bonafide11
Worker
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.
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 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!
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 ..
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
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.
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 ..
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.
Someone just built Great Library on turn 60 on my girlfriends chieftain game.
I'm like whaaat?
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".
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'.