[R&F] Emperor and up is plain boring

[Archon_Wing]

Most of the people who talk about only 1 way probably can't even describe said way.

I think that's the issue...

 

[Jkchart]

Most of the people who talk about only 1 way probably can't even describe said way.

I think that's the issue...

True. It's just "war is the only way to play".

Uh...is it because that's the pattern you always use?

 

[Archon_Wing]

True. It's just "war is the only way to play".

Uh...is it because that's the pattern you always use?

It's not even that. It's probably a lack of ability to even handle war well at all, eg. hold off early rushes. It's like if I keep throwing someone in Street Fighter; and they think all you need to do is throw to win, but that's because they don't realize it's trivially countered.

But yes, it does have to do with stubbornness. You'll hear a lot of nonsense that hasn't been true since Vanilla, and trying to play GS/R&F like it was is bound to end in faulure. Or playing it like another Civ game, for that matter....

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Most of the people who talk about only 1 way probably can't even describe said way.

I think that's the issue...

District build, research path, build order, governor order . . .

but as I said I don't think it's as strong as previous games.

Now I did say that there seems to be things that you can't do . . . things that should be possible that you need to just skip past at higher levels (by my experience, I don't play deity that much). I would like certain strategies to not be non-starters.

Still it's not the same as a few earlier games where your first many turns were mapped out for you beforehand.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I don't even think most people can even agree on what to build first. For example, I think Immortal and below, builder first is the best unless you can't improve 3 tiles. Some people have different opinions, and I respect their right to be wrong.

As for district? Well, campus is definitely strong, and most people will complain about it. I'm not even sure if it's the best first build as sometimes I don't even build a district at all for a while.

First governor is heavily up to debate. Amani, Pingala, Magnus, and even Liang have good reasons to be first.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Honestly it seems to me that difficulty is more varied based on where you land on a map than difficulty level. I usually play on Emperor or Immortal and it doesn't seem that different. In my first mali game, I played King and got whooped because I ended up in barbarian-land and got really far behind (maybe I could've caught up, but I'm a big fat quitter).

 

[Archon_Wing]

Honestly it seems to me that difficulty is more varied based on where you land on a map than difficulty level. I usually play on Emperor or Immortal and it doesn't seem that different. In my first mali game, I played King and got whooped because I ended up in barbarian-land and got really far behind (maybe I could've caught up, but I'm a big fat quitter).

Yep, Emperor game with strong leaders (Mvemba, Seondeok) is often harder than Immortal games with weak leaders like England.

 

[Sostratus]

Only way to expand from here on is war... always damn war.

What particularly about the early game gives you frustration? What makes you say "gah, might as well just roll a different game at this point?"
When i first played emperor+ I would always get this really defeatist feeling when I saw that the AI had so many more cities than me and stuff. But its not hopeless at all; I've had pure peaceful wins on emperor (small map) without even building campuses until mid game.
The Ai gets up to 80% production bonus, but you have a much more OP perk: the organic super computer in your skull.
A well built empire of a handful of cities can easily out-compete the AI blob empire. Most maps the AI does expand fast, but not so fast that you literally cannot place more than 2 cities - they may settle a nice spot you wanted, but it's not super common to get hemmed in on all sides (at least on continents type maps. You're asking for a tussle on pangaea.)
The most important thing is making sure what you do have is well laid out. Good district placing. An eye for where future farm triangles and mining rings will go.
The AI doesn't do this well and that means your exponential growth will beat theirs. Pack in cities with 3 tile spacing if you must (helps support more districts -> leverages your placement advantage.)

If you just remember "its the economy, stupid" you can overcome them peacefully. Even being behind in tech. Even when they invade and you're outnumbered. Even when they have twice the land area.
Obviously war makes it easier but war is a crutch for early macro management.

