Civ VI is easy? I don't know...

[isau]

AI Sumeria is VERY scary once it gets it War Cart factory going. Here's what's going on in in one of my recent games. If not for that mountain range he'd tear me apart. (We are at peace... for now.)

I did manage to absolutely destroy China prior to this.

 

[Chuma]

AI Sumeria is VERY scary once it gets it War Cart factory going. Here's what's going on in in one of my recent games. If not for that mountain range he'd tear me apart. (We are at peace... for now.)

I did manage to absolutely destroy China prior to this. View attachment 456746

Yes! This is exactly what happened when I agreed to have open borders plus they sent settlers over my lands.

 

[BigChiefLizzy]

So what do people think the shortcut would be to increase the difficulty? Higher mid/late game AI yield buffs? Higher AI unit strength buffs? More stacking? More mid/late game AI aggression (via say warmonger civs getting a conquer the world agenda to ignore diplomatic penalties)? All of the above?

After the human player gets one (two maybe) tech levels higher than the (lowest/average?) AI, all lower AI players get enough gold to promote 50% of their existing units up one tech rank regardless of resources or their own tech rank (they stole some guns etc.), but they have to disband 50% of their force to do so, and they are forced to do this. So cuts down unit spam, and the AI gets to move around about bit more easily because of more free tiles. More AI aggressive may follow as they may have a viable attack force.

 

[Assault Lemming]

I don't know what version of Civ Vi you all are playing, but I keep getting my butt handed to me on Prince. On this occasion, Sumeria just took my capital on turn 62.

Both Sumeria and my only other neighbor, China, had neutral but improving (positive modifier ratio) relationships with me. Sumeria surprised attacked me and then China did also a few turns later. China barely had an opportunity to slap one of my warriors, though, before Sumeria took my cap.

I know I'm no expert, but I usually comfortably won games on King level in Civ V. I suddenly understand why people want to ragequit sometimes. I'd never had that feeling before until Civ VI.

Focus military and production in the early game, carve out land for yourself and establish a secure base before switching to culture or science or whatever. Use the barbarians to level up your military. If the enemy ai thinks you are weak early game you can expect to be attacked early.

 

[Assault Lemming]

The game is really easy build some slingers. Get experience fighting barbs and upgrade to archers when you get archery. Once you past the initial stage you have won, even on deity as the AI hardly ever builds walls. Quite annoying actually. Even Civ V was more of a challenge, it took me a while to win on deity in Civ V and ages on Civ IV.

Yep archers seem to wreck the AI, he keeps producing units destined to get annihilated. Archers themselves might just be OP.

 

[Chuma]

I tried on Settler with no barbarians, legendary start and ambudnant resources and still got an early attack.

 

[Xyriach]

Neurosurgery is easy if you know what you're doing.

 

[Cabbagesavager]

I tried on Settler with no barbarians, legendary start and ambudnant resources and still got an early attack.

Barbs cripple rival civs as well. Abuse them.

 

[Chuma]

I lost my capital but had a second city and one extra unit. Was able to retake it by spamming a heap of units. Have had another civ offer me one of their cities out of nowhere.

 

[sresk]

I think the main problem is the AI doesn't settle nearly enough or rush factories... if you play right you can start getting factories set up in late BC early ad (which is a whole nother problem)

 

[Ryika]

Once you realize that you can just start the game by making 20 units and still easily get ahead during the midgame nothing should scare you anymore.

It seems to me that people are still in Civ 5 Mode, and trying to squeeze out as much economy as possible as early as possible to get their cities as big as possible, but that's currently just not required. No matter how much you push your cities, the big jumps in efficiency come from tech unlocks, and those unlock times don't change much even if you build tons of units - including a bunch of warriors, because hooray for free maintenance - early on.

 

[Gumbolt]

It's difficult to create a game that challenges such a wide spectrum of skill levels appropriately with difficulty levels.
They haven't created a expert AI at least based on most reports, so it's difficult to dumb down for easier difficulties.
And even if they created a easy or standard AI, that's super difficult to scale up (in this case it may be mostly just extra units, boosts, and such).

I would say the game is easy for experts and aspiring experts. Everyone below that has some challenge.

Yes the challenge is to make the game so players of all skill can enjoy the game. That is also why you have difficulty settings from settler to deity. No one is forcing you to play deity. If you find settler or Prince easier you play that level till you are comfortable. Like most versions of Civ the way Ai is designed means ultimately most of the better players quickly learn how to exploit game issues.

