Civ5 is too easy, please add a difficult level Firaxis.

[Old Peter]

Deity is supposed to be hard, but it is not. I love this game so much, I think g&k is actually the best PC game ever made! But the game loose it's appeal when it can not provide a challenge anymore.

We have been running a deity challenge series in the strategy section for a while. For the experienced players there really is no challenge though.

And the new players meet some resistance first, but even they are able to complete almost all of them when they figure it out and get some advices.

This is not how deity is supposed to be.

It is possible to make deity challenging by doing some crazy settings, like put half of the AI opponents in one single team. And removing the city states. Etc. But then you play a different game. It is not supposed to be like this either.

So please Firaxis, make deity harder or add a new difficult level. I am sure all of the players then can find a difficult level that suits them, even the experienced ones. And the new ones got difficult levels for them too. Everybody would be happy.

And also look in to the two biggest abuses (bugs) out there:

1. Gold loans before declaring war. Fix this by removing lump gold sums altogehter. Or add a setting that prevents gold lump sums trading. Gold per turn would always be a better thing. More fun also.

2. Moving around 3 grade spies couping all the city states.

 

[kirbdog]

I agree. Fixing the "cheap tricks" that the human player can perform (but maybe shouldn't be able to) and making the AI's "I" stronger are a better way of making a more difficult and more fun game (than just throwing more brute force power at the AI).

 

[Moriarte]

Every game becomes easy when you learn all the tricks. Removing lump sum DoW trades won't solve your problem of winning every time Luckily, new expansion is coming out though.

I think the core of the problem is not lump sum or spies. It's Ai's inability to fight and make weighed diplomatic/economic decisions. Basically, you are a professor dealing with kindergarten level opponents. Even at Deity.

 

[Matthew.]

They game will never be challenging until the AI plays at a tactical level, and I don't think that is going to ever happen (which is the reason for half the rants on 1UPT). The way the game is set-up is if you have equal military tech you can pretty much hold off an infinite number of enemy units.

 

[The Pilgrim]

Peter, tommynt asked you to play MP against him. I think you should accept his proposal.


As for ways to make game more difficult, sure there are few.

1. Don't use reloads.
2. Don't abuse the living out of AI.
3. Don't use exploits that you consider unfair.
4. Don't use promotions/policy saving.

Here, you have a harder game and you are welcome.

Whether that will make it hard enough for you, I don't know. Maybe not. But constant complaining that deity is too easy while you're doing all of the above is getting a little old, to be honest, and one may start to wonder what's the real purpose of these 'rants'.

 

[The Pilgrim]

They game will never be challenging until the AI plays at a tactical level, and I don't think that is going to ever happen (which is the reason for half the rants on 1UPT). The way the game is set-up is if you have equal military tech you can pretty much hold off an infinite number of enemy units.

How hard is to program move and shoot for ranged units? If the devs managed to cause stupid AI to use pillaging in almost efficient manner, that can't be a totally impossible task. I suspect that permanent balancing between rants about worthlessness of tactical AI and 'OMG! I was building all these wonders and AI came with whole 6 units and took them away!' is the real issue here.

 

[ense7en]

We've had this discussion before...

Cease exploiting the AI. It'll magically become harder for you.

And yeah, play MP. None of your exploiting is going to work for you.
My steam: sardonicn7
Add me, i'd love to get my ass kicked in some MP.

Also, Deity is already ridiculously imbalanced and feels broken, because it is.
AI cannot compete tactically though, not even close.
A higher difficulty level only means even more boosts to the AI, not a better AI.

 

[Matthew.]

How hard is to program move and shoot for ranged units? If the devs managed to cause stupid AI to use pillaging in almost efficient manner, that can't be a totally impossible task. I suspect that permanent balancing between rants about worthlessness of tactical AI and 'OMG! I was building all these wonders and AI came with whole 6 units and took them away!' is the real issue here.

Oh there are certainly plenty of small fixes that could be done which could go a long way. I am all for improving the AI: I rant about it all the time.

But the AI can't think, only calculate. It cannot know whether a tile is good or bad. Even minor calculations are easily overcome by a human player once you start to consider multi-pronged attacks. Starcraft is a great example. That game essentially breaks down into ball of doom vs. ball of doom. The AI has the build order and capabilities to get that ball of doom. It can even micro all the different skills as blazing speed during a battle. But it can't read the map. A multi-pronged attack cripples even their "expert" level AI.

It is actually funny to watch the AI try and use keshiks. It will run in, fire, and run out in a similar fashion of how a human would use them, but again it doesn't know what a good or bad tile is. They get some annoying shots off, but still get steam-rolled when they land their keshik on a poor tile.