 

[Mahi]

What particularly about the early game gives you frustration? What makes you say "gah, might as well just roll a different game at this point?"
When i first played emperor+ I would always get this really defeatist feeling when I saw that the AI had so many more cities than me and stuff. But its not hopeless at all; I've had pure peaceful wins on emperor (small map) without even building campuses until mid game.
The Ai gets up to 80% production bonus, but you have a much more OP perk: the organic super computer in your skull.
A well built empire of a handful of cities can easily out-compete the AI blob empire. Most maps the AI does expand fast, but not so fast that you literally cannot place more than 2 cities - they may settle a nice spot you wanted, but it's not super common to get hemmed in on all sides (at least on continents type maps. You're asking for a tussle on pangaea.)
The most important thing is making sure what you do have is well laid out. Good district placing. An eye for where future farm triangles and mining rings will go.
The AI doesn't do this well and that means your exponential growth will beat theirs. Pack in cities with 3 tile spacing if you must (helps support more districts -> leverages your placement advantage.)

If you just remember "its the economy, stupid" you can overcome them peacefully. Even being behind in tech. Even when they invade and you're outnumbered. Even when they have twice the land area.
Obviously war makes it easier but war is a crutch for early macro management.

I feel forced to prevent a rush attack from a neighbor AI and that's the boring part. You never get a true friendly AI as a neighbor. It's basically the rush attacks that always happens no matter what that I find annoying.

 

[Takfloyd]

I feel forced to prevent a rush attack from a neighbor AI and that's the boring part. You never get a true friendly AI as a neighbor. It's basically the rush attacks that always happens no matter what that I find annoying.

This and similar complaints are simply untrue. It's obvious that you haven't considered other approaches. Do you even open the diplomacy screen at all? A few gifts is all it takes to get the AI to like you, and then they'll usually be your friend for the rest of the game. In fact, I've made a bug report on how easy that is because it seems to be an exploit.

Alternately you can make sure not to expand near the AI until you get walls, which are generally enough to ward off any early attack. You absolutely don't have to build more military units than just enough to deal with barbarians as long as you play wisely and don't play with fire. I usually build one slinger and that's it until I have 2-3 cities.

 

[Leucarum]

It seems like (as someone who is getting better at deity) that it's not so much that you can only play the game one way, but that whatever way you play has to be efficient. On lower difficulties forgetting to swap in a policy card or chopping out the wrong thing isn't as big of a problem as you have a lot more leeway from the AI.

That said, if you're brain-fried, just got back from the pub or otherwise know you're gonna make some mistakes a looser style of play might be exactly what you need.

 

[Victoria]

What particularly about the early game gives you frustration?

He gets attacked all the time therefore he plays small Pangea maps. As you know that is what you play if you want to war and just roll up lots of opposition.
As everyone else is saying, the game is very map dependant, and it is, you have to be flexible when you start but when you cram civs together on an island ...

 

[Bibor]

I don't know why some of you think that it's a question of inflexibility of openings, when its clearly not what this is about.
If you play on a Pangaea, there's a chance you'll be right in the middle, sometimes you'll have one, sometimes 4 or even more neighbors that you'll meet pretty much very Early. It's not uncommon for me now to actively avoid contact, because I don't have 100+ gold laying around to spend on delegations that early. And even if you send a delegation, there's a chance the AI will simply dislike you.

Now, with early AI on Emperor+, as you very well know, they start with more units than you do so they'll naturally see you as weak until you "beef up". Nothing wrong with that. But the way pangaea works is that the AI doesn't really care about distance, as long as there's nobody between you and that civ. I've had declarations from like 20 tiles away, just because there was nobody in between. And no, I'm not making this up or taking one lonely example and turning it into a "happens every time!!1one".

Simply put, If you see AI units coming your way, you can pretty much count on a surprise war and this happens on a Pangaea really, really often. Which means for the next 20 turns you're really (and this is what the OP is about) pigeonholed into a playstyle that has nothing to do with your choices or style, but a reaction to what's going on (while you had other plans).

