is BTS more difficult?

[werdna]

I've read before that BTS AI was supposed to be smarter. I normally play on emperor on warlords, so on my first game I tried prince and it was really easy.
So then I tried monarch and I'm still outperforming AI in research and military wise.
It does seem smarter and better decision making, but just not progressing faster.
I do have no tech-brokering on. Could that effect AI progress by a lot?
I'll be trying emperor game now.

How is everyone elses opinion on difficulty playing monarch or emperror levels?

(btw, I always play marathon and used big-small map for my bts games).

 

[LordGek]

I've read before that BTS AI was supposed to be smarter. I normally play on emperor on warlords, so on my first game I tried prince and it was really easy.
So then I tried monarch and I'm still outperforming AI in research and military wise.
It does seem smarter and better decision making, but just not progressing faster.
I do have no tech-brokering on. Could that effect AI progress by a lot?
I'll be trying emperor game now.

How is everyone elses opinion on difficulty playing monarch or emperror levels?

(btw, I always play marathon and used big-small map for my bts games).

Just a theory here, but I'm willing to bet it has more to do with playing in Marathon Mode than anything else. As I think the big Marathon Espionage Debacle points out, it doesn't look like the Marathon Mode was tested that extensively beyond some, "Okay, it starts up alright, just multiply all costs and effects by 3 and get back to testing the standard game."

So I'm also willing to bet Blake's Better AI was OPTIMIZED for standard speed play.

 

[weimingshi]

I started a game on marathon, huge map, 18 civs, emperor, raging barbs, aggressive AI. Didn't turn on no tech brokering though. I'm approching year 0 now. SO far its pretty easy. It was pretty intense during the barbarian rushing stage, came close to loose a city to barb twice. But against the AI, it was easy so far. I built all the wonders I aimed for and then some ( about 2/3 of wonders). I am at least 4 techs ahead of the next AI, trading techs for gold lets me run at 70% science, -70 gold per turn, yet still have 2500gp constantly, end result is I can found as many city as long as there is space left. I founded 2 religion, confucianism and christianity, earlier ones are founded by AI, but those later ones will be mine also, cause AI can't compete with my research speed. My research speed is at least twice faster than next AI. I am the number 1 on power chart. Me and 2 of my religious friend civ just beat the second strongest civ to oblivion, took 3 of his cities in 10 turn. I'm using maceman and cho-ku-no and the best he has is swordsman and horse archer. he still needs 15 turn to finish research on machinery for crossbow man. I'll be vassilizing him before he gets there. Unless some game altering event happens, I am crusing to an easy domination win.

One of the grip I have is with lightbulbing techs with greatperson. The way it works now gives a huge advantage to players. My using Gp to lightbuld I could found confucianism while I was a good 3 techs away from it. I just researched civil service, got another great merchant and bulbed paper already. I can start research education and start build universities in 40 turns. while other AI is still researching along the lines of theology. It seems that AI just never lightbulb techs with their GP.

 

[Zhahz]

I played my first game on noble, normal speed, small, hemispheres, and also with no tech brokering, and I obliterated the AIs for tech. It was pretty sad - I was researching biology when I invaded the civ who shared my continent - and he still didn't have code of laws, which was extra sad since he had twice as much land/cities as me, expanded early, and probably crushed his economy (ie, needed courthouses badly). But the other AIs in the game weren't doing much better.

I love the idea behind the no tech brokering option and wouldn't expect using it to have that huge an impact on the AIs, but maybe it does.

I would hope that the AI can handle any type of game speed and settings, or at least be competitive on anything even if it's *optimized* for a certain style.

 

[rtfischbeck]

So far i'd say warfare is more difficult, with the ai being much more aggresive and in general simply better. In fact i've seen one ai eliminate another by 2000 b.c. on another continent. The ai also seems to make better tech choices, but is much slower in general, as in no longbows as late as 1000 ad on monarch. It feels a bit easier to me honestly, but i've only played a few games thus far.

 

[werdna]

So far i'd say warfare is more difficult, with the ai being much more aggresive and in general simply better.

that's what i feel too. The AI wars better now, but in other aspects it's not changed. And become it seems to emphesize war more now, it falls behind in other areas.

 

[HiroHito]

AI makes more sense, aint harder imho.

 

[jackdog]

am half way through first game on normal speed/map only on warlord as before I was easy at prince but struggled at monarch so dropped a level. So far with tech trading on its fairly easy but you obviously notice the AI difference re war etc.

Think with tech trading on it looks like it will be similar difficulty as people were on before, will finish this game with a domination win i'm sure and try prince, expect to win but not easily.

Take into account though I was playing a totally original CIV4 no mods pathces or expansions at all and have gone straight into BtS, so a lot more to learn than most.

As a quick aside i'm not sure its very fair the rule book, if you can call it that, almost presumes you have been a warlords player and have that knowledge so for people like me only recently backj into the game who missed warlords etc getting the info together ain't easy. not really very fair on new players with even less experiance than me.

 

[TriviAl]

I'm playing random - large - epic at monarch.

Ended up with the Ethiopians on a pangea. Wasn't that impressed with them at an initial look, but they've turned out to be a proper powerhouse - not 100% sure why, but it all seems to slot together just right.

Anyway, I've found warfare rather more difficult. IMO, partly the nerf on siege engines - which I find a good thing.

War 1 vs Mansa
Axe/Sword + Catapult rushed one neighbour around 500BC. Managed to pull through, but hadn't built enough catapults and took some larger than expected casualties before eliminating them. They didn't put up much of a fight.

War 2 vs Hammurabi
Medieval combined arms in about 800AD. This is/was tough and still not over. It's a nasty, sneaky, agressive AI. Been hammering catapults at me, good mix of units, moving around my SODs. It's cool!

Frankly, if I hadn't been inspired by the thread about using cover promoted Crossbowmen to protect stacks, then I'd have been shot to bits by now! Nice to be challenged.

Espionage has been interesting, mostly poisoning/unhappiness - it's pretty nasty and rather effective. Liking that.

In terms of tech, it's a fairly even matchup so far.

The game's still in the balance, there's a couple of large religious blocks and one of those could squish me quite happily!

 

[axident]

I finally got around to playing an actual epic game instead of Afterworld. I don't know about harder... seems easier in some ways. The AI is slower to research now, perhaps because I ignore my spy % until it gets pretty bad. That early research boost and shrewd trading gets me a dominating lead on Monarch.

AI combat seems to be better, though, but you can still outsmart it. When I DoW on my neighbor, he rushed his army to his frontline city. When I saw what I was up against, I gave up and marched right past that city and took his capital instead. The survivors healed up and eventually joined my second wave of attackers to take out that front line city. Oddly enough, when I re-DoW later on, the same thing happened, except this time, when I started to leave his frontline city to take an inner city, the frontline city's axemen jumped out and killed some of my attackers. On the open field rather than against walls, I had much better odds against his axemen, which were already damaged anyway. So I countered and healed. The survivors and reinforcements took out that frontline city after all. His inner city is still standing, grrr. Not for long, though.