Has the difficulty level been increased in a recent patch?

[bonafide11]

I haven't played the game post-patch a lot yet, but from the Emperor game I've played, I haven't noticed any increase in difficulty.

 

[Quineloe]

Montezuma (predictably) but also Assyria which launched a full assault about 800BC with no less than 5 of those siege towers backed up by a horseman, several warriors and two spearmen. I didn't stand a chance lol - the siege towers have a strength of 12 and can take an ancient city with two or three hits.

I've seen a tower spam attack by Assyria before on king, way before the beta. Did you have no army at all and he just knew you'd be a pushover? In my case I had 6 military units and was able to actually hold it off because the city he went for only had two tiles where you could attack without river penalty, and I held one of it throughout the fight.

I can never understand players who insist on playing high difficulty levels and then complain the game is too hard or forces them to play a certain way just to survive. If you want to play "casually", drop to Prince or below - that's what those difficulties are there for!

Problem with Prince is that the game is mind numbingly boring in the second half because you outclass every opponent by a large margin.

It would be nice if there were a difficulty setting that gets progressively harder throughout the game, instead most of the difficulty is frontloaded in the first 75 turns.

 

[neilkaz]

Military heavy AIs don't build many buildings.
Since they aren't building many of them, they don't have much building maintenance and so can afford the unit maintenance.

Now the AI has always gotten happiness bonuses.

Have the AI's gotten happiness bonuses with the patch? I noted that they seemed to have tremendous happiness again, like in BNW. This sucks since now they are much less likely to have issues due to ideoligical pressure.

.. neilkaz ..

 

[DemonMaster]

Have the AI's gotten happiness bonuses with the patch? I noted that they seemed to have tremendous happiness again, like in BNW. This sucks since now they are much less likely to have issues due to ideoligical pressure.

.. neilkaz ..

Have wondered this myself in my beta-games. The AI controlled the ideology pressure fine in my games or at least not bad.

Question: The unhappiness from ideology-pressure, are those suppose to be deducted from your total or is it just a number. I tried to find it in the total, but didn't find my unhappiness (from ideology) deducted. But can be have seen wrong.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

In all recent beta-patched games, AIs who open Honor tend to try and send an attack force by early Classical just like in "good" old G&K days (Immortal/Deity) They also tend to send better mix of units for what i've seen (number of archers/CBs along some melee and possibly horsemen, fewer cats then before, they couldn't use them anyway) They are not much better at using them (melee still attacking non damaged cities and being killed before they can actually take it), but if you are not prepared, you're going for a nasty surprise. Also, i tried to bribe Dido when i saw her coming for me with an obvious attack force, but she refused attacking anybody else. Maybe they finally fixed the AIs war decision so that it no longer accepts to DoW just about anyone even after they choose a target.

It's fine for me, the ultra passive AI of early BNW was as bad as the psychopatic AI of G&K and at least here, peaceful civs tend to be peaceful. However, i guess we'll see lots of "wtf, the game haz becom impossable!" threads after the patch is released

 

[Dogmouth]

In all recent beta-patched games, AIs who open Honor tend to try and send an attack force by early Classical just like in "good" old G&K days (Immortal/Deity) They also tend to send better mix of units for what i've seen (number of archers/CBs along some melee and possibly horsemen, fewer cats then before, they couldn't use them anyway) They are not much better at using them (melee still attacking non damaged cities and being killed before they can actually take it), but if you are not prepared, you're going for a nasty surprise. Also, i tried to bribe Dido when i saw her coming for me with an obvious attack force, but she refused attacking anybody else. Maybe they finally fixed the AIs war decision so that it no longer accepts to DoW just about anyone even after they choose a target.

It's fine for me, the ultra passive AI of early BNW was as bad as the psychopatic AI of G&K and at least here, peaceful civs tend to be peaceful. However, i guess we'll see lots of "wtf, the game haz becom impossable!" threads after the patch is released

This has been my experience as well, and like you I also found the early passive AI dull. I wonder whether we're going to see a lot of early warmongers collapse now, because their appetite for early war appears to be greater than the value of early war. By contrast, in G&K, early conquest was really profitable, so the warmongers who actually went to war tended to do pretty well.

 

[Horizons]

The game gets changed so often (in patches, not just expansions) - your entire strategy changes after each and every patch because so many changes have been made to the mechanics. I guess I just can't keep up with it any more.

 

[greygamer]

I've seen a tower spam attack by Assyria before on king, way before the beta. Did you have no army at all and he just knew you'd be a pushover? In my case I had 6 military units and was able to actually hold it off because the city he went for only had two tiles where you could attack without river penalty, and I held one of it throughout the fight.



Problem with Prince is that the game is mind numbingly boring in the second half because you outclass every opponent by a large margin.

It would be nice if there were a difficulty setting that gets progressively harder throughout the game, instead most of the difficulty is frontloaded in the first 75 turns.

That does indeed seem to be the way the difficulty levels work, it just becomes a question of if/when you catch up or pass them with each successive difficulty level causing that to occur later on in the game.

