Is this game too easy?

[stormtrooper412]

well, I did have a literal Spearman vs Tank situation.

(Tank one-shotted the Spearman taking only 1 damage)

 

[chazzycat]

after 5 unsuccessful attempts on deity this weekend I am going to officially rescind my previous comment.

it's not easy.

maybe, if the stars align and things go super smooth it's easy in some playthroughs. But this is how mine went:

1) kongo neighbor. defended his rush and struck back, took 1 city. but couldn't get any further since his UU came online and spammed like crazy. those things murder warrior/archers. i had invested in only military and the reward of 1 crappy city not even close to being worth it. no room to expand and the other civs are way too far ahead.
2) india neighbor. rushed him without waiting but he already had varus, those things murder warrior and archers, couldn't take a single city. literally takes 10 archer shots to kill a varu, while varus 1-shot archers
3) germany neighbor. was so close to me he had my cap surrounded by warriors by turn 15. couldn't even improve a single tile. slingers got killed and then my cap fell.
4) barb scout appeared on turn 2 opposite side from starting warrior, 3 turns later there are 5 barb units surrounding my cap. ragequit
5) again kongo neighbor. got to him before UUs came out this time, but terrain (flat jungle) made conquering a slog. took 2 cities but was too slow...by that time Aztecs had conquered all the CS on the continent and had 8 cities to my 4, had a bunch of captured workers, districts, and a huge army coming my direction. again i had invested only in military so wayyyy behind

 

[civplay]

add more AI. Since winning on deity, I started playing on a small continental map and adding 2 civs (8 total), and so far its been really hard. I'm barely able to play on emperor. The AI just has the early game advantage and is right on top of you. Basically you're in war as soon as you settle your third city, so you'll be behind in infrastructure.

 

[noontide]

yes. Don't get me wrong, I'm still having a blast, but it's but not as challenging on the higher levels as it should be.

But you are limiting yourself doing domination-only. The builder game is pretty fun IMO.

I think this is right on-point. Yes, it's probably by now tried and true that you build up slingers or whatever, turtle and just brace yourself for the first or second wave of DoW (or if you are aggressive enough you send out a scout or two looking to steal a settler or builder), and once you withstood those earlier waves you counter attack, keep upgrading those half dozen units you have and systematically wiping out your neighbors -- because AI is pretty bad at war.

But I tried a couple of peaceful Deity games and you have to be near perfect in your Eureka timing, district placement and economic development to even keep up with the AIs. That's if they are playing largely peaceful too. If you have one or two AIs that gobbled up other AIs early, it's almost impossible to win Deity peacefully. Just my experience so far.

well, I did have a literal Spearman vs Tank situation.

(Tank one-shotted the Spearman taking only 1 damage)

I think AI not upgrading its units might be a major reason the game in generally feels easy so far. And It's easy to fix in the patch if the developer think it's a priority.

I have many situations where the AI's military strength is over 1000 vs my 3 or 4,00. And once they declare war they sent waves of pikemen or even archers while i have crossbow and knights waiting. And they are usually neck to neck with me in terms of science.

So it's not simply a matter of the game being easy, it's more of a sense of it being unreal as a history sim game. Cause in reality a situation like that will simply not happen.

 

[pkaem]

The game is way too easy when an AI is involved. I really like it's conception and it's fun, but the state of the AI is the huge problem right now. It need's to be patched and rebalanced quite hard. It's often much harder to fight an babarian horse camp then two AI's. Any resonable diplomacy isn't possible with this band of psychos, they get massivley boosted, like before, but it's much easyer to steal it from them. Main reason for this is imo, that cities are much weaker now. What is a good and a bad thing. It was a rough way to beat Civ V on deity. In VI it's often possible in your first attempt, if you're kind of knowing what you are doing.
Main problems imo are:

- Unit selling economys
- AI denouncing everything while not knowing what to do with settlers and builders
- City states get knocked down in a way too large scale and nobody cares
- CB system broken, penaltys for holding enemy citys too high
- War weariness needs a rework
- Religion too weak
- Melee units need a significant buff
- Production cards for early cav units need rebalancing
- Some early inspirations need to get less random
- Barbs need some adjustment so that they are kind of a consitent thread, like somewhat between a total harmless normal camp and a local military supernova-horse-camp. OR it needs to be possible to catch barb scouts early. From what I saw, the AI gets screwed pretty hard by horse camps from time to time, which sometimes leads to losing every bonus settler and builder but one or so and after it getting eaten by it's neighbour.

If you are unsatisfied with the solo gameplay right now, I strongly advice to to try multiplayer. If you add some custo restrictions like "No T1 horseunit hammer cards" and no unit selling, it's very playable. If you don't like to play MP at all you need to wait. I'am quite convinced that this will end in a really great game, for mp and sp purposes.

