Difficulty Level of Civ6 GOTM's?

Its not like there is anything at stake... Surely peoples self reports are sufficient. I find the whole competition aspect a bit odd. I'm not trying to beat anyone ... its interesting enough just to read about the different approaches. If you want to achieve a remarkable result its seems thats more the venue of the HOF thing.

Furthermore i agree with the folks who would like to see some more variation in difficulty as it does allow more variation in play. Its unfortunate the AI is so weak militarily, but thats not going to change in the short run. Even in other civ editions tho it was pretty much always possible to steamroll the ai with war alone and while its even easier now, its hardly anything new.

 

Noting @ShinigamiKenji 's comment, I think it's still a a good idea and that maybe bonus points or something for doing this could be interesting. I'd suggest it be in addition to the current stipulated VC type.

It could certainly add more flavour and a potential RP to a given civ's game, which frankly is spurious to most victory types as it seems there is really only a single optimal way to win the game. I guess it could functionally be a bit of a handicap to have to build a certain wonder or so on while on your route to winning. So adding a small extra challenge but which is more interesting than a simple speedbump.

Given the lack of map editor, it might be too much for the mods though...

 

And another, totally different suggestion: Right now, some players, myself included though i rarely finish any games, make it quite a serious competition for winning the GOTM. I dont think that is a bad thing as it will show what strategies are the most effective to win the game.

I do agree however that a more important goal of the GOTM is for players to learn. Therefore, it would be nice to think of a way to encourage people to make a much more detailed writeup including the reasoning on why they made the choises they made. Maybe we could have an extra few awards for the best writeups. For example we could have 3 awards for "best educational writeup", "best entertainment piece", "best literary work". I wouldnt mind even seeing this replace the victory date awards, or at least be more prominent. I know most of you dont really care too much which nerd has spend the most time planning and micromanaging his game to get the best date. I think a new approach like this could invigorate the GOTM threads a bit.

 

Yeah, I often use others' games as benchmarks to see if I'm doing well or not. It's a better base for comparison because it's more standardized (the map is the same for everyone). And if I'm not, then I'd like to see a more detailed report to compare against my actions.

I'll try to improve my future submission reports.

 

Agree. I learned so much going through the forum. Witty write-up is very entertaining too.

 

while i don't think awards for witty write ups etc should be a thing, I apprechiate in depth write ups to learn the game better too.
We had a 150+ science victory in one of the GotM and I still can't emulate that!

 

The changes to IZ will make that harder to emulate. Stacking bonuses meant that you could quickly settle a small city get it up and running and buy the IZ buildings and add that to the stack.

 

I know this isn't specifically about difficulty level, but since we are talking about game parameters, I would like to see games more designed to highlight the special attributes of each civ. Especially early on, many of the GOTMs are the first game I am attempting with each civ. I would like to be able to see the effect of the special units or buildings. Moderator Action: <<SNIP>> I know shaping the game to take advantage of the unique attributes might make it too easy, but it would still make it more interesting to try them out.

Moderator Action: Please do not discuss ongoing games outside of the spoiler threads. leif
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

Justus, you arent really supposed to talk about running GOTMs here.
Anyway, you can use the aztect warriors against CSes too.

Still, i see what you are saying and i agree.

In GOTM9, the civ fits victory condition (and the map as it is not pangea so you can get something out of that traderoute special).
They are so fast in the GOTM team, you ask and they did it yesterday !

 

My apologies, I forgot GOTM8 was still running, I saw the GOTM9 announcement (which I agree, does fit the VC) and my mind moved on.

 

I think the current spread of difficulty levels is fine. After all, we are mostly playing against each other in the GotM, trying to win in as few turns as possible. That is always a challenge, no matter the difficulty level. Experienced players could view the difficulty level as just one of the parameters they have to take into account when plotting an optimal path to victory.

 

My own xp with HoF and GOTM is that the level only changes the conditions; the competition is against the other players in any case. I am totally for more games that let more people submit a win. We all know that its not winning that matters, its how much fun you have that matters. But we also know its a lot more fun winning than losing. But winning gets boring if we never challenge ourselves, so I am 100% on board with the low/high level games. I am also on board with easy/hard maps, and easy/hard opponents. Staff doing a great job, imo.

 

Do you have an idea what the difficulty for the next GOTM will be? Will it be deity?

 

I am not sure what you were trying to say. At first I thought I did but then you contradicted yourself and that left me puzzled.
GoTM is about challenging yourself because if you don't you are not going to win the GoTM. We can all play against the AI at any time, we don't need GoTM for that, instead it is a competition against each other.

The topic of difficulty level came up because at present, the games balance means higher difficulties exclude more players than it includes due to the hyper aggressive AI and its ability to early rush a player to death. If you look at the last game that had a nearby aggressive China, somes reports were that sadly, players were simply killed by China in less than the first 50 turns.

 

For me an important reason to play GOTM is that it is there. It is this single map that i have a choise to play for a month and i make it the game to play.
If i do not play GOTM, civ for me usually is like this:
I start a game, the start position doesnt look good. I restart.
I restart 10 times, but the start position actually never gets better than that second or third start i got but dont have the save file anymore.
Frustrated, I play hearthstone.
I start a civ game again. This time i am structured, i start 10 games, keep al the saves and select the one i like most.
I play for a few hours, things go well, but not perfect. (they of course never go perfect because perfect is a theoretical something that just doesnt really happen)
I discover some ancient game like populous the beginning for download and play that for a few days, when i get back to civ, i dont feel "in the game" anymore.
Instead of completing the imperfect last game that i am no longer really "into", i start a new game with the intention to do it more perfect. Of course when i start a new game, i start in a desert or tundra so the process starts all over again.

GOTM solves most of that. I still abandon most games before finish, because enough went wrong to make me want to play the next GOTM rather than finish the last or simply because time runs out or my civ fanaticism for the month runs out before i finish. But its getting much better when i just connect my civ game to 1 game for 2 or 4 weeks. I imagine i might not be the only one who has this sort of issues with civ and plays GOTM for that reason primarily. As it is thus more than just a competition against other players, having a semi challenging difficulty level is something i like. Hence i suggested the handicap option because challenging can never be the same for different players.

 

Thanks for all the hard work to prepare these games for us.

Although I'm an Emperor/Immortal/Deity Player (on previous civs anyway), i'd like the easy game to be Prince/King, with some lower difficulties too sometimes. You can still get a challenge from lower difficulties by getting to victory in the fastest time possible and It does make you think and alter strategy when you realise you might actually be able to get Stonehenge or have time to plan your expansion..