What settings would you recommend...

kilem

Chieftain
Joined
Apr 27, 2014
Messages
55
...for a veteran civ player looking for a challenge?

So not something excessively hard but a decent challenge.
Also should I follow this advice "
I marked Revolutions, Barbarian World and Raging Barbarian options as bad for AI too.
Minor civs game option has similar damaging impact."
This was an answer to a previous thread in which the AI was lagging behind and I got this answer as to what might be causing it.

REALLY looking forward to trying the v40 :) !!!
 
I think there's a settings thread floating around somewhere, but for my two cents since I've been starting lots of games recently to find a difficulty that works for me:

You're right on Revolutions, Barb World, Start as Minor, and Raging Barbs being things that should be turned off; the AI does struggle more for each of these enabled. Additionally:
  • Surround and Destroy essentially gives a 20-100% boost in strength to the human player to just about all stack combats if you know how to use it (and the AI doesn't really), so I'd recommend turning it off, cool as it is
  • Size Matters changes wars to favor the aggressor more, and also inherently gives more options to the human that the AI can't quite figure out. Nevertheless, it changes the civ4 formula, substantially, so I personally enjoy playing with it regardless
  • Religious Disabling should help fix cheesing the (massive) win-more benefits you can get from a tech lead
  • Turning down the resource density (C2C World is my favorite mapgen atm) can lead to situations where you don't have a required material e.g. iron and an AI does, forcing you into an offensive war you might not otherwise want or be ready for, or risk falling behind. I find that with high resource counts, the human can usually utilize it better; on lower, there's usually 1-2 AIs that get lucky and disproportionately better starts that make for a better later challenge when you meet them
  • On difficulty, there is a *huge* spike between immortal and deity due to the AIs starting with 2 cities vs 1. I'd recommend maybe the one below immortal or so (general rule is vanilla civ difficulty you're used to +2), and if you *really* want a challenge, bump it to deity
  • If there's a natural wonder in your starting cities bfc that'll usually make your game a fair bit easier due to the cumulative nature of the bonus throughout the prehistoric era, so I consider rerolling when that happens
 
Agreed on Blazenclaws comment;

Since Immortal felt lacking in challenge (the ai really cant manage with their one city and its so easy to conquer neighbors with stone units or obsidian) i recently started a Deity game on large perfectworld map on epic speed. The 2nd city gives the ai enough of a head start to feel threatened throughout the early game. They even attacked me from two sides before i reached stone units. On hitting obsidian i managed to go on the offense which was fun enough.

Now i am in early ancient era and while i was able to defeat my closest neighbors, i am still behind the other ais in tech on my continent alone and since i am a curious one i looked in the world builder and saw that some of the players on another continent are even further ahead so going forward will be quite interesting still.

I hope the ai will learn some day that it should for them be first priority to build a cave wonder, even if only to deny it to the player.
 
Turn on Tech Diffusion and Win For Losing and No Tech Handicap for Humans. That should keep them very competitive regardless of how big a lead you may think you have.
 
Turn on Tech Diffusion and Win For Losing and No Tech Handicap for Humans. That should keep them very competitive regardless of how big a lead you may think you have.

I've actually found this to not really be the case, or at least, insufficient with respect to Tech Diffusion. One problem is that nearly all the AI follow the same, or very similar tech progressions through the tree. In my last game, I got a bit of an early lead exiting the prehistoric era, and had enough espionage points to see what the AIs were researching, and so while we were close in tech, I could always finish whatever tech they were, at worst, a few turns before they did. This allows you a few turns head start on relevant wonders you want, and once you have that lead, I found that the benefit of getting (eventually) every wonder outpaces what TD and WFL provide to the AI, even when they're trading with each other past writing.
(I should also note that it was the civ with 4 cities to my 20 that was for a long time the runner up in tech, not my rival with 21 cities)

IMO, I'd suggest the power of tech diffusion be increased significantly for civs you have open borders with, as well as with all other contacted civs if you have the open borders civic (which atm feels like nearly strictly superior to closed borders)
 
or at least, insufficient with respect to Tech Diffusion.
Which is exactly why I made WFL. I feel that TD can only help the lagging keep up a little whereas WFL can actually thrust the lagging forward quite powerfully. RL Portugal, even the US, are good examples of how a smaller nation can do quite well at being on the forefront of tech progress.
 
Thank you all for your answers :)
One final question; which speed would you recommend? I know that C2C was intented for long games; so which one is the most 'balanced'?
 
You can try Normal/Long/Epic - those are 2000/4000/6000 turn long game speeds.
 
I thought that C2C wasn't "intended" to be played on normal? or have I misunderstood?
 
All speeds have got longer/slower. Snail was traditionally recommended, when it was 5000 turns; Prehistoric has since got longer, so Epic is roughly equivalent to Snail as it was then.
 
Those tips you see during loading game/generated map are outdated.
 
All right thank you all for your answers and help :)
Long live C2C and its amazing community !!!
 
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