Requested changes to difficulty settings

Fluxx

Mr. Almost There
Joined
Apr 21, 2009
Messages
635
Now this idea and complaint came from a conversation I had with a friend.
Both him and me can win games on a relatively frequent basis on Deity (say 40-50%), but win the vast majority of our games on Immortal.

Now the problem and the point of the debate comes here, we both did not enjoy Deity at all compared to Immortal even though we are both very competitive of nature, and we wondered why.

These are the conclusions we came upon what the problem is with Deity:

1. Potential strategies are very limited
2. Some world wonders are impossible to construct, and at best you will be able to build a select few
3. In the early game you have to play a defensive game the majority of the time
4. Obtaining a worthy religion is only viable for a select few civs
5. City states relations are incredibly difficult to maintain
6. Some games are potentially unwinnable from the start

Now before I go deeper into each point, the summary is that on Deity you basically are playing Civilization 5 with barely half of its actual content.

Now to clarify the first point, I am not talking about Victory Conditions, because pretty much all VC's are still viable on deity (with the exception of diplomatic which can be a cointoss sometimes).
The problem is that the majority of the games you have to do a NC start, you have to take the tradition tree, you have to take rationalism, you have to focus on certain techpaths first, etc etc.
Sure you can have small divergions here and there, but the overall picture and broad strategy of the vast majority of your games will be the same.

The second point is more of a niche, but still is an important part of the game. The sad part it is almost completely taken away from you.
On immortal you have to make sacrifices to get certain wonders, but at least they are in your reach. On Deity most ancient/classical wonders are out of your reach. Next to that the wonders in other era's are often unreachable unless you get lucky with a GE pop AND the overall techpace of the game is slow for the AI's.

The third point is also extremely detrimental for the play experience.
There is almost no way to get a sucesfull attack on an AI before turn 90 at earliest.
Sure there are some games where you have a civ like Darius, you get a lucky start, a weak AI and you have about a 10 turn window where you can pull of a relative succesfull attack. But the majority of the games you can NOT be offensive in the early game.

The fourth should be clear for most people. Investing in a religion is already a costly endeavour, and on deity where all your resources are literally worth their price in gold it better pays off.
So unless you have the celts, or get incredibly lucky with a goodiehut or 2 subsequent early religions CS, you basically can not get a religion before 5-6 are founded before you.
Founding a late religion makes religion extremely lackluster, and not only that but with all the multipliers Deity gets, they can much easier harass you with missionaries/GP's.
Now as the mayans or the ethiopians, the investment in religion is relatively redundant, but this basically makes it only for a select few civs viable to go the religion route.

Now for the city states. On Deity the AI will have about 10x-20x your income. If they set their eyes on a city state, you can just forget about it, you wont compete. Not only that, but with all the other multipliers on everything, you will loose all the quests related to the generation of certain resources, and also the quests to pop certain great people (part of that is also due to the wonders). So basically most of the quests go to the AI's, and moneywise you can not remotely compete.

Now the last point is probably the hardest to push through. Ofcourse there are god amongst us men here in these forums, and they by far outpace my skillevel.
However, there really are some games that are almost unwinnable.
Lets say you play a continents map, and you have a runaway AI on another content, it is sometimes to late before you can hinder them.
Or sometimes you get a bad start, and some terrible neighbours, f.e. spawning on a continent with Monty + Nobunaga. Not only do you have little trading partners, there is a good likelyhood they will prevent you from properly building your economy, and therefor you getting even further behind than the other civs.
And these are just simple examples, but some games are just unsalvagable.

Now I think potential solutions will be reducing some of the bonuses Deity gets.
I used to know the exact bonuses Deity got in Civ4, but there is no clear chart/statistics of all the bonuses they get.
However, the gap between Immortal to Deity is too big.

Maybe remove the techs they get for free. This will allow for a bigger window to attack (AI' will get civil service slower, some slower than others). Also it opens up at least some wonders to be constructed by the player, because the AI has to actively research some of the tech paths, and might skip some techs early.

Change the starting units. The combination of an extra settler, 2 workers, all the early worker techs is just a very nasty combination. Combine that with the insane multipliers they get on all base resources, and you got one perfect recipe for earlygame disaster.

The other solution will be cutting on some of the insane multipliers Deity gets.
There is really no reason to give them reduced upkeep AND higher income, reduced happyness penalty AND growth bonus, unit cost AND train rate, etc etc etc.
Alot of the bonuses overlap/amplify eachother and not only that they also get even higher than on immortal PLUS the extra settler + worker + techs..

And these are the things I even know of deity gets, some bonuses that get mentioned are incredibly vague. Do bonuses still scale with era's like they did in civ4 f.e.?

So to conclude this post before it turns enormous again, some changes need to be made to Deity difficulty because the change is too great with immortal and subsequentially takes about half the content away in the game.

Thoughts, ideas?
 
Maybe just take all the possible bonuses the AI can get and break them out so that you can pick and choose? A sort of Custom Difficulty level?
Some people want to play a game with all the odds stacked against them that you listed.
I personally prefer not to play on Diety for many of the reasons you stated (and the game ends up not feeling like a game of Civ to me)...
But if you could control all the bonuses individually I could see it helping with the replay-ability.
 
