Early vs. late game difficulty

[Blue Ghost]

(I play on an intermediate difficulty between King and Emperor, but am thinking of reverting to King after a long streak of failures.)

I don't know how many other people feel this way, but for me, the discrepancy between early and late game difficulty is a major issue.

The early game is really unforgiving. A single mistake or spot of bad luck (picking the wrong policy tree, missing religion, getting forward settled, losing an early war) can easily screw up your entire game. And you're playing from behind throughout, as you haven't had the time to overtake the AI's inherent bonuses to everything, and the AI has ample opportunity to screw you over.

Of course, how hard the early game is depends on the difficulty level, but I find that if I play on a low enough difficulty to have a good shot at succeeding in the early game, then by mid game I'm usually so far ahead that the game no longer poses any challenge. This leads to the band of satisfying games being really narrow. Those games that fall into that band are pure awesome, but it's really hard to get there.

I've heard some others talk about this, but no one's brought it up as a major balance issue yet. Is there a way to fix this, or is it just inherent to the game? Or am I just crazy, and this isn't a problem?

My proposal would to be make it (as either the default or an optional setting) so that the AI bonuses ramp up as the game progresses. So the early game is less unforgiving, and the AI can stay competitive throughout. I don't know if that can be done, or if there are better solutions out there.

 

[tu_79]

You are probably playing peacefully late game. If you try domination you'll see how it gets tougher the more successful you get.

AI bonuses already are spread out in every age. You could manually change the starting AI units to ease your early Emperor game.

 

[Bromar1]

You are probably playing peacefully late game. If you try domination you'll see how it gets tougher the more successful you get.

AI bonuses already are spread out in every age. You could manually change the starting AI units to ease your early Emperor game.

This is what I do. I usually disable the free Pathfinder for AI because it gets them more ancient ruins and helps them snowball too early

 

[Blue Ghost]

You are probably playing peacefully late game. If you try domination you'll see how it gets tougher the more successful you get.

AI bonuses already are spread out in every age. You could manually change the starting AI units to ease your early Emperor game.

I suppose I could make things harder by going domination, but there doesn't seem to be a practical reason for that when it's easier to just win peacefully. I mean, some games I plan for domination from the start, but if my original game plan is peaceful, it feels weird to switch to war just to make things harder.

How are the AI bonuses spread out? I didn't see anything obviously era scaling when looking through the difficulty settings.

I'm already disabling AI bonus starting units. It helps, but doesn't completely solve the problem.

I guess it's just me then? The consensus is that the difficulty spread is fine?

 

[tu_79]

In vanilla, all bonuses were given at turn 0, so yes, they are spread evenly among ages.

What you are experiencing is when a civ gets the lead and no other civ wants to confront it directly because the leader has a strong army. If you had gone domination, AI would have ignored a little your military power, and you had needed to fight against several civs at a time.

 

[Workerspam]

The early game is really unforgiving. A single mistake or spot of bad luck (picking the wrong policy tree, missing religion, getting forward settled, losing an early war) can easily screw up your entire game. And you're playing from behind throughout, as you haven't had the time to overtake the AI's inherent bonuses to everything, and the AI has ample opportunity to screw you over.

Of course, how hard the early game is depends on the difficulty level, but I find that if I play on a low enough difficulty to have a good shot at succeeding in the early game, then by mid game I'm usually so far ahead that the game no longer poses any challenge. This leads to the band of satisfying games being really narrow. Those games that fall into that band are pure awesome, but it's really hard to get there.

Your description matches with my experience in games I used to play, but since I changed my starting strategies I've found the game difficulty to be more balanced from start to end. The early game is now less treacherous for me and the late game remains challenging; in fact I'm more likely to face crippling set backs in Industrial/Modern than Ancient/Classical.

Using my previous strategy and playing on King I took early risks, attempting to scrape by with a bare bones military while expanding aggressively and building early infrastructure and Wonders. When it worked it'd set me up with a great base from which I could grow and dominate the world. When it failed I suffered huge setbacks that derailed my game. I didn't recognize that imbalance until I stepped up to Emperor and suffered early setbacks constantly; civs did not tolerate any weakness at that level. So I adjusted my game, put more resources into early military, made smarter decisions (want to forward settle a neighbor? better build a strong military to back it up), and the early game became much less perilous. At the same time my runaway potential was nerfed a bit since I wasn't starting from a supercharged point early on in the games where my high risk strategy didn't suffer a set back. King went from an early fail/late runaway coin flip to a predictable win (with an occasional runaway warmonger stepping up to earn a win). Emperor is now a solid challenge; I rarely suffer early setbacks but can run into trouble or be overtaken in any given era.

