Which is more difficult on immortal+, CP only (without CBP) or CBP?

[civfnaticfan]

@Gamewizard I am only using VP with no other mods and i always reinstall and clear my cache when i start a new game , yes once in a while there is a runaway but it is not as crazy as the runaways in CP core only.

 

[civfnaticfan]

I tried two deity VP games where I use Really Advanced Setup to allow the AI to have the same starting conditions as "Community patch only" starting conditions. I give each AI , 2 settlers, 4 warriors 2 workers and 2 scouts with promotions. I also add 6 free techs (including wheel) to each Ai so it mimics the same starting condition as CP only deity.

Now , the AI are able to pump out more units since they have a better edge, and their scores are not so close after classical era which is a good thing. However I still find it very easy to conquer cities, conquering two civs and heading to conquer a 3rd civ who is the leader of scores, before 200BC. The AI seems to underestimate the power of veteran units, like 3 range and indirect fire promotions. Another interesting observation is that AI early on are really weak in terms of unit strength and strategies but improves significantly after classical for VP. I also found out that the ease of conquering cities stems from the fact that cities needs mathematics before they can have two hexagon area of effect and that is excluding indirect fire!


With VP , I am playing against a very handicapped AI that is not challenging and fun as a veteran Civ player. Has any veterans Civ member here actually tried CP without VP games and did a comparison between the VP? It seems to me that the game mechanics fits the CP only as playing with VP makes the AI a lot less challenging. Is there any way I can raise the difficulties to higher notches for VP because I really like the tech tree and diplomacy with city states.

 

[merill]

Is there any way I can raise the difficulties to higher notches for VP because I really like the tech tree and diplomacy with city states.

open DifficultyMod.xml
go to the HANDICAP_DEITY section
increase AIFreeXP to give to the AI more powerful units (you can try with 150, or 300)
increase DifficultyBonus to give to the AI more bonus yields along the game.
You can also decrease some AIxxxxPercent if you feel the need.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

Could you maybe post a gameplay or two on youtube? I think it might help a lot to those of us of struggling with VP AI Deity. Thnx!

 

[CrazyG]

Can you post videos or screenshots or savegames or something? Because I think I'm a decent player but I don't see how what you are talking about is possible

If you wanted the game to harder, it sounds like dropping to standard speed or increasing the number of civs might. Also try pre-selecting Mongolia as one of the AI, in my experience they are the strongest civ on Deity

 

[civfnaticfan]

@CrazyG and @LukaSlovenia29 what are your usual starting build orders for units and buildings in VP? Research?

 

[CrazyG]

@CrazyG and @LukaSlovenia29 what are your usual starting build orders for units and buildings in VP? Research?

I don't have a default order, it varies by civ and starting position. Lately I usually do monument first, but sometimes shrine or scout first. I've read this thread again and it sounds like you might be archer rushing succesfully? If that is the case (you are being really vague about what you actually do) go to standard or quick speed and it will be much harder. Why don't you post what you are doing?

I (and I think many others) don't find the vanilla game on Deity all that interesting, because the AI is so front loaded in bonuses, you either survive in which case you won or you get smothered by an artificially difficult opening.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

Hi. It depends. But in any case I really could learn a lot from seeing how to consistently beat deity VP AI by such a wide margin, so I'm looking forward to seeing your gameplay, thanks in advance!

 

[civfnaticfan]

@CrazyG, you can try to build a worker first, it will come out nicely if you have tech mining first to either mine or chop(after bronze working). The worker(s) have dual purposes, switching roles to scouting when u r at war or besieged. In some of my games, i did something tricky, i prechop a bit to bait enemy AI to attack me, as they will see me tempting with few military units, so my army can get veterancies.In any case, fast population growth is of the utmost concern in the early game, so you can also use it to build farm and get some hammers asap. On deity, you should build warrior and one fast archer if you are turtling, if not the AI will surely come after u before turn 60 on epic or turn 100 on marathon. You want to avoid a super early clash because the earlier the clash, the more your economy will suffer. Build monoment/shrine after you have at least 4 military units if/when you are going for non-domination since hammers=units. Try not to build scout until you have at least two cities(i usually disabled goody huts), it takes one unit count.