In short, Civ AI will never play at a "challenging" tactical level because very few AI programs in the world can. It took several years to code a competent chess AI and the number of variables in chess is a fraction of what you would need to code for a game like Civ.

Multi-player is the obvious answer, so I agree with the others.

 

[Zet]

1 unit per tile is the problem. It's very hard to program an AI that can properly play with 1 unit per tile.

1 unit per tile means that wars are slow and don't achieve much.

 

[tommynt]

I ll repeat what others have said - If u want a challenge play multiplayer.

Thats the case in EVERY pc game - ever heard some1 complaining about too easy Call od Duty or Starcraft game? People just start mp ..

If u want more challenge and ask Firaxis for further improvements u should focus on multiplayer improvements.

Another thing is possibly a more clever ai - but this is also kinda coresponding with multiplayer.
Firaxis should see how I or other good players play the game and make ai do same.
But coding the Ai to do the right thing at the right time is very hard ...

And then they d have to make totaly different tactics and strategies for each lvl - cause I doubt that prince players d like get their workers stolen as soon as ai scout is aproaching ..

 

[Light Cleric]

1. Don't use reloads.
2. Don't abuse the living out of AI.
3. Don't use exploits that you consider unfair.
4. Don't use promotions/policy saving.

Here, you have a harder game and you are welcome.

I agree with this It kind of feels like someone complaining Kaizo Mario World is too easy because they can beat it with savestate spam.

Also:

2. Moving around 3 grade spies couping all the city states.

Couping is really big risk to take; even 95% will fail eventually with so many attempts needed from the AI couping you right back, and if you lose that rank 3 spy, it's going to be very tough to get it back.

Unless you reload after a failed coup, in which case...I don't think I need to say anything

 

[Civking5]

To op, I like to know what game speed and what map size you use usually ?

 

[Naokaukodem]

1. Gold loans before declaring war. Fix this by removing lump gold sums altogehter. Or add a setting that prevents gold lump sums trading. Gold per turn would always be a better thing. More fun also.

Weird idea. You must be an original !

As to me, I can beat Prince easily but sometimes, I say sometimes, I have hard times even in Warlords. That time where I lost 4 warriors to a capital, 3 civs declared war in the same time when i had no army. (because usually i don't lose my units, and my playstyle is to go wonder after some units, that time I went wonders too, but lost my army in the process... reflexes i guess)

 

[Light Cleric]

Also, to add onto my previous post, what exactly can they do to make Deity "harder"? The AI already cheats in almost every single imaginable way; are we going to ramp it up even more? If that's what you're asking for, you can go into the XML files and do that yourself.

Right now, though, the AI has enough ludicrous advantages in the numbers. What it really needs is better decision making abilities; for example, most of the time the AI really has no damn clue how Great People work and just pops all sorts of GPs all the time rather than focusing on the type it needs. It also makes really really bad decisions about where to settle; are there any of us who HAVEN'T seen AIs drop cities in horrid spots just because it was 3 tiles from the last one?

Like some of my friends who've seen me play Deity have said, for most purposes, Deity is an entirely different game than the rest of Civ V as it is. If we're giving the AI any more numerical advantages, I would like to see some of their cheats removed and just have them get a flat combat bonus or some kind instead, rather than "lol giant horde of units" that the AI is too stupid to manage properly. Giving them even more cheating is not my idea of "challenge", it's fake difficulty.

 

[Glassmage]

Go to AI handicaps xml file. Make AI's more imba.

 

[tetley]

Just roll for a bad start. Or pick a civ that's bad for a given map. I don't see what the issue is here?

 

[Gucumatz]

Join one of the two main Civ 5 multiplayer clans!

No Quitters is what I personally use and full of great players that could easily handle deity without an issue. But playing against Human wits is what makes Civ 5 shine. Every feature in Civ 5 can be better utilized by a human mind than an AI mind. You will enjoy every war, every act of diplomacy, every alliance, and every scouting mission in multiplayer. You haven't played Civ 5 until you have played multiplayer

[You can join the No quitters clan, play a game and see what I mean, but they aren't the only Civ 5 multi clan]

 

[BlackWizard]

Play with Giant Multiplayer Robot. It's much better than simultaneous turns which sucks big way

 

[Galgus]

I think lump sum gold trades can be positive for trades of gold over time for gold now as a loan system, but every AI should immediately stop trusting a player using the lump sum gold trade -> war trick.

(Albeit AI's rarely make such trades. Or equal trades for a luxury rescource they have one of.)

Mostly the AI just needs to wage war properly

 

[sufficiency]

Play on a small map with 12 civs on Deity. Good luck.

EDIT: or, play on a standard map as India, but only domination victory.