I almost dont look at details and yet play at monarch-emperor level, dont worry about the excessive micro management, its a game not a calculus exercise; just leave the silly number crunching to the accountants and focus on having fun.
Can you have your own play style...
- Thread starter Sultan_of_ATL
- Start date
I almost dont look at details and yet play at monarch-emperor level, dont worry about the excessive micro management, its a game not a calculus exercise; just leave the silly number crunching to the accountants and focus on having fun.
LordMachiavelli
Chieftain
I'm not the best player, but I'm not the worst either. I can win about 1/3 to 1/2 of the time on Emperor. If I have a style at all, I would label it flexibility. The key, I think, to my games, is not to over-specialize. Maybe it keeps me from winning on the highest levels, I don't know. But I've found more often than not, having the ability to suddenly switch from building commerce and tech to pumping out units has saved my butt from more than one psycho. I do micro manage from a control aspect, but I don't micro calculate to squeeze out 3 more gold from my empire that's already making 1000 per turn.
When I want the challenge of pushing myself I play higher levels. When I prefer to experiment with different strategies, especially late-game ones, I go down. When I'm trying out something completely different, like a new mod, I often play settler just to get a feel for it and make sure I experience all the new details right into late/end game.
To make an analogy, I have a friend taking IT classes. Putting together a new computer network from scratch, doing everything by the book, is not a test of a good network engineer. The true test, is when something goes wrong, being familiar enough with the system as a whole, to know where to look and what to do. I play a different map and different leader every time. I enjoy the challenge of figuring out what will work best in each situation. I usually learn something every game, which is part of the goal, win or lose. If I lose, the only thing I lose is the opportunity to try out my theories or experiments late game.
I will never "master" the game. I may never win a game on diety. That's ok. It's fun anyway.
LM
When I want the challenge of pushing myself I play higher levels. When I prefer to experiment with different strategies, especially late-game ones, I go down. When I'm trying out something completely different, like a new mod, I often play settler just to get a feel for it and make sure I experience all the new details right into late/end game.
To make an analogy, I have a friend taking IT classes. Putting together a new computer network from scratch, doing everything by the book, is not a test of a good network engineer. The true test, is when something goes wrong, being familiar enough with the system as a whole, to know where to look and what to do. I play a different map and different leader every time. I enjoy the challenge of figuring out what will work best in each situation. I usually learn something every game, which is part of the goal, win or lose. If I lose, the only thing I lose is the opportunity to try out my theories or experiments late game.
I will never "master" the game. I may never win a game on diety. That's ok. It's fun anyway.
LM
I play for fun, not bragging rights. That means that I'll knock the difficulty down, use the World Builder to "time warp" my way out of those "WTF??!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME??" spear vs. tank type events, etc. Why? Because it's fun.
I try different strategies, and sometimes I just free-form my way along. When I get discouraged or pissed, I reload a previous save or start a new game.
I find that the lower levels let you play around a bit. The higher levels I don't bother with mostly because they seem fairly rigid in terms of what they let you get away with. I find the game to be generally way more combat oriented than is my natural instinct (peaceful builder who prefers diplomacy and expansion).
For example, right now, I'm playing as the Dutch on Warlord on a toroidal terra style map. On the "main" continent, my guys have maybe 6 cities, two of which were captured in a war (and are in constant danger of culture flipping). I may start a war again later if I can get away with it, but Justinian (my major rival) is vassaling the person I want to attack (Izzy).
However....I beat everyone else to the New World by FAR. Some of them have just gotten caravels and I'm patrolling the coast of the new world with privateers. I plan on dominating that area and then going for either cultural, space, or diplomatic victory. If I can get far enough ahead of everyone else tech-wise, I might build up a huge army and unleash my wrath on all who oppose me. Or not. We'll see.
But none of that is really "standard" procedure.
For me, I've taken a few "standard" techniques and adapted them to my own style. IE: I'm trying to seriously specialize my cities this time around, which, again, is not my instinct. I also have learned a lot about effective stack building (IE: your "City Busting stack" vs. your "Pillaging" stack), which I've incorporated into my game, and have tried techniques that aren't my instinct.
So, basically, yeah, you can play around some, but the higher up you go, the more the AI gets an advantage, and the more the game degenerates (in my opinion) into effective AI-countering techniques, which means you have to spend your time min/maxing. That's not my thing, which is why I never go above Prince.
I try different strategies, and sometimes I just free-form my way along. When I get discouraged or pissed, I reload a previous save or start a new game.
I find that the lower levels let you play around a bit. The higher levels I don't bother with mostly because they seem fairly rigid in terms of what they let you get away with. I find the game to be generally way more combat oriented than is my natural instinct (peaceful builder who prefers diplomacy and expansion).
For example, right now, I'm playing as the Dutch on Warlord on a toroidal terra style map. On the "main" continent, my guys have maybe 6 cities, two of which were captured in a war (and are in constant danger of culture flipping). I may start a war again later if I can get away with it, but Justinian (my major rival) is vassaling the person I want to attack (Izzy).
