What Difficulty Level do you play on?

[hecubus]

About to finish first game on Noble in BTS. I bumped from Chieftain to Warlord back in vanilla, pretty much stuck with it through Warlords. Was getting to the point of starting on Noble (I can win easily on Warlord, time to move up) when I discovered the CFC, the Gauntlet, the HOF, and then BTS. I abandoned a number of Noble games early when I got a very poor start or botched the game. I may not get the win I wanted at the start on this one (Monty, Stalin, Shaka and Kublai all have other ideas), but I am going to finish it.

 

[Seidrik_The_Gray]

EMPEROR!!!!

It's the only level that seems to push back for me.

It's a huge step from Monarch though, and I'm struggling on Emperor. I haven't been able to reliably sling shot Civil Service on this level, yet. I can hold my own with clever diplomacy, but I can't seem to get over this hump I have in the middle ages.

 

[FrancisMarion]

Just moved up to Emperor... it's hit and miss so far... my love of Aggressive AI isn't making the transition any easier either.

 

[dutchking]

Prince/Noble. Those are the most balanced levels to me.

 

[GenMarshall]

I just started playing Civ again, however its been a while and not that confident to play a higher level.

 

[ButSam]

I am currently winning a game on Prince, but I think it is mostly due to a very lucky start. I normally find Prince a very good challenge. I have lost 1 and won 1 on Noble in BTS, whereas I regularly won on Noble in Vanilla/Warlords.

I started with Bronze in the radius of my capitol, and was able to wipe out the only other civ on my island by ~2000 BC. Oh, and I was Tokugawa, so I got all sorts of free promotions.

Now there are other civs I have found, but their starting areas are about half the size of mine (which makes sense, since my continent was supposed to have 2 people). I am winning by ~600 points, and well ahead in techs. I just need to get Banks so I can pump up my commerce more and get my research above 60%, then I can still settle more cities on my continent. If anyone else tries to settle on my continent, they will regret it...

Sam

 

[Jamesds]

If you are looking for a way to practise and improve your game, follow the link in my post. We will be looking for another player soon, so we will accept the first person who comes! Currently, we have reached turn 80, and the difficulty level is prince .

 

[IronCrown]

EDIT: 98% of all players play 1-2 levels below their skill.
Losing 3 out of 4 times means, you still might be too good for this level.
If you play against 9 rival civs, you win 1 out of 10 if your current difficulty is right.
Winning more means you are a cheating bastard who likes to punch first-graders =)

Blake posted something similar, but I think it's wrong. When two people play against each other and one has a 'skill level' of 8 and the other one 9 then the latter will almost always win. It's not a matter of mathematics. Every game is new and if one player is better he will win, period.

Of course Civ includes quite a bit of randomness, like starting position, resource distribution etc, so if players are of similar skill, everybody has a chance to win. But the better player will still win the vast majority of games even if he's only slightly better. The few games he loses will be those where he has very bad starting conditions or he makes mistakes he usually doesn't make.

In a game without the element of chance this is of course even more so: For example, I play chess only slightly worse than my brother. Still, he wins every single game.

 

[Jamesds]

In a game without the element of chance this is of course even more so: For example, I play chess only slightly worse than my brother. Still, he wins every single game.

Hmm, slightly off topic, but I have to correct you here. In chess, going by the international rating system, you have a 25% chance of winning a game against someone with a rating 200 greater than yours. It works the other way: you have a 75% chance of winning a game against someone whose rating is 200 less than yours. This means if you are very evenly skilled, then you should win almost half the times you play your brother. The fact that your brother wins most of the time shows that there is a great difference between your ratings, and thus your skill levels. Nothing that a bit of practise and study can't help though .

Applying this to Civ4, I think what Blake said is true to an extent. It's just that I don't like playing on levels where I only win 10% of the time....at least 50% would be nice!

 

[Guardian_PL]

Monarch here, but despite how much I BTS, no insane modifiers for AI mean that winning now is a piece of cake. Really, Warlords kicked hard, BTS mean You have to move up a level to enjoy it the same way. I cracked Emperor once on Warlords (cultural victory with Bismarck) but with one reload, so let's see if I can do better than that

 

[IronCrown]

Hmm, slightly off topic, but I have to correct you here. In chess, going by the international rating system, you have a 25% chance of winning a game against someone with a rating 200 greater than yours. It works the other way: you have a 75% chance of winning a game against someone whose rating is 200 less than yours. This means if you are very evenly skilled, then you should win almost half the times you play your brother. The fact that your brother wins most of the time shows that there is a great difference between your ratings, and thus your skill levels. Nothing that a bit of practise and study can't help though .

Well, if I lose every game by gradually falling behind (first slightly worse position, then a pawn, another pawn, until finally I can't hold my ground) I think that I'm only slightly weaker, but as long as both of us play constant und focussed, I will always lose because there is no chance involved. To make an analogy: The number 10000 is only one higher than the number 9999 but it will always be higher no matter how often you compare them. So if you match them one million times to see which 'wins', the former will win 100% of the time although they differ only very slightly.

In reality there is of course some chance: Because we aren't machines, the level of concentration and skill varies a bit from day to day. And drinking beer while playing doesn't help

I think you can see that even in the combat math in Civ4: I noticed that your odds drop very steeply if the strength of your unit is lower than that of the enemy unit, even if the difference is very small. I can't check right now, but I think a Strength-promoted warrior has like 70% winning chance against an unpromoted warrior although the strength difference is only 10%.

 

[ThorRex]

I was just starting on Prince when BtS came out so I played my first BtS game on Prince. Much to my surprise, I found it to be much easier than Prince in Warlords. I think the main reason for this is that the AIs tech a lot slower in BtS than they did in Warlords. I've won all my BtS games without any contest so I think I'll move up to Monarch soon.

I agree that BTS seems easier than Warlords at the Prince level. I have always played Prince and rarely won but BTS seems a good bit easier. Its a nicely balanced game- I won one cultural victory and one Diplomatic victory. It seems to me that Advanced Starts favor the human, don't have any idea why.

 

[Bridog7]

The highest i can go up to is noble. i tried prince once and bairley won. its hard. noble is better.

 

[DiabolicX]

Just moved up to prince recently. The last few games have been the most fun and challenging I have played so far.

 

[Lord Neil]

I play on Noble and have been in the top part of the score board. I always with 18 Civs(going to move down to 12) and raging barbarians. I am planning to move up to prince when I finish my current BtS game.

 

[snipafist]

Just made the transition to Prince. Economic development, proper defenses, and measured expansion are all incredibly important at this level, but I'm getting the hang of it.

 

[Enkidu_Warrior]

I refuse to play higher than Noble.

I enjoy developing a plan and executing it to fruition - not micromanaging and being railroaded into strategies as higher levels require.

It's a game, I'm playing for fun. Noble gives me the most flexibility for that.

ew

 

[katabrok]

Prince.!
Itś the standard, the mid term. and require some good strategies!
Makes the game not too much dificult but you have to be attention, and provide fun enought.
!

 

[Catharsis]

Never got higher than Chieftain; I tried Warlord and got my behind handed to me. But I'm happy with my low-level existence.