What is the highest difficulty level that allow you to win consistently ?

[Antiphon]

I have the game only for some months now, and the highest difficulty I played with is King, and currently I am trying out all civs in random order. I win MOST of my games, with few losses here and there (watch out Ramses IF he can survive, he is badass cultural threat ). I do "cheat" in some way however, I pick my current civ through an online random generator and then play a "suited" map. So I don't play England or Polynesia on Pangea or Arabia on Archipelago .
In some long time in the future, when I have played all civs and all scenarios, maybe I'll try out Emperor or something higher, but King is challenging enough to not get bored while forgiving enough in case you lose an early city or don't grab 1-2 key wonders.

 

[Princeofnigeria]

I win a good 90% of my prince games (losing only when i try something new and it fails catastrophically, or If I do something really stupid). I play king and win about 50/50

 

[Ninakoru]

Well, I win consistently on Emperor, I win more than not on Immortal, and played twice in Deity with failure as result

 

[Sabrina]

For single players, I win 99% of the times on Prince. It's getting boring, I will move to king next time. For semi-MP, what I play the most, prince is still hard to win, since my opponent (currently playing as emperor) is much more experienced.

 

[ense7en]

Emperor. It's too easy most of the time.
I can win on Immortal usually, but if i get a bad start surrounded by warmongers i often quit once they DoW and plow through me with massive armies before t70.

I dislike how rigid playstyle has to be on Immortal+ though...you really cannot deviate much from the norm so it becomes rather boring.
I enjoy sometimes just playing less optimally, but to do so i usually need to do Emperor or lower.

 

[Galgus]

I always play Prince Marathon games on Huge maps and care more about building up my Empire and playing morally than winning.

I also consistently win those games.

I don't move up in difficulty because I hate fighting a stupid AI that cheats to make things harder, though I know it cheats on Prince to some extent.


Crossing my fingers for better AI in BNW.

 

[IkM]

I win consistently on King. I tried Emperor a few times but AI built wonders faster than me. then I returned back to King diff.

 

[adwcta]

Like I mentioned in the other post, I could win consistently on deity. Not 100%, but certainly enough to be considered consistent.. But I choose to play not Diety, not Immortal, not Emporer, but King.

The reason is that, as a turn-based RPG, increasing the difficulty level doesn't actually make anything harder, it only limits options that can be considered viable strategic choices. But some of the options that are eliminated as they are "strategically inferior choices" are a HECK OF A LOT OF FUN!! wonder-building/hoarding, infrastructure focus over military focus, OCC, wider culture-based empires, exclusively naval militias... all these strategies (plus countless more, limited only by your creativity) are inferior and less effective strategies but are tons of fun and add new flavor to the game, increasing replay value- If I were to play only what was strategically optimally, I'd have beaten the game 3 out of 4 times on diety the first month I owned the game and then immediately thrown it out as I'd be sick of the repetition. Playing the game more creatively and not necessarily strategically optimally, I've won over 30 games over a year and still find it fun to play as I try to do something new every game.

As for selecting King difficulty, that's the level that I can take any civ, on any map, go for any victory condition, and select a strategy that's good but not necessarily optimum, employ the strategy well, and win every time.

Not counting duel games, advanced start games, or games using substantive mods:

I don't agree that King is how low you need to go to get a diverse experience out of this game if you understand the mechanics well enough to do deity. I'm sure I am overall a less skilled player than Darth, but I've played 20+ games on Emperor and never lost a single one, employing all sorts of strategies, all victory conditions, all types of maps (size, terrain, speed), using 12+ different civs. I never do ICS though, because that type of playstyle is not fun for me.... but I've gone 20 cities wide on Emperor for a science victory before and never felt threatened. Emperor is where I play to "test" a certain strategy out and to tweak things. You can make many many mistakes, get fairly unlucky, and still not be danger of losing on this difficulty as long as you have a primary and backup victory condition in mind. You do have to have a plan, or at least form a plan by turn 100, but that plan can be pretty much anything if you execute it semi-competently. I mean, I've yet to do anything on Emperor that didn't work.... so that has to say something about that difficulty, especially since I rarely pull strategies from online and 90% of what I try are just home-cooked slightly RP stuff. Relaxing, fun, creative playthroughs.

I win about 75% of my games on immortal, but it's more stressful. You can still win doing everything here (I've won with 2-city culture, 4-city culture; peaceful science, aggressive science; CS-diplomacy, Civ-diplomacy; timed-push domination, end-game capital snipe domination), you just can't make major mistakes, and a bad start can really force your hand in terms of play-style so that you have to adjust to what the AIs are doing much more than just blindly going about your business. I can win consistently (near 100%) with certain strategies/openers, but when I test new stuff, it's a 33% fail rate. I consider this difficulty the right challenge for me, where I feel a sense of accomplishment for winning with a new strategy.

I win like 10% of my deity games. I am awful at this. I can't even pull off tried and true strategies that I find on this forum consistently. None of my home-cooked strategies work, at all; it's pure slaughter. Very stressful.

 

[BrokTheFanatic]

I'd need parameters, like what is consistent? 70%? 90%? I'll go with 90%+. If everything is random (map type, civ, starting spot), I'd probably say Emperor. Immortal is an outside possibility.

