Too Easy?

[Bradicus]

I admit I'm only playing my first game and it's only at the noble level! But I had four cities while many of my rivals only had 1 or 2! And I wiped out the only civ with whom I shared a large island with and now I'm a powerhouse! I have 2.5 times as many points as 2nd place!

Has anyone else noticed this mod to be a little easy? Maybe I just got lucky with my start! I usually win my noble games but not by such a large margin! I'm also the greatest enemy of every civ yet they never invade me. Seriously I have cities defended with 2 units and the AI doesn't even touch me!

On a side note; I love this MOD. I love how much work was put into it to make the game more realistic. It truly is an advancement over BTS. Kudos to the developers!

 

[Carwyn]

What civilization are you playing? Are you playing with revolutions on? If it's too easy, try turning off some of the options - like try playing with tech trading off and research all your own! It's killer! Also, when you are comfortable that you have the hang of it, turn up the difficulty, there is a HUGE difference between Prince and Monarch, for instance. The barbs start to spawn like mad and you have to really hustle just to stay alive.

Sometimes you just get a really good start. It is not the norm and you can easily be taken out early on from a barb civilization that pops into a real threat in your next game.

 

[zappara]

I've had games where my civ has been destroyed in less than 200 turns on noble difficulty and other times I have no difficulties on building large empire on harder game levels - it just depends on what game options you use and how you play the start (though sometimes you can be very unlucky ).

 

[WildFire]

went from noble -> monarch -> emperor in 2.71 mp game (1 game in each) and I must stay, the difficulty def got ramped up. We quickly out teched the AI in the other levels but on emperor, their military stayed close as did their economy and everythin else lol.

 

[xcrissxcrossx]

I usually play on Prince in regular civ, but I have to play on emperor or immortal for the AI to keep up in RoM. Huge difference.

 

[Carwyn]

I usually play on Prince in regular civ, but I have to play on emperor or immortal for the AI to keep up in RoM. Huge difference.

Try messing with the settings... turn on raging barbs and turn off tech trade. Use random civs - I find that I can just fly with France for some reason, they just get good land every time for instance. Turning off tech trade makes a whole new game.

Try mod modding - remove all the modifiers on the AI to get them to use one civic over another and see how they respond. We've found that actually makes them tougher, though we changed the civics too and are not done doing that for a more balanced game. (We want civics that allow you to get some benefit no matter what land you have or play style you want, so that they offer more real usable choices.)

 

[Killtech]

I do have the same problem... started a game as Emperor on a large map with 30 civs and snail speed. now it's 1000 AD and i have nearly 4 times the score of the next civ on the score board (my celtic empire has 2084, next civ are the vikings with 689). the problem seems to be that the AI builds a bit too many units instead of city improvements (the zulus do that so exzessivly that they cripple themselfs so much such that they are totally unable to ever leave the minor civ status... even with tech leaking on) while human players tend to have all buildings in their cities that can be build. also the AI dosn't use trade caravans which slows them down considerably compared to human players. and on top of all i realized that controlling your workers yourself gives you a significant benefit agains players using automatomation.

 

[phungus420]

It's impossible for the AI to keep up with all the new stuff in RoM. Especially since much of it is python based, and thus the AI simply cannot take it into account (Inquisitions Python does effect the AI behavior, but that's about the only python component I know of, other then some stuff by Davidlallen in Dune Wars that is programmed in Python that the AI is "aware of"). It's just a known fact for RoM that you will need to up the difficulty. Most users seem to need to bump things up 1 or 2 levels from what I read on these forums.

 

[civ_king]

I do have the same problem... started a game as Emperor on a large map with 30 civs and snail speed. now it's 1000 AD and i have nearly 4 times the score of the next civ on the score board (my celtic empire has 2084, next civ are the vikings with 689). the problem seems to be that the AI builds a bit too many units instead of city improvements (the zulus do that so exzessivly that they cripple themselfs so much such that they are totally unable to ever leave the minor civ status... even with tech leaking on) while human players tend to have all buildings in their cities that can be build. also the AI dosn't use trade caravans which slows them down considerably compared to human players. and on top of all i realized that controlling your workers yourself gives you a significant benefit agains players using automatomation.

I think we need to teach the AI to build most buildings in their high production city then spam caravans to build buildings in other cities

 

[Afforess]

It's impossible for the AI to keep up with all the new stuff in RoM. Especially since much of it is python based, and thus the AI simply cannot take it into account (Inquisitions Python does effect the AI behavior, but that's about the only python component I know of, other then some stuff by Davidlallen in Dune Wars that is programmed in Python that the AI is "aware of"). It's just a known fact for RoM that you will need to up the difficulty. Most users seem to need to bump things up 1 or 2 levels from what I read on these forums.

I've been through the RoM python, and there is hardly anything there. I've moved most of it into the SDK or XML with my modmods, so I don't think this is really true. I play on Monarch difficulty, and if I don't get a fantastic starting spot, the game is quite a struggle.

For anyone who thinks RoM is too easy, turn on Revolutions and BarbarianCiv.

I think we need to teach the AI to build most buildings in their high production city then spam caravans to build buildings in other cities

I've given some thought to adding a AI type for caravans, but it would be quite a bit of work... It might be my next big project though.

