - too easy now

[AgentTBC]

I think BNW clearly needs to be patched to be more difficult. The combination of massive late game gold income plus complete lack of aggressiveness on the part of the AI has made the game very easy on everything but Deity and relatively easy even there.

I'm loving the mechanics but its totally unbalanced in terms of difficulty at this point. Am I wrong?

 

[AgentTBC]

Oh, since I'm kvetching:

About half of the Exlporation and Commerce trees are utterly horrid and need to be improved. Unless you're a masochist I guess.

 

[luko18]

In my humble opinion, this it totally map dependent.

I am playing TSL Northern Europe mod now. Just on King, but the map size is great.
In the last 200 turns I have been attacked by Poland, Sweeden, and Mongols.

Everyone is conspiring against one another all the time, and world congress actually embargoed me.

Once again, great map, good size= loads of fun and warfare

I dare you, of friendly challenge you to win this on Diety (Im playing as Russia right now on king, northern europe)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=500154

 

[rodrigoq]

I agree with the OP.. Especially on diety. It's much easier now to focus on 100% military early, and steam roll the AI. I stopped doing it because it was boring. Pretty much any civ can generate enough gold with 1 city, and chop an early army to butcher the AI. Only exceptions being aztecs and Zulu, who still build alot of units, but never use them. My last random civ, large map, diety I was Austria.. ended up killing off the last civ before the end of med era. Basically chopped a 6 unit army + city state gifts from early quests, blew up my 3 closest neighbors, used their caps to chop more units and proceeded to swarm the other civs.

That and the AI isn't expanding as much as G&K. I get hate for expanding too fast, Place my 5th city before they place 4th, and I'm expanding aggressively or something. Persia in one of my games stayed at 3 cities till industrial age. Usually in G&K theyd be pushing 10+.

 

[Maxym]

I am sure it's coming. Remember GK was very forgiving at the beginning, not like BNW, but it got vicious only after few patches.

I do agree, deity is the only playable level and it's not even hard. I have yet to lose one and I am not even trying too hard. I certainly didn't even steal workers or Dow early. Just hang around with three or four cities and then take over in industrial. Besides not expanding or warring, the AI seems to be light on units in later ages, and it's not like they have been using them

Their bonuses are still there, I just had Maria build Apollo in ONE turn, and I am sure she wasnt prebuilding



I miss the old AI, but I do like the new mechanics too. Hope it will get better soon.

 

[Walter E Kurtz]

A complete lack" of agressiveness? I played a recent game on Immortal that was lost because I was locked in a defensive war for pretty much the entire game.

Defensive wars suck because you get nothing except experience points. But I had no choise because 4 civs attacked me from every possible direction. I basically needed four armies and was behind in tech because of that. I did take out one of them but in the meanwhile Shaka captured the rest of the world and Alex allied every single CS.

If the AI finds a reason to attack, or you're just having bad luck with your neighbors, and you don't have a convenient mountain range or body of water giving you protection things can get ugly pretty fast. BNW is only easy when you're in a good spot and it turns into a love fest of friendships while you sim-city your way to diplomatic or science victory.

 

[MarshalN]

Or in my case, what looked like a love fest turned into a two alliance war - I'm in one camp with Denmark and Ottoman, and the rest of them are in the other camp. It was all nice and peaceful up until three ideologies were picked, and then all hell broke loose.

 

[Green_Power]

Don't worry guys. The game is easy for veterans at the moment but I'm sure that Firaxis will fix this in the Fall patch, just like they did last year with G&K. Remember? Pre-patch was too easy and post-patch was too hard?

It makes sense. First you please newcomers, the people who would find the game too hard, even on Settler. Then you tweak the game (most probably re-set the flag AI_spends_gold_in_units=TRUE) and we can all return to play masochistically again. I think that Civ5's AI is only scary in two situations anyway: a) Has four times more units than you in a battle, or b) is at least one to two military eras beyond you. It's sad but it's true.

 

[Denounced]

In my first game on BNW I played as Shaka on Emperor. I was doing well until 4 enemies DoW'd me. I got gangraped and they each took a city. Then my closest ally; Greece, backstabed me at my lowest point and took my capital
My only crime against Greece was backing out of a joint war promise earlier in the game.
For me the game felt harder because I was certain I had everything I needed to defend myself against 2 or 3 civs at once. That 5 man DoW including an ally was way too much to handle. Are you guys sure the game got easier?

 

[Maxym]

In my humble opinion, this it totally map dependent.

I am playing TSL Northern Europe mod now. Just on King, but the map size is great.
In the last 200 turns I have been attacked by Poland, Sweeden, and Mongols.

Once again, great map, good size= loads of fun and warfare

I dare you, of friendly challenge you to win this on Diety (Im playing as Russia right now on king, northern europe)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=500154

I did not notice you said northern Europe, and I started a Full Europe one on deity as Portugal. I will see if I can post a save. It has turned out brilliant so far....

I somehow got old AI back, it might be the abundance of luxes and plenty of room and trade partners. Isabella went absolutely bananas ReXing like madwoman with liberty. Even with my liberty I only managed to settle two more cities before she filled the Iberian peninsula and now is off to settle southern France. But it s already crowded there with Nappy and Romans. Seems everyone is expanding, none of the turtle with three cities BNW BS.

I had to DOW her too early as her border popped in a direction of my warrior sentry and she asked The Question.

As I was just building archer army to CB rush her I said yes and had to endure her attack which took my 2nd city to zero twice. I pushed back and took one city, but could not make it to her cap. She keeps sending waves and even opened second front at my cap. I keep pressing for XB but she is swarming conquistadores and pikes and I have CB and spears. I am afraid tercios are not far behind.

 

[steveg700]

"Complete lack of aggressiveness"?

Hyperbole doesn't strengthen an argument, it undermines its credibility.

If this is not hyperbole, then there is an inexplicable difference in our games.

I will agree, however, that the AI does not seem willing to expand beyond a few a cities in most cases. This may well be because happiness was unnecessarily dialed back.

 

[PhilBowles]

I did not notice you said northern Europe, and I started a Full Europe one on deity as Portugal. I will see if I can post a save. It has turned out brilliant so far....

I somehow got old AI back, it might be the abundance of luxes and plenty of room and trade partners. Isabella went absolutely bananas ReXing like madwoman with liberty.

I've been playing my normal Immortal settings and often encountering the same civs, and something's changed for me as well - I've had moderately early wars in all of my last half-dozen games, and more expression of the familiar AI personalities.