(POLL) In which difficulty level do you find the balance between enjoyable and challenging?

[lqwertyp]

I voted immortal. For me it's the best difficulty because I can beat the ai on any victory type without trying the same strategy every time (archer or knight rush). Deity is winnable but not in a fun way for me.

 

[Rosty K]

Emperor is my pick, combined with a mod to eliminate AI's free settler, because its the last difficulty level which allowes a bit of roll playing. I can beat deity easily by warmongering but I don't want it to be the only way to play this game.

Any chance to know the name of the said mod?

 

[WillowBrook]

I think I play king most frequently - I can do whatever I'm trying to do in the game (usually going after an achievement or three) without the AI being either a total pushover or a runaway.

 

[tedhebert]

I play most of my games on emperor, but I chose Immortal, because I NEVER lose on Emperor.... Immortal is not a sure win... Since the question is about balance, that's my answer

 

[Mr. Shadows]

It depends on my mood and what I'm trying to accomplish. If I'm experimenting with something I usually play Emperor, or sometimes Immortal, and that includes each new scenario. If I'm achievement hunting I might turn the difficulty down to Prince or even lower depending on what it is. Lately I've been getting pretty comfortable (although by no means infallible) at Deity.

 

[KayAU]

None of them, really. I mostly play on King now. I don't think I have ever lost a game on that difficulty, so there is little challenge, but the way Civilization tries to create difficulty on higher levels is deeply unenjoyable for me. I also don't like the way the game is favoring very wide play and warmongering (which is made even worse by the fact that the AI is absolutely awful at combat). I like to play peacefully and tall, and it gets tricky to remain competitive that way on higher difficulties, which then compels me to switch into a playstyle I don't particularly enjoy.

 

[Futumch]

I didn't think we were allowed to play on Prince anymore.... you know, since he died and all.

It should be renamed "The difficulty level formerly known as".

 

[Bee7]

I unfortunately haven't been able to find any such difficulty due to the way the AI's bonuses are front-loaded. Any difficulty where the late game is challenging has dramatically constrained options in the early game (competing for early wonders/great people requires an investment disproportionate to the reward, and attack by a numerically/technologically superior force is essentially inevitable).

This is a key observation, I think. Games on the higher difficulties are often significantly less interesting because of the need to go flat out for a big military and to take out your neighbors. Once you pass tipping point, the AI keels over and it is an easy route to victory. This situation also encourages stuff like settler, worker, eureka and AI city farming—I don’t mind having to live with one of the three, but all of them makes it all feel a bit artificial. Much though we criticise the devs, I think the AI is astonishing in many respects, though it is also a bit laughable at times. However, if that can’t be improved right now, the other way out would either be to buff diplomacy or religion so that the human player had another route to survival in the early eras, other than the brute force approach.

 

[Zuizgond]

I wish they would put more resources into designing a more challenging AI as the difficulty increases instead of the lazy concept of granting it absurdly high bonuses.

 

[bbbt]

I wish they would put more resources into designing a more challenging AI as the difficulty increases instead of the lazy concept of granting it absurdly high bonuses.

AI in general is not there yet. Basically every game increases difficulty with bonuses: i.e. RPGs don't get 'smarter' enemies, they get more enemies and/or the enemies get more HP/damage. Strategy games give the AI bonuses. Etc. Unless a game is reaction-time based (and the computer can move/process faster) - and even then that's still not the rule (see most FPS games), or something like chess/go which is simpler and has tons of data to decision points for machine learning and the like.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of things they can do to improve the AI overall (i.e. differentiating it's pathfinding between 'friendly territory' and 'enemy territory' might be nice), but smart AI/scaling difficulty is still some years off for civ. And when it does come, I wouldn't be surprised if it requires connecting to one online, not using one running on your computer.

 

[PYITE]

The poll is turning out a nice normal distribution curve, with emperor being the center peak. The developers and statisticians are happy as a result.

 

[bbbt]

Didn't Dota 2 recently get an AI that could beat the best human players, even when it's input speed was limited to that a human?