 

[Zorn]

For me, the difficulty has dropped a lot from 2.6 to 2.8.
At 2.6, I was could not win on emperor.
On 2.8, I am totally dominating on emperor, and are on a good way to win my first try on immortal.
Maybe I just got used to it.
(Settings were the same, huge, snail, raging barbs and barb civ. No rev)

 

[Carwyn]

Ah, I'm still playing 2.71 for our MP experience. We've actually made Prince a lot harder - it was too easy and Monarch a bit hard - and we've modmodded it to add challenge. We had a lot of games on Monarch that never made it past 300 turns and one of the four of us was going out so we restarted. (Can't quite imagine playing for weeks without one of our best friends!). Now, if someone goes out later in the game, the high score wins and we restart. Very few games make it to the end. Since we went to beefed up Prince though, we're now well into our game and its been challenging and interesting. I got the nasty land this time and will never be more than a third world nation, if I make it to the end. A big island with tundra, small lakes and no rivers is rough. At least I'm still in the game.

 

[civ_king]

putting rev on increases difficulty a bit

 

[Killtech]

For anyone who thinks RoM is too easy, turn on Revolutions and BarbarianCiv.

Well actually i play with both on. i tried even rageing barbarians but i had to realize that i can cope with the black hordes much better than the AI does... in fact i can get all my first military units easily to 20 xp giving me a nice advantage at the start. though i have to admit that i use the advanced start option (it's quite a must when playing on snail speed... 'cause you don't want to know how long it takes to build a settler on emperor speed in your starting city) which gives me clearly a great benefit (the AI seems to waste too many points into expanding it's cultural bordes i think).

About the Revolutions option it's really awsome! it gives the later game a good challange where without it you would just spent the centuries conquering the remaining independent territories agains inferior defenders. though it does not really endanger my empire since there is no real opponent who could profit form a rebellion in my lands. so it just delays the inevitable...


EDIT: and a strange obersvation to add releted on the snail game speed: is it normal that my core cities can finish nearly every unit in just one turn and world wonders don't take me more than 15 turns at the beginning of the middle ages at 400 AD? ok, i admit it, i use some of Afforess modmods but i had the same issue without it playing older version of RoM, although not the pronaunced. it seems to me that the procentual bonuses in production and food that come form different buildings are a bit excessive if you manage to improve your tiles optimally and gain strategic resouces for buthery and fishers huts! those bonuses are the main reson my cities grow much faster than any of the AIs giving me the biggest advantage. IMHO most of this bonuses should be tured down or changed into static bonuses (+1 istead of +5%) - especially all food related (production automatically goes down when the cities are smaller, so they might even stay). percentual bonuses might be ok for later epoches (such as modern? wasn't that the age where city populations started to explode?).

however one should realize that large cities with many worked tiles benefit most form these procentual bonuses while small cities don't get much of it while static bonuses halt smaller towns most! ... and you can guess who has the larges cities in the world.

 

[WildFire]

Ah, I'm still playing 2.71 for our MP experience. We've actually made Prince a lot harder - it was too easy and Monarch a bit hard - and we've modmodded it to add challenge. We had a lot of games on Monarch that never made it past 300 turns and one of the four of us was going out so we restarted. (Can't quite imagine playing for weeks without one of our best friends!). Now, if someone goes out later in the game, the high score wins and we restart. Very few games make it to the end. Since we went to beefed up Prince though, we're now well into our game and its been challenging and interesting. I got the nasty land this time and will never be more than a third world nation, if I make it to the end. A big island with tundra, small lakes and no rivers is rough. At least I'm still in the game.

Do you guys attack each other? Or just a non-war pact but anything else goes (spying, embargo's etc)

 

[Carwyn]

Do you guys attack each other? Or just a non-war pact but anything else goes (spying, embargo's etc)

Weeeelllll, normally we try to make the game hard enough that we have to work together at least in the beginning to have it go awhile. However recently one of my mates had bad land and ran his settler north a bit to settle. Turns out he was pretty close to me. Often we will work those things out, agree (sort of) as to who gets what land and go on a while... This time I had Zulu. What can you do except the impi rush?? Our build times are slowed way down, but I got a couple of impi out asap and sent them his way. I found a settler with an archer and made quick work of it and he was spluttering! hehe He was saying, you'd better take me out before I get Gallic Warriors! I sent my Impi on and that was the end of the game. He said his land was so bad it was a relief and we started another game... hehe

That said, usually we just work together, argue on the phone and have a great time. Mostly its a social time and we may or may not go to war depending on the circumstances. Many agreements are "misunderstood" by one or more of the parties agreeing to them, or just plain pushed to the limits! The bickering is friendly and the goal is to finish a game with everyone in it, or take them out spectacularly to the enjoyment of all. My mate was just saying that we'd all gotten along too well lately and not had any wars, so I obliged him. We hope to win by having a clear lead at the end in points or control of land or something we can pin a victory on (the victories that come with the game are too limiting somehow and we never do the Space Race). It's all informal and a lot of fun.

Most games end well before the full run because someone has really poor land and an AI takes them out. Sometimes we start a game a night, sometimes we play one for weeks. They do tend to get really slow later in the game, esp. if we do a huge map.

 

[WildFire]

I agree with a lot of that, mainly because we started playing on harder difficulties making us even more paranoid of each other where we get to the point of trading everything and basically having a permanent alliance before they are 'allowed'.

I agree most of the Victory options come too late for most MP games as someone dies early, has terrible land or it get's unbearably laggy/slow with that many people. A cool victory option could be tied to wonders... Get 4 cities with 'X' amount of wonders and you win a wonder victory or something.

Though I guess that would make industrious a little too powerful