Higher difficulty levels force you into 1 playstyle.

[TheMeInTeam]

Combat ignoring difficulty level seems to point the way, to someone as pea-brained as me, to go the warmongering route early and often when trying to climb.

And I seem to remember now, when climbing up from the lower levels, that combat was my way up too.

I war'd my way to monarch (some of my games from early last year show that progression pretty well), but after that I had to learn empire management, too .

If you want to be really stubborn, keep trying that emperor game over and over until you start to match feral's or my openings (he just HAD to finish the game one turn sooner than me ). I don't micro or compute basically ever so it shouldn't be THAT hard if you keep trying. Snaaty's guide to higher levels is a good reference on the general idea of opening, although below immortal you can probably get away with both AH and bronze before archers.

 

[Dirk1302]

^True, i went the other way btw started with building and rexing which got me to ~ emperor, then learned the finer skills of well timed war.

It'll be very interesting to see how far your strat of fast play and automation'll stretch. Do you think you can learn to beat deity regularly with this in the future, that would really be an achievement. Or will you slow down some when you get to that level?

 

[Gliese 581]

Emperor was the hardest jump for me (not counting immortal to deity obviously since that's more like noble->immortal in scale of added AI handicaps). I played my first game on noble but that was a landslide win so my real entry level was prince. Of course having played the other three civ games for years (although I wasn't very good at them) gave me a head start there.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Note you do in fact get more bonuses when fighting barbarians at lower levels. These modifiers are presented explicitly to you but if you do not bother to check you might begin to wonder why your barb battles seem to go less favourably at higher levels. At the lower levels, it's actually pretty hard to lose units to barbs.

This is the only real way that combat changes from level to level, as far as I know.

EDIT There are also free wins vs barbs at lower levels, as noted by Gliese below.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

^True, i went the other way btw started with building and rexing which got me to ~ emperor, then learned the finer skills of well timed war.

It'll be very interesting to see how far your strat of fast play and automation'll stretch. Do you think you can learn to beat deity regularly with this in the future, that would really be an achievement. Or will you slow down some when you get to that level?

I don't even automate on immortal! Well, I do but we're talking post 1400 AD automation then. But at least I win on immortal now (although my games are frequently very close, somehow I've come up with 4 straight.) Worker automation seems to save me 30-45 minutes if I micro workers vs just auto the entire game. Ouch.

My guess is that it's possible. More like, I'm 90%+ sure that a truly good player could beat a standard deity map in < 4-5 hours on a consistent basis (assuming the start is realistically winnable). Now, will that person be ME? A really talented player could probably beat it faster than I beat immortal.

At some point I'm going to brave deity more frequently, much like with immortal recently. However, to compete with the AI bonuses there, it may be necessary to do some calculations. I have a vague idea of the best tiles to work and in what order, when to whip, etc from reading the forums and whatnot, but it's still far from perfect. However, working suboptimal tiles and slowing yourself down early on doesn't seem a plausible path on deity. The only option to play it at the speeds I play is to force-memorize what is optimal. Like a yield-scale, whip cycle yield combinations, and work out what buildings vs units are priorities early on (same with tech, although tech will vary more). And what commerce limitations there are on expansion, etc etc.

If I took the time, and memorized it in similar fashion as a test at school, I suspect the (by far) weakest area of my game (micro decisions) would improve DRAMATICALLY, without much loss in speed after the outlay of a couple slow games and logging that is! It would never be 100% using such heuristics, but one could get pretty close. Close enough to win games on deity, assuming general macro issues like tech/trade/diplo choices were addressed (although I'm much stronger in those areas).

But to take the time to DO that ...well it's the same reason most other people haven't. It's a tighter game with very rigid constraints, and the punishment for small errors is pretty severe! I don't think you guys will see me leave civ IV anytime soon though (barring sudden civ V), so who knows .

 

[Gliese 581]

Note you do in fact get more bonuses when fighting barbarians at lower levels. These modifiers are presented explicitly to you but if you do not bother to check you might begin to wonder why your barb battles seem to go less favourably at higher levels. At the lower levels, it's actually pretty hard to lose units to barbs.

This is the only real way that combat changes from level to level, as far as I know.

True, aside from easier fights there's also free wins vs barbarians from Prince and down.

 

[PieceOfMind]

True, aside from easier fights there's also free wins vs barbarians from Prince and down.

