What's your favorite difficulty to play? Is it lower than what you can consistently beat?

[Hep Roc Heretic]

Prince (+random maps and leaders + standard everything else), because right now it's the most relaxing challenge .

It usually takes me a month in RL to finish a game, and if I have been away from the game for a few days, it sometimes takes a while to get my head back in the game. I can lose a lot of ground trying to catch up.

Once I start winning on Prince level consistently under 300 turns regardless of leader or VC, I may try to up the ante a little bit.

[EDIT]: Full disclosure -- the best I've ever done was dom victory in 360 turns. I have a ways to go.

 

[Nigel_Tufnel2]

I usually play Immortal, and don't regularly do early wars, so it keeps the game challenging enough. Exceptions for warring might be an AI Settler encroaching on a planned expo spot, or when getting a sudden urge, or when playing a good early war civ... Probably 1/5 of my games. I often use a mod that limits starting Settlers to 1, except on Deity. This seems to allow the AI to ramp up in a more normal fashion, and obviously makes the game easier (and of course, allows fewer Settler steals, which I don't do often anyway).

I never tire of real world maps, and enjoy water exploration, so I use a lot of mods/maps (Gedemon's, and the various Scrambled continent maps). Often I will play on Emporer the first time or two, to be able to explore in a more leisurely manner.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Still mostly experimenting on Prince with random leaders. Usually I try to test one thing out per game. I should move up I know, but then I can't do this...

Spoiler :

 

[kaspergm]

I find Emperor offers me a fairly good balance between freedom to experiment and AI not falling completely off. AI performs worse than it did in Civ5 Emperor (which was my default playing level), and I probably could beat the AI pretty consistently on Immortal, but I get frustrated by the huge amount of bonuses that the AI gets, especially in early game. I should say I have modded Civ6 Emperor a bit to take away the free settler, so that makes it a bit easier for me, but I hated the way AI would spam holy sites very early and take all religions, since the game lacks the posibility to take control of another religion through conquest (one of my favorite mods from Civ5).

 

[Ferocitus]

I only play Ynamp Giant Map, ludicrous size (230x115), 24 civs, 60 city states.
Prince is now too easy for me for most Civs. King and Emperor are perfect
for me at this stage.

 

[KingCheops]

I'm mostly just achievement hunting and having fun now so I'm sticking to Prince. I'm one of those who hate the idea of the AI cheating instead of just playing better. At Prince I can kind of drift in and out or go deal with the toddler and the baby and sometimes I'll be challenged by the AI due to being distracted.

 

[KayAU]

I usually play on King, and yes, it is far lower than what I can consistently beat. Truth is, I hate the way Civ creates higher difficulty. If the AI should manage to beat me because they got massive advantages, that doesn't feel right, it feels like they are cheating, which is exactly what they are doing. It might have been acceptable in a game which was more asymmetrical by nature, or where the setting somehow explained the mismatch, or where the environment was a bigger factor than the other players. Take something like the Fall from Heaven mod for Civ 4, for example. I can accept that the fantasy map is full of dangers, and that there is a whopping huge dragon near my borders. I can accept that there is a large alliance of evil-aligned factions surrounding me. But I don't get why every other civilization, when building basic units, does it faster and gets higher combat strength, nor why they start with three settlers and 5 warriors.

Also, there's the fact that to win on higher difficulties, I would have to play in a specific way, which I don't particularly enjoy: aggressive and expansionstic. What I like to do, is building. That includes wonders, which, at Deity, I am probably better off ignoring.

 

[tedhebert]

I find emperor the best to get a good challenge but still find ways to wins almost all games... allows me to try out all the civs, victory conditions etc...

Immortal If I want a real challenge and real possibilities of not winning the game, if I want city dev, wonders, unit production decisions ta have a real impact
on my chances of winning the game (or at least not to be outclassed by a runway opponent) is the best choice for me

I've tried Deity only once or twice... Too much to handle for me ;-)

 

[DemonMaster]

Since the game, regardless of civ version, is all about the journey, not some aftermath statistics (and there is no HoF anyway), I usually play on a comfortable level (i.e. King). I can play a more challenging, high level game sometimes, but most often I go with a nice comfortable one. It also fits my playing style (I am usually a builder).

