Is there a big difference in difficulty between Emperor and Immortal?

[Leathaface]

I have played Civ VI for 185 hours so far and I can win Emperor fairly easily now. I am thinking of making the jump up to Immortal, will there be a big difference?

 

[Rossticles]

Their bonuses scale 50% from Emperor so if you think you're that far ahead for most of the game then go ahead.

 

[jaegybomb]

It's a noticeable difference but it sounds like you are ready.

 

[Miravlix]

Gigantic, not because the AI is better, but because the barbarians get a buff that allow them to wipe your first city before you even finish your first build. (Camps spawn 3 warriors and 2 slingers on immortal)

The barbarian change forces you to play a military game, unless your a "luck" player and think it's okay to loss the games because you didn't bother to play optimally.

 

[HF22]

To be honest, I am not real sure that difficulty does increase much. The extra units / settlers on higher levels mean the AIs tend to do more of the barb clean up (actually making the early game somewhat easier), and since they are still terrible at combat the extra AI bonuses just mean more free stuff for your relatively small investment in military units.

 

[Leathaface]

Does the AI get more aggressive on Immortal? IMO on Emperor they were too peaceful and I never felt like I needed to keep a big army just to keep them away.

 

[Dale]

Like all difficulty changes, the AI doesnt get "better" it gets more cheats. Which simply means it just takes a bit longer to overwhelm them.

 

[gimper42]

I find the AI is more aggressive from Emperor to Immortal. They're more aggressive towards everyone and everything: you, city states, barbarians, each other. But it doesn't necessarily make things more difficult so long as you can have 3-4 archers by the time their forces arrive. And that should be pretty much standard practice for most folks by now, methinks.

 

[Eliminator_Sr]

I haven't played Immortal yet but based on the bonus amounts it's not as big of a leap in difficulty as King to Emperor where the scaling is 100% and the AI gets an extra settler. I expect if you can win most of the time on Emperor than you can pull off Immortal though you will probably have a harder time keeping up with the AI in research and culture. I skipped over Immortal and went to Deity and I noticed a major difference there.

This is a good one page summary: http://civ6.gamepedia.com/Game_difficulty

 

[TheMeInTeam]

After playing a few times I could beat deity, emperor --> immortal shouldn't be too bad.

The way barbs are tuned it's hard to justify anything other than getting out some slingers --> archers ASAP. Those archers can wipe barbs (sometimes it is completely impossible to block scouts causing spawns, and AIs can spawn barbs that attack you which is broken), but they also double as city-state murderers, anti-AI rush, and rushing the AI yourself.

So already the opening is pretty well set down. Triple (or more) slinger into archers is overwhelmingly favorable. From there you expand and get commercial hubs/improvements/some campuses/later industrial districts down, killing AI if you have any to kill because that's more favorable than playing nice, consistently.

Ranged spam with mounted is probably the way to go in principle, but I didn't have any trouble just spamming melee + occasional mounted with battering rams on a deity Pangaea domination with Norway, so you have a lot of leeway with wars.

If you still have some around battering rams and siege engines even work with mechanized infantry...