Difficulty explanation

Ossian

Warlord
Joined
Jan 7, 2007
Messages
109
I was wondering when you play "Custom game" instead of "Play now!" when you select difficulty next to your name is that effecting the AI's?
I wonder because the Difficulty next to their name stays at noble.

I'm pretty sure it effects but I just want to be completely sure that when I use custom game (Or M player games) that I'm getting harder AI's that I like.

Thanks :goodjob:
 
That only affects you. So if you play on Deity, the AI will start with Archers and a lot more techs than you, but if you play on Chieftain you will be better than the AI, because they'll be stupid.
 
Huh? So I have to do "Play now!" in order to play with hard AI's?

If not how do I change difficulty in Custom game or Hotseat games?
 
ok, but don't they get smarter if your on a higher difficulty?
 
ok, but don't they get smarter if your on a higher difficulty?

No, but their relations/responses to you are relative to your power. So, if you're playing on a higher difficulty and are less powerful as a result (fewer cities, higher costs, less tech, less military power) the CPUs, who are still on Noble, will be more aggressive and threatening towards you because they'll be that much more powerful than you in virtue of their lower difficulty. They will out-tech you, attack more frequently, expand much faster than you possibly can, feel much more secure in demanding things from you - so, while they aren't smarter, their reactions are effectively modified towards you to make it harder.
 
No, but their relations/responses to you are relative to your power. So, if you're playing on a higher difficulty and are less powerful as a result (fewer cities, higher costs, less tech, less military power) the CPUs, who are still on Noble, will be more aggressive and threatening towards you. They will out-tech you, attack more frequently, expand much faster than you possibly can, feel much more secure in demanding things from you - so, while they aren't smarter, their reactions are effectively modified towards you to make it harder.

That's a much better explanation than what I put forward. :lol:
 
Hmmm....I could be mistake but I beleive that you are all wrong.
I remeber reading the manuel, and it stated that the difficulty next to your name was the difficulty that ALL the AI were used as.
Could be mistaken, in fact I'll start looking for it right now.
 
Hmmm....I could be mistake but I beleive that you are all wrong.
I remeber reading the manuel, and it stated that the difficulty next to your name was the difficulty that ALL the AI were used as.
Could be mistaken, in fact I'll start looking for it right now.

When you go into multiplayer, it has the difficulty of each player (CPU's also) listed. The CPUs are frozen on Noble.
 
difficulty level determines bonuses and penalties

higher difficulty for a Player means

For THAT player (for the AIs this is always at Noble)
pays more in maintenance
pays more for techs
has a smaller bonus v. barbarians and animals
worse treatment by the AIs (more likely to declare war, etc.)

AI (based on the human player's bonus)
pays less in maintenance
takes less to build buildings (not WW), units
takes less time to improve terrain
takes less food to grow population
take less gold to upgrade troops
gets a 'starting' bonus of extra units+techs


Barbarians (based on the human difficulty)
get more free cities and more free units
 
Changing the difficulty for the AI slots does make them weaker/tougher though. It works just like for the human, so setting the AI slots to deity means that they only have 1 health to begin with, pay more maintenance etc.

You can also differetiate it so e.g. Toku gets to play on chieftain, while Mansa is on deity. ;)
 
Afaik there's a special rule in MP games: If all human players play on the same level then the AIs will have handicaps according to that level. But if humans have different levels, then all AIs will play as Noble (same probably goes for custom games though I never tried to set a difficulty there for the AIs).

Which is very annoying. If you play with a noob friend who is much weaker than you then you would like to give him an advantage. But you can't because then the AIs will be ridiculously weak, being only Noble. So you can only play all on same level or without AIs.
 
The easiest explanation is that you expect to be able to set the AI's difficulty when Civ only allows you to change your own.

This is because the AI doesn't really change - the only thing that changes is its bonuses or penalties relative to you.

Yes, it's a bit backwards from what you'd expect at first.

