How Difficult do you find the game currently?

[CrazyG]

Just curious what people are thinking. Especially in regards to early, mid, and late game difficulty.

 

[TwoPodRay]

I’m about to make the jump to deity, but so far, as long as I’m aggressive and war a bit, I’ve found any victory condition very easy based on the map/Civ settings I generally use. I refer back to the “Warring Overpowered” thread’s question. But I’ll find out for sure in a few days when I start deity.

 

[Stalker0]

I still find Emperor a comfortable challenge but I'm also a lot lazier than a lot of people in my play

 

[lunker]

Emperor for comfy but engaging, Immortal for a serious challenge.

For me early game difficulty largely depends on terrain, luxuries, neighbours etc... Mid-game is usually somewhat on the easier side. Late-game I begin to have a little more trouble because you have a lot more things to manage.

I don't really have any complaints about the difficulty/curve at the moment.

 

[tu_79]

I did a Danish domination run on Emperor, and this looked like a piece of cake, after my struggle with Babylon and Inca, even in King. I think the lower the difficulty, the more aggressive AI becomes, and failing to provide a meaningful army is punished harder. Even the immortal Austria of the contrast game was easier.
A suspect of mine is that the highest difficulties become easier when you can finish them before AI complete atomic age.

Also, I find combat still too long and the domination victory happening too early. I won that Danish game with frigates. I'd like to see fewer units, faster combat and longer assymilation times.
Another irk is that war weariness is not affecting at all when you don't lose units. This allowed me to keep fighting and take all enemy cities without asking for truces. This is plainly wrong. At least capturing cities should increase war weariness, since those citizens are now part of your empire and they are tired of war.

 

[dpshw]

i usually play king and when i want to try something new even prince. early game too easy, midgame i get bamboozled by happiness a bit too often and lategame is too easy again (once all the necessary buildings are in place). also i kinda dislike the need to play wide once lategame kicks in, or maybe it's just my style to fight fire with fire when the warmongers emerge

 

[Auramagma]

I usually play on Immortal, but dropped to Emperor when started using JFDLC, partially because of unfamiliar mechanics, partially because the game plays differently and Domination feels less powerful, which was exactly, what I wanted to achieve (among other things)...

 

[Owlbebach]

Just curious what people are thinking. Especially in regards to early, mid, and late game difficulty.

Deity here.

Early game is okay more or less, might be a bit harder.
Then Medeival/Renaissance AI starts to fall behind, which becomes especially noticeable in the end of Renaissance and mid-Industrial. At that time i usually become ~top3 in tech and catch up or even lead in culture
Then in Modern and later AI presses "super-uber-turba-forsage" button and catches up very fast. So fast that it feels artificial. Haven't tried to win via science for a very long time, but it might be quite hard nowadays

EDIT:
As you all might saw i tune difficulty settings myself and i feel like it would be a good move to increase C slightly, increase B a bit more, and reduce A

 

[FoxOfWar]

I play on King, but that's partially because of my decision to usually go "I want to play X civ to do Y", which is not very often optimal towards any victory condition. So things are difficult for me then, but that's because I went "let's see if how building-spammy I can go with Fale Tele (Polynesia 4UC building that gives yields on building completion)" and ended up having 40 cities by Medieval.

Or because I went 3-cities Egypt with the goal to build ALL the wonders.
Or because I got a marine civ and wanted to own all of the coastline of all continents, then failed to keep them.
Or... you get the idea. I don't play optimally.

I could probably play on a higher difficulty if I wanted to just win the game, though.

So... the game is difficult enough for me, certainly.

 

[Grassland Farm]

I'm not the most brilliant Civ player, but I've been climbing in difficulties fairly quickly since I picked up Civ5 with VP.
I'm playing my first game on Emperor (6) right now, and I manage. I'm halfway through the score ranking, I got DoW'd pretty bad by Bismark (I'm playing Suleiman, and he robbed a few of my Tanzimat Caravans) but I fought him back without being able to take a city. My capital is crazy good so I'm just pumping up great people and hope I can outech my neighbours.
I feel like the big difference between prince/king/emperor is the AI no longer falls behind pathetically in tech, and has actual cash to spare (Before playing on emperor I sometimes couldn't even sell my luxuries because AI was always in the negative income... Now they all earn 100 gold per turn, and that's just in the medieval era)

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

CrazyG, while I'm thinking about how to reply, I'd be very interested in hearing how difficult do you find the game?