For VP, one trick you can do is to do a perimeter scout of the surrounding , hopefully to reveal a few CS , because they gift science rewards pretty generously just by revealing other civs, so hold your horses before reveal too much of the map.

And your first settler what can people use the settler for?

**The above suggestion is just to help people to fend off the first wave and retaliate , from there on its flexible. Suggested SP, authority right wing only, then switch to progress, but it seriously doesnt matter as it's the warring strategies(which i will save abit for now) and promotions you choose are more impt.

 

[CrazyG]

@CrazyG, you can try to build a worker first, it will come out nicely if you have tech mining first to either mine or chop. In any case, fast population growth is of the utmost concern in the early game, so you can also use it to build farm asap. On deity, you should build warrior and one fast archer if you are turtling, if not the AI will surely come after u before turn 60 on epic or turn 100 on marathon. You want to avoid an early clash because the earlier the clash, the more your economy will suffer. Build monoment/shrine after you have at least 4 military units . Try not to build scout until you have at least two cities, it takes one unit count.
For VP, one trick you can do is to do a perimeter scout of the surrounding , hopefully to reveal a few CS , because they gift science rewards pretty generously just by revealing other civs, so hold your horses before reveal too much of the map.

Sounds like you aren't playing VP or its installed wrong, very much of this is totally contrary to my experience. Notably the worker and the farm, a farm is just a 3 yield tile, you hopefully have plenty of those already. If you want fast growth getting a monument to open tradition faster will earn much more than a worker into farms, which you might need to replace after revealing stone or animals. You can purposely leave a farm on a tile like that, its acutally pretty powerful but too gamey for me. I've tried worker first and done the math, its really bad (not saying its always wrong, it can work for Maya and maybe a couple other niche scenarios). I also don't see how you ever get religion with your shrine and pantheon coming that late.

That might be solid advice for vanilla, but on VP a lot of that sounds like bad ideas to me.

Edit-elaborated and fixed grammar. I also noticed you edited your comment to adjust for inaccuracies, I'm going to be nice and give the you benefit of the doubt, but this whole thread smells fishy to me

 

[merill]

@cvifnaticfan:
also, you can edit the TechChanges.sql (line ~178), that's where the bombard range is set. Just remove the MATHEMATICS line and set the agriculture one to 2.

 

[tu_79]

@CrazyG

For VP, one trick you can do is to do a perimeter scout of the surrounding , hopefully to reveal a few CS , because they gift science rewards pretty generously just by revealing other civs, so hold your horses before reveal too much of the map.

It doesn't matter if you 'hold your horses'. Foreign scouts will find you. What you get by fulfilling CS missions is some influence and, hopefully, a good bonus from being friends/allies. There are two missions that helps here: Reveal map and discover civ. But you could just kill the barbs that are pesting them for the influence, get experience and gold.
Also by delaying scouting you are missing an oportunity to trade (I'm supposing that you will arrive late for any extra goody hut). So, you are just trading some happiness for some science.
Getting a worker first is very very risky. It's quite bad at exploring, can only build farms early on and force you to beeline to Mining -> Bronze Work, if there are forests. While farm clusters with resources can be very good later with a cathedral, they are not that helpful so early. And what CrazyG pointed: you are delaying policies, potentially missing wonders (not an issue if you are going to conquer soon).

I thought that luring the AI with civilian units was no longer possible, precisely to avoid this exploit. Or maybe this just works with barbarians, but XP from them is capped.

 

[peterw1987]

civfanatics strategy sounds like troll to me.
exploring using worker is only viable if no barbarian.
no ruin and no barbarian really defeat the entire purpose of deity, since it nulls AI early boost, which is from scouting ruins, and getting cs influence killing barbarian.

i am playing korea exclusively till now on imortal+ standard,pangaea,normal speed.
my starting strategy is, i usually only build scout if i settle my 1st city on jungle/forest, so it only take a 2 or 4 turn.if not, i will build mostly monument first, unless there are a lot of mining luxuries nearby, then i will go worker first, and rush buy scout if i have enough gold from finding ruin or cs.
because if your first scout take 10+ turn to produce, it is not worth it. And i always try to spend my early gold for grabbing good tile, and investing building.

 

[zeta]

I am actually keen on trying to play with CP only, but then again some great mods won't work.