I love the civilisation series but with work/ kids dont get nearly as much time as i'd like to play it. As a result my games drag on for ages and my skills are a little rusty. Consequently I have selected Warlord difficulty as I don't want to have to try too hard! However I would still like there to be some threat / challenge. Hence my question - will other civilisations independently (without you declaring war on one of their allies) ever take it upon themselves to attack me on Warlord difficult?
Will other cultures declare war on Warlord difficulty?
- Thread starter bowen2015
- Start date
Popedesu
Chieftain
I'd assume it's possible, though you'd have to really provoke them, you'd probably have to get all the negatives just for them to declare war. You could always try just randomly declaring war on them, or try declaring war right from the get go when you meet them, that would make the game more challenging with out upping the difficulty, though probably a bit more than you want.
A big part of the Warlord problem is that the human player often will be perceived by the AI as too powerful to DOW safely. To successfully induce a DOW, you need to both irritate the AI (expand quickly, abuse CSs, rebuff diplomatic overtures, etc) and neglect your military, economy, happiness, etc., such that the AI's war-making algorithm spits out a DOW. Not easy to do.
Welcome to the forums bowen!
Civ5 is a little more forgiving (and interesting) than III or IV, so I think you should start at Prince. I think anyone with some previous civ experience will be bored by warlord difficulty.
Civ5 is a little more forgiving (and interesting) than III or IV, so I think you should start at Prince. I think anyone with some previous civ experience will be bored by warlord difficulty.
I hear ya, bro. I'm a nursing student working full-time and try to keep my love-life interesting (or at least prevent stalkers, restraining orders, etc.), but I still needs to get my gaming on! A better compensation for reducing the time needed to finish a game is reducing the map size; this works much better than lowering the difficulty level. If you lower the difficulty level, you'll likely just quit all games prematurely because you'll put yourself into a position of "will win unless I intentionally sabotage myself" about 20 minutes into the game, and then spend the next 4 hours going through the motions, it becomes more of a chore than entertainment. Smaller maps means less capitals to take for domination victories, less diplomacy interruptions between turns, less computer thinking time between turns, and possibly fewer cities to micromanage.
As far as difficulty, and wanting to "not try to hard but still have challenge," we know what you mean. You want it to be fun whereas frustrating is not fun, yet you want the other players to be competent enough to be engaging. Smaller maps may help with this as either 1.)making the map smaller or 2.) increasing the game pace makes the game easier. Obviously increasing the game pace works counter to your preference.
And as Beetle said, Warlord is probably not a good place to start for anyone who has any experience with the series. Warlord (even Prince) or below is mostly just for testing theories and strategies, with Settler being that the AI will not interfere with your experiments at all, but by Warlord they engage you, but can be dismissed easily. Prince is kind of the baseline, it also prepares you for higher levels because many of the parameters remain the same for the human player from Prince all the way up to Deity (starting happiness, happiness per luxury, unit/building/research/SP cost, etc.) But I'd advise at least King, especially if you'll take my advice on smaller maps, because you said you wanted the AI to engage you and they probably wouldn't at Prince since you're experienced.
Your proposal is somewhat of a conundrum, though - you want the AI to engage with you, specifically mentioning an occasional DoW. The AI won't DoW you if it's suicide, but if it is not suicide for them, then the game inherently won't be easy enough that you won't have to try hard.
Many thanks for getting back to me guys - very helpful suggestions. On civilisation 4 I remember trying the difficulty level one up from Warlord and finding it too hard (as laughable as that probably is to you seasoned veterans!). The thing is as quite a few months can elapse between games I have to relearn a bit hence if I start on too hard a difficulty level I take a pummeling while I am working things out again. It would be great if you could switch difficulty mid game. If you say Civ 5 is a bit more forgiving I will give prince a go next I think. Are the enemy civs much more belligerent on Prince? I dont want to get trounced but I like the feeling that unless I stay on my toes and keep stuff guarded I could get attacked! I know i know - I want it all ways!!Think it's a seasonal adaptation to colon-endparenthesis.