 

[Balkans]

Is it lower than you can consistently beat? - My rule of thumb in gaming in general is to play one step above the comfort zone, one level and one foot into the uncomfortable zone. This is where i get better and where i can involve myself to care. That is the only way for me to have a depth of experience and any kind of enjoyment and fulfillment when i play a game. I don't want to sound like a psycho who can't enjoy life as it is, but what i'm trying to say is for example - if it's a shooter, i don't want to run through levels just click away the enemies and it's over. I need the kind of immersion that will make me to take cover and take some time to think what to do next... There has to be some challenge.
CiV VI is kinda ezpz if you understand the mechanics and with the state of AI you can take a wild guess what difficulty i play. I already explained in one of the similar discussions, what attracts me to high difficulties is that the struggle is real, and then when you squeeze in a wonder ... now that's a great feeling. I can't get any satisfaction if i play in comfort zone.

 

[knight508]

This is actually my exact take on all games too otherwise I get bored. That being said I really pushed it with VI and I readily beat Immortal with less than 50 hours logged (according to Steam). I played another game on Immortal to make sure it wasn't a fluke, luck, good start etc. but it was just as easy. So for the first time on a Civ game I took a serious step to Deity and after three games I have yet to win. I'm glad in that I'm not getting completely dominated as I thought I would but in fact I do dominate a good part of the map. The problem is that this preoccupation keeps me too busy to focus economy/tech and so the remaining AIs are ready for space and my tech lag is a bit too far behind to consider an all out attack without heavy losses or worse a complete defeat.

 

[Onii-chan]

When the game was new, any difficulty was super easy. After some patches the AI definitely improved however. Nowadays (though I haven't played in the last 3 months or so) I play almost exclusively on Immortal; I think that's challenging enough but I'll still win in the end if I play seriously. I.E: basically what Emperor was to me in Civ V

I don't particularly feel like losing has to be a real danger for the game to be enjoyable, but at the very least I want it to actually feel like I have to work for it in order to win. Otherwise it's not really satisfying

 

[The_Quasar]

I agree, Immortal plays like Emperor in Civ V.
I normally play Immortal or Deity, dropping down to Emperor to try something at a level I know I can win at.
I do believe that it's better for the AI to cheat, than to play a game I know I can always win (imho no point to that).

 

[kamex]

Prince or King, it isn't challenging, but it bothers me the extent to which the AI cheats on high difficulty levels.

Yes, used to play Emperor/Immortal - Now I play Prince most of the time for 'fun'. The fact that so many strategies and game elements get indirectly 'locked out' at high levels annoys me.

 

[Jewelrunna]

I prefer King/Emperor, beyond that, I feel there's really one way to play the game that allows you to be competitive with the AI. What I like about Civ is the multitude of different approaches to the game, so I find that playing Immortal or Deity just takes the fun out. Prince is a bit too easy though.

 

[Frostburn]

Usually Emperor. Challenging yet not so much so that I can be flexible with strategy. I win (or can win before I decide to start a new game) more than half the time but lose or have to restart at least a thrid of the time.

I'll go Immortal If I'm playing a strong warmongering civ like Aztec or Macedon and plan on Conquest Early. But I'd say 80% of my games are Emperor, 20% Immortal. I'd sya I win, or am in the lead when I stop ~60% of games.

 

[iammaxhailme]

I usually play difficulty 5 on Civ 6, and difficulty 6 on civ 5.

Those are the top ones I can consistently beat (I generally go for peaceful games, maybe a little aggression in 6 but not much). I have beaten Diety with all victory types in both games, but generally by using really cheesy strategies, such as 1v1 on a huge map.

 

[PMac67]

Emperor.... I feel its the most balanced difficulty for me personally... We should all be saying 'Prince' really cos its a level playing field but Civ6 isn't is it ?

 

[Vahnstad]

I finally did beat Emperor for the first time with china



















I liked it, everyone was fascist

 

[Naokaukodem]

I can consistently beat Deity on Civ6 (unlike Civ5), but with the trade gold bug enabled from the release. Dealing with commercial hubs would be too much to deal for me i feel.

But, I like experimenting things, like this game currently on Marathon speed with Rome, I find it more difficult on this speed (King iirc, trying above but was not satisfied, I think that AIs start with two settlers since Emperor) After all I'm supposed to be Rome and conquering all my neighbours, but if i knew a Earth map existed, I would have probably dled and played it.

That's because Civ6 was released that I bought books about History, like "SPQR", "The Great Story of the World", "Barbarians", etc... I've read the second, I'm on the first now, and it made me want to play Rome. Alas i couldn't find a Earth map in the vanilla game. I thought about the wonderful Civ3 Conquest scenario(s), and it made me want to play it again. Those units, those musics, this History rewrited ! I believe I'm preferring game with limited eras but more fidelity to reality, like Europa Universalis and co, though i didn't play them yet. (fear from complexity)