Difficulty... too high?

[Dracul JOSHI]

Okay, first off.... I don't want any insults that I am bad at this game from a competitive angle, because I always played them as Sims where I try to be good to my people and others.

But here's the thing... I play slow expansionist... so the only real threat are early rushes most of the time...

And I did have a bad feeling about Scythia from the get go... thank god we aren't close.

I also usually play Huge-Marathon.

normally, I play on settler, when I just want a relaxed game or on prince, when I want an even match with the AI until somewhere around turn 600 when I take off. (industrialization). I have played higher games on Occasion, but I don't appreciate the AI cheating.

So I figured I would play a game of settler to figure out, how this game works compared to previous entries and picked China, because the Big Wall improvement is very much my thing.

to put it simply... I am stuck with 1 City enveloped by other civs since turn 150 (I b-lined for Stonehenge, as usual), both the hanging gardens and Oracle have been absolutely neutered, was denied the pyramids that usually give me my work force because I have no desert, am behind in technology AND I almost got conquered and only managed to survive, because my Warrior came close to their territory from behind to lure them back at the turn my city would have fallen to the war charriots... also, until the war declaration, we were even friends...
made worse by the fact that none of my friends gave a hoot to help me in any way.

So now I am turn 300 and pretty much settled for a Religious victory, because that's the only thing my wonders are really good for at this point (+4P) and the only thing I am ahead in.

Currently turtling up for future wars... building walls and Great walls... which means I am removing certain features, such as cows etc. which might bite me back another time.

Also, I don't like the Housing & Amenities mechanic... it's too unneccesarily convoluted. I liked Happiness... particularly since I could have the feeling of being REALLY liked by my people if I got it REALLY high.

Aside from that... I think the Heureka's etc. are a bit too broken... I think they should dial them down from 50% to 30% while keeping China's at 60%
oh, also, they should make it so that China gets the full bonus when one is triggered by a city state... because like this, it's pretty useless.

aside from that... I want an earth map... and a bigger map size, but that has been said before.

 

[alextarg]

I don't think difficulty is too high. IMO It is well balanced. If you fall behind at normal difficulty is because of a few things. From what i read, you focus too much on wonders, it takes a lot of hammers and the benefits are just too small. Try to get settler faster so the ai doesn't take all the place already and focus on food early on and hammer after. Hammer is the key to success. Build your cities on rivers (always) and don't neglect having a small army of warriors and archers (3 of eatch) minimum because on marathon, if you get DOW you'll not have the time to build an army fast. Ai will also think twice before attacking you if you have a decent army. I hope this will help.

 

[Dracul JOSHI]

I don't think difficulty is too high. IMO It is well balanced. If you fall behind at normal difficulty is because of a few things. From what i read, you focus too much on wonders, it takes a lot of hammers and the benefits are just too small. Try to get settler faster so the ai doesn't take all the place already and focus on food early on and hammer after. Hammer is the key to success. Build your cities on rivers (always) and don't neglect having a small army of warriors and archers (3 of eatch) minimum because on marathon, if you get DOW you'll not have the time to build an army fast. Ai will also think twice before attacking you if you have a decent army. I hope this will help.

I mean... it's good advice... but it doesn't really help much...
I completely admit that It's my own damn fault and I scraped by lucky, but don't like building units, because I am notoriously bad at keeping them alive >.>'
Same goes with settles and building cities... I don't like making them until I can make sure that I can protect them with at least a descent ranged Unit.
also, I am the peaceful kind of player... I am trying to make friends... and that works in previous V and BE, because the Cities can defend themselves from the get go...
Was quite a shock for me, when I realized with a war chariot standing before my front door waiting for reinforcements, that I couldn't bombard them.
Heck, the only reason I had an Archer to begin with, was because I bought it with Gold.

Also, why should I have expected, that a declared friend suddenly decides to wage war against me? The delegation didn't mention rumors and backstabbing, while realistic, isn't exactly something I expect.
And why didn't the other Friends of mine do anything against it? I mean, Peritocles I can see, he's a diplomacy focused player... but Montezuma and Cleopatra who was loving my piety should have been ALL OVER that in like... 5 Turns.

