Difficulty advice for a beginner

[Chiba]

Hi,

I have so far only played three games in Civilization 5 and I haven't played any of the previous versions.
My first game was on Prince difficulty on a World map, where I had no idea what I did and for some lucky reason only survived, because Korea, which conquered half of the world, liked me and never declared any war on me.

My second game then was again on Prince difficulty on Continents, where I was (luckily?) placed by myself on a continent and never really had to build any units until the modern era.

My third game then was after Gods & Kings came out and I tried myself at King difficulty on Continents Plus, as I had the feeling that Prince was too easy. I really tried my best, was on a continent with four others and for some reason on of them declared war on me pretty early and the only way to make peace with him would have been to give him some of my cities and all my gold. So I was at war with that AI for 300 or so turns and he had almost twice as many points as I did, but never really dared to attack me all-out, so I could keep him off. I expanded by taking cities of a weaker AI (which for some reason declared war on me several times) and so everyone but this one AI left me alone. It started to go downhill when I foolishly nuked one of the annoying AI's cities. From then on he nuked one of my cities every turn and I eventually gave up. I don't really know why he didn't nuke me before.

My question is now, did I get the wrong impression from my second game, where I was all alone on a continent? Should I go back to Prince once more or try King again?

I should add that I always played with Japan so far and I set only Domination victory with players staying in the game until they are completely wiped out, as I don't really like the other options.

Thanks for any advice.

 

[MaximusK]

Hi,
My question is now, did I get the wrong impression from my second game, where I was all alone on a continent? Should I go back to Prince once more or try King again?

IMO, isolated games (like archipelago/small continents) are easier than pangea or large continent games.

I would stay on King. I think King is just hard enough so that you have to learn the game to do well. Take note of your mistakes, analyze and reflect on what worked and what went wrong.

Prince isn't quite hard enough to force you to compete. Emperor you pretty much need to know the game to compete. So stay on king.

 

[Syntax Error]

IMO, isolated games (like archipelago/small continents) are easier than pangea or large continent games.

I would stay on King. I think King is just hard enough so that you have to learn the game to do well. Take note of your mistakes, analyze and reflect on what worked and what went wrong.

Prince isn't quite hard enough to force you to compete. Emperor you pretty much need to know the game to compete. So stay on king.

However, do take note that Archipelago maps are usually slower than continents/pangaea. Because of the smaller landmasses, you WILL need naval techs to discover other civs and city-states. If you want to get a feel of how to play these types of watery maps, I suggest starting with Polynesia. Ocean Embarkation without research is HUGE here. It allows you to discover all civs at the start, and you'll be sure to get the first finder's bonuses on most City-States.

 

[Hyper Nova]

Stick to king. The reasons why they all piled on you were probably a combination of things

1 The Higher difficulty, AIs are a bit more aggressive on higher difficulties but your descriptions leads me to believe this alone wasn't a major factor.

2. Higher difficulties above Prince the AI starts getting production and tech bonuses this allows them to get more units etc which if you neglect your units will then make the AI see you as weak and an easy target. It definitely sounds like you aren't building enough Units early on.

3. This is probably more significant. In your King game you were likely a little unlucky at how close you spawned and who you spawned next to. If you spawn really close to an AI they will more likely covert your lands early and hate you right away. Also if you spawn next to warmonger leaders like Monty, Bismarck, Alex, Attila, etc they will be more likely to attack you early. Your prince games you may well have been set next to less aggressive civs and slightly further apart.

4. Did you expand a lot? If you expand a lot the AI civs near your expansions will believe your expanding to aggressively and they won't like it and will attack. THis ties in somewhat with proximity ideas in number 3. So if you spawn close together AND expand a lot early they really will HATE you.

So heres some ideas that might help


Ask What went wrong? Why did it go wrong? And What will i do next time prevent that from happening.

So in this case what when wrong was you were attacked early and caused you to struggle. Only you can answer why did this happen? and it might be a combination.

Either He was an aggressive leader like Monty

Or you expanded too much in their direction.

or You were really close and he wanted your lands

Or You didn't build enough early units to make yourself appear strong to the aggressive civ to ward him off therefore seeing you as weak and trying to take advantage.

Once you work out what it was you can then try a few things

One thing you always want to do is get a scout early this is important for several reasons one is you get to find CS early and get the gold bonus from finding them. You can spot where the barb camps are. You can find the Ruins fast and hopefully pop some useful stuff and you can scout out city locations.Also find out early whether your hemmed in by a Civ or you have space to expand and who is near you that might be aggressive.
If you come across Bismarck or Monty next to you you know they might attack early and you build units. If its someone more peaceful you can maybe get away with more infrastructure.