 

[tommynt]

So I have played this game for about 3 hours now and read half hours another in forums and talked another half hour with other civ experienced players:
So basicllay best thing to do is build worker, build another workers, build even more workers.
And after that u build more workers.
In between some of those u sneak in a settler or such a site thingy. which most of time will be fnished in 1 turn because u got all those choppers out. Dont you?

With this i am leading after 2 hours of 1. deity game so far that i m too bored to continue.

WTF is this gamee design?
And why are game testers and other testers (magazine, sites and so on) to dumb to figure?
Why dont devs ask good playrs before pubilishing such a nonsense?

Game should be abbout decisions and reviews say this game, is but well its not.
Its choping all world down.

And btw stop me with nonsense like i need to play more to understand better, I was both in civ3 and civ4 best player (both single and multy) - so I am able to figure game mechanics.

 

[fubi]

Okay after playing a few more Deity games, I have to admit not every games turns out easy. If you DON'T get that amazing early snowball and manage to get 8-10 cities up by turn 100, things tend to get more complicated Played a game with Ghandi and went for Religion victory. After spending an arm and a leg to get my Religion up and having to stay on only 4 cities for nearly 140 turns, I had to go for some ridiculous miracle war against my nearest neighbour Greece, trying to utilize every single +Combat bonus I could find (including this cool thing: http://civ6.gamepedia.com/Crusade ). Barley managed to take his cities and had to go into catch-up overdrive after that. Still managed to win after all, but that was a pretty fun game.

 

[D7th]

If Civilization VI is facile, then make it exigent.

Imagination, the painter. A warrior wonder.

.temp

 

[CaiusDrewart]

So I have played this game for about 3 hours now and read half hours another in forums and talked another half hour with other civ experienced players:
So basicllay best thing to do is build worker, build another workers, build even more workers.
And after that u build more workers.
In between some of those u sneak in a settler or such a site thingy. which most of time will be fnished in 1 turn because u got all those choppers out. Dont you?

With this i am leading after 2 hours of 1. deity game so far that i m too bored to continue.

WTF is this gamee design?
And why are game testers and other testers (magazine, sites and so on) to dumb to figure?
Why dont devs ask good playrs before pubilishing such a nonsense?

Game should be abbout decisions and reviews say this game, is but well its not.
Its choping all world down.

And btw stop me with nonsense like i need to play more to understand better, I was both in civ3 and civ4 best player (both single and multy) - so I am able to figure game mechanics.

It's definitely true that chopping and harvesting are way, way overpowered. Try playing the game with house rules that forbid a) unit selling b) chopping and harvesting outside your borders and c) using captured AI Settlers. I know that it sucks for players to have to intentionally limit themselves like that, but at least, with those rules, you can get a fun and playable game for now. It's still easy, but not absurdly though. And of course these exploits will eventually get patched out anyway.

 

[aeo1us]

Civ V was programmed in such a way that if you were kicking butt, the AI would pick one civ, and kill off the others to (ideally) slightly exceed your progress which always ensured one major competitor to overtake. I find Civ 6 doesn't do this at all.

 

[TornadoCreator]

I've found one of the hardest games to play is as one of the two Greeks in the "Yet (not) Another Maps Pack" largest Earth map. On Deity you'll be stuck surrounded by the other Greece, Germany, Russia, and a little beyond them, France, Romans and Scythia. You'll be lucky to get a second city down before the space completely dries up and you may have to waste a few turns moving your initial settler just so you can settle as you'll spawn on top of the other Greece. The interesting thing is, the map is huge, so outside of Europe there's enough space for everyone to get to 8-10 cities even with all 20 Civs in place (including both versions of Greece). Especially as there's basically no-one in North America or Africa. Africa has Kongo and Egypt, North America has USA... that's it. Australia and South East Asia are also completely empty except for city states. This means nations like USA, Japan, China, India, Kongo and to a lesser extent Brazil, Aztecs and Scythia have huge areas to expand into without bothering anyone. If you're NOT playing as those civs they will quickly prove powerful, while playing as a European country forces you to fight for every scrap of land possible. It makes a Deity game far harder, just through civ placement.

That said, I agree, the game is too easy. Especially if you play as Arabia... by far the strongest civ in the game.

 

[nick-brown]

My advice to up the difficulty: Deity with only Domination and Score victory conditions enabled*. This will mean that you'll almost certainly be DOWed very early as the AI has nothing else to focus on. Having previously won a few games on Deity it took me about 10 starts to win in this scenario (I wasn't a natural early war player).

Of course having said, now that I know what the correct response is (build archers) it seems easy again ;-)

* Religion is dull and a science victory can be achieved too early. Culture is ok but enabling it in this scenario would distract the AI.

