Deity unplayable!

[EpicWestern]

Don't you think being able to win 2/3 of the games in the HIGHEST DIFFICULTY SETTING a game can possibly offer signals there's something definitely wrong with the difficulty of this game? I wish deity win rate was <20%

No, because due to game length having a large majority of games end in defeat will give you a bad experience. The game needs to be difficult enough that you should lose the game if you play poorly, but most of the time you should be winning. I think its also extremely important that all games of civ at least maintain a path to victory. You don't want to have a situation where a 5-15 hour game of civ is like a hand of poker where its just impossible to win against an aggressive player when you're dealt a bad hand. So the AI still needs a ton of work, but I feel like the civ difficulty bonuses are at their optimal level given AI weakness. In other words I don't think enemy civs should get more initial settlers or better combat bonuses. Ideally civ AI is improved so much that bonuses aren't needed at all, but you're basically playing against chess computers.

 

[Bee7]

Honestly, so many people prefer 'immersive' play, I think it would behoove them to role out something like 'game modes': they already have the whole 'rulesets' functionality, they could just do some tweaks (change tech vs prod times, make the tech tree less beeline-like) save it under a new ruleset ('Expanded Empires' or something), and advertise new 'multiple game modes'. Heck, 80% of the work would just be asking to use some existing mods. While they are at it, they could create a stripped-down, warmonger penalty-lite and extra aggro AI ruleset and call it 'Warmonger' or something, for those who a want a simplified domination game.

This really is a good idea. The only argument against it that I can think of is that the devs are finding it tough enough to balance the game in one mode, never mind three or four, but I love the idea of this.

 

[bitula]

This has nothing to do with playing on Deity or not. If you're not reaching the Atomic era before 1000 CE, that just means you're not playing very well. This is how the game has been since launch. The research costs are massively undertuned.

I recommend using a mod to slow down research times. There are several ones available. Here's what I'm currently using:

Spoiler XML code :

UPDATE Technologies SET Cost = Cost*1 WHERE EraType ='ERA_ANCIENT';
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost = Cost*1.2 WHERE EraType ='ERA_CLASSICAL';
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost = Cost*1.3 WHERE EraType ='ERA_MEDIEVAL';
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost = Cost*1.3 WHERE EraType ='ERA_RENAISSANCE';
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost = Cost*1.3 WHERE EraType ='ERA_INDUSTRIAL';
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost = Cost*1.4 WHERE EraType ='ERA_MODERN';
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost = Cost*1.4 WHERE EraType ='ERA_ATOMIC';
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost = Cost*1.5 WHERE EraType ='ERA_INFORMATION';
UPDATE Civics SET Cost = Cost*1 WHERE EraType ='ERA_ANCIENT';
UPDATE Civics SET Cost = Cost*1.1 WHERE EraType ='ERA_CLASSICAL';
UPDATE Civics SET Cost = Cost*1.2 WHERE EraType ='ERA_MEDIEVAL';
UPDATE Civics SET Cost = Cost*1.2 WHERE EraType ='ERA_RENAISSANCE';
UPDATE Civics SET Cost = Cost*1.2 WHERE EraType ='ERA_INDUSTRIAL';
UPDATE Civics SET Cost = Cost*1.3 WHERE EraType ='ERA_MODERN';
UPDATE Civics SET Cost = Cost*1.3 WHERE EraType ='ERA_ATOMIC';
UPDATE Civics SET Cost = Cost*1.4 WHERE EraType ='ERA_INFORMATION';
UPDATE Eras SET GreatPersonBaseCost = GreatPersonBaseCost*1 WHERE EraType = 'ERA_ANCIENT';
UPDATE Eras SET GreatPersonBaseCost = GreatPersonBaseCost*1.1 WHERE EraType = 'ERA_CLASSICAL';
UPDATE Eras SET GreatPersonBaseCost = GreatPersonBaseCost*1.2 WHERE EraType = 'ERA_MEDIEVAL';
UPDATE Eras SET GreatPersonBaseCost = GreatPersonBaseCost*1.3 WHERE EraType = 'ERA_RENAISSANCE';
UPDATE Eras SET GreatPersonBaseCost = GreatPersonBaseCost*1.3 WHERE EraType = 'ERA_INDUSTRIAL';
UPDATE Eras SET GreatPersonBaseCost = GreatPersonBaseCost*1.4 WHERE EraType = 'ERA_MODERN';
UPDATE Eras SET GreatPersonBaseCost = GreatPersonBaseCost*1.4 WHERE EraType = 'ERA_ATOMIC';
UPDATE Eras SET GreatPersonBaseCost = GreatPersonBaseCost*1.5 WHERE EraType = 'ERA_INFORMATION';

