Difficulty Trauma

[Dauntless]

I was wondering if somebody could help a poor NID (Noob In Distress ) I was just wondering if anybody could tell me why Cheiftain is waaaaaaaaaay too easy, even with aggression set to max, however, the next one up, Warlord i think, if really difficult (to me ) My cities r in disorder often, and the enemy easily outnumbers me I dont like playing on Cheiftain, coz im getting nowhere with it! lol

I dont even wanna imagine what the 'Sid' level is like, i'd probebly die of shock
I'm normally good at Strategy games.....honest

 

[Arathorn]

There are lots of threads on this. But, fundamentally, to answer your questions, more information is needed.

How are you winning on Chieftain? Are you doing anything different on Warlord? Are you expanding far enough? Do you have what you consider to be way too many workers? Are you actually LOSING at Warlord or just feeling like you're going to?

Next step is to point towards the War Academy (a TON of good stuff there), the thread in this forum on "Where to find good advice", and suggest reading a Succession Game or a good story. The info is ALL here, to take a player from Chieftain to Emperor (if that's your goal) in a few weeks, but it takes time to find/read/digest and implement.

Arathorn

 

[Dauntless]

Well, I normally win by letting time play its toll, and waiting until a fair deal of techs have been discovered. I spend time researching, and then towards the end of the middle ages-pre industrial age i tend to focus on making an army. Simply because i exploit the fact of being about 10 techs ahead of everyone else. (Normally 15 other players unless some r destroyed) When i start fighting, i regularly win battles, theres only the odd few i lose. On warlord, for some reason it feels like i've been moved by about 3 levels for some reason I'm normally behind on techs by bout 5 less than all the other civs. AI always seems to be able to build faster than me (could just be the terrain though). My cities go into disorder easily because of 'over-crowding' (is there a way to turn crowded complainers off?). The AI's troops r more difficult, but i can handle them.
I'm using similair strategies in Warlord than in Cheiftain. I'm guessing I have to be more offensive? (I'm worlds better at Defence, so thats my main focus.)

I did infact start a game with Warlord on today, and its not going as bad as expected...made it till year 70BC so far i think, and captured 1 (yes, you read it, 1, One, Uno, Un, Ein) city belonging to Russia, before both our armies came to a stalemate. Mine are primarily made up of Swordsmen, being the best i can build. I'm on a Peninsula, and not much land mass available, Russia see's me as 'technologically backwards', and finances have suddenly started falling. (Probebly due to the Russian War)

Is there anymore advice, or could this thread be moved elsewhere?

 

[screwtype]

Cities go into disorder because the citizens there are unhappy. To keep your citizens happy, you need luxuries, like spices, wine, ivory etc, and happy buildings, like temple, marketplace, colosseum and cathedral. You can also increase happiness in a city by turning citizens into entertainers or other specialists, but this will decrease your city's food gathering and therefore population growth, so you should only use it as a temporary measure if possible.

As a last resort you can make citizens happier globally by increasing spending on them (using the happy slider underneath the science spending slider) but you want to try and avoid that if possible as it diverts a lot of money from your tech research.

To make luxuries available to a city, you must have a trade route from the luxury to the city in question, which usually means a road between the two. A sea route can be traced from one harbour to another if you have available the type of shipping that can traverse the sea.

You can trade luxuries or other items for luxuries with other civs. You will need a trade route to do this - sometimes the other civ will provide the route.

One of the best happy buildings is the marketplace because it compounds the effects of whatever luxuries you have available, so the more luxuries you have, the more happy faces a marketplace will give you. But build temples and colosseums as well and cathedrals if necessary.

Oh, some wonders also increase happiness. See the different wonders to find out what effects they have.

Techs - don't forget you can trade techs with other civs, this is especially useful early in the game IMO, where you can get ahead of all the other civs by trading techs with all of them. Apart from that, you need lots of gold, so get out of despotism early as there is not enough gold in it. Republic gives good gold early, monarchy a bit less, but Republic is also subject to war weariness which is something else that makes your citizens unhappy. So if you want to make war on other civs early, monarchy might be better, if you can hold off fighting, choose Republic. Later you can switch to democracy which gives the most gold of all. Oh, and build lots of cities, the more cities you have the more gold you generate, obviously.

 

[The Omega]

At the start of the game, EXPAND! I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!!! HAVE PRACTICALLY EVERY CITY MAKE SETTLERS, EXCEPT FOR TEH GREAT LIBRARY(WHICH CAN BE VITAL)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Smilies!

