City-State difficulty setting in multiplayer

Azger

Chieftain
Joined
Apr 12, 2021
Messages
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So I have noticed after many multiplayer games, the city-states don't start with walls in immortal and diety settings. The diety/immortal AI civs and aggressive players kill all the city-states around them with ease and snowball like crazy. this makes it difficult to play civs that depend on city-states because they are so defenceless at the start and forces a military game style which is not always enjoyable. My guess is that this issue is due to all city-states being on prince difficulty by default in multiplayer. If the devs add a difficulty setting for the city-states in multiplayer, I'm sure this issue will be solved.
 
I have noticed this as well. It ruins a lot of games for me and my group. This issue is exclusive to multiplayer. Maybe its related to the fact that in a new multiplayer lobby, each player slot is set to Prince by default. You can set the difficulty individually for each human and AI player (like to Deity), but maybe the city states are stuck on Prince?
 
This bothers me as well, and you people are a major disappointment for not making more noise about this. After many games over the years I've come to the conclusion that the Single Player AI is simply unacceptable, and there is nothing that will remedy it. I've tried everything: AI+, Real Strategy, Smoother Difficulty, mods intended to help the AI only make it worse.

So I no longer play Single Player... I play hotseat multiplayer with two dedicated players pitting myself against myself, and by using saves, I can intervene to play the rest of the AI from time to time. In particular, so that they make better choices in the beginning. Sometimes they won't settle their capital where I start with them off, which is usually best for them. I will no longer tolerate their commitment to failure. If I feel that I'm too far ahead, I can intervene to waste my turns, and help them become stronger, or stir up some wars to make things more interesting in the world.

The one disadvantage is the lack of surprise... I guess my spies and informants are just too good at their jobs :)

But I prefer the city states to have walls. They are too easily defeated. I wonder if there is a mod that will properly give them walls.
I use one called "More Civs Allowed," that lets you have more then 12 civs on huge maps. Up the normal limit of 20, but I never have more then 15 or 16, except on some very special maps, like Borderlands, that I made to support 18. 15. 16 if I intend to destroy someone in the early game.

Honestly, I don't know how they continue to allow this in true multiplayer. I guess they just don't care that their game is broken.

Case in point, Play Babylon, make 3 Slingers, promote them to Archers, build 2 Crossbows, then build a Pike and Shot and conquer everyone around you in the Classical Era. Make sure your capital has decent production. I won't join a game that has Babylon, but doesn't have Heros mode on, but that too presents a problem. Stupid Standard maps don't even give you 7 continents, and yet hypocritcally are too fixated on the "7 wonders of the world." I make my maps with up to 21 continents and wonders.

As a result we created a new type of Game Victory: Recruit Sinbad.

Even if you forget about the gold, Sinbad lets you meet practically every city state in the game, if there is a decent amount of water on the map, and get past the oceans. Then, if said City States don't even have walls, Sinbad has high enough combat strength to capture them. Not sure if he actually can, though.
 
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