Most difficult settings

[Jono]

I thought of a way to increase the difficulty settings after all.

Set Always War, but turn Tech Trading on. The AIs will trade techs amongst themselves, but no one trades techs with their enemy during war. (i.e. You).

Then set One City Challenge. This will spare the AI the trouble of looking for expansion room (which there ain't anyway) and get them started on the project of attacking you.

Plus, no chance for the player to get a 2nd city up before everything hits the fan.

Evil?

It's pretty amazing you made it to year 300 even. Too bad you didn't have some way of curing the disease, then you might of been able to knock out Mary's tile too. Still,

Actually, I suggested this o.O

 

[Sureshot]

ya, after 17 ai's on deity always war, i play the barbarians like theyre a nuisance, not a terror. you can just scout your area so they don't appear, bottleneck areas and hill archer defense stops them dead. if barbarians ever get siege weapons i'll be mighty scared tho.

17 ai's always war deity really skewed my concept of safety and threat... i played a game afterwards (same settings minus the always war bit) of grigori and took my warrior adventurer rampaging through enemy civs like i was unstoppable: i declared war on the doviello and just destroyed their pitiful second city and then locked them in their main city with my one warrior adventurer. deity may give them like 10+ units to start with, but they lack in strategy still and im not afraid of 1 civ, theyd need atleast 10 to make me worry now lol

 

[Sureshot]

tech trading on would have made it more difficult, i just never turn it on because the AI's always trade with each other and it gets way out of hand with no way for you to stop it (atleast in previous civs you could get tech from conquest or spying.. so sad that you can't do either in civ4 )

incense would have been so nice... the happiness value would have helped too