What's your criteria for moving up in difficulty?

Great question.I was at Emperor for the longest time maybe 2 years now.I told another player a couple of weeks ago he needed to move up from King and stop winning all the time.I get bored on Emperor even though I loose maybe 40% of the time.When I win I know I am going to win I just start over.I needed a bigger challenge both to make me better at my weak points and to make the game funner.
So for me my criteria is what will make the game fun or more fun.
 
Once I was able to constantly beat an AI with whatever victory condition I wanted to. I actually enjoyed playing around, so I never felt "bored", even when I knew the AI wouldn't be able to beat me if I played my standard strategy.

In fact I pretty much still do the same - these days I can beat Deity more often than not, but I still prefer to play on Emporer. It's the last difficulty that feels "like Civ should feel" (to me), everything after that just takes away choices and strategies.

In my personal opinion Civ is not really a game that is well designed to be "a great challenge", because the difficulties that are kind of hard are also kind of restricted. But I guess if you really WANT to progress, there's no reason not to try the next difficulty, eh? You might lose a few games, but if you do, you know that you're not yet ready. ;)
 
What I did was win a victory of each time and then move up difficulty deity is not really all that fun though since it takes away a fair amount of the wonders you are capable of building unless you go for a save great engineer strat
 
If you are bored most of the time - switch to a higher difficulty.
If you are frustrated most of the time - switch to a lower difficulty.

I think that would work. Now, if only I could follow my own advice... I keep getting beat up on deity
but I still refuse to play immortal which I probably would enjoy more :/
 
Artifex1 said:
After winning 5 times?

After winning with a bad civ?

any criteria?
Click to expand...

Winning just once as any civ is probably enough to advance unless this is Emperor to Immortal or Immortal to Deity.
 
I too was stuck on emperor for the longest time. I agree that playing on emperor is the most fun. You are free to try things out, switch up your strategies, and pursue the wonders you want. I decided to move up to immortal when i started getting a bit bored, especially in terms of warfare. It felt to me as though the AI was never really a threat.

The first couple of games at Immortal were tough, and I can nab only 5-6 wonders per game, but I enjoy it because it keeps me on my toes. I know I can't afford to ignore any facet of the game for risk of losing. And, at least initially, it made the end game more suspensful because i knew it was a race to build those spaceship parts.
 
I read this from the forums here awhile back and I forgot where but I thought it was a good way of determining what level to go. If you win over 50% of the games at that difficulty, move up. That way you make sure you are getting challenged while at the same time making sure its not too hard that you aren't having fun.
 
and if like me you dont really want a challenge having fun is more important. so try another difficulty a few times, and if you have fun by the third time maybe stick with that new difficulty, and occasionally try the next higher. when you have fun on that one jump again...
 
When I first started BNW, I started on Prince, beat one game easily, moved up to King, beat one game easily and then moved to Emperor. I stumbled at first, then had one game where I won by a knife's edge in a space race with another AI. Then managed to beat the game using liberty starts and even winning a CV as Germany with autocracy ideology.

At that point, I moved to immortal and it sure is hard to win. I've only won 4 games on immortal and one of them only contained 6 other civs, one of them being the Zulus who annihilated 3 other civs which made my cultural victory really easy. If I continue playing, I'll still be stuck on Immortal for a while, even if I try to get NC earlier or beeline to education. I really don't know how you can pull off a CV with a larger number of civs, because most AI aim for a cultural victory.

By the time I even think of moving up to deity, civilization beyond earth will be released by then.
 
I've started with King on September 2011, and decided to increase difficulty every 5 wins. Over the years (and expansions) thankfully I've gotten better at the game and now I'm playing Deity, and so far have won 4 Scientific, 2 Cultural, 1 Domination, 1 Diplomatic victories.
 
I won a victory of each type and then played until games weren't challenging anymore at that level. Then when I got my ass kicked at the higher level, I went back down and played a few more to get better...
 
I moved up when I won 3 times in king or in emperor but moved up when I won once in all the lower difficulties. I play on emperor often because the AI does make surprises in this difficulty and becomes a total FTW... Immortal and Deity difficulties are too fun since AI are OP most of the time.
 
sendos said:
When I first started BNW, I started on Prince, beat one game easily, moved up to King, beat one game easily and then moved to Emperor.
Click to expand...
Haha, this was my experience also. I came back from being away for a few years, found prince and king to be too easy. I think king and below are easy if you got the basics of 1) picking good spots for cities and 2) pop management, decent growth = decent beakers and everything else becomes easy if you got that figured out.

The thing is, I can never lose on emperor either, no matter how much i blunder (and i blunder because i play too fast for my own good). So last couple of weeks i am playing on immortal and the game is fun again. I find myself paying attention and trying to optimise the details, because unlike emperor i don't have that huge margin of error.

I guess my advice is that if you feel you can't lose on your current difficulty, move up. ;)
 
When I realized that only divine intervention or an insane bonehead move on my part would cost me victory and that I would win 99.999999% of my games I advanced from prince to king. I wa on the verge of advancing to emporer and had some test runs with it but then other games caught my famcy and I stopped playing Civ. Now still at king after all of these months and working back up. Basically whenever I feel like the AI poses no threat unless I make a blunder I advance.
 
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