But if you can pick map type, civ, size of map, restart until a good start location, victory conditions and even opponents, diety can probably be consistent. I haven't tested that enough to say for sure, I normally play on Immortal with more randomness. It all has to do with early units and early bonuses that allow you to keep up scientifically while bullying a nearby opponent (and/or a CS) for workers or a city grab. Being agressive early on has always been a #1 tactic in every civ game (unfortunately, though it makes sense). I prefer to try strategies that build until mid game and early late game, for wars. I prefer those battles since the AI can use those units 'ok'. Especially late game, walls of SAMs, tanks, infantry and then rocket artillery make the battles quite fun (though it does make for really long games ).

The problem with 'trying to be peaceful' on immortal and diety is that 'across the map' some AI civ might be getting huge (from space to grow or conquest) and certain ones will build to the space race quickly. You have to pressure them and the only way is militarily, which you can't do if you haven't fought early on and taken lots 'o stuff. If you wait too late they will beat you in the space race from sheer size and it is non-trivial to press an attack against them since they will literally have a wall of units that you have to nuke down and press into just to get a beach head sometimes, not to mention 30+ battleships/subs/destroyers (I normally play on a large map (epic pace), the battles have been great but they take soooo long, heh).

Anyways, you can't really where the 'consistently' lies since we all play by different rules. Like I try hard not to nuke, since the AI doesn't seem to use them (not sure why not).

 

[agusbres]

Ok, my first post in this forum, even though I've been reading it for a looooooong time!

I'd say I "consistently" win in Immortal, probably about >80% of the times.

Currently just got my first win on Deity with China, obviously Domination... But still, I am waaaaaaaaaaaaay not ready to play "well" on Deity, getting more and more frustrated...

 

[stii]

not what i was expecting. i love this answer, particularly since the UA was changed with the patch. I should give them a few more tries at deity. I've only beaten deity/standard with the 'usual' suspects - Babylon, Maya, Inca, Arabia, and China. (Notice, they all have an archer UU, haha.)

btw:
100% - emperor and under
50-66% - Immortal
5-10% - deity

I notice that lots of people mention the Austria nerf like it is some huge penalty. From what I remember it was you need to ally for five turns and pay extra for more units? Five turns just requires some planning, you want to buy CSs the turn before they stop being allies so you get max value, this isn't always possible but it isn't a huge issue.

You really don't pay very much for the units if it cost 700 rather than 500 you are getting a huge number of units.

 

[Browd]

Agree. More of a speed bump than a nerf. Plan 5 turns ahead and play scrap value for their units. Still quite powerful.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

I notice that lots of people mention the Austria nerf like it is some huge penalty. From what I remember it was you need to ally for five turns and pay extra for more units? Five turns just requires some planning, you want to buy CSs the turn before they stop being allies so you get max value, this isn't always possible but it isn't a huge issue.

You really don't pay very much for the units if it cost 700 rather than 500 you are getting a huge number of units.

Browd: Agree. More of a speed bump than a nerf. Plan 5 turns ahead and play scrap value for their units. Still quite powerful.

It's not so much a penalty as a game-breaker removed. Pre patch there was no incremental cost for each marriage, no waiting period for allies (the old Yoink! achievement), and a flat 500g for each marriage with no addt'l cost for units (still had maintenance though). Late game it was really powerful with all the happiness mitigation from religion. It was also the only UA that could remove a victory condition (diplo). It can't do any of that now but is still quite strong. The AI Austria would seriously runaway very early until they added that AI would spend more of it's gold.

 

[budweiser]

I think what made them change it is when I liberated and then quickly allied a CS in the AI's first ring. Then I sold it to him the next turn for a tidy sum.

 

[azzaman333]

Im somewhere around 95-99% on Emperor. Need to give Immortal and Deity a proper whirl at some point.

 

[Hieschen]

Emperor. It's too easy most of the time.
I can win on Immortal usually, but if i get a bad start surrounded by warmongers i often quit once they DoW and plow through me with massive armies before t70.

I dislike how rigid playstyle has to be on Immortal+ though...you really cannot deviate much from the norm so it becomes rather boring.
I enjoy sometimes just playing less optimally, but to do so i usually need to do Emperor or lower.

Same here

 

[Walter R]

Prince.

Just playing my first game at King. To try this new level I 'bravely' chose Archipelego and small map (and as usual am playing England). First non-barb combat was quite late - to take 4 SOTL to Kyoto and capture after bloody fight, wiping Oda out. Dido was obviously unhappy as she had been mopping up his empire and DOWd within 2 turns.
Well she has a fair bit more military than I have including ships, but I fancy I know how to use my ships better - I guess we'll see. Oh I've got another SOTL due out of London in 2 goes, so I hope I get to use it!

 

[Ninakoru]

Im somewhere around 95-99% on Emperor. Need to give Immortal and Deity a proper whirl at some point.

Well, Immortal is a huge step, but Deity... so unforgiving.

 

[comatosedragon]

Emporer.

 

[BAshley]

Emperor. The first level I played on after completing tutorial was prince, but I won that without having to think about it that hard. Moved to king and couldn't tell the difference. Then on to emperor and found the initial AI rush you get most game was a bit beefier but the AI generally has more gold and CSes actually have troops so in that way it was actually easier. I can still get early wonders + first religion + all the good nearby city spots 90% of the time.

But I've never done particularly well at immortal. MadDjinn's LPs and Moriarte's and others' responses to Deity challenge threads make winning by domination on deity seem trivial but I've tried to emulate them in my immortal games and still only succeed occasionally.