I just played my first Gemini difficulty game in BERT and won with ease

[Gort]

On the other hand, yes.

 

[Ryika]

Yes or no? That's the question people all around the world ask themselves today.

But honestly, there's no doubt that the new stuff - and the fact that the AI can't handle ANY of it properly - has made the game a lot easier on all difficulty settings. So the answer is of course yes - and the world is relieved to know the truth.

 

[Kutuzov]

Funny. I played a quick game of Civ V at Settler a couple of months back to get the achievement. (I was sick with a heavy cold at the time and so wanted the giggles rather than the challenge - that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it). TBH, Civ BERT on Gemini is not that much more difficult than settler for a player with experience. I end up far, far ahead in tech, affinities without really trying and the AI doesn't appear to be doing any espionage either which is not helping. I took out Barre's beacon with a lousy two units. Two units to invade his territory and destroy the beacon! That's Settler to me.

Fun as it is to play, at the moment, BERT is just a walk in the park. I know I could beat the game at Apollo if I wanted to but I don't want to have that 'award' while it's not really an award at all. I'll wait until they do a bit of balancing. For now, BERT is played for the fun and not a challenge and to be sure, it is fun to play.

 

[Ryika]

Well, if by "award" you mean the Achievement, then just go through the mod menu (don't have to activate any mods) before starting the game, that will disable them and you can still play around on Apollo.

And I agree with you on the "Play for fun"-part although I wonder how long it'll be until that changes this time. Anyway - someone has finally started working on a balance mod (see http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=14021338), that will probably shake things up quite a bit. Would have started working on that a long time ago if I hadn't still more than a dozen mods to update.

 

[Lucius_]

Apollo can be challenging if you aren't playing a rigid optimized strategy. Increasing the number of sponsors also increases the challenge some too. Or it at least changes the strategy involved. No more spamming cities endlessly. That's my experience, but I am not CiV diety player, so imagine for some, Apollo would never be challenging without mods. The step up in difficulty from Soyuz is mindboggling though. Even that difficulty isn't very hard, maybe Prince equivalent.

 

[EpicWestern]

I agree that BERT seems overall easier than just BE, after you adjust to mass melee boat. Still, I don't think its quite an auto-win yet on Apollo especially if you choose random everything from the start.

 

[Manannan]

Apollo can be challenging if you aren't playing a rigid optimized strategy.

Not really. You can just kinda faff about and tech however you please without any concerns that the AI is gonna stop you from achieving victory on Apollo, as long as you're vaguely aware that you need to win before t250 (I think, I don't know exactly when the AI tends to win). You don't need to academy spam, you don't need to rex, you don't need to declare war on anyone, you don't need to pick any particular virtues or agreements, you don't need to do anything in particular; just pop some cities down where you feel like it, build some things, vaguely tech towards objectives, click next turn until you win.

Sigh.

 

[Lucius_]

That's not any different than CiV. In CiV you can derp around and do whatever you want as long as you win by t300 or so. In fact the only challenge to victory, at least immortal or lower, is being run over by an early rush and being unprepared. I do think the AI is too easy on Apollo, considering it's the highest difficulty, but I don't think their win time at t250 is the issue. It's more the player can win too fast and the AI doesn't try to slow you down. But again, it's better with more sponsors, at least in the early game while they still do not respect you. With borders tight, and low respect, they DoW you more.