How can Civ7 be made more challenging on the higher difficulty levels?

[Geoff B]

I have been playing Civ since the 1st version came out in 1991, and have bought every version and DLC ever since. When I buy a new game, CIV or other, I always start on the highest difficulty setting, and don't read any of the tutorials or guidelines, or any of the pre-launch material, official or in forums. This gives me the greatest fun and challenge. If I can't win on the highest difficulty after 3 games, I drop down a level, and play 3 more games, etc, until I win, and then I go back up a level. It usually takes me a few goes to win, and then a few more to win on the top difficulty level. This has made games like Old World, Humankind, and ARA History Untold more interesting.

So I was really looking forward to Civ7, not having a clue what was different from Civ6. In my first game on Diety, I misunderstood the overbuilding rules for most of the game, thinking that I shouldn't have more than one building on a tile. One other Civ declared war on me for a few turns early on, but other than that I was not attacked, and still came 4th on legacy points. In my second game, no one attacked me until I was within 14 turns of a science victory, and even then it was half-hearted. I had even run my military down to one artillery piece per settlement, but no-one took advantage. I won the Science Victory, and wasn't far off an Economic victory either. I was shocked and disappointed that I hadn't had to put any real effort in learning any nuances in the game, or study my strategy like a game of chess. All I did was manage my happiness level per settlement, and expand as rapidly as possible, to usually 2 above the cap, apart from the Modern age, when even that didn't matter. I didn't look at the technology or civic trees, and easily finished the complete trees. I was totally awash with gold. I was fairly bored for the last 50 turns! At the moment Civ7 feels like a stripped down, threadbare, version compared with previous iterations.

I am perfectly happy for the lower levels to be easy for beginners, or players that just want a relaxing "sandbox" type of game, but I do expect the top couple of levels to be an intellectual challenge, at least for a few games. So I have a couple of questions:-

1) What set up gives the most challenge at the moment, eg pace of game, size of map etc? I have played on standard setting so far.
2) What changes can the developers make to make the game more challenging? Making happiness management tougher could be one, eg higher penalties for the human player going over the settlement limit, use of influence more expensive, or even the obvious better starting bonuses for the AI opponents.

With all other versions of Civ I have definitely had the one more game feeling, but I am not sure Civ 7 is challenging enough for an experienced 4X strategy player.

 

[gdr_willter]

Give AIs additional settlers as like what happened in Civ 5 and 6.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I think your experience points at some really weird setup. Did you try playing on Continents+, Standard speed, Standard size, no other changes?

Whether it's challenging or not, depends on your skills, but you'll clearly much more wars than you've described.

 

[Geoff B]

I usually set the map on "shuffle". In my second game I had 3 AI Civs on my continent, and met the other 4 early on in the Exploration Age. It seemed too easy to be friendly with them.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Give AIs additional settlers as like what happened in Civ 5 and 6.

No thanks, removing these was the best thing they did. Deity on previous versions was just a different game then what normal players were experiencing which had all sorts of unintended consequences. There needs to be a way to get them to be more challenging rather than just freebies at the start, maybe something that feeds in during the game like an extra pop every 10 turns or so.

 

[Vahnstad]

Give AIs additional settlers as like what happened in Civ 5 and 6.

Makes these higher difficulties unenjoyable.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I usually set the map on "shuffle". In my second game I had 3 AI Civs on my continent, and met the other 4 early on in the Exploration Age. It seemed too easy to be friendly with them.

1. Shuffle is a total mess
2. There's something wrong with your settings. On standard size map you start with 4 other AIs on your home part of the world and 3 more become available in distant lands in exploration. The changes clearly affect AI behavior. Do you have any mods?

 

[Leyrann]

By using the Artificially Intelligent mod.

Whether it's challenging or not, depends on your skills, but you'll clearly much more wars than you've described.

According to Notque (who did most of the work for above mod), the base game seems to have a bug that makes AIs not declare war in some situations, which appears mostly as a per-game thing.

