Game size/difficulty epiphany

[Smokeybear]

Ok, so I'd been complaining a lot in the past about how the last G&K patch made King a lot more difficult than it had been, in my personal experience. Pretty much forcing me to step down to Prince to be able to have a fun game, usually.

Well, I'd always played huge or large map size games up till recently, on marathon or epic pace- and it wasn't until I started playing my first small/standard sized map games at standard pace that I realized just how much map size has to do with the AI's chance of kicking yer buns on a given difficulty.

With the smaller map sizes, none of the AI's had the space or opportunity to start ICS spamming for mile after mile without any opposition, like many of them so often do on larger maps. And that city spamming is what makes a booming runaway civ (or three) that you just can't beat, when they have so much room and time to get away with it. Without the huge raft of crappy ICS cities to abnormally boost their science/tech output and spam huge armies with, they had to actually earn their successes against other civs, which takes more time and effort and resources.

Needless to say, once I started playing smaller maps on standard speed, King is once again a fairly easy difficulty to beat. Map size makes a huge difference.

 

[Heerlo]

I mostly play on huge maps also, and on vanilla Civ5 I mostly played prince. However, not long before I got G&K I was starting to do good sometimes on king. Then came G&K. For my first game I decided to step back down to prince for at least one game. I never have gone back up. It's seems like now I even have a hard time on prince on G&K, at least sometimes(still playing on huge maps).

 

[regeneration64]

I know what you guys mean. I usually play huge maps. In vanilla I started out on Prince to get used to the game and didn't find it too difficult. King took some getting used to but mastered that as well. Around the time G&K came out I was trialling Emperor and was trotting along quite nicely.

I went down to Prince again to get used to the new mechanics introduced in G&K and once I was used to these I stepped up to King. I certainly feel that King is harder in G&K than vanilla. I agree with the OP, my first G&K Emperor game was on a tiny map against Russia and was relatively easy. I stopped it early and tried a large map with standard settings but couldn't get a foothold.

I'm now trying my first huge G&K Emperor game on the Earth map (albeit domination-only) and I can sense it being a long drawn out bloody slog to the finish line primarily because of the shear amount of civs in the game and the huge map size.

 

[Zodan_Mir]

There's a reason all of the experts posting LP vids usually play on standard size maps or smaller. If you give the AI civs time--and, more importantly, space--to city-spam, you're setting yourself up for a more difficult game.

The biggest problem with civ5 is the seemingly unlimited happiness that the AI has (provided you don't alter the handicap), as happiness is the only limitation (with the exception of war) on the game's main advancement system: population growth. Everything is linked to, or is a result of, population growth. In a smaller/standard sized map, AI civs will regulate each other more efficiently, declaring war and getting in each other's way. On larger maps, you're just giving more land to the AI's to play with at the start, which is just more places for them to build 'tall' with city-spam before your own civ is even 'out of the gate', so to speak.

Also, I would argue that the AI is better with regard to combat in G&K. Sure, it still makes questionable mistakes here and there, but it is nowhere near the brain-dead AI found in 'vanilla'. Firaxis has refined a few things over the last couple of years, which has thrown the original player difficulty/AI_handicap 'balance' out of whack--especially on larger maps.

 

[regeneration64]

There's a reason all of the experts posting LP vids usually play on standard size maps or smaller. If you give the AI civs time--and, more importantly, space--to city-spam, you're setting yourself up for a more difficult game. T

he biggest problem with civ5 is the seemingly unlimited unhappiness that the AI has (provided you don't alter the handicap), as happiness is the only limitation (with the exception of war) on the game's main advancement system: population growth. Everything is linked to, or is a result of, population growth. In a smaller/standard sized map, AI civs will regulate each other more efficiently, declaring war and getting in each other's way. On larger maps, you're just giving more land to the AI's to play with at the start, which is just more places for them to build 'tall' with city-spam before your own civ is even 'out of the gate', so to speak.

Also, I would argue that the AI is better with regard to combat in G&K. Sure, it still makes questionable mistakes here and there, but it is nowhere near the brain-dead AI found in 'vanilla'. Firaxis has refined a few things over the last couple of years, which may throw the whole player difficulty/AI_handicap 'balance' out of whack.