Personally I find King to be my comfort/fun level, I can just about hold my own at Emperor before falling behind in the later eras. Knowing who your neighbours are should dictate the early game ...never tell Atilla where your capital is!

I don't have serious gold issues early on, sell some luxuries to tide yourself over until your cities can establish good trade routes. Caravansaries or coastal cities really help with this, but you do need to keep at least 1 neighbour at least neutral towards you or you will find gold an issue.

I'm not sure what they can do to stop the game from ultimately being a science race with some random elements thrown in.

 

[Yucatan]

At immortal level, Stonehenge and Pyramids are spammed more quickly than pre-beta in my games. Does it happen to you ? Their teching seems also a bit faster.

 

[Quineloe]

Someone just built Great Library on turn 60 on my girlfriends chieftain game.

I'm like whaaat?

 

[NyQuil]

I'm playing my first game on King but got a ridiculous desert start with about 4 salts and a dye, plus a river, plus Petra, plus desert folklore, so I'm not really getting a sense of it. As Morocco, I've got a whole bunch of kasbahs and trading posts.

Genghis Khan is next door and I've had to pay him off to keep taking city states. Sweden started next to him which is about as bad as it gets for that civ - Stockholm was gone in the Medieval ages.

I did help him take out Siam if only to use the city as a buffer between me and him.

 

[joshua43214]

Just finished a patched Immortal OCC with Babylon. The Ai is definitely teching faster. The AI is still doing weird things though. Had Greece as my next door neighbor, he took honor and expected forward settled right up to me, never DoW'd and took Freedom with 16 cities. Morocco forward settled my opposite border, went tradition and piety then took Autocracy with 4 cities and stayed peaceful the entire game.

Win times are definitely longer, mine was 312 in a game where I got the Petra with Babs, this normally would have been a 290ish win. I actually had to buy the last three spaceship parts because of build times.

 

[joncnunn]

Have the AI's gotten happiness bonuses with the patch? I noted that they seemed to have tremendous happiness again, like in BNW. This sucks since now they are much less likely to have issues due to ideoligical pressure.

.. neilkaz ..

The beta patch has not change the handicap xml file at all.
It's still on the Brave New World initial release version.

As to what has happened: The Beta has increased the threshold for the AI to found a city. Given that junk cities is the #1 reason for happiness issues, the AI now having more happiness means that the improved AI city placement code is working. (But they haven't yet gotten around to decreasing the AI happiness bonuses to compensate.)

Similarly, the AI should build more Libraries, Universities, etc. than before since their science flavors have increased, but it hasn't had it's science handicap bonus decreased.

 

[Gort]

As to what has happened: The Beta has increased the threshold for the AI to found a city. Given that junk cities is the #1 reason for happiness issues, the AI now having more happiness means that the improved AI city placement code is working.

I dunno, we're still seeing stuff like the AI building cities on 1-tile islands with a single fish resource. There's work to be done on "junk cities".

 

[Scott Jegg]

Those ones aren't entirely junk. I seen a picture of one today that was size 14. As long as they can grow and have science buildings bought in them, they can generate a reasonable amount beakers.

 

[Aaron90495]

Someone just built Great Library on turn 60 on my girlfriends chieftain game.

I'm like whaaat?

I'm just jealous your girlfriend plays Civ. Couldn't get mine to touch any video game if her life depended on it.

Back on topic, yes, the game seems to have gotten noticeably harder. In my two Deity games (not a huge sample size, I know, but it's all I have to go by), all the AI's expanded quicker - and to better spots - than they did pre-patch. They also seem to be teching faster, having better unit balance, and founding religions faster. I haven't played enough to make a firm judgment, but it seems like every level has been effectively increased by 1/3 to 1/2 - i.e. post-patch Immortal is right between pre-patch Immortal and Deity.

 

[joncnunn]

I dunno, we're still seeing stuff like the AI building cities on 1-tile islands with a single fish resource. There's work to be done on "junk cities".

I didn't mean that the mission was completely accomplished; but really meant it's a big step forward that the very worst of the junk city sites aren't being founded.

I am though thinking that at current AI handicap level, the above site is merely marginal since it can grow, particularly at the handicap levels commonly seen in this forum by experts.

 

[Horizons]

lol I will need to go back to Prince, if I play Civ5 again that is. It is clearly being 'optimized' for the hardcore players at this stage, and will likely become less and less 'fun'.

 

[JanghanHong]

I expected a little jump in difficulty in emperor difficulty.

Everybody does science better now, which is good since I'm always the science lead by too much.

 

[Dogmouth]

lol I will need to go back to Prince, if I play Civ5 again that is. It is clearly being 'optimized' for the hardcore players at this stage, and will likely become less and less 'fun'.

I still don't understand why non-"hardcore" players want to play above Prince. Prince is the default difficulty. It's designed for casual players. Maybe your problem is that Prince is too easy rather than King+ being too hard?