Now before you start - again - commenting that you can play peacefully, note that (if this is the same, and I think it is, as in Civ4 and 5), AIs get placed on the map first, which basically means the human player gets whatever's left. That's why its oh so often a Tundra-Desert start or the smack middle of the map. And to get a decent city spot leaving you some breathing room, you're bound to forward settle someone. On a pangaea, any where you look, there's an AI there.

Sidenote, just had a really weird pangaea seed, almost like a continents map. And yes, the difference was huge. AIs were peaceful, even Genghis, my first neighbor. So this might really be a map type thing.

 

[_hero_]

This and similar complaints are simply untrue. It's obvious that you haven't considered other approaches. Do you even open the diplomacy screen at all? A few gifts is all it takes to get the AI to like you, and then they'll usually be your friend for the rest of the game. In fact, I've made a bug report on how easy that is because it seems to be an exploit.

Alternately you can make sure not to expand near the AI until you get walls, which are generally enough to ward off any early attack. You absolutely don't have to build more military units than just enough to deal with barbarians as long as you play wisely and don't play with fire. I usually build one slinger and that's it until I have 2-3 cities.

"I won because I did something that seemed like an exploit" isn't exactly a ringing endorsement for the AI.

 

[iammaxhailme]

On Civ 5 I usually play on difficulty 6, and in Civ 6 I usually play on Difficulty 5. Coincidence???

 

[Mahi]

Some of the people in here need to get down from their high horse. I know you can win the game in various ways but no one.. And I mean NO ONE can deny that the early rush attack is "hardcoded" (not really but you know what I mean) into every AI and is inevitable if you play on continents on standard map size and down. If you are saying you are not experiencing this, you are simply not playing the same game as me on the same map types.
Continents;Standard Size Map;Emperor; is the default setup in CIV 6 so why is the start of this default map always so blant and repetitive? Because it's simply a bad design decesion to have the close AI trying to attack you each time. Where is the fun in that?

Yes, you can play other maps to avoid it.. but why am I forced to play specific map type just to avoid this ridiculous behaviour for close neighbor AIs? I loved continent maps in all earlier CIV versions.
Yes, I can avoid being attacked - but I can't just ignore the fact that the rush attack WILL happen if I don't counter it in some ways.

It's not about "always war" throughut the whole game it's about war is coded into the AI in the first 25 turns and that feels repetitive and also just feels like a very lazy AI coding, where Leader Personalities go right out of the window.

"Oh hi Ghandi, who are worldknown as a peacemongering leader. Would you like to trade delegations to establish a dimplomatic foundation between our to nations? Awesome! I believe our friendship will last for centuries!"
4 turns later
"Ghandi, what are you doing with those warriors outside my borders?"

And don't start this "You don't know how to play the gaaaaaaaimmmeee!!!1!!! - I'm sooooo guuutttt, listen to how I steamroll the AI in the first 50 turns, n00b". The early rush attack cannot be ignored in 95% games on emperor, continents, standard map size.

 

[Disgustipated]

gifting the AI luxuries can also stave off an attack. That's part of the reasoning behind settling on luxuries recommendations. Sometimes it just isn't possible, but I can confirm it is possible on Emperor. But as mentioned above, if you play pangaea, and you start in the middle of 4 civs, you probably won't be able to prevent one or two of the 4 from attacking you. The other thing to do on higher levels is don't tell them where your capital is. Not always possible. But once they know the location, they may make plans to take it.

 

[MrRadar]

"Oh hi Ghandi, who are worldknown as a peacemongering leader. Would you like to trade delegations to establish a dimplomatic foundation between our to nations? Awesome! I believe our friendship will last for centuries!"
4 turns later
"Gandhi, what are you doing with those warriors outside my borders?"

How do you know that Gandhi is world-known as a peacemongering leader? I assume you're talking about meeting him somewhere around 4000-3000 BC? You both barely know the world. You've just met. There may be hordes of hostile people wandering about. Gandhi has just begun his millennia long journey of getting to know his true inner self and still is mightily confused at that moment. And he just met a stranger who he does not know how to approach, but who may have a settlement in a very attractive location, probably better than his. Why not to send a few warriors to have a closer look? Have you sent him a delegation? A gift? Have you taken the first step in building up mutual trust? Why anybody, anyone should trust you on sight just so, at the times, when it is customary to kill first and see if i was really tasty later?

