Here are the new difficulty levels I propose, in an attempt to fix various small errors, rebalance the whole thing to make it more consistent and make it easier to adjust in the future.
What's the philosophy?
Noble is the pivot difficulty
At that level, AI gets no bonus (except in a few areas where it's really bad). Still, Noble is intended to be rather challenging, especially regarding properties management (education, crime, etc.).
Lower levels than Noble make both AI and the game mechanics more forgiving
They're intended for players new to C2C that might have trouble managing all the new stuff in there. AI gets many penalites, the player gets many bonuses, from free barbarian wins to better goody huts, more free units, cheaper buildings and construction, easier to manage properties, less declarations of war from the AI, etc.
I won't detail every change, but roughly:
- Settler gives really huge advantages to the player, with bonuses in the range of 60% vs. Noble
- Chieftain makes the game significantly easier, with bonuses in the range of 30%
- Warlord makes the game slightly easier, with bonuses in the range of 10%
Higher levels than Noble mainly make the AI better
Each level of difficulty has the following effect:
- AI gets increasing bonuses. At Deity level, it's twice as efficient to build, grow, etc. (meaning it has a 100% bonus to production, growth, etc. The only exception is the construction speed of wonders, which ramp up to "only" 50% bonus for the AI). Intermediary levels are scaled accordingly. Roughly speaking, the AI of a given level is 15% better than the one at the previous level.
- AI is also less and less friendly with human players, starting at -1 relation penalty at Prince up to -5 at Deity (meaning you'll have a hard time making friends at that level). It's also less willing to trade techs.
- Some non-AI gameplay effects also get increasingly difficult:
* Barbarian are more challenging, they'll spawn cities faster and the player will get increasing combat penalties against them (including animals!). Again, Deity makes them twice as challenging with scaling intermediary levels.
* Revolution chance (with the Revolution option) also increases up to twice as likely at Deity
* Game properties (education, disease, crime) also increase up to twice as much per pop at Deity
* Starting location is increasingly worse statistically (that's already the case in the current difficulty level)
Here's the full table:
Are there other noteworthy changes?
Yes, now education, disease and crime properties are all based on a 5 points per pop increase or decrease (and decay set to 5% per turn), to allow more flexibility in how sources of education and disease apply and to make the system more understandable: now every time your city grow 1 pop, your properties will decrease and stabilize 100 points lower (all things being equal; you can of course construct more buildings to counter this effect). This loss of 100 does increases with difficulty: it's -125 at Prince up to -200 at Deity.
In order to rebalance the game, all sources/sinks of disease from buildings have been multiplied by 5 (since disease/pop was 1 before), while education and crime were multiplied by 2 (making crime in Noble about as difficult as it was in Prince and education in Noble somewhere in-between what it was in Monarch and Emperor). Note that the supply from civics has not been changed (since it's currently undergoing a heavy review by Toffer90), so the properties are currently much easier to manage early on (the -10 disease from garbage everywhere and to a less extent the +15 crime from no borders are less relevant now). Units (watchman, healer...) also weren't changed for now.
The next step will be to rebalance the whole supply of properties, so don't take the current balance for granted.
How do I install it?
Extract the files into My_Mods/RebalancedDifficulty.
View attachment RebalancedDifficulty.7z
(Old OP below)
What's the philosophy?
Noble is the pivot difficulty
At that level, AI gets no bonus (except in a few areas where it's really bad). Still, Noble is intended to be rather challenging, especially regarding properties management (education, crime, etc.).
Lower levels than Noble make both AI and the game mechanics more forgiving
They're intended for players new to C2C that might have trouble managing all the new stuff in there. AI gets many penalites, the player gets many bonuses, from free barbarian wins to better goody huts, more free units, cheaper buildings and construction, easier to manage properties, less declarations of war from the AI, etc.
I won't detail every change, but roughly:
- Settler gives really huge advantages to the player, with bonuses in the range of 60% vs. Noble
- Chieftain makes the game significantly easier, with bonuses in the range of 30%
- Warlord makes the game slightly easier, with bonuses in the range of 10%
Higher levels than Noble mainly make the AI better
Each level of difficulty has the following effect:
- AI gets increasing bonuses. At Deity level, it's twice as efficient to build, grow, etc. (meaning it has a 100% bonus to production, growth, etc. The only exception is the construction speed of wonders, which ramp up to "only" 50% bonus for the AI). Intermediary levels are scaled accordingly. Roughly speaking, the AI of a given level is 15% better than the one at the previous level.
- AI is also less and less friendly with human players, starting at -1 relation penalty at Prince up to -5 at Deity (meaning you'll have a hard time making friends at that level). It's also less willing to trade techs.
- Some non-AI gameplay effects also get increasingly difficult:
* Barbarian are more challenging, they'll spawn cities faster and the player will get increasing combat penalties against them (including animals!). Again, Deity makes them twice as challenging with scaling intermediary levels.
* Revolution chance (with the Revolution option) also increases up to twice as likely at Deity
* Game properties (education, disease, crime) also increase up to twice as much per pop at Deity
* Starting location is increasingly worse statistically (that's already the case in the current difficulty level)
Here's the full table:
Spoiler :
Are there other noteworthy changes?
Yes, now education, disease and crime properties are all based on a 5 points per pop increase or decrease (and decay set to 5% per turn), to allow more flexibility in how sources of education and disease apply and to make the system more understandable: now every time your city grow 1 pop, your properties will decrease and stabilize 100 points lower (all things being equal; you can of course construct more buildings to counter this effect). This loss of 100 does increases with difficulty: it's -125 at Prince up to -200 at Deity.
In order to rebalance the game, all sources/sinks of disease from buildings have been multiplied by 5 (since disease/pop was 1 before), while education and crime were multiplied by 2 (making crime in Noble about as difficult as it was in Prince and education in Noble somewhere in-between what it was in Monarch and Emperor). Note that the supply from civics has not been changed (since it's currently undergoing a heavy review by Toffer90), so the properties are currently much easier to manage early on (the -10 disease from garbage everywhere and to a less extent the +15 crime from no borders are less relevant now). Units (watchman, healer...) also weren't changed for now.
The next step will be to rebalance the whole supply of properties, so don't take the current balance for granted.
How do I install it?
Extract the files into My_Mods/RebalancedDifficulty.
View attachment RebalancedDifficulty.7z
(Old OP below)
Spoiler :
income, which is less and less relevant as the game goes.
for building them and allow it to explore and grab goody huts more easily, but not much more, meaning it's giving a very short-term advantage that will give you a wrong impression of the real, long-term difficulty difference of that difficulty level. 
bonuses that are supposed to compensate the skill difference between the AI and a human player.