If you want to play with "Settler AI" you choose Settler difficulty for yourself. If you want to play with "Emperor AI" you should choose Emperor difficulty for yourself instead.

And no, you can't set one AI to play at an easy difficulty and another AI at a hard difficulty; they all operate with the same relative advantages or disadvantages compared to you.
 
I also thought this was the most confusing thing ever. I still can't quite understand what happens when I play "hotseat" with a friend... and we choose different difficulty levels. I can understand that we will have advantages/disadvantages depending on our choice, but I don't understand how the AI's advantages/disadvantages are picked. I see posts in here that come close to explaining or that do, but my brain somehow can't grasp it, hehe.
 
Um, they get smarter at higher difficulty in custom games. Noble isn't so hard. You bump it up to emperor and late game they'll send 400 units (no I'm not exaggerating) your way. I'm almost certain that no one has been invaded by 400 units (from one civ) at once before they have finished the tech tree on noble.
 
Changing the difficulty for the AI slots does make them weaker/tougher though. It works just like for the human, so setting the AI slots to deity means that they only have 1 health to begin with, pay more maintenance etc.

You can also differetiate it so e.g. Toku gets to play on chieftain, while Mansa is on deity. ;)
Is it really possible to change the difficulty for the AI slots?
How can this be done for a single player game?
I always did this in CivIII, because I wanted some opponents to be strong and others to be weaker. But when I setup a single player game in CivIV the difficulty slots are "greyed out" for the AIs.
So i cannot change them. Or is it only possible in multiplayer? Or mod?
[...] so setting the AI slots to deity means that they only have 1 health to begin with, pay more maintenance etc. [...]
I thought the difficulty concept for AIs works opposite to the concept for human players. So setting the AI to deity would increase the advantages for them.
At least it has been that way in CivIII when different difficulties were set to different AIs, if I remember correctly.

EDIT:
Seems my qustions have already been answered. I should have read the posts more carefully.
Anyway... If someone knows a method or mod making it possible to have different difficulties for different AIs I would appreciate if it would be posted.
thx
 
It's also not possible in single player, I checked yesterday.

Um, they get smarter at higher difficulty in custom games. Noble isn't so hard. You bump it up to emperor and late game they'll send 400 units (no I'm not exaggerating) your way. I'm almost certain that no one has been invaded by 400 units (from one civ) at once before they have finished the tech tree on noble.

No, they're not smarter. Smarter would mean they 'think' deeper, use better tactics, place their cities better, work their tiles better etc. They may seem smarter because they are more powerful and more advanced because of their bonuses, so they can build larger and stronger stacks. But they act always the same.
 
Is it really possible to change the difficulty for the AI slots?
How can this be done for a single player game?
I always did this in CivIII, because I wanted some opponents to be strong and others to be weaker. But when I setup a single player game in CivIV the difficulty slots are "greyed out" for the AIs.
So i cannot change them. Or is it only possible in multiplayer? Or mod?
I could have sworn that was possible, but it doesn't seem like BtS allows it. I think vanilla in some version allows - at least I can remember experimenting with it, though that might have been in multiplayer or in civ3. :confused:

I thought the difficulty concept for AIs works opposite to the concept for human players. So setting the AI to deity would increase the advantages for them.
At least it has been that way in CivIII when different difficulties were set to different AIs, if I remember correctly.
No, in civ3 it also worked as I described, with the human level (the level you choose when setting up the game) determining AI productionspeed etc. and AI level determining their happiness cap and corruption.
 
[...] No, in civ3 it also worked as I described, with the human level (the level you choose when setting up the game) determining AI productionspeed etc. and AI level determining their happiness cap and corruption.
Ah, I see. Thanks for the info.
But then I did it the wrong way when setting up my own maps in CivIII. I usually set the opponents starting close to my starting location to 'warlord' or something and opponents starting far away to 'emperor' or whatever. I just wanted my early neighbors to be easy to defeat.
 
Top Bottom