How do I play this game?

[bbbt]

Difficulty is usually Warlord, from what Ive read Im one of the very few that plays on such a low difficulty.

If you look at the steam achievements, the majority of people play on lower difficulties. On this board though, yes most people skew higher difficulties.

 

[Victoria]

Diplomacy can be managed, You can end up allied with practically everyone once you get the grips on it... but as others have said, things are changing so wait 2 weeks, hopefully the new system is less clunky than the old.

 

[My5t1kal]

Possibly the low difficulty is contributing to your problem. When it's more difficult to conquer, the warmonger penalties stack up slower...

Finished my first game, finally. I think you hit the nail on the head as far as my main problem. Too easy. I do play on Epic speed, but that didnt really slow me down. Also, I was Korea strictly for the purpose of being one step ahead of the rest. So as I am entering information Era tech, the rest of the world was still Atomic or Modern and nobody wanted anything to do with me.

Additional gripe would be how silly the AI is with their demands to someone holding 20+ nukes while they have an ironclad.
Like having a kindergartner walk up and kick me in my shins and demand I give him my groceries.

Hence the difficulty thing, I suppose. Be a little more realistic if it were a kid of Jr High age.

Edit: Rather than creating a new topic, maybe someone can answer why everyone hated me just for being #1. I was very far in front of everyone, but I did nothing (in my control) to upset anyone. I had 3 alliances, they expired and no friends from then on. Only events between me and other civs were their cities ditching their civs and joining mine (presumably because I have a better haircut than their leader). IMO I would want to be friends with the biggest/most successful/not war mongering civ.

 

[Victoria]

IMO I would want to be friends with the biggest/most successful/not war mongering civ.

So a few things... first the diplomacy system is about to change so in 2 weeks all f this will be different.
Every civ has an agenda that changes how they react toward you. Some positive, some negative. The idea is not just to cruise along in neutral because that tends to end up with just what you are facing. The idea is to get them friendly with you and then be friends with you and then you can be alllies. This all leads to very positive modifiers and alliance deals.
The main issue you may be facing is that a couple of patches ago they changed it so that once you got over 50% toward your victory and appeared to be winning, civs would start to get negative modifiers toward you.

So if playing peacefully you ideally should be fostering goodwill but eventually they will dislike you for gamey reasons. I think this odd behavior may have been partially to do with discussion here we had over wen you were winning other civs just helped you along the way and it was too easy. I guess one has to be careful what one wishes for in this life.

 

[Sagax]

The main issue you may be facing is that a couple of patches ago they changed it so that once you got over 50% toward your victory and appeared to be winning, civs would start to get negative modifiers toward you.

In my last two CVs I’m pretty sure the AI didn’t show any of those modifiers whatsoever. Might need to open the saves again, but I’m fairly certain. We definitely stayed BFFs till the end, though.

I only saw them showing up when going for SV and completing the projects that are on the SV progress screen. Maybe those modifiers apply to Domination and RV as well, but in both cases the AI already hate you enough by the nature of these victories - so I never paid attention.

 

[Victoria]

In my last two CVs I’m pretty sure the AI didn’t show any of those modifiers whatsoever

Sounds like it has gone then, I must admit I have not noticed it myself but stopped looking at the dip screen.