Agreed. I understand that the AI needs some perks (espcially on higher difficulty levels) but the seemingly limitless happiness one really gets on my wick! Surely the AI would focus on their own core cities and other ammenities rather than spamming cities if their boost to happiness wasn't quite as great. It is also so frustrating on huge maps playing the land-grabbing game for the first 200 turns.

 

[Nukuler]

The biggest problem with civ5 is the seemingly unlimited happiness that the AI has (provided you don't alter the handicap)...

Are you saying that turning down the handicap is an option? How would I go about changing this setting?

 

[joncnunn]

Are you saying that turning down the handicap is an option? How would I go about changing this setting?

It's included in both the VEM & GEM mods. (Both also teaches the AI how to cash rush in general and happiness when needed)

It's best to create a mod rather than edit the files directly; steam is likely to resync them and in addition the G&K has its own copy of the files so if you changed the wrong file directly your change would have no effect. (To be on the safe side you would have to change both copies; and also keep a copy in a directory steam doesn't see so that if it did "update" it you could change it back.)

Global AI Defines, towards the very bottom is the global setting which by default is Chieftain; changing that to Prince changes all handicaps.

Handicap Infos has more.

There's a lot of lines where actual AI handicap is taken from a value on the (human difficulty level / 100) * (difficulty level pointed to in global defines / 100).

Example of Happiness:
Key fields are HappinessDefault, NumCitiesUnhappinessMod, PopulationUnhappinessMod, and AIUnhappinessPercent

Happiness Default is 12 on Chieftain. That is 9 on Prince (and all higher difficulty levels)

The next two values are 60 on Chieftain. That is 100 on Prince (and all higher difficulty levels).

AIUnhappinessPercent is 100 on Prince (& King), 90 on Emperor, 85 on Immortal (even lower on Deity)

So if your playing on Prince, by default AI has a base happiness three higher than yours and 60% of your unhappiness for # cities and population.
On Emperor; AI's unhappiness by default is 60% * 90% = 54%; On Immortal by default that is 60% * 85% = 51%.

Changing that line to Prince would change AI happiness to match the human on Prince & King. While giving the AI a more reasonable 90% handicap on Emperor & 85% on Immortal.
(But if you want to even it out totally on those levels, you also need to change AIUnhappinessPercent to 100 on Emperor and above.)

That same file also has explanation on AI building wonders early on Immortal +: It starts with a free worker and Pottery, Mining, and Animal Husbandry so there are several wonders it's only one tech away from and in addition it already has the worker to improve hammer production.

 

[Zodan_Mir]

Are you saying that turning down the handicap is an option? How would I go about changing this setting?

The AI-controlled civs play the game with HANDICAP_CHIEFTAIN by default (regardless of your selected difficulty level). To change this, you'll have to go into your GlobalDefines.xml file and modify the STANDARD_HANDICAP value.

For example, you can change the HANDICAP_CHIEFTAIN value to HANDICAP_PRINCE, which would give the AI-controlled civs 100% unhappiness per city, population, etc. instead of the 60% they have with HANDICAP_CHIEFTAIN. The AI-controlled civs will still have unhappiness bonuses based on your selected difficulty level, but at least they won't be as ridiculous. (The player difficulty unhappiness bonus is multiplied with the handicap unhappiness bonus, giving the AI-controlled civs a huge happiness advantage.)

After doing this, you don't have to play the game as though it were hopelessly trying to be an RTS (which is what so many experts seem to do and/or like ... for some odd reason. I mean, if you're going to reduce the 'richness' of civ down to a poor, pseudo-RTS style of gameplay (along with all of the expert commentary on what you *need* to do every game), then what's the point, right? Just play a real RTS. By adjusting the AI_Handicap and your personal difficulty setting, you can actually play the game to ... *gasp* ... build a civilization, instead of dumbing everything down to a "strategy" designed to overcome the AI's artificially inflated advantages.

The GlobalDefines.xml file is found in your steam program files directory. Something like: C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization v\assets\gameplay\xml\

@johncnun - Good points about editing the HandicapInfos.xml files. This allows you to keep the 100% unhappiness for all player-selected difficulty settings.