It's possible that current technology does exist that allows an AI to be built that can challenge the majority of players on this forum. But the resources required to do that way exceed anything available to Firaxis. Bonuses are the only practical way to make a moderately challenging AI at the moment

Nevertheless, the current state of the AI is still particularly shoddy.

My understanding with the Dota one is it was just 1v1 (i.e. it didn't have to coordinate more than one unit), and a lot of it's advantage was from being able to much more accurately gauge the time it took to do of particular things (I'm not 100% clear on how Dota is played, but things like the time between a spell starting to be cast to it's effect). Plus it's an online game with far more players where machine learning techniques can much more accurately be put to work.

I think Firaxis could, for example, turn just the tactical combat aspect of Civ into a standalone game (Civ: Battles). Say each person picks 10 units in an era and places them on a map, and fights to the finish, etc. Or a 2-1 unit ratio but with city bombardment city capture scenario. If they made that online game, they could use something like that with machine learning, if it got enough players. Though it would still be a lot more complex decision wise than chess/go/etc.

For the empire building logic and the like, I think that's much harder. Especially, as I understand it, the better AI would actually be more deterministic in many ways which would make it potentially much worse with MODs and the like (i.e. the more min/max it gets with a particular ruleset, the more that breaks if the ruleset changes).

Though the more they got the tactical combat (even just defending cities) up, the more it become challenging overall of course.

 

[AmtrakQuebec]

The poll is turning out a nice normal distribution curve, with emperor being the center peak. The developers and statisticians are happy as a result.

... except for the fact that there are actually three more easy difficulty levels that the poll creator chose not to include, so actually it is heavily skewed to the more difficult end of the spectrum ... and there was less rejoicing

 

[WillowBrook]

... except for the fact that there are actually three more easy difficulty levels that the poll creator chose not to include, so actually it is heavily skewed to the more difficult end of the spectrum ... and there was less rejoicing

But, to be fair, the population responding to the poll are visitors to the civ fanatics website, so one would expect the mean to be higher than the average Civ player.

(Then again, the average owner of the game has not achieved the steam achievement for winning at settler level or higher. )

 

[bbbt]

(Then again, the average owner of the game has not achieved the steam achievement for winning at settler level or higher. )

I was motivated to look at achievement stats at some other 4x games, and Civ 6 actually doesn't stack up badly. About 40% have won the game on Settler and higher. In comparison it looks like only about 17% have won Endless Legend or Endless Space 2 on any difficulty, and only 3%(!) have won Stellaris (granted, it's a Paradox game, so victory conditions are probably not the goal for most).

 

[Leathaface]

Emperor ATM, though it's starting to get a bit easy lately. I can definitely win most of the time, like at least 90%. I've started playing Immortal lately, hopefully I can get better and that'll become my new go-to level.

 

[trev1972]

Ive only played 3 games so far- all on king (newest game is emperor as king was too easy)

I kind of stymie myself deliberately though, i know an early warmongering approach would be optimal but its not the style i like at heart.

 

[Disgustipated]

I'm back to playing King again. I initially voted Prince, but after my last game which offered zero challenge whatsoever I'm back to King. But even my current King game has been extremely easy. But I am playing Kongo. And get this, my first goody hut pop was a relic. I can't tell you enough how overpowered this is getting a relic this early in the game for Kongo. Then I went for the suzerain with Kandy and got 4 more relics for a total of 5 in my palace. That's all I have room for at the moment. I still think King can be pretty challenging for me if I'm surrounded by AI's at the start and I start with a weaker civ. I've never been a big believer in Kongo until this game. Wow.

Kongo + early relic = insta win

 

[KyivanRusCivPlease]

Thank you to all who voted and commented so far. Would also like to know the opinion of @Victoria and @Eagle Pursuit. Are you there guys?)

 

[Tech Osen]

The poll is turning out a nice normal distribution curve, with emperor being the center peak. The developers and statisticians are happy as a result.

I now feel peer pressure to up my game!