Is BNW just Sim City??

[noto2]

I've been a big civ fan since Civ2, I played thousands and thousands of hours of Civ4 (and a lot of Civ3). When Civ 5 came out my comp couldn't handle it so I didn't start playing it until after BNW had been released, I thus never played Civ5 vanilla or G&K

I'm a hybrid player, sometimes I like to war all game, sometimes I like to build. Civ4 was a fantastic game. I used to play on Emporer, with AI mods. I remember, though, that even without mods Civ4 was challenging. If I was playing a builder game the AI would actually attack me. It wasn't Sim City I was playing, that's for sure. I can't even tell you how many times the AI caught me with my pants down, building wonders and infrastructure with a small army. I lost countless games to dogpiles too, where my army was strong but not strong enough to fight off 2-3 civs at once, and I would lose due to losing the diplomatic game.

Civ 5, at least BNW, has NONE of this. First of all, if I want to go to war, the AI is so freaking pathetic that it's a cakewalk to win domination.

But even if I want to sit and build away towards a peaceful victory, it's a snoozefest. The AI doesn't DO ANYTHING. Oh sure, the AI will denounce me for expanding too much or having a different ideology, but it never actually tries to stop me from winning. I've had several games in Civ5 playing as a builder, like Egypt or Korea, beside a martial civ like Japan or Mongolia, and I just sit there building away, with no military whatsoever, and I never get attacked.

I've tried mods. I've downloaded and installed many mods that claim to make the AI more aggressive, expansive, or whatever, and nothing seems to work. It honestly feels like in BNW the AI is programmed to just sit there and let me win, never actually trying to do anything or create any challenges for me - the one exception being the barbarians. The damn barbs are the only thing in the game that ever cause me any trouble, like attacking my trade routes, but of course they are just a minor irritant.

I'm sorry, I suppose this is a rant, because I'm 99% sure I'm just going to drop this game, with fewer than 150 hours in it, and go play something else. But maybe some one can shed some light on this for me. Any mods actually fix this?

 

[HughFran]

What level are you playing at? You must be on a real lucky streak because it's very rare for a neighbouring Civ - especially a warmonger - to not declare war on you if you have a weak military. If you have enough to deter them, then they will not attack unless you annoy them enough but I can't imagine that a Civ like Japan wouldn't try to take advantage of your weak military. Try playing on a harder level and see how you get on. Also, in these games where you have played peacefully - have you won many of them? What victory conditions did you have enabled/disabled?

 

[consentient]

It does sound a bit like you've never been involved in serious attrition warfare with Deity unit spam. Warfare is not always as easy as you say.

 

[reddishrecue]

Sort of like sim city but with focuses on the empire and military. In sim city you only play 1 city while in civilization, you get to play with more than one, move units and meet other civilizations for trade or whatever other things you can do with them.

 

[Kriogen]

...beside a martial civ like Japan or Mongolia, and I just sit there building away, with no military whatsoever, and I never get attacked.
...

Peaceful Oda?!? Post a save or it didn't happened!

 

[FrostK]

I really doubt that after 150 hours you can win 7-8 from 10 deity standard size pangea maps with random civ.
But if you can - you can always try MP.

 

[noto2]

I played Civ4 with Kmod and random personalities on emperor and still lost 1/3 of my games. It was fun.

Diety is really boring to me. It's like playing chess with a 6 year old and starting the game by trading your queen and rooks for 3 of his pawns. Will it be difficult to win? Sure... but I'd rather just play a fair game against a better opponent.

So I've been playing civ5 on emperor. If it's this boring on emperor I'm not all that excited about giving the AI a better handicap.

I don't know if any of you played warcraft, but warcraft's AI was the same - it was hard for a beginner and easy to beat for an experienced player. There was a 'hard' mode where the AI got double resources. This skewed the strategy. In a normal game of warcraft against an equal human opponent, you had many different strategies - fast rush, fast expansion, tech - and all were viable. Against the 'hard' AI, however, the only thing you could do was a fast rush. If you tried to tech or expand, the AI's resource advantage would overwhelm you. So against hard AI you just had to rush it every time, and you could win because it was early enough in the game that it's resource advantage was relatively minor.

That's how I see AI handicaps. They just force the player into playing the same way every game. It's incredibly boring.

 

[wideframehoss]

I played Civ4 with Kmod and random personalities on emperor and still lost 1/3 of my games. It was fun.

Diety is really boring to me. It's like playing chess with a 6 year old and starting the game by trading your queen and rooks for 3 of his pawns. Will it be difficult to win? Sure... but I'd rather just play a fair game against a better opponent.

So I've been playing civ5 on emperor. If it's this boring on emperor I'm not all that excited about giving the AI a better handicap.

I don't know if any of you played warcraft, but warcraft's AI was the same - it was hard for a beginner and easy to beat for an experienced player. There was a 'hard' mode where the AI got double resources. This skewed the strategy. In a normal game of warcraft against an equal human opponent, you had many different strategies - fast rush, fast expansion, tech - and all were viable. Against the 'hard' AI, however, the only thing you could do was a fast rush. If you tried to tech or expand, the AI's resource advantage would overwhelm you. So against hard AI you just had to rush it every time, and you could win because it was early enough in the game that it's resource advantage was relatively minor.

