You're playing on Prince difficulty? Really?

[lynxxyarly]

Sometimes it's important to know the difficulty level and other settings, such as map size and speed to properly discuss an issue. But at no time should someone be flamed or ridiculed for what difficulty level they are playing on.

how is this even remotely relevant to the thread...?

Seems like you were looking for something that wasn't even close to being there.

 

[Dralix]

how is this even remotely relevant to the thread...?

Let's see, OP mentioned backlash at people playing on Prince, and asked if people should post difficulty level and other things in every thread.

Seems like you were looking for something that wasn't even close to being there.

Not looking for anything, but I may well have misunderstood OP's original intent.

 

[Jonathan]

how is this even remotely relevant to the thread...?

Seems like you were looking for something that wasn't even close to being there.

The title of this thread is "You're playing on Prince difficulty? Really?"

The implication seems to be that there's something wrong with playing at Prince level. If that implication wasn't intended, the title shouldn't have been written like that.

Myself, I normally play at Prince level because I prefer a level playing field, and see no reason why I should deliberately cripple myself with respect to the other players, when they outnumber me anyway.

If my main complaint about the game was the ease of winning, I'd certainly consider playing at a higher difficulty level. However, as it happens I have no particular objection to winning most of my games, so I don't go around complaining about it.

 

[eMCee]

Only Dralix correctly responded to this thread. I asked about backlash ... and why people complain when they haven't tried higher levels. They still teach reading for comprehension don't they?

 

[Guardian_PL]

The problem with difficulty balance is straightforward. You can run rings around the AI militarily. This means you push up the difficulty level giving the AI more and more ridiculous bonuses. You keep doing this until the AI can beat you.

Whatever level you settle on, the AI overpowers you with bonuses or the AI is still so stupid militarily that you win. Either way the game is frustrating.

Exactly, thank you.

 

[Camikaze]

So I was playing a Prince game and it wasn't going all that well. Not disastrously, but certainly not well. And yet I do have reason to complain about the AI in that game, because I should've been killed off. The AI failed to take advantage of a glaring opening, that being my complete lack of any defence. I survived, but only due to AI ineptitude. That would seem a good reason to complain about the AI without playing a high difficulty level.

 

[Trias]

The key point you're missing is that the AI - the algorithms and the tactics it uses - are identical at all difficulty levels.

Do you have anything to back up that claim. It was certainly true for past incarnations of civ. (For civ4 we can just inspect the AI code to see that this is true). However, the interview with Ed Beach quote ae few posts above your post by Windsor seems to indicated that in civ5 this might not be entirely the case.

Of course, since the heuristics currently in use bu the AI are not that good at distinguishing a good move from a bad one, occasionally doing a move that is suboptimal according to its own heuristic might not make that much difference in practice. (In fact, it might make it harder for the player to exploit the AIs predictability.)

 

[wurstburst]

I feel people should play at whatever difficulty gives them the most enjoyment in the game.

 

[skallben]

Sometimes people present strategies and concepts that will be much more difficult to pull off vs higher diff level due to AI bonuses. Sometimes I believe the recipient of the critique is more stingy than the person actually pointing this out is "bragging". Sometimes people have opinions on others ability to play the game based solely on them being on a lower diff level. Some people like to play relaxed to the end and dominate all the time, while some people like mad challenges and start a new game every time they know they will win.

No way of playing the game is "wrong", everyone to their tastes IMO. Any discussions should be kept sincere but respectful, as allways.

 

[joyous_gard]

Where is that confirmed?

Ed Beach @ civilzation5.com:

Spoiler :

EB: I think one thing the AI is going to do is – we have it set up so when the AI is trying to make a decision – so it's trying to decide what to build in the city, trying to decide what technology to pursue next – we go ahead and we look at all the possibilities based on where they are in the tech tree right now and we rank them according to which ones we think are the best choice for a strong Civ player at that given point in time. Now what happens is when you're playing on the higher difficulty levels we almost always pick one of those top choices just because we want that civilization to be as competitive as possible with you. When you're at a lower difficulty, one of the things that we do is we start opening that up to some of those other lower ranking choices and we pick from those choices as well. We're also looking at kind of a different depth of analysis in terms of the military and tactical game when you go and you have a higher difficulty setting. So rather than just looking in the immediate area of a city when you're playing on the higher difficulty levels the AI is gonna be thinking a little bit deeper, looking further across the map and using that to kind of come up with decisions like, “oh wow I'm actually 10 tiles away. Maybe I have 3 or 4 units that can reinforce the situation.” I'll pull those in and that will strengthen my military right in the nick of time here.

Are the contents of this spoiler true? Somewhere I got it in my head that the AI was making the same decisions at all difficulty levels.

It makes sense that building selection would be different at different levels. I can't believe these guys are so good to do "If deity, then call for reinforcements, else no reinforcements."