I finally got the chance to try this out at the weekend with 2n multipliers (2, 4, 6…) for tech and civics on Deity. So far it seems to solve the misalignment and pace problem. I’ve played until 1200AD and then gave up, which means that Deity this way is as hard as it was the only difference is that at 500AD civs at most reached medieval instead of atomic age. I still had no chance against Kongos knights versus my chariots, but at least the game was immersive and challenging at the same time. The AI actually built huge armies, and I don’t use any other mod. Anyone feel free to try it out. In my opinion multipliers for every difficulty must be applied by Firaxis to fix this. I don’t see any disadvantage of this configuration so far, but I’ll report back after next weekend play.

 

[trev1972]

Ive only played (and won) on emperor.

Ive watched a fair few 'lets plays' where they won on diety, and it seems that at immortal/diety the main difference is that early warfare (and stealing settlers etc) is crucial.

I think ive seen one lets play on immortal where the guy wasnt agressive early and won but that was australia tsl which was a stupidly op start/civ

I wish the ai played smarter as the difficulty went up instead of blatant cheats but know thats not going to happen...

Oh and to the previous poster research is definitely too quick in proportion to production i agree on that

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It does already align with acceptable accuracy on Prince, just not on Deity (or in general: the other difficulty levels). I’m talking in terms of an average game, it is fine from my side to have unusual situations, this cannot be prevented, there is no need to make mathematically precise alignments. I have no such desire.

“every other aspect of history has been thrown to the wind” – statement is a huge exaggeration in my opinion. Or at least I don’t have this impression. Certainly not “every”.

No, the design deviations are non-trivial and permeate the entire experience. It really is true that a desire to match calendar timing with historical progression is mistaken. Worse, it's flat-out incoherent, you can't make a case for history in just this context while coming from a rational framework.

IRL history's discovery pacing (and everything else) followed a causal chain of events, and those events did not begin with "empires led by a single, 6000+ year spanning entity optimizing for the empire's well-being as the top priority", nor did most begin with a single settlement and a tiny military with lots of uncontested land.

This is before we touch an population growth, logistics/supply by era, borders, actual combat, zone of control, ruler/local entity decision-making, pre-paper map-making, or a ton of other mechanics.

Complaining that the game allows/expects faster timing at high difficulties because of the misalignment of history (as opposed to other reasons) while accepting its premise is incoherent. You are necessarily trying to equate acausal outcomes with causal history. That doesn't work.

Put an entity in history leading a nation that only cares about the well-being of that nation, knows future techs and plans for them in advance, sees entire military top-down and can control them, and can micromanage how the nation's pop (which for some reason grows more slowly while having more people) and you have something that in no way resembles our history. Unless you ignore causality, it SHOULDN'T resemble history.

Arguing to ignore causality in favor of historical events is self-inconsistent and has zero credibility in any game debate. Objectively. History depended on its causes. Throw that out, and you necessarily threw out history too. You can't separate them.

TL;DR version: What this means in civ is that 500 AD computers is no more or less reasonable than any other mechanic unless you can find a non-history argument against it. This thread is lacking in coherent non-history arguments against it.

 

[bitula]

TL;DR version: What this means in civ is that 500 AD computers is no more or less reasonable than any other mechanic unless you can find a non-history argument against it. This thread is lacking in coherent non-history arguments against it.

The non-historical argument is that a Deity gameplay should not be shorter than the Prince gameplay which is the one balanced without modifiers. This takes away the “epic-ness” of the game and turns it into rushed competition (similar to sports). The historical argument is that on Prince discoveries are well aligned to the historical years, so you may as well argue with Firaxis why did they align it so. In my opinion the alignment was made to increase immersion, as a player myself it is in agreement with my general experience.

EDIT:

So regarding this. “Complaining that the game allows/expects faster timing at high difficulties because of the misalignment of history”

1) I have no problem with “allows”, the problem is that it “expects”.

2) “Misalignment of history” is just a side affect (or indicator) of increased game-speed and not the cause of it. By adjusting era mutlitpliers (in the XML) possibly both can be fixed at the same time (I will continue my experiments on the weekend). These are two separate problems but since they are interrelated I did not feel the need to discuss them separately. The point is that fixing the misalignment alone is not a solution. Both must be fixed in relation to each other.