The game is incredibly skewed towards building armies for some reason, whether you use them or not...
Also, why did Ghandi of all people berate me for not having an army? His 'it's different to have than to use' bullfeathers didn't help either... and honestly... I need to google if he ever said that, because that sounds so out of character.
ESPECIALLY with the Wonders neutered.

Also, as I said... I am playing China, because I looked at the bonuses and they were perfect for my defensive-Wonder oriented playstyle...
regrettably the wonders are virtually wothless, unless you have divine inspiration... which I do... I figured that out quickly enough.
Oh, and why are they so neutered in the first place? Now you need space, the right type of Tile AND all the production... they should be actually wondrous now... like.. Civ V vanilla levels of Wondrous... or at least Beyond Earth.

 

[MkLh]

Well, I guess it's too difficult on Settler which probably should be a level where you can do absolutely what you want, always pick any winning condition you want etc. On the other hand, it's most likely too easy on Deity for powergamers who target victory over all and are ready to use any exploit there is. The AI is that bad.

 

[darko82]

No, it's not even on Diety:

 

[Dracul JOSHI]

Well, I guess it's too difficult on Settler which probably should be a level where you can do absolutely what you want, always pick any winning condition you want etc. On the other hand, it's most likely too easy on Deity for powergamers who target victory over all and are ready to use any exploit there is. The AI is that bad.

yeah... it has a lot of difficulties, but they don't seem to be diverse enough...

also, despite them making it more complicated again, I feel they just made it even more into a boardgame with some flavour text.
Really, what's the point of having non-war oriented civs if you need to raise an army anyway under any circumstances?

 

[Dracul JOSHI]

No, it's not even on Diety:

let me guess... domination victory?

 

[Disgustipated]

No, actually he did a space victory. I just watched it.

He could have done a domination victory. The AI always declares around turn 20 to 30 from what he is saying (at the higher levels), and they repeatedly declare wars on him, so he pushed back and took their cities.

I'm still thinking taking cities is far to easy in this game.

But the difficulty levels do need tweaking. The easy difficulty levels are surprisingly even. I am playing on the 2nd level, and Scythia produced a ton of units and could have conquered me if they were aggressive (they aren't aggressive at this difficulty). The AI seems to get more production than me at the 2nd easiest level. WTH? Scythia's military far surpasses mine. Yes I do have infrastructure, but my infrastructure should allow me to build more units, but my turn times are still slow. Nearly every city has an industrial district now.

edit: I should note my military is more advanced than Scythia, but they could still crush me with sheer number of units. In the early game they had like 20 warriors running around, all built and supported by 1 city. This seems too many for such an easy difficulty level.

 

[Dracul JOSHI]

No, actually he did a space victory. I just watched it.

He could have done a domination victory. The AI always declares around turn 20 to 30 from what he is saying (at the higher levels), and they repeatedly declare wars on him, so he pushed back and took their cities.

I'm still thinking taking cities is far to easy in this game.

But the difficulty levels do need tweaking. The easy difficulty levels are surprisingly even. I am playing on the 2nd level, and Scythia produced a ton of units and could have conquered me if they were aggressive (they aren't aggressive at this difficulty). The AI seems to get more production than me at the 2nd easiest level. WTH? Scythia's military far surpasses mine. Yes I do have infrastructure, but my infrastructure should allow me to build more units, but my turn times are still slow. Nearly every city has an industrial district now.

edit: I should note my military is more advanced than Scythia, but they could still crush me with sheer number of units. In the early game they had like 20 warriors running around, all built and supported by 1 city. This seems too many for such an easy difficulty level.

But this is exactly what I am saying... he DID a Domination victory... he just didn't complete it...
The only reason he DIDN'T get the Domination victory, wasn't because he was going for science instead, but because he purposefully held back once he got what it would take to get a DOM victory to get another victory FIRST.

 

[Nefelia]

New game, new mechanics. You'll have to get used to the new realities and unlearn a lot of ingrained habits from the previous Civ game.

I'm currently on my fourth Emperor game. The current three had nice start locations, but I made too many mistakes and missed too many opportunities. Each one was a learning experience that made the next game that much easier for me.

From what I can gather from your experience:

1) You don't build enough troops. You don't actually have to use them beyond creating a barbarian-defence force outside of your capital. Just having a decent military in place is enough to deter the enemy from attacking you. Build Ancient Walls in your capital as well at some point. If you make your city look like a hard nut to crack, the enemy will direct their forces at easier targets.