 

[kb27787]

Oh my goodness... horsemen/horse archer barb camps that spawn one unit per turn several turns into the game after I settled immediately a barb scout saw me and reported back to camp 3 freaking tiles away from my city border (I rage quit)... when I first played this I wondered if the devs had raging barbs from BNW permanently on.
And then, Sumeria war cart (nerfed now in recent patch) rush from neighbor AI. Germany is also an ass. Spain is another one. They're pretty much BNW Shaka, you KNOW war is coming in the first 30+ turns... I've had Spain rush me with 5-6 warriors/slingers under 20 turns. Harald surprisingly, not so much, in stark contrast to BNW... sometimes he's friendly and leaves me alone early.
If you survive and emerge from the early game it's easy. Early game is a lot harder than CivV because of certain things like no longer being able to bribe AI to war, AIs going to war on CS and no one cares, crazy barbs on steroids (and I though hand axes were quite annoying in BNW, but they've got NOTHING on civVI barbs).

 

[Herod]

When Civ V released a lot of people levelled down a notch, in Civ VI I'll have to level up. My latest game was on Prince and when I sent my tanks and helicopters down to Catherine they found warriors and chariots defending Paris. I took Paris with 2 bombers and one infantry in one turn, not exactly an evening of stragetic planning.
As Prince is the highest level where the AI don't receive bonuses, I will have to leave the level playing field and increase levels giving the AI a head start.
It must be really easy if people can win on Deity because the AI start with 3 settlers/2 builders/5 warriors and massive production and gold bonuses.

 

[Hythian]

Apparently Ai doesn't research a bunch of military techs.
Which results in my tanks riding over their warriors.

My experience with this hasn't been that they don't research the tech, but that they don't seem to recognize the Strategic Resource that they need to be able to build the units. I've seen even late game the AI settle cities in positions that got them maybe slightly more food, but were in a position where they wouldn't be able to reach a resource they needed to field a more modern military.

I had one game where the AI was building Space Race projects, but were still basically a warrior / crossbow military because they'd never sought out Iron, Niter, Oil, etc. to improve their forces. So they could launch satellites, but defended their territory with Warrior armies.

Barbarians are actually the only danger - a camp spawning 4 cavalry is brutal.

Yeah... Unless the resources spawn within AI city boundaries as the tech gets discovered, or they have a UU that doesn't need a resource to build, the Barbarian forces upon the map are often the scariest things I find myself fighting.

 

[Yzman]

I seem to have a harder time than most in this topic and it appears to be that I never expand enough. I tend to stop around 3 cities or so. I have been grooming myself to expand more. There is no real penalty for expanding in this game, unlike previous games.

 

[TornadoCreator]

I seem to have a harder time than most in this topic and it appears to be that I never expand enough. I tend to stop around 3 cities or so. I have been grooming myself to expand more. There is no real penalty for expanding in this game, unlike previous games.

Oh no, there really is. If you're playing on a large enough map with sparse enough resources, that's when you get real difficulties. Keeping enough Amenities to keep all your cities happy is quite a challenge if there's not many luxuries about, making the hard limits on early civs 4 cities, then 8 cities, and finally 12 cities. Those milestones are definitely dictated by your resources. The main problem is, once you've got 6 luxury resources, (enough for +2 amenities over 12 cities) you're pretty much set. It's why my only real complaint about the "Yet (not) Another Maps Pack" is that there's far too many resources spread around. It means there's little reason to trade with the AI and very rare do you find you're without a key resource.

I think it's make for a far better game if certain resources where extremely limited. The strategic resources should be limited per map. Make it so that only ~20 sources of Horses, Iron, Niter and Coal appear. Horses should only spawn in Western Asia and Europe, 10 sources in each, somewhat spread out. Iron should only spawns in large quantities (6+) in Northern Asia and North America. With one single deposit in modern day Brazil, South Africa, British Isles, Scandinavia and Australia. Niter should appear in South East Asia, South America, and along the West Coast of USA only with around 5-8 sources in each location. Coal should appear mainly in North East Asia, North America, and Australia, with single deposits in Eastern Europe, British Isles, and India. This will make trading these valuable. The late game materials should be even rarer. Oil should appear in North America, the Middle East, Siberia and Scandinavia only with about 3-5 sources in each location (max 15). Aluminium should spawn in Brazil, East Africa, and Australia (2-3 in each), with single deposits in China, Russia, Greece, and the Caribbean (again max 15). Uranium should be the hardest to acquire, appearing in Eastern Europe, around the Caspian Sea, around the Great Lakes in North America, and in southern Australia. About 2-3 deposits in each location, maximum 10 deposits per map. This would make the game FAR harder to rush. You'd need to actually keep NPCs sweet in order to build what you want. Strategic resources would be just that. Trading for Oil or Uranium even if you already have it would be valuable as it'd stop an opponent getting it.

