I'm kind of between difficulty levels. I play mostly on emperor level and the early game challenge is enough so that i really have to fight and play my cards right to climb the histograph.
However, late game, in the early-mid industrial age, the AI seems much less adept at managing its empire. You often see them building the forbidden palace right next to their capitol and neglecting to build factories/power plants in most of their cities. With a well placed FP and factories/coal plants in each city i'm more than doubling their production and at that point its pretty much gg.
Come to think of it, i've only actually finished two games of civ. The late game turns are too tedious and time consuming, and i usually just retire once i have an overwhelming advantage.
When i bump the difficulty up to Deity, it doesn't feel like civ anymore. I'm just exploiting the game and doing drone work (contacting each civ every turn for techs, trading maps, etc.) While i can do things like infinite city sprawl, or upgrading dozens of chariots to mounted warriors to swing the game in my favor, it gets old quick.
These observations are based on patch 1.21, so hopefully some things have changed with the latest patch. I just recently started playing civ again and am eagerly awaiting my Play the World exp to arrive. Amazon sure is taking their sweet time.