However, if you are the easiest target in the world, the invaders will come streaming in.

2) Most of the wonders are not necessary.
- Stonehenge is an expensive gamble. You are better off just getting a Holy Site and Shrine. The Prayer project is useful in generating Great Prophet points if you are in a tight race against the other AI.
- The Pyramids are also an expensive gamble: For the price of the Pyramids, you could have built four builders. FOUR builders.
- Hanging Gardens is actually more powerful now. +15% growth in all cities is far greater than +6 food in one. Regardless, even this one is not a must-get.

3) Earth map will likely be patched or modded in soon. As for bigger maps, the solution to that has been posted already. I'm thinking of getting that fix done myself, but thus far Civ VI has a lot more units in play than Civ V did. A slightly smaller map than I am used to might actually be more suitable for gameplay.

 

[ackadacka]

But this is exactly what I am saying... he DID a Domination victory... he just didn't complete it...
The only reason he DIDN'T get the Domination victory, wasn't because he was going for science instead, but because he purposefully held back once he got what it would take to get a DOM victory to get another victory FIRST.

What are you even going on about, its easy to focus any of the victory conditions. The way civ 6 works you can no longer just wonder spam all the wonders and all the city improvements, all the distritcs and wonders have strict conditions. If you do not expand early you will lose the chance to do so and if you give away your capital location to other civs or they find you before you find them they will also forward settle you.

There is also one thing about domination victories in higher difficulties, Unless you go full into domination and keep taking over cities you will lose to culture or science or religion anyways. Once you know how to war in civ and know how to stack adjacency bonus then you will start finding it hard to lose.

You just have to improve your play man, sounds like you just want to turn all the AI off and play single player..

 

[Frank327]

yeah... it has a lot of difficulties, but they don't seem to be diverse enough...

also, despite them making it more complicated again, I feel they just made it even more into a boardgame with some flavour text.
Really, what's the point of having non-war oriented civs if you need to raise an army anyway under any circumstances?

Well, there's different definitions of "raising an army". There's a difference between amassing cavalry and siege engines to take out civilizations and building maybe 6 units, half of which are archers to defend your cities.

Doing nothing but building wonders isn't supposed to be a winning strategy beyond settler/chieftain difficulty. You could argue that wonders aren't very strong but I think for cultural/religious victory they definately help a lot. But your second city is a lot more important than your first wonder for developing your civilization. You always want a good mix of military, expansion and culture/science/religion. That deity win video also mentioned trying cram a settler early in the build order, build some military and after that develop your districts.

 

[Nefelia]

Scythia's military far surpasses mine. Yes I do have infrastructure, but my infrastructure should allow me to build more units, but my turn times are still slow. Nearly every city has an industrial district now.

Are you over-investing in infrastructure? I have an empire of 7 cities in my current game, and only one city has an industrial zone so far (on a tile surrounded by 6 mines). The districts are supposed to be strategically placed. Look at your surroundings and build a district based on what would get the best Adjacency bonuses.

If you do not expand early you will lose the chance to do so and if you give away your capital location to other civs or they find you before you find them they will also forward settle you.

Yeah, I learned to never let them know where my capital city is, or get any sort of access to information. With their wonky hidden agendas, the more they know about me, the quicker they will start becoming unhappy with me.

I'd like to hold off on their displeasure until they have a genuine reason to dislike me (like my blatant and remorseless war-mongering).

 

[UnknownHuman]

I just finished my first game in Emperor difficulty with Cleopatra, and passed the early rush the AIs are basically doing nothing.

In terms of bellicosity after the classical era the AI seems to not want to have a huge diplomatic penalty by attacking its neighbours or rivals, which is alright because it means you cannot force the AIs to slaughter each other because of their diplomatic penalties, but the issue is that the AI seems to not be able to use casus belli properly meaning that once the classical era is over (only time where the diplomatic penalty is nullified), the AI won’t attack you ever again, or attack another AI.

That being said I played Cleopatra so it might have biased the AI behaviour since I spammed trade routes to all of my neighbours, but even in CiV the AIs often attacked you even if you had a lot of trade routes with them.

