Okay. So I've finally had some time to think about Civ VI again and came up with this idea for the next version of smoother difficulty. With the idea to add amenities and MyopicCat's idea of giving the player penalties as a way of getting around the +100% limit, I think it's possible to finally get rid of the extra settler while keeping the game hard. I also want to actually "smooth" the jumps between difficulties by adding new ones. Demi-god is the difficulty between Immortal and Deity, to help bridge the large gap between those two, and Omniscient is the difficulty level above Deity for true masters of the game. These are the specifics I came up with:
Value | Warlord or Less | Prince | King | Emporer | Immortal | Demi-god | Deity | Omniscient
Base Science & Culture Bonus | 0% | 12% | 24% | 36% | 48% | 60% | 72% | 84%
Per Era Science & Culture Bonus | 0% | 1% | 2% | 3% | 4% | 5% | 6% | 7%
Gold and Production Bonus | 0% | 20% | 40% | 60% | 80% | 100% | 100% | 100 %
Combat Bonus | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 (+1 over time) | 4 (+2 over time) | 5 (+3 over time) | 7 (+3 over time)
Bonus vs Barbarians | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
Bonus Amenities Over Time | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
Extra Military Units | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 3
Extra Settlers | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0
Extra Builders | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0
Player Production Penalty | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10% | 25%
In particular, looking at Deity, I would like to hear some thoughts on how that looks compared to
vanilla Deity. This new version would:
+ Increase science & culture from +40% to +72% at the start, and increase by 6% more each era, capping at +100% each at Modern era
+ Add 1 more combat strength to all units at the start, and increase +1 more at Medieval, Industrial, and Atomic eras for a total of +4
+ Add +5 additional combat strength vs barbarians
+ Grant amenities to every AI city over time, staring at +1 at Medieval, increasing to +4 at Modern
+ The player has -10% production towards everything
- However, the AI starts with 3 warriors instead of 5
- 1 settler instead of 3
- and no extra builders, instead of getting a free builder with each of its first 2 cities
Any thoughts? Does this sound reasonable, or do you think this new Deity would be too much harder/easier than vanilla Deity?