Difficulty? Is my game copy broken?

[daudi81]

I'm not sure if this has been posted about or not, I'm new to the forum. soo - Ok I didn't play Civ 4 that much, but I remember having amazing difficulty at the hard setting (just 1 above normal).

Civ 5 comes out, and it's been a couple years since I've played Civ 4, so I start on Warlord. Halfway through the game I quit because it just got too easy. So I go to 'normal' setting, and it's a little harder at first, but eventually I wipe the floor with everything and everyone by the time I have knights. So I start a new game, on hard mode (King I think), and I'm about 1/4 the way in and can tell it's going the same way.

I remember having an incredibly hard time with Civ 4 on the hard setting (not the hardest), so that should say something about how terrible I am at this game - I'm not horrible but I'm in no way great.

I'm about to go to the hardest setting just to test it out, but I'm afraid I'm going to find the same thing. Did the developers decide to play a joke on a few people and release a few game copies that had easy-mode regardless of the difficulty you put it on?

 

[milk steak]

Why don't you actually beat a game before making your assumption?

 

[ChronoReverse]

Just curious, how large of a map are you playing?

On smaller maps, it's absolutely easy to beast the AI since it's horrid at combat (hopefully this will be addressed by a patch), but on harder difficulty levels and larger maps, by the time you reach the farther away civilizations, they'll have a super economy and the ability to pump out higher teched units =(

 

[Guardian_PL]

Hello daudi81, and welcome to CivFanatics!

Yes, there's a lot us with the same experience here, I've finished my very first game on King (Standard), then on Emperor(Large), and now I'm playing Immortal(Standard, turns are looong from 1600' onwards to play on Large+). It's a walk in park sadly, and on the contrary to certain... Fan-biased individuals here I didn't play warmongering other than being attacked. And it still was godawfully easy.

Come, join in my prayer - "Patches, patches, patches... "

 

[Veshta]

Between the AI's inability to fathom the hex system and the non-existent diplomacy you can win any game on any difficulty by being aggressive like Monty in Civ4 .. attack right off the bat.
Diplomacy can be made better but I doubt they will be able to do much about the AI combat. Hexes, hard-counters and ranged units are just too good for a humans ability to think sideways.

Come, join in my prayer - "Mod-tools, Mod-tools, Mod-tools... "

Fixed your prayer for you

 

[Guardian_PL]

Between the AI's inability to fathom the hex system and the non-existent diplomacy you can win any game on any difficulty by being aggressive like Monty in Civ4 .. attack right off the bat.
Diplomacy can be made better but I doubt they will be able to do much about the AI combat. Hexes, hard-counters and ranged units are just too good for a humans ability to think sideways.

Originally Posted by Guardian_PL
Come, join in my prayer - "Mod-tools, Mod-tools, Mod-tools... "

Fixed your prayer for you

NO!

It is THEM whose job is to fix it. If Firaxis will follow Bethe$da style: "ya here you go that's Oblivion/Failout, it's crap but we're busy counting the money so go and fix it yourselves, in the meantime we'll be spreading the news how awesome this game is, hopefuly you'll manage to make enough cool mods by the time for the new expansion marketing campaign to start", then I'll never buy another game from Firaxis. Period. My last game I bought from Bethe$da was Morrowind, from then on I knew better.


I just feel it's disgusting to take money and credit for countless hours of voluntary, dedicated work. Effing vulture approach...

Mods should improve the gameplay, not create it.

 

[daudi81]

Why don't you actually beat a game before making your assumption?

Beating it would just be a test of patience and redundancy and wouldn't be fun. Challenge is fun - mindless clicking of "next turn" isn't =)

The last game I had twice as many cities as the next powerful nation, had a full continent (the largest one) to myself after beating everyone on it (standard size map), was making 200+ gold per turn (golden ages were just ridiculous), and had enough in reserves to buy a new military unit outright in every city - so if anyone went to war with me I could build a huge army in 1 turn. I was buying buildings left and right because I had so much gold. Was by far and away #1 in all the little "polls" they do. Happiness was very high, even though I had like 10 cities I just annexed. I was thinking of finishing it just to see the techs in the game, but I would have rather restarted a harder game. I haven't finished a game in this yet, so maybe I'm jumping to conclusions - but do you think I would have had a hard time beating it?

I'm going to try it on Immortal today and see if they wipe the floor with me -if not - I guess it's on to Deity. Seriously, I'm not that good at this game, especially after reading this forum and seeing how much people know about strategies etc. If I can do this well this early on, I'd imagine how frustrated the veterans are with it.

I think the main problem is the AI sucks at war. Their pretty decent in everything else, but they just don't make good military decisions. That is the key reason I was able to do so well this last game.

Anyone else have the same opinion or do I just need to play it more to get a better picture?

 

[milk steak]

I don't disagree that the AI will make some boneheaded military blunders. Upping the difficultly will only give them a boost to production/research/etc. and won't necessarily make their military strategy any better. So instead of going up against an incompetent army of Spearmen, you'll be up against an incompetent army of Riflemen.

 

[Crispin]

Same results here, I usually played on the step above normal on civ4, and it was usually a challenge.

Civ 5 its laughable, haven't been able to play on the largest map setting though, the game goes so slow when you have explored.

Yes I'm no big fan of the game yet(Its ok don't get me wrong), I think its shallow and many of the reviews are surprising and disappointing, because there is no way the game in its current form deserves a 9 or 10. THAT SAID the difficulty and game slowing down beyond playable IS something that could be fixed in a patch. So thats something.

 

[Chong Warrior]

I think the reason Civ V is so easy is because the CPU players can't cheat by justing giving each other techs all the time and blowing you away. Now this huge advantage has been taken away it just shows how bad the AI really is.

 

[Malecite]

Well they sort of can, its the whole research agreement thing.

But any space chimp with a laptop can win on Diety, its the same principle as chieftan, go to war early and often, build up elites and slap the computers silly military efforts aside.

Their production, economic, and research bonuses mean very little if your able to raze their cities with a handful of units.

I just dont get how people are enjoying this vanilla, repetative, walk in the park BS. No matter what you do you have to have war at some point and the comp is utterly fail at that critical element, which essentially means a broken game thats over midway through.