does playing on lower difficulties teach you bad habits?

[Victoria]

If I want to struggle I'll go deity, this makes my emporer games quite easy and peaceful. I use prince to try out things that get your skill levels up like the 100 envoy challenge or win a science victory with just 5 cities or a tough one the other day was capture 10 ships with seadogs... that was tough because I had trouble finding 10 ships.

If you play at a lower level with a good hard training target it can make your skills better. Without that target I agree you can get lazy but equally fully support other comments here, it all just depends.

 

[Disgustipated]

Probably not as much as older games like SMAC where things like happiness were affected by difficulty level. Dealing with unhappy citizens or drones were much easier on lower difficulty levels. The way things are now, your side develops the same to my understanding, where's it's only the AI that gets bonuses.

I prefer a mid difficulty level as I don't stress about mistakes. My current game I made a few mistakes like forgetting to change out policy cards. In fact, that's the mistake I make the most. I don't utilize policy cards nearly as well as I should. I get so engrossed in the game, I forget to change policies.

 

[steveg700]

As difficulties increase, we are progressively talking more and more about a game where "skill" is generally an exercise in sticking a script; a game where experimentation leads to inefficiency and exposure to unacceptable risk. Beeline along a well-established path that's set early and prune away any branches of gameplay that are limited to first-come-first-serve, because you won't be amongst the first. These are the keys to prosperity for most folks playing at high difficulties. This is distinctly contrary to what we tend to think makes a person skilled: being resourceful, daring, innovative .

I don't really grock the appeal of deity as one's default difficulty, since at that point you've given up on aspects of the game like wonders and religion as viable avenues to victory. You build armies to avoid being wiped out by your way-too-close neighbors, ideally taking their cities in turn to exploit their progress up until the point of conquest. Then you can turn your focus to chucking out settlers rapidamente. Grow your population so you don't fall behind in all-important science. Could playing game after game in an efficiency-obsessed fashion based on pre-programmed strategy not be construed as teaching a bad habit as well?

 

[craney1987]

I get so engrossed in the game, I forget to change policies.

I have this problem when I beeline. If I just pick one at time it's reminder for me to check my deck

Could playing game after game in an efficiency-obsessed fashion based on pre-programmed strategy not be construed as teaching a bad habit as well?

not being a deity player I hadn't considered this. It seems so odd to me that with each in difficulty the game needs to be played different to the way you had just learned.

 

[Balkans]

Could playing game after game in an efficiency-obsessed fashion based on pre-programmed strategy not be construed as teaching a bad habit as well?

Playing in efficiency-obsessed fashion in this kind of game is opposite of developing a bad habit. As for pre-programmed strategy, it all depends on player creativity - for me personally there is absolutely never anything pre-programmed, the only thing that drives my strategy is what is going on on the map and what i see i could make of the map. The only reason i play on high difficulty is because that's the only setting i can immerse myself and make my decision count. I like to make a decision that actually counts, that actually goes different path and by doing so make more or less risk.
Yea, sure, you lose the aspect of building wonders, and stuff like that, but i can't even put to words the feeling of managing to squeeze a wonder on deity while risking your head to aggressive neighbor. It just doesn't feel right for me when you can have it all. I like to struggle as much as possible, so that achieving anything easy down the line becomes that much sweeter.

 

[Lanthar]

I don't think "Bad Habits" is the appropriate term, necessarily.

Playing at lower difficulty levels could lead to you playing less efficiently for a win, since lower levels are more forgiving of experimentation and less efficient play.

 

[Kyro]

I don't think "Bad Habits" is the appropriate term, necessarily.

Playing at lower difficulty levels could lead to you playing less efficiently for a win, since lower levels are more forgiving of experimentation and less efficient play.

I think we should make a distinction between:

Playing styles that are actually bad habits.

And

Playing styles that are considered bad habits because they don't measure up against other strategies more empowered in the game.

Placing cities at bad locations, forgetting to trade luxuries, not building an army, letting barbarians run amok, bad district placements, not prioritizing crucial resources. Those are bad habits and it is true that you can get away with many of them at lower difficulties.

The problem we are highlighting here however, is that integral parts of the game that players enjoy are more and more becoming "bad habits" in the game.

Specifically, Wonders, Religion and basically just not being a Genghis Khan.

Wonders, Religion and building are all crucial elements of the game. The fact that they can be cast aside so easily and without significant consequences speaks volumes about the state of imbalance in the game.

This imbalanced destribution of power to different but sound strategies can only result in overcentralized play styles.

You want to play this way and that, but you can't because they're just not as good as that one boring thing that is just better than anything else. It's just not satisfying to try out other strategies that you know is just not as powerful.

In short, the freedom to play/execute strategies is directly related to the amount of power the devs allocate to different elements that make up the game and in order for freedom to truly exist power must be evenly distributed.

Wonders/Religion/Peaceful Expansion are just very underpowered right now so they are automatically regarded as inefficiencies and "bad habits".

 

[Lanthar]

I agree with you, @Kyro, on your points about Civ VI - the paths to victory are not balanced. Hopefully future expansions will improve this.

I was commenting in general, but do see your point that there are objectively bad habits that could be developed, like terrible city placement, over districting, etc.

 

[_hero_]

If anything I think playing on higher difficulties teaches you bad habits. I prefer immortal or even emperor sometimes and trying to develop peacefully, beating the AI just by being more efficient than them. That is harder than playing Deity and conquering your neighbours. In doing so, you're effectively turning the difficulty down several levels. It's basically playing King except you have to take over your neighbours by classical if you want to keep playing.

Ancient wars are clearly something we're supposed to engage in, but taking out all your neighbours' steroid grown deity cities is cheesy. I still enjoy Deity sometimes, but it's by no means the ideal for how the game aught to be played. It is broken by design in order to offer the highest reasonable level of challenge, but in doing so it really just exaggerates some of the game's current balance issues and exploits.

Yeah. Things like religion and wonders were put into the game because they were intended to be put to use, but just like every other civ game the devs made them not worth the effort on the highest difficulties. Winning on Diety has always come down to taking advantage of the AIs sup-par military ability and/or cheesing mechanics.

 

[joncnunn]

In the sense of building too many and in some cases the wrong wonders, yes playing on too low a difficulty level can teach bad habits. (There's some wonders in Civ VI that aren't really worth the opportunity cost at Prince; just like previous versions)

And in addition playing on too low a difficulty level can lead to insufficient attention to micro for a higher level. (I note though that with the current state of the AI that if you are good enough warmonger you can win Deity in Civ VI with very little micro.) There's also the note that you can achieve any victory condition on Deity other than Religious by using your military well enough simply to conquer the AIs with the best shot at winning before you reach your desired victory condition.

As to religion: To me it looks like founding a religion is only worth the opportunity cost in Civ VI if you are intending on winning via a Religious or Cultural victory. So it's not the part of founding a religion on Prince per se being a bad habit but doing that and then seeking either science or domination victory that would be.