However....I beat everyone else to the New World by FAR. Some of them have just gotten caravels and I'm patrolling the coast of the new world with privateers. I plan on dominating that area and then going for either cultural, space, or diplomatic victory. If I can get far enough ahead of everyone else tech-wise, I might build up a huge army and unleash my wrath on all who oppose me. Or not. We'll see.
But none of that is really "standard" procedure.
For me, I've taken a few "standard" techniques and adapted them to my own style. IE: I'm trying to seriously specialize my cities this time around, which, again, is not my instinct. I also have learned a lot about effective stack building (IE: your "City Busting stack" vs. your "Pillaging" stack), which I've incorporated into my game, and have tried techniques that aren't my instinct.
So, basically, yeah, you can play around some, but the higher up you go, the more the AI gets an advantage, and the more the game degenerates (in my opinion) into effective AI-countering techniques, which means you have to spend your time min/maxing. That's not my thing, which is why I never go above Prince.
One play style I'm having fun with is the 'ethical' playstyle. No slavery or pop-rushing, no declaring war unless that civ has declared on you before, and only declaring war on that civ if the survival of your civ is at stake. No razing cities, either. Selecting Aggressive AI and Raging Barbs helps keep the game interesting although I had to bump the difficulty down a level.
Sultan_of_ATL
Chieftain
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2008
- Messages
- 36
Thanks for the responses. I'm glad people understood my point. I think the basic idea most have expressed is that if you want to win on the more challenging levels you have to have some tried and true tactics to survive let alone win. That's fine, because its like that with most things. My play style is usually built around being a moderate-builder with a decent army and a lot friends via cross defensive pacts.
I agree. The higher levels can be so limiting as it seems you have to depend more on exploits of game mechanics to survive than actually 'playing a civilization'. On the other hand, without having the specter of necessity or the struggle for survival, the game gets boring as well because the 'role-play' aspects are not really developed.
A long time lurker here /waves
Don't feel too bad about being limited to specific types of strategies on higher difficulty levels. Even on the hardest difficulties, there is still a lot of room for different strategies. For example, there was this one guy here on the forums, who basically made up his economy from building wonders. Before someone proved it could be done, some people on these forums would probably have said it wasn't possible.
Personally I don't follow all the "accepted strategies" but I still do fine in my games. For example I hardly ever build the pyramids or oracle, I don't usually found religions myself, whip-rush or axe-rush, I don't really know how to run a spying economy, and I get bored with micromanagement toward the late game. I tend to either fight wars very early, or very late (rifles) avoiding warfare in the middle-ages as much as possible. Sometimes I don't even wage any major (offensive) wars before rifling. Despite this, I'm still winning games on immortal.
A lot of the accepted strategies are accepted for a reason, however. I didn't start chop-rushing or specializing my cities until Emperor, but adopting those strategies did help me get over the hurdle, and I can recognize their power now. Also, the game does get more unforgiving at higher difficulty levels. Even when there are a lot of ways to victory, I've found it increasingly necessary to do things more efficiently, and not just doing things for no special reason.
Just remember that the most important thing is for you to have fun. If that involves playing on a lower difficulty level, there's nothing wrong with that. Personally I have fun with trying to do things as efficiently as possible, so it's all good
Don't feel too bad about being limited to specific types of strategies on higher difficulty levels. Even on the hardest difficulties, there is still a lot of room for different strategies. For example, there was this one guy here on the forums, who basically made up his economy from building wonders. Before someone proved it could be done, some people on these forums would probably have said it wasn't possible.
Personally I don't follow all the "accepted strategies" but I still do fine in my games. For example I hardly ever build the pyramids or oracle, I don't usually found religions myself, whip-rush or axe-rush, I don't really know how to run a spying economy, and I get bored with micromanagement toward the late game. I tend to either fight wars very early, or very late (rifles) avoiding warfare in the middle-ages as much as possible. Sometimes I don't even wage any major (offensive) wars before rifling. Despite this, I'm still winning games on immortal.
A lot of the accepted strategies are accepted for a reason, however. I didn't start chop-rushing or specializing my cities until Emperor, but adopting those strategies did help me get over the hurdle, and I can recognize their power now. Also, the game does get more unforgiving at higher difficulty levels. Even when there are a lot of ways to victory, I've found it increasingly necessary to do things more efficiently, and not just doing things for no special reason.
Just remember that the most important thing is for you to have fun. If that involves playing on a lower difficulty level, there's nothing wrong with that. Personally I have fun with trying to do things as efficiently as possible, so it's all good
needsomesleep
Chieftain
- Joined
- Nov 21, 2007
- Messages
- 54
Actually before I really knew what I was doing I won several victories. It was only when I decided to learn how things work that I started to suck. So yea if you keep to your own play style and it works for you thats whats important.
That's an excellent summary of what happened to me. I got caught up in the threads of how to win using particular strategies and found that I don't execute them each equally well. I don't like warring, but I'm effective at it. I would prefer diplomacy, but I suck at it because I don't like to share. Basically, I used a hoge-podge of styles and it worked fine, all be it on lower difficulties. I moved up to Noble, and am content there. I don't have to put so much "work" into the game as to kill the fun for me, and I still lose occasionally, but I win enough to keep me coming back.
When I tried to build a cottage economy, or follow the early rush guide to a T, I got my rear end handed to me again and again.
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