 

[eg577]

Screwtype highlighted all the ways to make unhappy citizens content and content citzens unhappy. Civil disorder occurs when there are more unhappy people than happy people in that city. On warlord your first 3 citizens are born content, and all the rest are born unhappy. Therefore when a city reaches size 4 it will need some form of "happiness" to avoid disorder. It doesn't really matter what form of happiness is used, because turning that one unhappy person into a content person or turning one content person into a happy person will both avoid disorder.

In order to get good at this game you have to learn how to manage happiness. One possible way of keeping track of happiness is to think ahead or "check up" on a city every time you choose it's production. If what you want to produce next will take 8 turns to complete and that city is going to grow in 6 turns then you know there is a possibility that the city will go into disorder before you "check up" on that city again. Determine if that new citizen is going to be born content or unhappy and then figure out if that means the city will go into civil disorder or not when that person is born. If you determine that the city will go into civil disorder then do something now instead of waiting for it to happen.

Taking preemptive action to prevent disorder doesn't always have to be making entertainers, temples or military police. Another thing you can do is to change some of your citizens to lower food production tiles (forests and hills are good for this) and simply slow or stop your city growth. Although slowing growth is a bad rule of thumb in normal situations if the only other option to prevent disorder is to make specialists after your city grows then simply preventing the growth is usually the better option. e.g. a size 5 city with no growth that is working 3 grasslands and 2 forests is usually better than a size 6 city with no growth that is working 5 grasslands with 1 specialist.

 

[ManOfMiracles]

If you really want to make chieftain more difficult:
1. Eliminate the victory conditions you consider the easiest so you have to try different strategies
2. Raging barbs
3. Don't do normal climate and terrain
4. Huge map
5. Max out number of civs in the game
6. Play as a civ you haven't tried before (or random) so you have different traits
7. Use a different map type (if you always do Pangaea, choose Archipelago)
8. Set AI for most aggressive (I see Dauntless already tried this)
9. Don't quit a game if the starting position is lousy--find a way to make it work

I really think players need to put themselves through all the options on one difficulty level before jumping up to the next unless they really want to get smacked around.

 

[eg577]

IMHO, moving up out of chieftain is not something that needs to be done gradually. Staying in chieftain too long will only teach you bad habits and prolong your ascent. Chieftain is there to learn basic things like shields = production, not to teach you strategy. You are never going to get practice for warlord if you keep beating up the AI when it has two hands tied behind it's back.

 

[Dauntless]

Thanks for the tips all I started a game with only 7 other AI civs, now i feel like i have room to breath, lol. I'll gradually increase the number of AI, and since i got lotsa land, getting Luxuries aint much of a problem now (and I'm near lots a flood plains )

 

[Turner]

Don't be afraid to post a save and ask someone to look at it. Often times it's the best way for people to tell you exactly what needs to be done.

 

[Dauntless]

Thanks, I'll consider that, but all seems fair now

 

[The Omega]

Ya, my first warlord game, I lessoned the number of AI. I did really well, until the FREAKIN BAYLONIANS BUILT THE FREAKIN SPACESHIP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Sorry, out of room for smilies!)

 

[Dauntless]

Oooooo, tough one m8. I got the highest productivity, so i dont think the Space Ship'll be too much bother, now that i reduced the Aztecs (formerly the worlds superpower) to a group of rambling ninny's

 

[Dell19]

At the start of the game, EXPAND! I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!!! HAVE PRACTICALLY EVERY CITY MAKE SETTLERS, EXCEPT FOR TEH GREAT LIBRARY(WHICH CAN BE VITAL)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Smilies!

Just as a minor point it can be more useful to use certain key cities that have some decent food producing terrain as settler factories by building a granary in them first before building lots of settlers since its quicker in the long term than building settlers randomly in any city.

Also there is a useful article about wonder crutches where a player like I have in the past relies too much on a particular wonder so that the game is lost if they fail to build it so moving up to higher difficulty levels becomes even harder.

 

[The Omega]

Oooooo, tough one m8. I got the highest productivity, so i dont think the Space Ship'll be too much bother, now that i reduced the Aztecs (formerly the worlds superpower) to a group of rambling ninny's

Well, I didn't build it, because I thought the Babylonians didn't have the resources to make a spaceship. If I wanted to, I could have easily won space race. But I wanted to at least crush every world superpower first.....Oh well.
Smilies! [dance]

 

[Roi du Culture]

i think the biggest problem is that on chiefain, you get used to being unstoppable with little or no effort. You get used to playinga gracious and aloof stragy out, and thus have trouble fighting for survival.

 

[kb2tvl]

It is time to learn the game... There are hundreds of little hints that help others get an edge. Workers, granarys, manually moving workers, fighting early wars, trading tech instead of researching it yourself, not worrying about building every structure available...

Probably the best way you can learn on cheiftan is to manually move workers, trade tech and fight an early war.