Next difficulty level?

[Prozac1964]

Hi, I've had several people suggest that I raise my difficulty level - that it might actually improve my game, so I guess I'm trying to understand how. And what difficulty should I choose to have the desired effect?

I've played several settler, 2 chieftain, 1 failed warlord, and 1 pretty successful warlord. So where should I go from here? I mainly play for dom vic.

Thanks for any ideas.

 

[wideframehoss]

I find that mixing up play styles can help prepare you for higher difficulties.

 

[liv]

How did you fail warlord?
It could be worth playing through warlord again and try to avoid the mistake you did the last time.
I find that once I have played quite a few of of the many different civs and won on one level I am ready for the next.

 

[Sessy]

play prince. I'm sure you can start out on it and be fine.

 

[Prozac1964]

How did you fail warlord?
It could be worth playing through warlord again and try to avoid the mistake you did the last time.

Well I didn't totally fail, but I considered it a fail nonetheless. I was playing as Mongolia and trying to capture Poland, and they had such a strong offense that I was unable to take the cap. I failed to anticipate and prepare for such powerful battles so I built military units far too late. For what its worth, I'm playing warlord now and kicking butt!

This time I have the massive army and navy.

So that's how I failed, I just abandoned the game and started a new one.

 

[liv]

Ahh I see. Been there and done that
Were you fighing with keshiks?
They are a lot of fun.

Sounds to me like you are probably ready to try a higher level if you are just truly steamrolling this game. Or you could try to win with a civ that does not necessarily have an early military advantage and you have to plan a bit for that.

 

[Illianor123]

Try Prince. If you lose, try to look at why. Behind on tech? Not enough units? Started to late (ie, someone won a science, culture, diplo victory)?

Remember that you shouldn't expect to get everything as you go to higher difficulties. You will have to sacrifice some wonder. though quite a few aren't worth the hammers. Dont go for the great library the AI loves it and there are more important things to be spending early hammers on.

Remember that science in king. Growing your cities is how you get science, and production. Build science buildings in every city. Growth. Make sure to build a worker early to hook up luxuries and to improve the tiles you are working. Wheat, cattle, deer are all top priorities. Growth.

Also if you build a massive army, make sure it isn't just a gold sink, but that you are doing something with it. Make sure you have enough ranged units. Remember that melee units are just human shields that should fortify rather than attack (unless you heavily outnumber the enemy), and that ranged units do the killing,

Did I mention growth yet?

 

[Prozac1964]

Is there anything I should anticipate on Prince?? Sort of like to know what's up ahead.

 

[joncnunn]

Is there anything I should anticipate on Prince?? Sort of like to know what's up ahead.

Base happiness for the human decreases to the default 9 on Prince (and stays there on all higher levels)

In addition both pop & city unhappiness for the human on Prince increase to 100% (the default.)

Mastering Prince is basically all about happiness management, once you do that you're ready to move beyond Prince.

 

[unrendered]

How did you fail warlord?
It could be worth playing through warlord again and try to avoid the mistake you did the last time.
I find that once I have played quite a few of of the many different civs and won on one level I am ready for the next.

Maybe hes just new to the game man.

 

[wearecity]

CIV 5 is the first CIV game I've played and the first turn based strategy game, I have played for more than an hour or so and still I have had 3 victories out of 4 on Prince Level.

Therefore, if someone like me, can win on Prince, it would suggest, that Prince level is good for learning on, while still providing a bit of a challenge to newbies.

I think it pays to research the best civs to pick, for the best type of victory you want. Germany was good for war for me and Greece were good for a diplomatic victory. I won a score victory with Japan.

 

[unrendered]

CIV 5 is the first CIV game I've played and the first turn based strategy game, I have played for more than an hour or so and still I have had 3 victories out of 4 on Prince Level.

Therefore, if someone like me, can win on Prince, it would suggest, that Prince level is good for learning on, while still providing a bit of a challenge to newbies.

I think it pays to research the best civs to pick, for the best type of victory you want. Germany was good for war for me and Greece were good for a diplomatic victory. I won a score victory with Japan.

I think Science Victory is a good start. It's probably the easiest out of all the victory conditions.

 

[Prozac1964]

Maybe hes just new to the game man.

I don't think he meant any harm, just giving a tip. Having said that I am fairly new to the game...I've been playing now for about 3 months, but it took me 2 of those three months to start to understand the game...and I'm still learning.

 

[59saintdane]

Play as Poland and you shouldn't have a problem on Prince.

 

[beetle]

I second the idea of using science victory as a way to progress through the difficulty levels. The SV scales well. If you find yourself two eras ahead of everyone, and are just hitting the next turn button, you are ready to try the next harder difficulty setting! I think if you stay focused on domination, you will find yourself stuck pretty quickly. But I agree with others that you are ready for domination victory on Prince. War is fun, and you can have plenty of war even playing towards SV. The point is to have fun, but I would swear that the harder levels are more fun!

 

[Sessy]

^ I wouldn't necessarily say that harder levels are more fun, but definitely more challenging, I still can't win consistently on deity, so there's probably a lot of stuff that I'm not doing correctly. The game is designed in a way that to win on high difficulty levels, you don't really have to do every detail correctly. The macro decisions are the ones that are going to carry you. That being said, higher difficulty isn't really more fun, given that you have much less freedom to do whatever you want.

 

[corranhorn01]

The advice here is pretty sound. I'd say try a Prince game to master the happiness changes between the levels and then you're fine to move up another one.

Personally I started Prince and then just jumped straight to Emperor after about 6-10 games (currently Immortal), but need to really improve my CV times... This is the first game of it's type that I've played (not counting AoE) and I've only been playing it for about 3/4 months seriously (I dabbled, but due to PC issues, I was never able to play for over an hour in the one session, so quickly stopped playing the game).