UHV difficulties unbalanced

[Hive Watch]

How come some civs like Portugal are so easy, and some like Persia are impossible? And they don't reflect reality, I won as Spain only with Aztec, Inca and Cuba land, while in reality Spain expand from California to the southernmost part of Chile, and Philippines, but to win as Ethiopia, you need to control almost all of Africa, while in reality they barely hold their own land together against foreign powers. I think you should be more powerful than reality to win, but it should be proportional for all of the civs.

Hope Rhye will balance the difficulties. But before that can someone experienced rank the difficulties of the UHVs, so I'll know how much effort I should spend on them.

 

[kravixon]

I'm no expert by any means, but from the ones that I've won; Greece, Egypt, Babylon, Spain, and England are relatively easy. France is if you build Constance. Japan, Mongolia, Rome, Aztec and the Maya(if you can build the temple) are in the middle. Persia, Mali and India are ridiculous.

Incidentally, I couldn't win with Portugal. Japan and China just wouldn't open borders with me.

 

[Hive Watch]

Well, I actually want a rank of all if not most of the civs
Babylon is fast but isn't easy without a guide
And for Portugal, just wait for a war to break out in Asia and than choose a side, also free religion helps

 

[Tibur753]

It's difficult to rank the civs because certain civs will fit more into your strategy than others. Civs like Japan, Netherlands, and Portrugal. are generally considered the easiest as you have few threats and don't need to war too much, if at all.

 

[Tigranes]

I think civs already rated with stars (1 to 5). I think the average of all the categories gives the feeling how hard is the civ. India got 15/5, Maya 13/5. Emperor Maya almost impossible, someone in the OLd World builds your Temple. India drives me crazy 3rd day in the row. Something going wrong all the time. I was going for a Great Prophet with 87% probability and I got GS! Few turns later Christianity was founded by python event in Independent Jerusalem!

 

[Riker]

UHVs are not balanced to be of equal difficulty, in a way that the player can choose how hard teh game will it be.

 

[blizzrd]

How come some civs like Portugal are so easy, and some like Persia are impossible?

None of the UHVs are impossible on Monarch difficulty.

but to win as Ethiopia, you need to control almost all of Africa,

No, you just have to prevent the Europeans from being in southern Africa. That is not the same thing as controlling it yourself. A couple of Oromo Warriors and a couple of Cannons and you can easily raze any landing party that the euros try to settle with in southern Africa.

 

[pku_dwest]

I said the Great People Point courses the unbalance.
But nobody can or want to understand it.

 

[blizzrd]

I said the Great People Point courses the unbalance.
But nobody can or want to understand it.

I'm sorry, but this post made no sense to me whatsoever. You haven't previously posted in this thread, so how does something you apparently "said" about GP points even relate to the discussion?

(I appreciate that English may not be your first language, but can you please explain what your meaning was?)

 

[BurnEmDown]

He's talking about some threads he posted a while back, helping with the early civ's UHV.
For me his guides and tips were very helpful with all 4 starting civs, except the Indians where I just can't finish the 3rd UHV! But that doesn't matter, his guides and tips helped me achieve the 1st 2 UHV, which I wasn't able to get before (both of them at least).

 

[Hive Watch]

I really don't think the star ratings correspond to the uhv difficulties at all

And I read from a guide before that if Europeans builds a city in africa, it counts as failing the uhv even if you raze it, is it the guide false or has it been changed

 

[mikebert]

I'm no expert by any means, but from the ones that I've won; Greece, Egypt, Babylon, Spain, and England are relatively easy. France is if you build Constance. Japan, Mongolia, Rome, Aztec and the Maya(if you can build the temple) are in the middle. Persia, Mali and India are ridiculous.

Incidentally, I couldn't win with Portugal. Japan and China just wouldn't open borders with me.

I won India. Persia is tough though.

India is like Babylonia and Greece. All of its goals are internal. One can employ a fast track research path to get two of the goals. India has lots of food resources, it is big and well protected so a huge population can be obtained more quickly that in China, for example, which is quite open to barbarian invasions.

Persia is hard because one of its goals is to control two shrines. There are seven religions. In most games two of them will be founded in China and two in India. One will be founded in Arabia in AD 630 and will be far too well protected by all those camel archers. This leaves two, Judaism (usually in Jerusalem) and Christianity (probably far away).

I've tried to take on India as Persian with little success. I've played games where I start as Babylon, discover Judaism and build a shrine there, then switch to Persia and take over the city with the shrine only to find its gone.

 

[onedreamer]

but to win as Ethiopia, you need to control almost all of Africa, while in reality they barely hold their own land together against foreign powers.

The goal for Ethiopia is that no Euros control land in Africa. For this to happen, Ethiopia does not need to control that land, but other african, or non european civs can. This goal does have some relation to History. When you say that Ethiopia "barely held their own land together"... heh, well it has been the only country in Africa that hasn't been colonized by euros during the colonial age. So their goal represents this achievement, since I am sure you agree that limiting it to their spawn area would be too easy.

About other UHVs, Persia is MUCH easier than India IMO because India relies on a) fortune and b) metagaming. All people who claim victories with India have their capital at Taxila... well you can call that victory, but not historical victory.

 

[JediClemente]

Persia is piece of cake. Seriously, it's so damn easy I only enjoy that game killing hordes of camel archers with elephants when Arabs spawn.

India on the other hand seems impossible to me, because it depends on factors you don't have any control on (Judaism founded in Jerusalem, for example).

 

[Visard]

That is why you don't found Judaism. Instead you will have to found Confucianism and Taoism. So yeah it is not very historically accurate.

 

[mikebert]

About other UHVs, Persia is MUCH easier than India IMO because India relies on a) fortune and b) metagaming. All people who claim victories with India have their capital at Taxila... well you can call that victory, but not historical victory.

My capital was at Delhi. I don't even know where Taxila is.

 

[mikebert]

That is why you don't found Judaism. Instead you will have to found Confucianism and Taoism. So yeah it is not very historically accurate.

If you discover monothesis before 2000 BC then Judaism doesn't appear in Jerusalem. Same goes for Islam in Mecca. In my Indian game, Arabia was Buddhist. I had discovered Divine Right and my Easternmost city was the holy city for Islam. I threw away the missionary you get with them to slow the spread of Islam. Persia was Buddhist and the Arabs must have picked it up from them.

 

[onedreamer]

I have read many guides of people like mikebert. IF you discover this and that before that etc etc etc... well too bad that in none of my tests ran with Dehli at start and following these guides I would win. And it's not like you're supposed to do all that much to make things happen so yeah... I do doubt about the actuability of those guides. I may occasionally and very luckily found Judaism (not in the last versions btw), but then fail other goals or substeps for goals.

 

[JediClemente]

In my experience, not founding Judaism means no UHV, as the first chinese one gets discovered pretty soon (guess by who?), the other means A LOT of research, and in the middle of that it's likely someone else will research Hinduism o Buddhism before you!

 

[BurnEmDown]

You should check pku_west's guide, it got me founding the religions pretty easily, I just fail the 3rd UHV (once only by 0.49% of population!). It can be found on this thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=304162