 

[Archon_Wing]

The non-historical argument is that a Deity gameplay should not be shorter than the Prince gameplay which is the one balanced without modifiers. This takes away the “epic-ness” of the game and turns it into rushed competition

That's what happens when you crank up the difficulty to high though. More advantages at the start = faster progression.

The unnatural pace is the point of the challenge and there's no way that Prince can play the same as deity.

And historically none of it makes sense regardless of what you do. In real life, civilizations did not all start at the same time after all, and expecting the same result as real life isn't reasonable.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The non-historical argument is that a Deity gameplay should not be shorter than the Prince gameplay which is the one balanced without modifiers.

Why? Seriously, the arguments below amount to "I don't like it".

A deity player can win on prince faster than the same player can win on deity btw. Deity just expects you to play better than prince.

This takes away the “epic-ness” of the game and turns it into rushed competition (similar to sports). The historical argument is that on Prince discoveries are well aligned to the historical years, so you may as well argue with Firaxis why did they align it so. In my opinion the alignment was made to increase immersion, as a player myself it is in agreement with my general experience.

"Epic-ness" is subjective and even on your own terms poorly defined, just like immersion (always found it interesting that players argue around immersion, as if one person's is more important than another's or as if "immersion" has a universal source between players). If you just want a game that takes more turns, slower game speeds to the job and let you fight the alpha-quality UI that much more.

The fact of the matter is mechanics are designed in such a way where early space wins/tech in general are the expected norm if you properly utilize the mechanics. The AI sucks something fierce, and the outcomes it gives at prince require an experienced player to play (very) poorly on purpose. That is not a credible baseline for where the game has aligned its mechanics.

Unit movement rate vs tech/production rate is an issue and has been since Civ 5 vanilla and even fast speeds in Civ 4. This is quite difficult to address with 1UPT and an awful UI interacting with it though.

 

[Archon_Wing]

The great kingdoms of Sumeria and Greece fought side by side, muskets and cannons blazing against the invading forces of the American empire. Pericles sought Gilgamesh's advanced scientists on how to improve their muskets and noticed that Gilgamesh had suddenly fired a gigantic object into the sky. So the envoys asked:

"Most exalted Lord Gilgamesh, we noticed you had launced a fearsome object into the sky. Perhaps this is your new weapon against the Americans."
"No, you mindless, violent simpleton. We do not intend to win a savage and uncultured Domination Victory We wish to travel to that orange looking object in the sky and this will be our first step to colonizing another world."
"But that force, surely we could use it for weapons!"
"No, it just makes you go really fast and now we can see the map."
"How did you people invent such a thing?"
"We went straight for rocketry"
"What is that?
"It is the ability to launch a large projectile over huge distances and it requires extensive calculations"
"How can any human being do such precise measurements? And how do you map the entire world just by firing something into space?"
"We cannot, that is why we are going to research computers and satelites"
"What's a computer? What's a satellite?"
"I don't know, but according to this tech tree, we need it to launch the spaceship"
"Wait, what's this?
"Long ago, in 4000 BC, our grand elders handed us this scroll that tells us how society will advance. Apparently you can ignore huge swathes of it and get to the cool things first. This is also how we built Big Ben. That commercial hub was built 1600 years ago in that spot to prepare for the discovery of economics. Building the bank in time was a bother though. "
"Ah, this is why you never invented boats. But how did you launch the rocket in the first place?"
"We chopped the forests. That's why all the trees are gone"
"How does that make any sense? And wouldn't the most cultured victory be a culture victory?"
"Shut up!" Also Teddy's troops are on the move. Prepare the bombards!"
"We don't have niter!"
"Damn, why haven't you gotten Replacable Parts yet?"
"Minions! Release the warrior club brigrade. The thousand year old corps of warriors will be given modern rifles to defeat the enemy!"
"Are you sure that's a good idea. I mean, they're basically cavemen"
"It is okay. With 210 gold spent on each, they will fight just as well as modern soldiers. In fact since, they killed a barbarian in the past, they'll probably be even better."

 

[bitula]

Why?
"Epic-ness" is subjective and even on your own terms poorly defined, just like immersion (always found it interesting that players argue around immersion, as if one person's is more important than another's or as if "immersion" has a universal source between players).