It is ancient start. Survival is the first imperative. Nothing else matters. Hold the ground, get more and better land, and survive at any cost. Everything around is or might be a threat to your survival. Only when you're get established and safe from hunger, there might be room for such niceties, as thinking about possible peaceful coexistence.

But seriously, what would you be satisfied with, early game? Isolated starts? You get them sometimes. I mainly play standard continents. Sometimes war is inevitable and I build troops like crazy, but sometimes is it easily averted or prevented, and I get away with building very little military and without a single war the entire game. Sometimes I get caught with my trousers down, lose a city or even the capital, and must come back. But that's Civilization. It has military units, so be prepared to use them, else why they're there?

As for boringness, I find anything below Emperor boring, because there any thrill is as good as non-existing.

 

[Leucarum]

I mean, the AI needs to be willing to attack a weak player if it thinks it can win otherwise there would be no challenge. If there was an artificial ban on attacks during the first N turns the attack would just come on N+1 if the player wasn't playing in a way that included early defence. Getting that early defence while setting up your future strategy requires efficient play. And unless you have a truly atrocious start position, squeezing out a few upgradable slingers thanks to agoge isn't going to throw off your build. Even though early game choices are hugely consequential, you don't have a huge range of those choices in things you can build or policy cards so I don't personally think it feels too much like being railroaded down one path.

I didn't realise how many inefficiencies were in my play until I started asking questions. There probably (definitely) still are more. Each one of these is a missed opportunity to have a slinger, monument or builder, and these missed opportunities compound each other over time. Banning the AI from early rushes wouldn't have made me more efficient. And if you really don't like early rushes... Perhaps you would be interested in the word of our lord and saviour Sir Wilfrid? He doesn't do many things well but that is one of them.

 

[DJ_Tanner]

The early rush attack cannot be ignored in 95% games on emperor, continents, standard map size.

I avoid it in most of those. While I don't always play cont maps, I typically play shuffle, I do end up with games with no neighbors and others in the middle of 3 or 4 civs. Avoiding a rush from 4 civs is absolutely more difficult than avoiding it from 1, I'd say about 3 times as difficult, but it certainly doable and is no way "hardcoded" into the game. I have never assumed the AI would attack me within the first 25 turns and most of the time I am right. Sure sometimes they do something odd and attack me when I thought they wouldn't, but that does add some spice to the game, and I enjoy that. Most of the time I can balance the diplo with civs, of course if 3 turns in I see Monty is right next to my border, I gotta make a call, do I give up way more than normal to avoid the war or beef up, if I beef up I will war with him (or other early game bully civs like him) almost for sure. If you act with aggression, and expect aggression, you are almost certainly going to get aggression.

I say this and I am no expert in the game, I don't min/max, I don't know all the exploits (I avoid those threads because I don't want to accidentally min/max), but I do recognize that if I play the exact same way every game I will get the exact same results (it is a computer afterall). I have seen some people mention they have specific goals in mind each game, and while I don't go that far I do usually have different plans for different games, and as with any plan it goes right out the window 2 turns in. For me, this is why I love shuffle maps. I go in with a plan on what I want to do and then have to adapt to the game situations, but typically I am a very peaceful player and I try to broker deals across the world. In doing so I realized that to avoid a war you normally have to actually do something, it isn't just sit there and expect 100% peace from everyone around you. I make myself valuable, or I make my land less desirable if I think an AI is trying to get froggy with me. Monty wants my lux? He can just have them, for free. If not fighting is what I want, then I am going to have to give something for that. Alternatively, if I don't want to give in, or think the war is better for that particular game, then war it is and he will be happy to oblige me.

End of the day, its your game, your time, use it as you like, but if you go into a game thinking war is inevitable it will be, or if you approach the same situations in the same way every time, you are going to get very similar results most of the time.