You are absolutely right and thanks for reminding me. I went and looked in the code and found the following, which I think is what leads to your statement.

iTheirOdds = ((GC.getDefineINT("COMBAT_DIE_SIDES") * iTheirStrength) / (iOurStrength + iTheirStrength));

	if (kDefender.isBarbarian())
	{
		if (GET_PLAYER(getOwnerINLINE()).getWinsVsBarbs() < GC.getHandicapInfo(GET_PLAYER(getOwnerINLINE()).getHandicapType()).getFreeWinsVsBarbs())
		{
			iTheirOdds = std::min((10 * GC.getDefineINT("COMBAT_DIE_SIDES")) / 100, iTheirOdds);
		}
	}
	if (isBarbarian())
	{
		if (GET_PLAYER(kDefender.getOwnerINLINE()).getWinsVsBarbs() < GC.getHandicapInfo(GET_PLAYER(kDefender.getOwnerINLINE()).getHandicapType()).getFreeWinsVsBarbs())
		{
			iTheirOdds =  std::max((90 * GC.getDefineINT("COMBAT_DIE_SIDES")) / 100, iTheirOdds);
		}
	}

If I'm reading this right, when you are still below your allocated number of free barb kills, you get truly lopsided battles. However these odds are not quite enough to completely guarantee a win I don't think. If your unit is injured and 1 hit from being killed, and goes into combat with a barb, I think there is a greater than 10% chance your unit will be killed. This is because the barb can have no greater than 10% odds of hitting you per combat round.

 

[Gliese 581]

Don't mention it, but I checked the reference chart which just lists "free wins".

 

[PieceOfMind]

Don't mention it, but I checked the reference chart which just lists "free wins".

Yes but based on the way these free wins are handled it looks more like they would be better described as "pretty-much-free-wins".

The code above will generally lead to battles with more than 99% success in favour of the human player. Only when units are heavily injured might you lose a unit before your free wins are up.

The number of free wins left is only decreased each time you win a battle, but theoretically it looks like it's possible to never win a barb battle even at low difficulties, though very unlikely. Not being able to use up all your free wins would be truly unlucky.

 

[EmperorFool]

The number of free wins left is only decreased each time you lose a battle, but theoretically it looks like it's possible to never win a barb battle even at low difficulties, though very unlikely. Not being able to use up all your free wins would be truly unlucky.

Now I'm confused. Let's say at level X you get 5 "free really good odds." Now, since that counter only decreases when you lose a battle--one that will 99% of the time be stacked highly in your favor--you can essentially count on "really good odds" forever. Right?

Perhaps they should be called "divine interventions."

 

[PieceOfMind]

Sorry I got my words wrong.

I should have said: The number of free wins is only decreased when you win a battle. Once you have killed 5 barbs at those really good odds, I don't think you have any really good odds anymore

 

[EmperorFool]

Once you have killed 5 barbs at those really good odds, I don't think you have any really good odds anymore

Okay, reading the code again that makes sense.

 

[mirthadir]

I will say that I felt the same way when I moved to Emperor. I had been a builder previously and found initially that war was the only way to avoid a slow strangulation.

Now, however, I can wonder spam (GW, GLH, Pyramids, and GLib without being Industrious or having Stone/Marble, though I only recently started grabbing GLH and sometimes miss Pyramids if I go for it) pretty easily. Getting the GW allows you to ignore barbs mostly, except when sending out Settlers--I got screwed in my most recent game with no metal or Horses and couldn't expand as easily.

Sure, I can't grab three religions, but I only tried that once anyway. Your options definitely narrow, but to me that's pretty reasonable. That's like complaining that your favorite Pee Wee Football strategy of constant fake punts and flee flicker fake-outs doesn't work anymore when you get to the pros. You can't make it more difficult and still allow cheesy tactics--they just don't work together.

Regarding the "my X counter got owned by a Y" part, that's been checked again and again. Combat ignores difficulty level and player type. The dice are impartial, and they can be cruel.

Some surprisingly "cheesy" tactics can work out to immortal. I've managed to get a religious monopoly (collect all 7) with Izzy; AIs without mons, OR, Pac, or Theo are massively weak. The trick is knowing when you can get away with the cheese. Izzy with a coastal cap is great for early religion hoarding; you can work an early 3 2 tile while growing (go for either the WB or SH first); coastal makes it one tech to get linked to the AIs, and expansive let's you get some very nice chop rates to make up for slow early expansion. She and HC are about the best for an early religion gamble; others with other maps pretty much have no hope. With a selected start (gems/fish/fish for izzy and gems/corn/corn for HC) I can manage to get 4 religions founded in the cap with settlers waiting on hand the moment I bulb Theo.

That to me is the big thing about higher difficulties, you learn when horrible things can work and when good things won't (i.e. killing off an AI when there are only 3 of you on the island).