Yes, it is mostly subjective, but just try it out. Set up era multipliers to 2N and see which one is the more immersive. This or the vanilla? The only difference is that the gameplay feels more epic and the era years are better aligned. It does not break difficulty. So if this setting makes gameplay more immersive without any undesirable side effect, isn’t it a superior setting? This weekend I forgot to adjust the multipliers of great people and got cases where Great General added +5 strength to modern age units when I was in medieval. But if I adjust it same way it should be fine. Will try it next weekend.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Yes, it is mostly subjective, but just try it out. Set up era multipliers to 2N and see which one is the more immersive. This or the vanilla? The only difference is that the gameplay feels more epic and the era years are better aligned. It does not break difficulty. So if this setting makes gameplay more immersive without any undesirable side effect, isn’t it a superior setting? This weekend I forgot to adjust the multipliers of great people and got cases where Great General added +5 strength to modern age units when I was in medieval. But if I adjust it same way it should be fine. Will try it next weekend.

I'm not interested in giving the trash UI 2x the opportunities to spam me. It's objectively worse in input volume than civ 4 (which wasn't exactly perfect) by such a wide margin that playing through mid-late game turns is a chore. Doing that 2x as long with no real change in anticipated outcome, difficulty, or even meaningful decisions isn't something I need to attempt. I can only tolerate so many unnecessary trade route prompts, crappy city management forced-prompts with 2-5x the inputs needed (per turn), interactions with laughable unit cycling (or to not have such a basic feature), or long-range pathing issues when ordering 10+ units across fronts.

And all of that is before we factor in 2x the in-between turn time, which by itself adds an extra hour of sitting in front of the screen per game, if not more.

YMMV, but to me adding 2+ hours of waiting time to a game that already (flagrantly!) disrespects the time of its players is not my idea of "epic", and making this align with year of tech better in a game that constantly eschews realism anyway won't change that.

 

[bitula]

Well yes, this setting certainly requires more patience and micromanagement. But so far I found no boring element. Furthermore, the AI actually builds huge armies so it is harder to conquer. Because currently AI is severely bugged (eg.: defending catapults in my play-through almost never attacked the incoming land units) it doesn’t really matter, unfortunately. But that is a different issue. UI is bugged as well, fails to display up-to-date numeric values. But, again, that is a different issue.

 

[cvb]

I finally got the chance to try this out at the weekend with 2n multipliers (2, 4, 6…) for tech and civics on Deity. So far it seems to solve the misalignment and pace problem.

I thought, you might eventually clarify this, because 2N seems REALLY huge to me ... but now I want to ask:

Do you mean

UPDATE Technologies SET Cost = Cost*1 WHERE EraType ='ERA_ANCIENT';
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost = Cost*2 WHERE EraType ='ERA_CLASSICAL';
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost = Cost*4 WHERE EraType ='ERA_MEDIEVAL';
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost = Cost*6 WHERE EraType ='ERA_RENAISSANCE';
[...]
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost = Cost*14 WHERE EraType ='ERA_INFORMATION';

or

UPDATE Technologies SET Cost = Cost*1 WHERE EraType ='ERA_ANCIENT';
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost = Cost*1.2 WHERE EraType ='ERA_CLASSICAL';
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost = Cost*1.4 WHERE EraType ='ERA_MEDIEVAL';
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost = Cost*1.6 WHERE EraType ='ERA_RENAISSANCE';
[...]
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost = Cost*2.4 WHERE EraType ='ERA_INFORMATION';

Or even something else? Please explain the 2n multipliers.

 

[bitula]

UPDATE Technologies SET Cost = Cost*2 WHERE EraType ='ERA_ANCIENT';
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost = Cost*4 WHERE EraType ='ERA_CLASSICAL';
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost = Cost*6 WHERE EraType ='ERA_MEDIEVAL';
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost = Cost*8 WHERE EraType ='ERA_RENAISSANCE';
etc


Why too much? Seemed completely fine to me. In my last play-through I had cannons at about 1600 AD, musketeers at about 1500. Seems fine, the AI had faster progression, but still not overpaced. I didn’t get to the modern era so far though, will have to start another game on the weekend to see how well it scales around that point. So I mean, to me, from a historical simulation point of view everything seemed fine, or to say so, nothing extremely out of place. It was like it used to be on Prince for AI.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Wouldn't it be less complicated to have the turns move through the bcs faster?

Consider that the last 4 eras are over a few hundred years while the first 3 are over 5000