 

[Geoff B]

I agree giving additional settlers to A1 opponents is the least attractive solution, there must be cleverer ways. Normally on Deity in previous versions you have to put some effort into managing happiness, but that doesn't seem to be too difficult in Civ7. I would like to see some tweaks in this area, which should be fairly easy.

 

[Geoff B]

1. Shuffle is a total mess
2. There's something wrong with your settings. On standard size map you start with 4 other AIs on your home part of the world and 3 more become available in distant lands in exploration. The changes clearly affect AI behavior. Do you have any mods?

No Mods. Why is shuffle a mess? It is more interesting not to know the rough land structure.

 

[doolar]

My routine is backwards from yours, but with the same goal. I start a new 4x game on the default difficulty, raising it every time I win. When I lose, that’s the difficulty I try to beat, the raising again until I end up on the hardest one.

Did the same with 7, and won every single round including Deity on my first go. I too believe it is too easy to win in 7.

My analysis over my 180 hours played is that the ages are difficult for the AI to utilise, while being easy for the human player. Less snowballing is more damning for the AI than human player.

 

[stealth_nsk]

No Mods. Why is shuffle a mess? It is more interesting not to know the rough land structure.

Shuffle builds the landmass from pieces of different map scripts, creating very unfair positions for different players.

And while I agree Continents+ is too predictable (at least until the next patch), it's not something you should worry about for the first 3-4 games at least.

 

[protocol7]

I don't mind giving the AIs extra stuff so I have to work harder to catch up. I'm using the Artificially Intelligent mod which improves things, but still ran into AIs not declaring war hardly ever. Is there some mod where I can throw extra settlers at them or something so they have a chance to beat me on Deity?

 

[Krikkit1]

The simplest answer is add infinite difficulty levels.
since
1. Civ7 difficulty levels are just numeric bonuses to the AI
2. if there is a “highest” difficulty level, players will be unhappy if they can’t beat it

Then they should add an “Impossible+N” Difficulty level where you choose the N (1-100) and each one adds the difficulty between Immortal and Deity.

At about Impossible +30 it’s probably theoretically impossible to win. (AI gets +600% to +900% yields and +60-90 CS)

so it would be accepted that humans couldn’t win all the levels

 

[Melkus]

There's a lot to improve on the AI site. Let the coders (FXS and modders alike) work on that before taking the easy way out with silly bonuses. (+8 CS is an immersion killer already)

Their choices for buildings are catastrophically bad, for instance - the AI can't even reliably build a unique quarter yet, but fills its cities with every warehouse building available.

And giving them extra stuff doesn't have to mean extra settlers. There's more creative ways.
They could automatically get a ranged unit per settlement, for instance. Free ships would be good, too. Cheaper unit upgrades. Or boosts when certain milestones are reached.

 

[aelf]

It's possible to luck out and have an easy time in some games. It won't always happen. At best 50% of the time, but I think the chance is lower than that.

 

[protocol7]

I wonder if they will end up releasing the DLL code for Civ7, which is required for properly fixing the AI. The staying power of Civ5 is because of mods like Vox Populi, and Civ5 and Civ7 user numbers are relatively comparable at this point - a pretty amazing feat for a fifteen year old game, and I think its due to the high quality mods. If they want to keep us selling new games, they need to be sure the old ones can't be improved too much.

 

[CliffCo]

If you can use mods theres one that adds 6 more difficulty levels by changing the AI's buffs

 

[chazzycat]

I feel like the AI are often hobbled by their disastrously bad settling patterns. Fixing the thing where they fling their settlers all the way across the continent would go a long way. In my current game all 3 of my neighbors did this. Surprisingly come the exploration age, none of them are competitive.

 

[gdr_willter]

No thanks, removing these was the best thing they did. Deity on previous versions was just a different game then what normal players were experiencing which had all sorts of unintended consequences. There needs to be a way to get them to be more challenging rather than just freebies at the start, maybe something that feeds in during the game like an extra pop every 10 turns or so.

Oh well, That was also my intention to say... Civ 7 deity maybe easier than the previous titles, but its difficulty is honestly based on the game system and AI behaviors, not the initial bonus.