TL;DR: In my experience taking big risks early contributed both to early losses and runaway wins. If you are suffering frequent early setbacks reexamine your starting strategy; odds are if you try a more robust starting strategy you can survive early at a difficulty level that will challenge you late.

 

[Blue Ghost]

So you're saying that the difficulty will be more consistent if I adjust my playstyle. That's good to know. Do you have any more specific tips on how to achieve this robust strategy?

However, even if it is the case that it's my particular playstyle that's causing the issue, I still think it's a potential sign of a problem in the game. If it were just that this playstyle is suboptimal and I couldn't win with it, that wouldn't be a problem. I'd just drop a difficulty level and play there until my game improved. But if this playstyle causes inconsistency in difficulty, that's not something that can be solved by adjusting the difficulty level. I know I'm not the only one who's encountered issues with inconsistent difficulty. If players have a tendency to adopt behaviors that are detrimental to the game experience, the game should be clear about signposting the players away from those behaviors.

 

[DimCarcosa]

As I'm an experienced Deity player I can share some strategies depending on playstyle.
But thing is, Civ V and especially VP is an unbalanced game from the start and there is not much to do about it. In order to fight that you have to develop some patterns and stick to them.
I am a warmonger so peaceful game especially on Deity is not my thing. Moreover, in my opinion, only war can make you a victor in high difficulty setups. But you must understand that what you wrote about early game is totally wrong. At least from my perspetive. Ancient/Classical is by far the easiest part of an entire session, merely because AI in those eras lack proper military. Only later they spam hundreds of thousands so do mind that in the beggining you have advantage which you must use. I don't say conquer all cities on your path if you don't like such playstyle but at least farm your small army to the point where you wield some best troops, veteran-like. Favoruable traties are also nice. Of course all depends also on pace of the game. If you play Standard then even warmonger playstyle will be hard. AI bonuses are hard to counter but as I see you play on mid difficulty so it shouldn't be so big problem as it is when playing vs Deity AI.
Remember about securing your troops. Not losing any until Industrial is a must. From then usually game turns to massacre so even losing 10 lvl troop won't hurt much as it wouldn't change much if remained alive.

 

[Owlbebach]

So you're saying that the difficulty will be more consistent if I adjust my playstyle. That's good to know. Do you have any more specific tips on how to achieve this robust strategy?

However, even if it is the case that it's my particular playstyle that's causing the issue, I still think it's a potential sign of a problem in the game. If it were just that this playstyle is suboptimal and I couldn't win with it, that wouldn't be a problem. I'd just drop a difficulty level and play there until my game improved. But if this playstyle causes inconsistency in difficulty, that's not something that can be solved by adjusting the difficulty level. I know I'm not the only one who's encountered issues with inconsistent difficulty. If players have a tendency to adopt behaviors that are detrimental to the game experience, the game should be clear about signposting the players away from those behaviors.

Here is an advice. Turn of ruins and events and don't use save-loads. Imagine you play multiplayer game and play SAFE. Do not play that "high risk - high reward" thing. When placing cities - think about how are you going to defend them, for example playing on deity i almost never place cities on flat land, 90% of my cities are on hill just because of that 3 bonus defense points.

 

[DimCarcosa]

Yes, placing cities, especially your first, can be crucial. Like in my current game I started on the coast surrounded by jungle 3 F no hammers with only gems to the north. Very bad start. But 3 tiles to the south there were 3 tiles of dyes and that's awesome. So sometimes it is wise to lose 3 or 4 turns of no developing to secure good position from the beggining. Plus, like Owlbebach mentioned, cities on the hills can give you advantage while defending since AI melee troops are dumb and often attack even with no backup from range units. Also try to find a hill with forest. When you settle you will get instantly hammers for the first buildings and that can be very helpful to obtain first policy or pantheon earlier.

 

[Workerspam]

So you're saying that the difficulty will be more consistent if I adjust my playstyle. That's good to know. Do you have any more specific tips on how to achieve this robust strategy?

However, even if it is the case that it's my particular playstyle that's causing the issue, I still think it's a potential sign of a problem in the game. If it were just that this playstyle is suboptimal and I couldn't win with it, that wouldn't be a problem. I'd just drop a difficulty level and play there until my game improved. But if this playstyle causes inconsistency in difficulty, that's not something that can be solved by adjusting the difficulty level. I know I'm not the only one who's encountered issues with inconsistent difficulty. If players have a tendency to adopt behaviors that are detrimental to the game experience, the game should be clear about signposting the players away from those behaviors.