I think the manual or somewhere I read that it was just differences in bonuses. In this post there's a Shafer quote that says prince is giving virtually no bonus to AI but he doesn't mention if there's a difference in building selection or tactical AI. What is the bottom line on this?

Is that something where they don't really say what the bottom line is because it is part of the magical mystery of video games? IS this spoiler quote the bottom line and I just need to go with that?

 

[GenericPlayer]

I have played on Prince through diety and I have not seen big differences in combat AI. Of course there are different paces at which the AI makes scientific progress, goes to war...etc.. but when it comes to combat, the AI still makes the same errors that doom their campaign. Here are a few issues you will see on any difficulty level:

1. Using up all MPs: The pathfinding/routing code is optimized so that in going from point A to point B, the AI will use up all MPs per turn - you can see this behavior when you are moving items on routes that take multiple turns as well. This is a problem because using up all your MPs is not always the smart thing to do, tactically or otherwise (especially when moving single file down a road or track).

2. Embarkation: The AI still sends units in water without any protection. The mere concept that embarkation without a strong navy is suicide still eludes the AI

3. When to attack and when to heal: The AI still gets this wrong. While improvements have been seen in how ranged units are used, the stronger cities are a menace to melee units. Instead of healing up/remaining fortified each turn while ranged units work on the City's HP, the AI will try to attack with healthy melee units as often as possible, losing many of them in the process. So the AI may be good at pulling heavily injured units off the line heal, but they cannot tell that attacking a city and taking a -5 damage hit is stupid if the city HP is not down to the point it can be captured. As such the AI has big problems when trying to capture cities from each other, let alone a human player.

 

[JBConquests]

Reading the OP I had a nice momentary day dream of an AI in Civ that was so smart that for Prince and down a patch had to be released to make the AI make a few dumb decisions because people who played on those skill levels were complaining that the AI was winning every game.

Then I came back to reality.

 

[Badtz Maru]

I thought he was talking about people who were criticizing the game for being too easy while playing on Prince, not the fact that some people play on Prince. It's a valid criticism, too. The "default" difficulty level for the last two Civ games have been pretty easy - with Civ3 it took me a long time before I started playing without a handicap. With Civ4, Noble was my default setting for an easy game within a month, and after I started studying how to beat the AI on harder difficulties Noble might as well have been a sandbox mode. Civ5 has been comparable to Civ4 after the patch, and the AI still has a lot of issues with tactical combat, but if you crank it up a few difficulty levels the AI has a lot more to work with and sometimes it seems almost smart. I know it's an illusion, but it needs help because the AI can't adjust it's own build orders to optimize production and science after reading forums, it's stuck with one strategy.

 

[Smote]

I feel people should play at whatever difficulty gives them the most enjoyment in the game.

Yep.

Prince is a good challenge for those that just want immersive gameplay, without micromanagement or study of any kind.


Rule of Thumb to win @ Prince -> Emperor:

Try to maximize your hammers/turn at all points in this game, and don't automate your workers.

 

[Guardian_PL]

Yep.

Prince is a good challenge for those that just want immersivecasual gameplay, without micromanagement or studythinking of any kind.


Rule of Thumb to win @ Prince -> Emperor:

Try to maximize your hammers/turn at all points in this game, and don't automate your workers.
Remember where "next turn" button is and click it.

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

I mean Civ5 is such a disappointment... Civ4 was sometimes as challenging as chess, whereas Civ5... More like a tic tac toe... So sad...

 

[skallben]

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

I mean Civ5 is such a disappointment... Civ4 was sometimes as challenging as chess, whereas Civ5... More like a tic tac toe... So sad...

Even with the red text and all and I partly agree with you, still...Editing quotes is just rude and immature.

 

[Androrc the Orc]

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

I mean Civ5 is such a disappointment... Civ4 was sometimes as challenging as chess, whereas Civ5... More like a tic tac toe... So sad...

Tic Tac Toe is much harder than Civ5. It is impossible to win against anyone with decent skill

 

[JBConquests]

Now Civ 5 isn't that bad. When they shipped MOO3 I once started a game on normal difficulty with the governers or whatever they were called on and literally did nothing but hit next turn button for the entire game. I won.

 

[cman2010]

Now Civ 5 isn't that bad. When they shipped MOO3 I once started a game on normal difficulty with the governers or whatever they were called on and literally did nothing but hit next turn button for the entire game. I won.

civ 5 is that bad when compaired to other civ games, compairing it to an even more borken game does nothing to validate civ 5.

 

[JBConquests]

civ 5 is that bad when compaired to other civ games, compairing it to an even more borken game does nothing to validate civ 5.

I suppose it depends upon which skill level you play at. I play at King and even though I wish the AI were smarter I still can have fun with the game.