In terms of empire management the AI was doing fine regarding great people competition, wonder production, science/culture output, even if China, which didn’t lost one city, was one era behind, and religion spreading. However the AIs were doing more or less poorly regarding city growth, few of their cities were taller than 10 population and their capital was often near 18 population by the end of the game, with the exception maybe of the Aztecs which had good cities growth and a capital of 30 population at the end. Another issue is that the AI is doing very poorly competing for victory, when I colonized Mars only three civilizations had launched a satellite and none had sent a mission on the moon when most of them were at the same technological level than me, and it’s the same for the cultural victory, religious seemed to be better handle with Japan controlling most cities on our continent and the Aztecs controlling most cities on theirs, but the two never really went on the other continent. The AI also didn’t care if I was winning, contrary to CiV where the AIs would often form a coalition to take me down.
Another huge issue, the AI takes way too many time to repair pillaged tiles.

In terms of unit management the AI is behaving as expected never or rarely upgrading units, even if it has access to resources or could settle near resources. Concerning the spies the AI never moves them, in my game the AI was obsessed with my commercial district, understandably so since a successful mission granted around 1 700 gold, but it made stopping those spies an easy job to me since they always were sent to the same districts.

TL;DR:
A lot of things are to be improved, but right now, no the difficulty is not too high, at least passed the early rush.

 

[MkLh]

What are you even going on about, its easy to focus any of the victory conditions. The way civ 6 works you can no longer just wonder spam all the wonders and all the city improvements, all the distritcs and wonders have strict conditions. If you do not expand early you will lose the chance to do so and if you give away your capital location to other civs or they find you before you find them they will also forward settle you.

There is also one thing about domination victories in higher difficulties, Unless you go full into domination and keep taking over cities you will lose to culture or science or religion anyways. Once you know how to war in civ and know how to stack adjacency bonus then you will start finding it hard to lose.

You just have to improve your play man, sounds like you just want to turn all the AI off and play single player..

On a Settler level you should be able to play any style you want and still win. It's a sandbox level. If you're forced to focus on a certain victory condition etc. on Settler then the difficulty is too high on that level indeed.

 

[Disgustipated]

I'm seeing the easy levels as too difficult, seriuosly I should have at least twice the score, if not 3 or 4 times the score at this level, instead one AI is close to me in score (although the other ones are pretty low). And from what it looks like, higher difficulty levels aren't difficult enough. Needs some balancing imho.

 

[Dracul JOSHI]

I'm seeing the easy levels as too difficult, seriuosly I should have at least twice the score, if not 3 or 4 times the score at this level, instead one AI is close to me in score (although the other ones are pretty low). And from what it looks like, higher difficulty levels aren't difficult enough. Needs some balancing imho.

I know this is a total nitpick... but this is what you get when you BALANCE too much. What we need is a tweak, an intentional imbalance in order to make the difficulty appropriate.

sorry, but it really grinds my gears how people are always so focused on balancing things without understanding the concept of balance. Nothing personal. And thanks for the support ^^

 

[Ryika]

Low difficulties seem to be fine for the most part, you just have to get away from the idea that you can play "slow expansionist" without having a military to defend yourself. Prioritize some units early on, and once you feel you're no longer under threat you can start expanding. The AIs don't play very industrial early on either, so you will still get ahead just fine.

 

[Dracul JOSHI]

Low difficulties seem to be fine for the most part, you just have to get away from the idea that you can play "slow expansionist" without having a military to defend yourself. Prioritize some units early on, and once you feel you're no longer under threat you can start expanding. The AIs don't play very industrial early on either, so you will still get ahead just fine.

right now I just feel like going back to V and BERT and waiting for the patches and expansions to kick in like with those and then come back and try again.

Especially since I like the happyness system more to begin with.

Really no point in staying here and complain about it, when I can simply play the one I enjoy.

Hope this game will be much better when I come back... for everybody's sake. ^^

Just figured I would share my experiences and give an experience log like when I test another Programm... it's kind of a habit as programmer with specialization on testing and Q&A including advanced project architecture

 

[Ryika]

Well yeah, if you want an experience that is catered especially to your very specific needs then you're bound to be disappointed.
I don't see the big deal. Build a few units, then play however you want to play.