I wouldn't say Diety is too strong. I'd say the other levels are too weak. In my mind, the top level of any game is allowed to restrict strategies to only one way to success. If you can solve the puzzle, the better for you.

Where the problem lies is that there should be a level under that that is challenging to you while still allowing various ways of gameplay. You know, I want a smarter AI, not one with bonuses that catapults it to the moon (literally in the case of Civ and science victory).

Have you tried some of the mods that improve the AI by a) adjusting AI priorities (for leaders), b) adjusting building and research priorities (to Victory conditions/strategies), c) help units (i.e. by giving larger sight ranges to AI), d) help the gold managment (rules for spending gold), etc. ... There's quite a lot one can do with the AI. I suggest the CivUp mod if you don't want changed gameplay for a start (and GEM if you want improved gameplay, though the current versions are not 'perfectly' polished).
 
My personal request for AI handicap changes for firaxis would actually be a one line change in GlobalAIDefines.xml :

At the bottom of the file; please change AI_HANDICAP to promote the AI from Chieftain to Prince.
 
Agree!

Change the AI 'handicap' from Chieftan to Prince
Remove free techs
Remove free units

Now the AI has:
Production bonus
Gold bonus
Growth bonus
Happiness bonus
Barbarian bonus

... Add the following:
Wonder/project bonus
Great people bonus
Culture bonus
Science bonus
Experience bonus

Conversely, you could give the player a handicap on some points but I imagine that might be unpopular.
 
Personally I hate the pacing on Deity. This is the reason for your point 1--the higher you go the more you are forced to bee-line science techs and ignore everything else. Fortunately it is easy to mod, so I've created my own mod that has pacing around Emperor level, but gives AI things like a passive boost to combat strength, additional culture (AI is terrible at acquiring policies), and cheap unit maintenance and upgrades.
 
Yes, they do need to change the AI so they can function better. It'd be a start if the AI didn't have such ludicrous starting bonuses but were better at managing their empire later in the game. You're right that high level difficulties just aren't fun because you're forced to avoid a lot of stuff, or you're forced to gamble on something (like a Wonder or religion) and reload if you don't get it (which you probably won't). Of course, making the AI better isn't easy, but it's still my biggest hope for this expansion. Unfortunately, with so many more things to complicate matters, I don't know if the AI will get better (how the hell are they going to run caravans successfully?)
 
I disagree. I think it's great that CiV has a ridiculously hard difficulty level. I think every game should have a ridiculously easy and a super hard level with everything in-between. Gives players options of playing at whatever they choose. I wish other games had harder max difficulties because some of them don't seem hard enough.
 
One point the OP didn't touch on that I think is the biggest determent of deity is that it absolutely requires gaming of the AI. You must exploit them for gold early and often -- this is simply not fun (at least for me).

It really takes you out of the game. I can beat it, but it's not fun; I don't feel like I'm beating the game, I feel like I'm beating flaws in the game.
 
I echo joncnunn's point; the game got a whole lot funner when I discovered the No Cheating AI Mod.
 
I wouldn't say Diety is too strong. I'd say the other levels are too weak.

Other levels are too weak? I just got PWNED by Alexander and his massive fortune of city-state allies on PRINCE:mad:. 419 hours in Civ V, and I think there needs to be a setting somewhere between Warlord and Prince for me :lol:

Of course, I've never read a "strategy" guide for Civ, i just research what "feels" right at the time.....(which is likely the problem at trying to go higher than prince)........I have won a few games on prince...
 
But then prince and warlord are the correct levels for you ;) I was saying rather than make the most difficult one easier, add in/adjust the other levels. I'm a emperor player myself, don't feel the need to go higher, but some players want to. Some players want the flexibility and challenge of high levels, some players want the "puzzle feel" of the highest level (with no range for errors).
 
I like that deity is impossibly hard, but I agree that a level between immortal and deity would be nice. My roommate aches for a emperor/immortal hybrid on the other hand.

Hopefully they will improve again the AI, and if the new mechanics don't eff up the game, then we might see a rise in difficulty that would suit everybody (I don't mind playing emperor for a while if it is challenging enough).
 
I like that deity is impossibly hard, but I agree that a level between immortal and deity would be nice. My roommate aches for a emperor/immortal hybrid on the other hand.

Emperor/Immortal hybrid: Closest thing possible to that is start with Immortal but remove the starting worker.
Unfortunately, that plays only slightly tougher than Emperor. (The AIs starting worker is almost entirely what makes Immortal more difficult than Emperor.)

Immortal/Deity hybrid: That would basically be Deity without the AIs extra settler; and could be named "Demigod".

Tougher than Deity: There's room to increase the AIs advantages within the frame work even more. Biggest single thing would be giving the AI 2 extra settlers instead of just one extra.

There is also the VEM/GEM approach of making radical changes to difficulty. (Instead of giving AI increasing amount of starting bonsuses that tend to fade over time, they have AI handicaps that start small and grow over time.)
 
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