Highest Difficulty for Role-Playing/Relaxed Play?

[hai 1]

Part of me really likes to min/max- to push myself to take advantage of game mechanics to the greatest extent possible. This side of me is very satisfied by playing Diety/Immortal games.

However, I also enjoy role-playing and trying out interesting strategies and less optimal game mechanics (while ignoring taking advantage of exploitable ones). Sometimes, I'd rather go on a Viking Berserker rampage than stress about build orders, rush-buying science buildings, getting NC up in a timely manner, worker stealing etc. What is the highest difficulty you guys feel like a multitude of unorthodox strategies are viable and role-playing is possible on?

I would probably say emperor, simply because even though the ai gets substantial advantages (but not on the level of immortal and especially the absurdity of diety which require the player to exploit game mechanics), they still are horrendous strategically.

 

[hai 1]

Feel free to mention other game settings than just difficulty level, or even mods that help level the playing field. I have a feeling 'epic' game speed would go a long way toward making a lot of civs more viable/fun (longer time to take advantage of their UU).

 

[Mutineer]

I found that you can do everything on immortal level. Below is just no challenge above is not fun.

 

[project_ako]

My rule is: The more war you're planning on, the higher you can safely raise the difficulty. War is least fun on highest difficulties due to insane unit spam, but it's the easiest way to win since the AI just falls apart in tactics.

 

[hai 1]

Immortal is trivialized by exploiting game mechanics, and even by playing very seriously. I have never tried playing a relaxed, role-playing game in it but I figured in particularly unorthodox cases it would be unbalanced. Maybe my initial assessment that emperor would be most fun in these situations was giving that particular difficulty too much credit lol; come to think of it, I played my first game of Civ 5 on emperor, and it was so ridiculously easy I never bothered with it again.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Exploiting what game mechanics on immortal?

 

[adwcta]

Emperor you can win without min-maxing, having no bonuses, and picking social policies with a random number generator, as long as you do not purposeful do stupid thing (non-optimal is fine; not building any ships/caravans is not; you don't need to build NC ever). AI won't spaceship until ~turn 400. As long as you do in fact have a strategy, you'll be fine. It doesn't have to be a great one, just a non-suicidal one. This is especially true if part of your role playing is going military, because everything in civ is easier if you're at least slightly aggressive. It is 100% worry free if you can play on Deity level.

If you're looking to role play AND have a challenge, Immortal is still not terribly difficult, and it's still rather balanced (at least compared to Deity). AI will not spaceship before turn 350. If you can min-max Deity, then you can role play Immortal in the big strategic picture (as long as you keep micro-ing the citizens, workers, etc).

 

[hai 1]

Exploiting what game mechanics on immortal?

I consider worker stealing an exploitation of game mechanics, and it makes such a huge difference. I can't think of any other blatant ones off the top of my head, but given that I constantly micromanage as much as I can I am sure there is generally plenty of metagaming going on.

Anyway, I'd definitely still be microing citizens and workers, I am talking more about big picture strategy. No matter how relaxed my play, I could not bring myself to automate anything lol. It's already hard enough to fight the compulsion to optimize stuff like SP's (rationalism!)...

Immortal it is! Thanks guys. I'm also thinking epic speed on a large map, to give some early UU's more time to shine and to lessen the penalties to sprawling empires.

 

[Vitruvius]

I think you can use mods if you want to enjoy the game while still having some challenge. For example if you want the AI to have deity like production but no free techs, theres a mod called full option start.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

[forcedalt]

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ5/difficulties

This chart might help to make an informed decision. From what i have been told , the difficulties don't change what the AI's do , or , how they do it, its just handicapping. There is also a mod called "really advanced startup" that i like , you can give yourself , or , any given AI free units, gold , science , faith , culture. Its an "interesting" game of sorts when you give one particular AI 30 nuke missiles as starting units, to make it more fun , give them a missile cruiser too...

 

[dashwinner]

emperor.

longer times (epic,marathon) makes things easier too.
a quick emperor might be more difficult than a marathon immortal

 

[budweiser]

You can role play anything on Immortal.

 

[Myth and Legend]

You can get every single wonder on Prince. Every. Single. One.

 

[docbud]

^^On prince level you can get a lot of them. But not every single one.

 

[cpm4001]

I'd say Emperor; I play on it precisely because it gives me the opportunity to relax and enjoy playing while still having enough challenge to it to not get really boring.

 

[Myth and Legend]

^^On prince level you can get a lot of them. But not every single one.

Did it as Egypt up until Broadway. Got bored and quit. I did reload a couple of times but to be fair, it was my second or third attempt at Civ 5.

 

[Ninakoru]

Emperor is my sweet spot for relaxed games, depends on your skill, King is very similar.

 

[manu-fan]

I play on Warlord just because of the way I like to play. I like to go all out domination with as many cities as possible. I find that Prince doesn't really support that, so I say what the heck, I'll just play Warlord. My aim is to have fun, not min/max.

 

[danaphanous]

I play on Emperor for casual games. AI is too easy below it and takes a big boost for Immortal which makes playing sub-optimally a catch-up game. Not that that's bad, just less casual.

 

[joncnunn]

The highest level you can play relaxed is one difficulty level lower than one you normally win at but requires work.

How low you need to drop to role play depends a lot on how much your role play would cause you to do things that the game punishes you for.