Difficulty You Play on The Most

All right, IF you're a decent player, you'll win. This doesn't apply to you, because you just pick settings designed to make the game easier than it's meant to be.

 

If aggressive AI adds half a level, then i can assure you that disabling space race drops a whole two levels. Space race is the only victory condition the AI is programmed to go after (this has been confirmed by people in the know).

 

Again picking the right settings is a skill. If you don't know how to do that you shouldn't complaing because I can win. You should learn this first or you'll lose every attempt.

 

Winning on Deity with the settings you use is not truly a Deity win. That's all i'm saying. And there's no skill in picking settings when all you do is read a thread and apply the settings suggested in that thread. But i have zero interest in using those artificial settings and would much rather play on Immortal with normal settings, and get 10 times the challenge you get. Without challenge, there is no fun.

 

i'm with zombie. i used to turn off the 3 stated victory conditioins until i realized that the AI had no chance. they're still trying to win the space race (yes, even montezuma) if you lose one of these games you're doing something very, very wrong. or you have the difficulty turned up way too high. i play noble or prince. i just hate having the production + research penalties. i'm thinking of tweaking it so the AI gets the free units of prince on Noble. aggressive AI still act like a bunch of hippies, in my book. always war adds the half level.

 

A win is a win. There are no true or false wins. I win fair and square because I tick lock asset. You like challenges fine but challenge for me is how to win the easiest way.

 

It's not a challenge because you just pick the settings you read on a forum. The only challenge you faced was learning how to read.

 

It's too bad the AI's programmed that way, 'cause I can imagine the shock somebody would get when the AI was set to aggressive and space race was turned off and by 3000BC every AI was already dogpiling on you 'cause they'd set their strategy to kill human! I think all kinds of setting tweaks are fine, but I do have a real problem with turning off science victory. That's what spaceship is, it's a tech tree victory, but still having to have some production capacity. If you're getting beat to spaceships, I'm better with you turning off tech trading, although don't crow about beating any level when you do that either. I'm not competitive about all this and if you're playing it like "god mode" (world builder, no spaceship, etc...) then obviously do whatever you want, but if you're trying to beat the game straight up, you should realize turning off the spaceship is just as big a hack as planting a couple extra warriors in your city to start. JMO

 

Turning off tech trading makes the game much harder, not easier. This is, assuming you know how to trade efficienty. I know, because i've played both ways, and let me tell you it's a heck of a lot harder to keep up with the AI with tech trading off, especially at higher difficulty levels. One of the reasons why i like that setting...

 

I said for me its a challenge but you seem to not understand. And I\m certain for many others it's challenge too.

 

Chieftan, I'm a noob

 

I just moved up into Prince level based on all the help I have culled from this site. I was pleassantly surprised that I found it to be not as difficult as I had feared. I attribute that to the strategies and tactics that I learned from many users on this site. I particularly found Zombie69 Micromanagement posts and Wounded Knights strategy guides helpful.

Also, the user Sisiutl has posted some very insightful stuff that has helped me a lot. His game series in the strategy section has helped me immensely; reading through all the things that so many diverse people are posting in as suggestions got me stoked to try my first prince game (his current Egyptian game).

It went better than I expected and now I am ready to take a good shot at the current GOTM (Prince level, Sladin).

 

Just moved up from Noble to Prince, so I took a shot at my first GoTM too.

 

Play Noble and win if I get a reasonable start. I Am going to try Prince soon, so am readying myself for a let down when I get wumped!!

 

There is one exception.. Always war games are much easier if you turn of tech trading, for obvious reasons.

 

Played two games on Warlord and then moved to Noble.
Played some games on Noble and moved to Prince after it became too easy.
After Prince became too easy I moved to Monarch and this level seems perfect for me. It is challenging but not too frustrating.

Every time I moved up a level my play-style became more end more agressive, and I have now given up completely on the Pyramids and the Parthenon...

 

Noble. Pure balance.

 

I have been playing Monarch a lot now. 8-9 games ish. Im starting to win most games now. Been a bit lazy moving up to Emperor. Not tried it yet.

 

Capturing them seems to makes the most sense, to me. Once I figured that out, my game took off a little bit. Now, even if I have stone, I let someone else put all the time and hammers into the pyramids while I build swords to take it from them. I picked this up from a warmongering strategy article on this site and it has been one of the single most significant changes in my play. For three previous versions of CIV I was playing on the weakest levels and could not figure out why I could not get better.

It took a while for me to remove my visceral emotional responses to being a nasty leader, but that's what it seems to take to move onto harder levels: ruthlessness.

 

Deity is my favorite. I like an uphill battle because I thrive under that kind of challenge. Plus you pick up the game quicker because you are forced to act rather than think.