Additionally, you could do the same with Luxury resources. Make it so that they're worth trading for. Each civilization can only make use of ONE unit of these luxuries, so make them rare. I'd place no more than 10 units per map, and I think as low as 6 would work well. This will make a huge Earth map worth exploring. People will fight over Australia for it's strategic resources where as they're fight over Africa for it's luxuries. It'd also make the great people Levi Strauss, Esteé Lauder, John Spilsbury, and Helena Rubinstein more valuable; and the Suzerain of Zanzibar would be more valuable too. Currently the Earth maps are too easy because there's too many resources...

Hell, I'd be tempted to make my own map to test this theory, if I knew how. I may look into it actually. Anyone who has access to any online resources or editing software that would let me create custom Civ 6 maps (like the guys who made the "Yet (not) Another Map Pack"), if you can point me in the right direction I'd be interested to try this out.

 

[flashheart64]

It probably is too easy as things stand.

I've had five Diety wins on the bounce. Three as Germany on a Continents map with a Science Victory and two as England on Islands.

By comparison, I've spent 100 times as long on Civ V and I've probably only have five Diety wins in total.

That said, I tend towards building rather than fighting. In Civ 5, once you started a fight you pretty much had to keep going. In Civ 6, as Germany, you can fight a defensive war for 20 or 30 turns and just rely on your late game production advantage to pull away. I've just finished a 221 turn science win as Frederick and the last hundred turns were pretty much by the numbers. Once you've got 6 or 7 cities with Hansas + workshops and Campuses + libraries and universities, you're up at 120-ish science per turn. Once you hit Enlightenment and get the 100% science bonus, you're probably producing 50% more science than the best AI civ and it's a done deal from then on.

By Civ 5 standards, I think I'm an Emperor-level player in that I can win any victory condition playing any civ. At Immortal level, I can usually win but, I need to play the hand I'm dealt in as far as how I win. On Diety, if I win it's because I've played at Nebby or Liz on islands or I've just got lucky.

I'm really not that good and Civ 6 is making me look a lot better than I really am

 

[stormtrooper412]

Oh my goodness... horsemen/horse archer barb camps that spawn one unit per turn several turns into the game after I settled immediately a barb scout saw me and reported back to camp 3 freaking tiles away from my city border (I rage quit)... when I first played this I wondered if the devs had raging barbs from BNW permanently on.
And then, Sumeria war cart (nerfed now in recent patch) rush from neighbor AI. Germany is also an ass. Spain is another one. They're pretty much BNW Shaka, you KNOW war is coming in the first 30+ turns... I've had Spain rush me with 5-6 warriors/slingers under 20 turns. Harald surprisingly, not so much, in stark contrast to BNW... sometimes he's friendly and leaves me alone early.
If you survive and emerge from the early game it's easy. Early game is a lot harder than CivV because of certain things like no longer being able to bribe AI to war, AIs going to war on CS and no one cares, crazy barbs on steroids (and I though hand axes were quite annoying in BNW, but they've got NOTHING on civVI barbs).

heeeeeeeeeeeeeey I haven't seen you post in a good while

I've never had much issues with early AI wars. You just have to unlearn the Civ5 concepts and open with 3 Slingers AND THEN think about expanding. It may have been some luckier RNG but I did spawn near Scythia and went all war from the word go, ignoring my expansion and culture and growth. But on turn 55-ish I had 5-6 cities and zero angry neighbors.

What sunk my game though was seeing barb mech infantry before I even got the normal infantry since I didn't had enough cities to keep up the science pace with the runaway on the other continent which translated to barbs having quite impressive median techs. But that was due to inexperience since I don't really play the late game much, I pretty much always stop after 100-150 turns after I clear out my neighbors and assume (wrongly) it should be smooth from this point. So cruise control micro is not an option, spamming cities until turn of victory is. Not a lot of fun I guess, unless you go romp and stomp, at least that gives dynamics

 

[TomKQT]

I was playing as France on the second highest difficulty (it was my I think 5th game, so not extremely experienced, but not a beginner either) and I noticed that Portugal is getting very close to cultural victory and America to scientific victory. I also noticed that some enemies (especially America) had much better units than I.
So I thought this game was not so easy as everyone says. I had to do something with the situation, so I tried to conquer some cities from Portugal and I started to use spies against them and America. I also tried to improve my culture as a defence agains Portugal turism. The battle was quite hard, because the civs were far away and almost surrounded by other civs (which would not give me open borders for longer times).
In the end, I didn't capture a single city but I think I crimpled them by pillaging, especially by coast (coastal raid).
The point is, I won quite easily a scientific victory, even though America was somewhere in the middle column on the victory screen, while I still didn't even had the tech required to build spaceports. And I also could win cultural victory, if I focused on it. So, after all - yes, it was quite easy Not an automatic victory, but the AI wasn't very good in the final steps.