 

[joncnunn]

The GlobalDefines.xml file is found in your steam program files directory. Something like: C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization v\assets\gameplay\xml\

The second copy of it (if you have G&K) is in ..\assets\DLC\Expansion\Gameplay\XML

 

[ahawk]

Rough estimates of how I do compared to map-size:

* On a Duel-sized map, I can consistently win on Emperor and even Immortal (~97% on Emperor and 85% on Immortal)
* On a Tiny-sized map, I can consistently win on Emperor and about half the time on Immortal.
* On a Small-sized map, I can win on Emperor about 75% of the time and beat Immortal maybe ~33% of the time.
* On a Standard-sized map, I can beat Emperor about two-thirds to half of the time. Immortal, at that point, is not commonly a win for me.
* On a Large-Sized map, it's pretty difficult to beat Emperor at all, and I'd say I've only won on a Large/Emperor map of any type maybe 30% of the time, with well over half the wins coming on Archipelago or Tiny Islands maps.
* I almost never play Huge maps. The turn wait is too long, and there are so many variables that cannot possibly be accounted for that I don't even enjoy them, and, worst-of-all, unless I play Marathon, there's never enough time to move my army, even if it's superior than the AIs', to win the 'whack-a-mole' of knocking out runaways. I imagine if I played Huge maps more often, as a few have said, I'd have to play King or Prince.

The only significant mitigating factor is to change the game pace. Marathon makes games a little easier, generally speaking, regardless of what civ I am, but especially so as Askia, Bismark, Monty, and a few others (the bonuses of killing barbs are not quite scaled correctly on Marathon, thus Askia gets a ton of gold per encampment, Bismark gets a larger-than-even-he-usually-gets army, and Monty gets more culture per barb kill). Other than Marathon, the only other options are to eliminate the ICS space by playing mostly-water maps.

On a final note, the handful of times I've actually beaten Deity have been on Duel, usually when the random civ ended up being Egypt or another of the wonder-spammers. In such cases, I've usually pulled off an early rush as whatever civ I spawned as (and these being other than the two times I won Deity with a cheese-rush of GA Persian Immortals or Hunnic Battering Rams by intentionally choosing Persia or the Huns ). Otherwise, I've lost Deity many a time.

 

[soprof]

99% win @ immortal/fractal @ any map size (1500 army of mine > 13500 of AI)

like 4-5 times more difficult at diety, I have won at @large/fractal, but few autosave load's took place. Definitely possible to lose there (

I'm generally dissapointed with immortal being to easy, and diety being so freaking much harder, these 2 initial uberbuffed cities with this agression-focused buildzZZZ.

summarizing: I want one more difficulty level between immortal and diety! Let's say all the buffs from diety, but god-damn ONE initial settler.

 

[joncnunn]

On existing difficulty levels, there's room for one on both sides of Immortal.
The one weaker than Immortal could be all Immortal bonuses except the starting worker.

And yup; the one stronger than Immortal would be as above poster described and called "Demigod".

 

[Nukuler]

Thanks to jon and zodan for the answers regarding AI handicaps.

As long as we're on the subject of size and difficulty, I've recently been to wondering if it is possible to prevent or at least delay the phenomenon of "runaway Civs" on a Huge map by dramatically increasing the number of City-States in order to "fill-in" some of the empty space. Has anyone ever tried this?

 

[joncnunn]

As long as we're on the subject of size and difficulty, I've recently been to wondering if it is possible to prevent or at least delay the phenomenon of "runaway Civs" on a Huge map by dramatically increasing the number of City-States in order to "fill-in" some of the empty space. Has anyone ever tried this?

That would help on the margins: AI would be DOWing city states left and right if you increase them significantly, but city states are better able to defend themselves than a weaker AI.

However, it may make ascetics policy even more overpowered than it already is (if even a third of the extra city states survive)

 

[soprof]

Thanks to jon and zodan for the answers regarding AI handicaps.

As long as we're on the subject of size and difficulty, I've recently been to wondering if it is possible to prevent or at least delay the phenomenon of "runaway Civs" on a Huge map by dramatically increasing the number of City-States in order to "fill-in" some of the empty space. Has anyone ever tried this?

I somewhy think it'll increase lag, esp. lategame