If you are hemmed in consider going Tradition because you are going to be restricted to a small empire to start with and Tradition is suited to that, also you get Oligarchy which helps you defend better. And then Build a few units to make sure you don't get piled on.

If you have room to expand then you can consider Liberty so you can grab up the good land faster without worrying about pissing of a close neighbour.

Personally I don't open with Honour even if I'm warmongering (unless i have a specific reason to like I'm Bismarck and want to go Barb hunting. Even then I only grab the opener.) Ill get my infrastructure via either Liberty or Tradition up and running then take Honour. But others might do it differently.

Also keep an eye on the diplomacy screen and see what modifiers one of those early civs you meet have, if they show as Hostile or Guarded or have the modifiers: 'Covert your lands' Or 'Believe you are building Cities too aggressively' be prepared for an attack.

 

[Adjuvant]

Yeh, the difficulty levels are definitely botched if people are giving advice to play king to a person who's played 3 times.

 

[Chiba]

The problem is that the only Prince game where I was successful (second out of two ) put me on my very own landmass, with all the AI players sharing the remaining two landmasses. That's why I'm not sure if I didn't overestimate myself and went for King way too early.
As for the King game I put a lot of effort in Science to keep up technologically with the AI players, so apart from the one who constantly harassed me I was the most advanced from those on the same landmass. But of course this made me lag behind culturally.
Also, I went for Autocracy in order to be able to field a larger army. I guess that was wrong too?

Generally, my main problem in the beginning is always gold and I never know what to do first. If I build/buy a scout or settler I will miss out on so many other things that do it pretty late and I guess that's the wrong way too.

I also have a question about the nukes: Seeing as the aggressive AI (Alexander in my case, even though I chose random characteristics) nuked me once every turn after I dropped a bomb on one of his cities, he must have had them for quite some time. Does the AI only use nukes when it is nuked by someone else first or was this just a coincidence?

 

[Syntax Error]

Never had to use nukes or been nuked before, so I can't answer that. As for the Gold, very early on, you can use gold for:

Workers
Archers (emergency homeland security, 3 or 4 will do, but basically, use it on military units)
Scouts (faster exploration = more goody huts, finder's Gold/Faith for CSes, Natural Wonders if you want to settle them).
Extra luxuries (when you're taking too much of a happiness hit).
Libraries (buildings in General. The most important national wonder, regardless of victory condition you're going for is the National College. The earlier you can get it, the better. More beakers=faster research=more wonder choices and better units)

 

[dexters]

Bibor's spread has no allowance for difficulty affecting aggressiveness. AI could be observed to be more agressive in higher difficulty settings simply because they either start with less or no handicap (prince and under) or significant bonuses (king and above) so if you're playing at a Warlord level in a King setting, the AI will have a higher score, likely more cities, more units and more likely to view the player as easy pickings.

I find something as simple as archers in cities, or moving your swords in their line of sight as a show of force when AI scouts come walking by can deter what I felt was an imminent attack from a Guarded/Neutral Civ. A key advice I would give when playing on a challenging difficulty level is to ignore 'set build orders' that you used in a previous difficulty level and play a little more defensively to get your bearings. Divert a little more production than normal to defense and it will help. No gaurantees of course, but lower difficulty levels usually allow players to go builder early with no consequences.

Civ-mix is also important in Civ5, more than anything, as the Civ personalities affect how the early game works, and UA of each individual Civ flavours the rest of the game. A game might be relatively easy going without Greece stealing everyone's city states, while another might be a pain because Hiawatha or Rameses stole all the wonders.

 

[cccv]

As has been pointed out, different types of maps can make the same difficulty level more or less hard. You may also want to be aware that different size maps have the same effect.

When I play on standard maps I play on king, and find the AI to be an even match. But when I play on huge maps the AI has way more room to expand, and because of their happiness bonus they are able to out-expand me by quite a bit and I am absolutely no match for them, so on huge maps I drop down to prince.

So basically, just find out which maps you like to play and plan accordingly when choosing your difficulty.

 

[Chiba]

I always play on huge maps, so this is probably another reason then. So my next map will either be huge at Prince or normal at King. And I will try not to nuke first and build a scout asap.

 

[zyx]

While on Prince it doesn't really matter what you do, on King and Emperor you should emphazise on a high tech rate - which means early libaries etc. By the time you hit renaissance/industrial you should be the leader in technology. On immortal and deity you have to keep conquering - unless you aim for a cultural victory - to overcome the AIs starting advantage.