[R&F] There needs to be a difficulty level between King & Emperor

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DrJambo

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One that doesn’t give the AI an extra settler.

I can fairly reliably turn over King, and this is perhaps even more so in R&F where there’s emergencies, loyalty and eras to game the AI on. But moving up to emperor sucks the enjoyment away from the early game as you’re literally forced into warfare of some sort just to keep up. Building wonders is also ill advised

Is there a mod? What do people do who’re like me and find themselves somewhere in between these two very different difficulty levels?
 
I'm in the same boat as you. King is only slightly difficult at the beginning, but I steamroll by mid game. When I try to jump to Emperor, I struggle. It's the first difficulty level where you have to actively exploit the AI to pare down its advantages. As a player that can get swept up in the roleplay aspect of the game, I dislike min/maxing and abusing the AI.
 
I feel like I quit most king games by turn 200, because I know I'm going to win. But I also really struggle with emperor.
 
I play Emperor for my peaceful games, even immortal for a challenging one.
The enemy having 2 settlers is not that big, as long as you pump out settlers before improving your cities you are fine.
It’s pretty simple maths, the AI gets some advantages that make up for their deficits, so roughly a city extra give them an advantage you have to fix by getting more cities than them.
It’s all about having the space to expand, and if you do not then you have to go sailing a bit but you should be able to get a couple of settlers out early. It’s more challenging but perfectly winnable.
 
I agree that there's a big step between King and Emperor. But there have to be steps, right? It took me quite a while to get to Emperor and I can win on Immortal, but Immortal still is not fun to me. Maybe you should play around with the game options while starting Emperor games (barbs on/off/raging - age of the planet etc.) It can hamper AI and help yourself narrowing the gap...
 
If you want to get an upper hand in Emperor+ then you need to steamroll your nearest neighbouring civ before they build walls.
 
That's the problem with Emperor+, it feels like you're constantly behind in the early eras. I like trying to catch up, but it would be nice if they balanced the difficulties so that every era was enjoyable on all the difficulty levels. I used to use the Smoother Difficulty mod, not sure if it's still supported. I have trouble winning on Emperor and Immortal when I don't go on the offensive.

I'd say Prince and King are the most enjoyable levels. It would be nice if the AI adapted somewhat to your success, maybe small boosts to their yields if you jump too far ahead.
 
The Deity++ mod (which may or may not still be working with R&F) has variations that alleviate some of this pressure, even a version without any extra starting units for the AI. As there's a maximum of 100% bonus yields for the AI though (at the moment not accessible in the code) those versions do give penalties to the very highest difficulties (it adds two more above Deity).

Would love to give some advice on how to change it yourself, but I can't figure out where the files are located. It's not the "Difficulty.xml" file, surprisingly.
 
u guys will think im bad for this, but when i play on emperor diff, i use cheat engine during the first five or so turns in order to pump out free units to put me on more of a lvl playing field with the ai. after that, it's a fair and fun challenge. the key is doing it right so u don't get carried away, or sell urself short either.
 
It's the "Eras.xml" file for modding starting units for the difficulty levels. However, since R&F came out, there is now an "Expansion 1" folder containing similar xml and an "Expansion1_Eras.xml" version, so I don't know if using the base game eras.xml is still the right thing to do?
 
Last edited:
DrJambo said:
It's the eras.xml file for modding starting units for the difficulty levels. However, since R&F came out, there is now an "Expansion 1" folder containing similar xml and an eras version, so I don't know if using the base game eras.xml is still the right thing to do?
Click to expand...

If you change the one in the "Expansion 1" folder, that should do the trick.
 
My Steam counter says I have played Civ6 for 2149 hours.
I have tried playing on emperor level several HUNDREDS of times by now, and I won only THREE of them.
Over the last year I have read more strategy articles and watched Let's-play-videos on youtube, but I am just too stupid to play this game successfully.
I am deeply frustrated.
 
Tuvok694 said:
but I am just too stupid to play this game successfully.
Click to expand...
You are not.
Most let’s play games are rubbish. You probably get side tracked, that’s my main issue.
Have you tried playing the same save a few times? Just to 80 turns to see how well you can do. The main measurement being how many cities you can get, nothing else really counts.
Building more than 1 district early for the eureka is a failure.
Ideally you like war because that’s the easiest way to play.
I’m happy to help you if you have no mods in use.
 
I just finished a game on emperor (Jayavarman, standard map, fractal). I won a SV, but don't see how I could have won without warring. Not total war, but I took a couple of cities from Monty early and mostly everything from Kongo (in 2 wars). And until mid game when I took most of the rest of Kongo's cities in the second war, I don't think I would have won.

I can almost always win a peaceful game on king, but cannot figure out how to do it on emperor (and before R&F, how to do it on immortal).

But yeah, the gap between emperor and king seems very wide.
 
It is not even that you want to war early, but with sone close spawns emperor is actually easier because you are capturing better and more cities plus the tech pace is faster. The result is that the game is lopsided either way and this can't change until rolling over the ai is a gicen.

There actually is an alternative though, because maps can make the game harder. Try king on fractal maps and make the maps bigger. That sometimes becones more challenging though I admit to not being too good.
 
Last edited:
Tuvok694 said:
My Steam counter says I have played Civ6 for 2149 hours.
I have tried playing on emperor level several HUNDREDS of times by now, and I won only THREE of them.
Over the last year I have read more strategy articles and watched Let's-play-videos on youtube, but I am just too stupid to play this game successfully.
I am deeply frustrated.
Click to expand...

Wow, really? I've played Civ VI like 150 hours and find Emperor too easy unless I'm looking to role-play.
 
You can share a save her Tuvok and people will walk you through it. The first 100 turns enough for that. Get a start and post your file and we will chime in
 
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