 

[Minh Le]

My win rate on deity is about 25% so the difficulty is about right to me . However, it seems I always lose because of a run away science AI who is not my neighbor... Ive got a game where Ethiopia got into renaissance while everyone else was still classic

 

[TwoPodRay]

I think all of these replies are really interesting to see the variety. I’d be curious if we could next identify WHY people find their respective difficulties hard/easy.

I mentioned before I find it easy because if you’re aggressive in the right way at the right time, you can establish a lead early and snowball. I haven’t tried playing peacefully in a while now though to see if aggression is truly the difference maker.

 

[CrazyG]

CrazyG, while I'm thinking about how to reply, I'd be very interested in hearing how difficult do you find the game?

I think its very, very easy if you have horses and take God of All Creation (which the AI literally never does on Immortal+). Now if I ban myself from using that pan.............

I think the early game is too easy. I can found with a religion with anyone, no problem. I can always attack and defeat any neighbor. I think it has to do with the A,B,C values which we changed a while back. Easy early game means that late game civs, such as Germany, Austria, or Korea, are the meta right now, both for who I want to play as and who I fear playing against. If its Renaissance era and Germany (human or AI) is leader of religion and his empire isn't on fire, its extremely difficult for anyone else to win.

It used to be really scary to start next to Greece or Persia, I honestly don't care at all these days. What I'm afraid of is Germany or Korea appearing on a different continent, getting a religion and taking inspiration, because I have to attack them or win very quickly, otherwise I will lose. I just cannot catch up to them once their late game multipliers start getting really big.

 

[Minh Le]

I think its very, very easy if you have horses and take God of All Creation (which the AI literally never does on Immortal+). Now if I ban myself from using that pan.............

I think the early game is too easy. I can found with a religion with anyone,

How can you found a religion with anyone any game? I always struggle with founding a religion...

 

[Cobra522]

I recently moved up to emperor in the last couple of weeks or so, and it's is noticeably more difficult. I've played maybe 5 games since I moved up and I still don't have a win under my belt (though I am improving each play through)

The early game feels similar in how it plays out, but the big difference I've noticed is just how hard the top civs snowball going beyond that. On king the gap in power felt much narrower, with more rare cases of civs taking off so quickly. I find it really difficult to catch up if I'm not snowballing myself by the renaissance.

I've found games much more enjoyable and the difficulty leveled with resources set to standard and playing on Pangaea rather then continents (I use the perfect world mapscript)

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

Thanks for the reply, CrazyG. So how would you change the game to make it harder/more balanced? How would you change God of all creation (just remove the culture or something else as well?)? How would you nerf inspiration (max 5 culture per city or something else)? What A, B and C values would you introduce? Anything else you'd do?

 

[Workerspam]

I play peaceful, empire building games. I’ll generally only conquer cities if I’m forward settled to a spot I really want, to neuter a dangerous aggressive neighbor, or to disrupt a potential runaway. With that playstyle I find Emperor challenging when I random my civ, immortal very challenging if I play civs I’m very comfortable with (Carthage/Shoshone/Celts).

Minus offensive wars I don’t find any era particularly more or less challenging. Early game the challenge is expanding while maintaining decent policy and tech advancement. Mid game it’s building a robust infrastructure and defensive force. Late game it’s deploying a large up to date military and/or navy for defense and tactical intervention while pursuing the most likely victory conditions. Runaways are the biggest obstacle, particularly tech and warmongers.

I’ve occasionally played aggressive games and it feels about a level easier when I do. I simply don’t enjoy the protracted nature of civ combat so I stick with a more passive approach.

 

[Stalker0]

I think with this thread is showing, as were at a point where people will have to tailor the ABC values to adjuster difficulty further. It appears the difficulty levels are pretty good for a good portion of the people. So I think the next step is better explaining how to tailor the ABC values to get the experience you’re looking for

 

[Bascule2000]

It's a slightly odd question, as there are 8 difficulty settings, and you can refine the difficulty further with Really Advanced Setup or a little hacking (I nerf the AI advantage vs barbarians, and remove the barb special move promotions for example).

Do people play the game through to completion? I tend to get bored after the Industrial era, and award myself the win because I know it's inevitable (Emperor difficulty). I think the game's too long - I think it's impossible to have a game of this length that is consistently challenging because if early events are meaningful then it must be possible to establish an unassailable lead. (This isn't VP's fault, it's just a product of the length of the game). I find the most interest in the layout of the map, how it impacts settlement and early wars, and that the lategame is too similar between different games to be interesting.