Like I said, on Prince they won't engage you unless they feel you'd be susceptible. Two ways you could try to address this are 1.) you could try to bait them - move units away from your borders, specifically where their units are accumulating. Playing possum, basically or 2.) hand-pick all the AI - I don't think anyone in civ5 is as irrational as civ4's Montezuma, but Attila, Shaka and Genghis will attack if they get frustrated with the arms race, and a bunch or others (Ashurbanipal, Dido, Washington, Alexander, Bismarck) like to engage more. Or you could just bump it to King - if you're new to the game, they should attack you frequently enough. And when they don't, it's time to move up a level.
Sounds like you're more familiar with Civ4. Two things to keep in mind that are different in Civ5 are:
1.) you and the AI are both going to have fewer units in general. Between 1UPC, hammer access, and more stuff to build, there's less. In Civ4, having 8 or 10 military units was more of a peacekeeping force for peaceful play and having 25+ units was what you had when playing aggressively. In Civ5, 4-6 units is what you usually have for peaceful play, and 12-14 unit is all you need, often more than needed, for highly aggressive play.
2.) Someone else can correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I think there is significantly less of a diplomatic difference between declaring war vs. having war declared on you in Civ5 as opposed to Civ4. In Civ4, the war-weariness and third-party civ annoyance was drastically different if you were "defending" (meaning war was declared on you) as opposed to "attacking" (meaning that you declared war on them.) In Civ5, it's more about how many cities you take and what you do with them, as well as what you do with their capital and eliminating civs; who actually declared the war is much less significant of a diplomatic factor.
Sorry about the delay - didnt get an email notification for this reply.
That's great thanks for the information - and that's particularly interesting about the average numbers of units required as I tend to just spam loads of units which clearly isn't the way! I think I will finish this warlord game, brush up on my tactics then have a go on king and see what happens...
That's great thanks for the information - and that's particularly interesting about the average numbers of units required as I tend to just spam loads of units which clearly isn't the way! I think I will finish this warlord game, brush up on my tactics then have a go on king and see what happens...
Civ5 has no war weariness, which is kind of shame I think. You do take a diplomatic hit for declaring war, roughly equivalent to the hit you take from taking a single city from a rival with a large number of cities. So relatively minor, but definitely something. There is no diplo hit for being declared upon. Also, there is no hit for staying at war when the other side is offering peace.
An act of aggression will pressure the player and possibly give them the game so i dont think Ai on lower difficulties will declare wars much and i dont remember them doing that in civ3 or 4 either. An easy solution - declare wars yourself, when and if you want. Between 4 and 5, Civ4 is more easy to learn(and harder to master) quite simply because Civ5 contains an awful lot of counter-intuitive silent game mechanics. So its easily to find oneself suddenly deep in unhappiness or out of gold for seemingly no particular reasons. I would definitely not go beyond civ4 difficulty in civ5.
civ5 is easier agreed its just that its counter-intuitive. The progression in civ4 is build cities, make farms/mine/units and proceed to win. Civ5 progression is build cities.. and you already lost and dont even know it yet because suddenly red faces appear and tech/social cost skyrocket, things like that take civ5 ugly to play, until the player learns the ropes. Imo Firaxis went overboard trying to balance different strategies.
docbud
Emperor
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2012
- Messages
- 1,518
^^I never played Civ IV, and I started with Civ V. So I'm not sure of the differences, so I'll take your word for it.
But I had no problems playing Civ V from the beginning (except for the first game or two where I had to learn about the game itself). Thankfully--I found this forum, which helped me immensely.
But I had no problems playing Civ V from the beginning (except for the first game or two where I had to learn about the game itself). Thankfully--I found this forum, which helped me immensely.
meatpardle
Warlord
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2015
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- 169
Every time I read this forum I'm reminded of what a terrible Civ player I am and must have been for the last 15 years
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