Emperor/Immortal is more difficult than Diety

[fuzzynutz]

This is relatively speaking, considering the nature of the AI at the moment.

From what I have seen it is much easier to get yourself going at the start of the game (the most important turns) when you are playing on Diety/Immortal for a number of reasons:

AI has more resources to give you for your useless Open Borders and Luxuries (something they dont need)
AI starts with a second settler, allowing you to take a city from them very early
AI spams more units giving you uber promotions way ahead of what you would get on Emperor


I am sure there are more, but from what I have found Diety is less challenging unless you put restrictions on yourself.

Emperor seems to be the most balanced, giving you access to Wonders without taking the risk away from trying to build one that you would get on earlier difficulties.

Anyway, just my thoughts so far, how about you guys?

 

[Sullla]

That's definitely not true. While you can trade for more gold via resource sales on Deity, it's a major exaggeration to suggest that this makes the level easier overall. Perhaps the AI's second settler gives them another city to be captured, but you still do have to capture it, and I'm not sure why that would make for an easier game than one where the AI only starts with a single city. More importantly, the AI produces mass swarms of units on Deity (the "carpet of doom") which one simply doesn't see on lower difficulty levels.

Not that I'm saying Deity is particularly hard either - it's more tedious than "hard". But Immortal and especially Emperor are even easier to beat than Deity. The only way that a proficient player can lose in Civ5 is to be snuffed out in the cradle during the first 50-100 turns, and that's much more likely to happen on Deity than anywhere else.

 

[MkLh]

I've never tried Deity, but I think Immortal is considerably more difficult than Emperor. Unlike on Emperor, on immortal the AI builds decent amount of units and stays on par on tech. I guess even more so on Deity.

 

[Slowpoke]

Did you actually finish a deity game? Deity A.I.s start with an extra settler, so while you can warrior rush one A.I., the other start becoming massive runaways. On immortal, you can deal with A.I.s having less gold by eskewing gold for gold per turn in trades, it's much easier.

 

[pi-r8]

Deity might be the best for teching as fast as possible, for the reasons you listed. But it's also a lot more likely that you'll die along the way in deity- the AI's produce something like 5x more units than they do on immortal, and they'll declare war a lot sooner because the land fills up so quickly.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

That's definitely not true. While you can trade for more gold via resource sales on Deity, it's a major exaggeration to suggest that this makes the level easier overall. Perhaps the AI's second settler gives them another city to be captured, but you still do have to capture it, and I'm not sure why that would make for an easier game than one where the AI only starts with a single city. More importantly, the AI produces mass swarms of units on Deity (the "carpet of doom") which one simply doesn't see on lower difficulty levels.

Not that I'm saying Deity is particularly hard either - it's more tedious than "hard". But Immortal and especially Emperor are even easier to beat than Deity. The only way that a proficient player can lose in Civ5 is to be snuffed out in the cradle during the first 50-100 turns, and that's much more likely to happen on Deity than anywhere else.

Tedium can break wills .

I am reminded of shadowing madscientist's mehmed game, where his goal was a marathon TIME victory on monarch. I had to get some trash talk from one of the civ IV strategy forum's better analysts to anger me into actually finishing it. The global warming was ridiculously terrible .

I at least proved the overwhelming majority of the thread followers wrong about taking vassals though; you can DEFINITELY cheese the mechanics so that your vassals can't win as long as you take them carefully.

 

[usi]

Emperor can be tougher than Deity if you delete your starting Settler...
Somebody mentioned this in somewhere; I tried it, and it was pretty fun.

You don't have to choose Germany, as it is possible to capture a city with a well-promoted Warrior.
Real masochists should puppet all the captured cities and get all military units from CSs.
Game speed matters a lot though, and I recommend Epic or Marathon, depending on the difficulty level.

 

[Slowpoke]

That goes without saying. I mean any restricted difficulty can be harder than an unrestricted difficulty. Try winning settler by deleting all your units first. Much harder than deity

 

[JudgeDeath]

Or just don't bother to play. It's hard to win then.

 

[Jaycob]

Deity is much more of a challenge than Emperor or Immortal. The hardest part is that you are kept on the defensive because war is unavoidable and the AI will swarm you with units until you get a significant tech edge and are able to push forward. Usually there is a runaway civ or two that you will have to contend with as well. It feels like the entire game is a race to not fall behind.... which is why early, unanticipated DoWs are so brutal... not because you can't outmaneuver the AI, but it slows you substantially having to spend your limited production/gold on military.

 

[usi]

That goes without saying. I mean any restricted difficulty can be harder than an unrestricted difficulty. Try winning settler by deleting all your units first. Much harder than deity

I meant to be sarcastic, rather than agreeing with the OP.

 

[fuzzynutz]

My experience has been that Deity is beatable by using a couple of strategies, otherwise you lose. This makes Deity simply a "Walkthrough" difficulty with very little deviation in how your games play out, making it extremely easy to beat.

I find the other difficulty levels below it allow me to try different strategies, thus failing, and losing more.

 

[Jaycob]

^I would not call Deity "extremely easy". Emperor or Immortal could be beaten with the same strategies much easier. OTOH, trying those "alternate" strategies on Deity would be much more difficult to pull off. I honestly have no idea what you are talking about

 

[alpaca]

My experience has been that Deity is beatable by using a couple of strategies, otherwise you lose. This makes Deity simply a "Walkthrough" difficulty with very little deviation in how your games play out, making it extremely easy to beat.

I find the other difficulty levels below it allow me to try different strategies, thus failing, and losing more.

You do realize that you got this completely backwards? It's the easier difficulty that allows you to use probably weaker, but certainly less well-developed strategies to win. This is one of the signs that deity is harder: You need to find a good strategy, or will lose. If someone finds a strategy that's good enough so you don't get out-teched and out-gunned on deity they will post about it for you to know. So you can copy it.

Most of these strategies would work on lower difficulties, except for the warrior rush, and be even more effective (such as ICS).

I also don't agree deity is easier. It's harder, but, above all, it's a lot more tedious. So I personally prefer Immortal where the AI doesn't have such ridiculous amounts of units they will always DOW you no matter what.

 

[LordTC]

Deity is very hard on Marathon on a huge pangaea map with a large number of opposing civs. The bonuses the AI gets at deity cause problems a lot more at marathon speed than at any other, and pangaea limits the usefulness of boats, which reduces an AI weakness. Also at marathon speed warrior rushing is trickier because the AI has more time to explore and often pops spears from a hut.