The "Noble" setting is the cleanest difficulty setting. By that I mean, it will be the LEAST skewed for difficulty. The more difficult the setting above Noble, and things are agressivly skewed against the human player.
Right now I am testing BTS TAM v.074 and to keep my testing "timely" and to allow myself easy access to wonders, I am testing on Warlord. Its like taking candy from a baby.
The BTS game (CIV4) engine is more difficult to play then Vanilla I have found.
If you are looking for Natural/Even difficulty, Noble is best.
If you are looking to Extremely Challenge yourself then go above Noble. BUT dont expect ANY phase of the game to be the same. Everything gets tweaked to make it harder for you.
I am not sure if this is right thread for my response...anyway
I have been playing consistently on Emperor and I have a question concerning the difficulty. Yes, the balance of the game is difficult at this level, however, the fact that there seem to be so many different units that can do collateral damage in the game makes playing on Emperor or even Monarch feel like Deity.
Of course it should only be natural that the game makes it hard to impossible for your economy to afford a 15-20 stacked army (above and beyond defensive units) of various units to combat the armies the computer raises. That being said, when the computer attacks you with its massive army of 20-40 or more collateral damage units it hardly matters who you have defending, whether it be a hero with 100-200 xp or 4 of them, they are simply destroyed outright and there is nothing that can be done. Then your cities fall as the collateral damage units move in and spam your spearmen (if you have them) to death (regardless of whether they are in fortresses built in the hills or with all city defense upgrades in a city).
I guess what I am asking is if Emperor should be this difficult? One of the things that attracted me to TAM was of course the time-period it is set in but also the Heros and the ability to promote other units with great generals and make them as powerful as the heros. In a more general sense, with the Emperor difficulty your offensive units MUST be heavily promoted and able to withstand a lot of punishment, otherwise they just simply die, whether on the walls of cities or defending in enemy lands.
But with the amount of units that cause collateral damage (that the computer builds in huge quantities) there appears to be no balance, unless the point of the game after copper working is to suck it up and try to afford 15-20 defensive units per city and hope to god they don't attack us. And retire your Heros to cower in some fortress far from the battles on the walls of your cities, or simply disband them because you can't afford to have idle units any longer. If I haven't even gotten the proper tech yet to build a hero it feels as if he is obsolete before hes even been built...
Units that cause collateral damage:
EARLY GAME: (Balanced for the most part)
Peltasts
Archer
Javinleer
early mid Game: (becomes unbalanced very quick with an AI's growing economy)
Armored Javinleer
Chariot Archer
Horse archer
mid game: (very unbalanced, as the compter AI's economy allows it to build 40-50 offensive units)
Bowmen
HEavy Horse Archer
Mounted Javlineer...
I think the problem lies with the Mounted units--I accept the fact that they receive so much movement and can eventually leave any city and attack an approaching army at will. But what makes everything unbalanced is when they can withdraw and survive the encounter to attack another day so easily, and most defensive units have no way to combat them effectively to boot. The only way to protect yourself in the hills and cities is with Armored spearmen really. But even a stack of 10 spearmen just simply die when 30 or more horse archers appear. Even if a spearman (upgraded from a special unit) manages to acquire 25% against skirmishers and mounted units, it seems to make little difference in my games. Maybe if there were more advanced promotions it could be done, but needless to say the effect of collateral damage is exponential once more than 10 such units appear at your walls.
Anyway, maybe its just my pride speaking here about being obliterated on Emperor
, whereas it felt as if I had a fighting chance in earlier versions.
.