I can compare how I used to play with how I play now.

Previous High Risk start: In capital build Scout, Monument, Shrine, Council or Granary, maybe an Archer, couple of Settlers, Wonders (targeting Pyramids, Mausoleum, Great Library) . Secondary cities went Monuments, Shrines, Councils, Workers, and Settlers, with a couple Archers thrown in. Starting Warrior (remember, older version of the mod) and Scout explored far and wide. I concentrated researching the top of the tree for the science and culture techs, or bee-lining a particularly valuable building (i.e. Forges if I have a heavy mine start). Sometimes neighbors would declare war or Barbarians would rampage through my lands and I had nothing to slow them down. Chalk it up to bad luck and start a new game.

But sometimes the Barbarians stayed away for a bit and my neighbors went elsewhere. Now I'm starting with 4-5 strong cities, early culture and science lead, and several wonders. I can now build a strong army to protect my awesome start and I end up in a runaway victory. It's not that the game was imbalanced; my starting strategy was imbalanced, leading to crushing failure or spectacular success with little in between.

Current More Balanced start: Monument/Shrine (if there's a particular pantheon I want)/sometimes Scout (I play with ruins so the risk is still sometimes worth it). Then Military; frequently two Archers or Spearmen. After that it will usually be Settler/Worker/particular Wonder in my capital. Secondary cities Monument/Shrine, then usually a military unit. My aim is to have enough military to fend barbarians and to hold off any initial attack from a civ while I switch to create additional units. As long as I have access to horses I'll research Horsemen early. Ideally I'll build 3-4; once I have that I can take some risks because I have the muscle to back it up.

Now I rarely lose a game in Ancient/Classical; when I do I can usually pin it on delaying Horsemen too long. And because I can survive the early game in Emperor I get a challenging game throughout.

 

[tu_79]

I can compare how I used to play with how I play now.

Previous High Risk start: In capital build Scout, Monument, Shrine, Council or Granary, maybe an Archer, couple of Settlers, Wonders (targeting Pyramids, Mausoleum, Great Library) . Secondary cities went Monuments, Shrines, Councils, Workers, and Settlers, with a couple Archers thrown in. Starting Warrior (remember, older version of the mod) and Scout explored far and wide. I concentrated researching the top of the tree for the science and culture techs, or bee-lining a particularly valuable building (i.e. Forges if I have a heavy mine start). Sometimes neighbors would declare war or Barbarians would rampage through my lands and I had nothing to slow them down. Chalk it up to bad luck and start a new game.

But sometimes the Barbarians stayed away for a bit and my neighbors went elsewhere. Now I'm starting with 4-5 strong cities, early culture and science lead, and several wonders. I can now build a strong army to protect my awesome start and I end up in a runaway victory. It's not that the game was imbalanced; my starting strategy was imbalanced, leading to crushing failure or spectacular success with little in between.

Current More Balanced start: Monument/Shrine (if there's a particular pantheon I want)/sometimes Scout (I play with ruins so the risk is still sometimes worth it). Then Military; frequently two Archers or Spearmen. After that it will usually be Settler/Worker/particular Wonder in my capital. Secondary cities Monument/Shrine, then usually a military unit. My aim is to have enough military to fend barbarians and to hold off any initial attack from a civ while I switch to create additional units. As long as I have access to horses I'll research Horsemen early. Ideally I'll build 3-4; once I have that I can take some risks because I have the muscle to back it up.

Now I rarely lose a game in Ancient/Classical; when I do I can usually pin it on delaying Horsemen too long. And because I can survive the early game in Emperor I get a challenging game throughout.

Delaying buildings in favor of units is another risk, but I guess it's a lesser risk for a human player.

 

[Workerspam]

True; every decision you make carries an inherent risk, since no move can advance all your needs (though a few uniques check off a lot of boxes). The challenge and fun is finding a risk/reward strategy that works for your style of gameplay.

I choose to go for culture (impacts everything), faith (zero-sum game), and military to start and concentrate on science and growth once my immediate survival is ensured. It's a common path but alternate strategies appear to work fine for others; skipping faith entirely and conquering a holy city down the line seems to have a lot of fans. I've just found that skimping too much on military leads to feast or famine games.

 

[DoctorDuke]

You are probably playing peacefully late game. If you try domination you'll see how it gets tougher the more successful you get.

AI bonuses already are spread out in every age. You could manually change the starting AI units to ease your early Emperor game.

How do you do this (manually)?

 

[Moi Magnus]

How do you do this (manually)?

In a subfolder of a the folder "(2) CBO" of VP, you have a file named DifficultyMod.xml. Everything is in that file.