That's how I see AI handicaps. They just force the player into playing the same way every game. It's incredibly boring.

Emperor will be a snoozefest if you choose to build infrastructure. Play deity and I think you'll be singing a different tune.

 

[Nick31]

Not to state the obvious, but why not play Immortal? It's not quite in between, but the AI will definitely jump you if you play too weak and are not savvy with diplo.

I'm a pretty skilled player and I choose Immortal in lieu of Diety so I can play around rather than just play the Diety Way.

 

[mtt9999]

The deity early game advantage that you do not like (extra settler, etc) is exactly that: am early game advantage. Once you get moving along and caught up on key infrastructure - the part of deity you despise isn't any longer there, yet the game remains challenging. To me it is the mid-late game of deity that is the most fun part of civ regardless of victory condition.
You may also start entering the Game of the Month challenges, which pre-specify victory conditions (limiting your options).
Or try immortal. It's a nice mix.

 

[joncnunn]

So I've been playing civ5 on emperor. If it's this boring on emperor I'm not all that excited about giving the AI a better handicap.

Not all level jumps are equal in Civ V.
King to Emperor is actually a very tiny step, and in fact prior to BNW's introduction of needing DOF for cash now it actually resulted in many cases on Emperor being an easier game than King after the human learned how to exploit this.

Immortal is a significant step though, about 2X that of between Prince and King.
So that if you had played King and then skipped Emperor and went to Immortal, you'd find Immortal about where you expected.

On Immortal, the AI doesn't get an extra settler, it's instead the starting worker.
The extra settler is reserved for Deity. Immortal to Deity is the biggest leap in the game.

Not to state the obvious, but why not play Immortal? It's not quite in between, but the AI will definitely jump you if you play too weak and are not savvy with diplo.

I'm a pretty skilled player and I choose Immortal in lieu of Diety so I can play around rather than just play the Diety Way.

Agreed on both points, Immortal is the first level when the AI is likely to DOW you early.

Indeed there is a lot more freedom to play around in Immortal than Deity.

 

[consentient]

To the OP, download Acken's balance mod and try getting a Domination victory on Deity on it

 

[Acken]

You can always give my mod a try. I'm always open for feedback if you want to try the latest experimental version (end of the OP)

Pretty sure the AI truly is more agressive in it.

 

[noto2]

Wow, thanks for the replies everyone. You have convinced me to try immortal but now I'm looking at Acken's mod and it looks right up my alley. Acken did you ever play with Civ4 Kmod? I like mods that change as little as possible in terms of game features, but work on making the AI much more aggressive, and the description of your mod seems to be exactly that, so I'll give it a go. I think I'll just stay on emperor for my first game with your mod to see the difference.

 

[Acken]

Go ahead I don't have enough feedbacks on these difficulties anyway But don't expect a miracle either it's still Emperor and a work in progress.

 

[beetle]

I played Civ4 with Kmod and random personalities on emperor and still lost 1/3 of my games. It was fun.

I think you are making the mistake of assuming levels in V is comparable to what it was in IV.

I think levels in V is more like they were in II and SMAC -- which is to say that the difficulty curve is pretty smooth, but tops out faster than many would like.

Diety is really boring to me.

That is not a convincing assertion unless you can routinely beat Deity.

It's like playing chess with a 6 year old and starting the game by trading your queen and rooks for 3 of his pawns.

This is how the difficultly levels in Civ have always worked.

I'd rather just play a fair game against a better opponent.

As would we all!

Against the 'hard' AI, however, the only thing you could do was a fast rush. That's how I see AI handicaps. They just force the player into playing the same way every game. It's incredibly boring.

That was not true in Warcraft. Sure, rushing worked, but you did not have to play that way to win at the highest difficulty setting. CiV is the same thing. Yes, you can work out a formulaic script if you want. But, even at Deity, that is not required.

 

[reddishrecue]

Ive had good opponents online before, even with my skills, theres good players online in multiplayer if youre looking for a challenge other than deity single player. It takes time to find a good challenge, but once you find one, its worth the search.

 

[Biz_]

yeah it's basically sim city if you want to keep it kind of fair

it wouldn't be so bad if the bonuses were pretty minor like 15% cheaper everything, but the amount of cheating the diety AI does is disgusting

civ4 had more challenging AI with fewer bonuses, relatively speaking

 

[HughFran]

Agree with everybody's points here, you need to try on Immortal and then Diety and then come back to us to confirm if it is still a 'snooze fest'. I'm an experienced Civ player and have also played every one since the very first on and I can tell you, Immortal and Diety are definitely not a walk in the park. If you play the way you are describing you will be steam rolled by the AI because they can spam units out of nowhere and will declare war for no reason. I've been caught with my pants down many times. You find that your mentality changes and you plan further ahead than you normally would. Science becomes even more important and choosing the right policies can be crucial.

I really look forward to hearing back from you after you've played at these levels to see how you got on!

Good luck

 

[mtt9999]

Noto2. Seriously try this one. AI will not let you glide peacefully into the night. Would love you to try it and post screen shots and updates:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=502035