The issue with this game from what I have read is certain parts of it seem to be broken.
Be it AI not upgrading units. Modern units vs early game units is a big problem.
AI settlers left unescorted when leaving cities making it easy to capture them. Brings back the worker stealing days from Civ 4. Perhaps captured settlers should be destroyed? Just like any other unit after a combat.
AI inability to manage the cities well.
AI inability to defend themselves and kill off wounded units.
Certain units being over powered. Archers and other UU units.
Barb units early on forcing players to spam units. Which in turn leads to the human player having highly trained units that can walk over the nearby AI.
AI trading you gold for x gold a turn. When you declare following turn it's free gold.

The game seems to have a lot of good features. From what I have read the mix of the above issues leads to a warmonger strategy very early on. I will be waiting for this game to be patched. Makes you wonder how some of these issues were not found out by play testing of the game before it was released.

 

[Acken]

By the way am I the only one that feels you always get boxed in on Deity ? Because of the ridiculous early housing rules + Deity AI having 3 cities by turn 10 + City states.

 

[LDiCesare]

In deity, it depends on the map. Playing on inland sea, I have no access to the sea but a vast area where the only contenders are city states and that is shielded by mountain ranges from the AI's. Could spam lots of cities and still should haveput more.
The ai will often settle quite aggressively, but sometimes they build 3 cities and stop there.

 

[EpicWestern]

Domination victory seems significantly hard, other victory types seem fairly easy. With the poor AI, just sitting on 6 or so and defending while teching isn't too hard, but with domination you're basically on a clock to wipe out several entire civs (taking capitals doesn't slow them down enough).

 

[joncnunn]

Yes the challenge is to make the game so players of all skill can enjoy the game. That is also why you have difficulty settings from settler to deity. No one is forcing you to play deity. If you find settler or Prince easier you play that level till you are comfortable. Like most versions of Civ the way Ai is designed means ultimately most of the better players quickly learn how to exploit game issues.

The issue with this game from what I have read is certain parts of it seem to be broken.
Be it AI not upgrading units. Modern units vs early game units is a big problem.
AI settlers left unescorted when leaving cities making it easy to capture them. Brings back the worker stealing days from Civ 4. Perhaps captured settlers should be destroyed? Just like any other unit after a combat.
AI inability to manage the cities well.
AI inability to defend themselves and kill off wounded units.
Certain units being over powered. Archers and other UU units.
Barb units early on forcing players to spam units. Which in turn leads to the human player having highly trained units that can walk over the nearby AI.
AI trading you gold for x gold a turn. When you declare following turn it's free gold.

The game seems to have a lot of good features. From what I have read the mix of the above issues leads to a warmonger strategy very early on. I will be waiting for this game to be patched. Makes you wonder how some of these issues were not found out by play testing of the game before it was released.

Most of that list actually was mentioned in the Let's Plays from pre release press release videos; they were already known just not fixed

#1 is largely a function of ancient era units have no maintenance cost while later era units cost an increased amount (not only does upgrading units have an upfront cost, it has a cost going forward)
But it's compounded by how upgrades work: e.g. if you don't have the resource for Muskets; your ancient Warriors are going to be stuck as Warriors even if you have Iron until you either acquire that resource or advance in tech to where the more advanced unit doesn't require it. (For Civ IV & V in the above case, that warrior could have been upgraded to Swordman if you had Iron)

 

[PhilBowles]

I found the game easier than it should have been for a first playthrough on Emperor, but there were no wars at all. Subsequently two attempts bogged down in very early wars after I'd only had time to establish two cities. The first was just an unending slog where I was at no risk of military defeat, but my production was set back and I was unable to expand. The next time the attacking AI was the Scythians, and they actually posed a threat as the only AI I've seen that builds missile units - and does so in quantity. Being horse archers I had no way to catch them either.

 

[isau]

Yep archers seem to wreck the AI, he keeps producing units destined to get annihilated. Archers themselves might just be OP.

I think something needs to be done about Archers. One of two things:

1 - Push them back, or
2 - Make AIs beeline them

The AI will often spend ages without teching Archery, and instead build a bunch of Warriors, which are probably the worst unit for them to build, because any chance of upgrading it depends on finding a resource.

 

[Ryika]

I really don't understand people's love for archers.

 

[isau]

I really don't understand people's love for archers.

Have you been using them? They're an enormous upgrade to the Warriors the AI tries to make work.