 

[DoctorDuke]

In a subfolder of a the folder "(2) CBO" of VP, you have a file named DifficultyMod.xml. Everything is in that file.

Thanks, I found it.
Is this the line I need to edit:

<AIStartingDefenseUnits>1</AIStartingDefenseUnits>

I don't see a separate line for any Exploration Unit...

 

[matlajs]

i have to contribute to this, that i am also frustrated in my lvl up from king into emperor. I have been already used to playing emperor year ago, but now i can't get back into it. 2 games was aborted pre-renaisance bcoz of repeating CTD, but anyway, those would be another forced games like- authority-conquest because of no another option to catch up. king just seems to me a boring routine. while an AI is capable of solid early-mid game, they are uncapable of do the same post industrial( except some lightning AI civs- Ethiopia/maya). bonus starting units + ruins is one thing, their yields overflow, where they get a city into 6 or more pup every turn +1 is another problem. I was'nt able to found just once a religion. in 2 cases i would be a last, but another civ found that one turn before me. Why? becouse their 6 pop cities build shrines way earlier than me. I always ask myself, how they have been able to found a religion with pantheons, which they picked and area they settled. Sometimes i discover, that they controll mt. sinai or something like that, then i say ,,ok then, lucky ones''. I mean, that sometimes player can be just unlucky, but few start ups in emperor showed to me, that this is not a case. that is 100% dificulty increase opossed to king and i am also heading to decrease something somewhere, but i would rather not turn off ruins, because i am used to them like they are standard of a game.

 

[ShadedSkies]

those would be another forced games like- authority-conquest because of no another option to catch up

Even if you don't want to conquer, you should still declare war and send in a few horses to pillage their tiles and steal their workers. This is super-easy and has catastrophic consequences on their end, since I started doing this I consistently have double the score of my neighbors by turn 150 on Immortal. If you target the source of their pantheon that's one less religion you have to race against.

 

[Mad Madigan]

Yes, if there's one thing the step up from King to Emperor taught me, is that you have to be very proactive in hampering your neighbor Civs, even if you never intend to conquer them and/or go for a Domination victory. I got into the habit of declaring war on civs if I caught one of their settlers unguarded and near one of my military units, as this not only prevents them from settling another city, but it sets them back in production because they will then immediately start building another settler. Even if you want to play peacefully in the long run, you have to be somewhat aggressive at the start. Eventually these Civs may forgive you, especially if you do them favors later once you can take the lead. As for founding religions, if I'm not playing as a Civ with bonuses to help with founding a religion, I just assume that I won't and that I will have to conquer a Holy City later if I want to control one (which you almost certainly do, eventually). Occasionally I'll get lucky and find a Faith Ruin, but you can never count on that. Thankfully, at this point most of the religious beliefs have been balanced to the point where if you have to capture a Holy City to control a religion, the AI's chosen Pantheon, Founder, and Follower belief should all be decent. And on higher difficulties, the AI is more likely to make best-case choices at every opportunity, so their religious beliefs should be picked based on their best calculations for how they were intending to win the game.

 

[Txurce]

Yes, if there's one thing the step up from King to Emperor taught me, is that you have to be very proactive in hampering your neighbor Civs, even if you never intend to conquer them and/or go for a Domination victory. I got into the habit of declaring war on civs if I caught one of their settlers unguarded and near one of my military units, as this not only prevents them from settling another city, but it sets them back in production because they will then immediately start building another settler. Even if you want to play peacefully in the long run, you have to be somewhat aggressive at the start. Eventually these Civs may forgive you, especially if you do them favors later once you can take the lead. As for founding religions, if I'm not playing as a Civ with bonuses to help with founding a religion, I just assume that I won't and that I will have to conquer a Holy City later if I want to control one (which you almost certainly do, eventually). Occasionally I'll get lucky and find a Faith Ruin, but you can never count on that. Thankfully, at this point most of the religious beliefs have been balanced to the point where if you have to capture a Holy City to control a religion, the AI's chosen Pantheon, Founder, and Follower belief should all be decent. And on higher difficulties, the AI is more likely to make best-case choices at every opportunity, so their religious beliefs should be picked based on their best calculations for how they were intending to win the game.

I play the same way regarding neighbors. However, I am able to gain a religion most of the time with a combination of 5 quick cities (last 4 shrines first) and God of the Expanse. There are other, more situational pantheons that are also worthwhile bets. Crazy G has spelled them out elsewhere -- maybe he can reprise them here. What's harder is to thread the needle the way Carthage does with Commerce, and find the ideal pantheon for your civ-and-start that also can deliver a religion.