Civ V has a number of difficulty settings which basically serve to make the computer cheat more to provide more of a challenge. My first game after fixing my computer was played at the 5th of 8 levels as it was the setting chosen from last time I played. Everything else I did randomly (map size, island type, which civ I would play...) and was surprised by how passive the computer played. I gather a lot of changes went into the AI since I last played but I didn't build a military unit beyond warriors (1 per city as a garrison) and no one ever declared war on me for being weak. Normally in Civ I get beat up on when I ignore military but it seemed not to be happening in that game. I ended up getting into a position where I could win under any of the victory conditions (military came up when I built every building in my cities and then just built tanks and bombers with the lack of anything else to do).
So I ramped up to level 6 and ended up in a 2 player game. I figured the best way to win a 2 player game would be to ninja their capital so I made a military plan. The map was all tiny islands which kept him off me at the start while I built up. Eventually I got to the point where I had 4 frigates which could shoot 3 spaces. This let me burn down his capital without taking any damage back. It took about 30 turns or so (I had to shoot a bunch to earn experience to get the extra range) but eventually I wore it down to nothing and landed a random military dork for the win.
Clearly the next step is level 7. My random race spawn was Egypt which gets a bonus to building wonders. So I figured I'd go for a culture victory with lots of wonders... Until it turned out the AI researched everything way faster than I could so they built all the wonders before I could. They were also more willing to attack me for having no military at all. Eventually I just got overwhelmed and quit. I can't just bumble around and hope to win at level 7 it seems. I may need to actually pick a civ or plan out my research or something!
On Immortal (level 7) things are dramatically more challenging. The AI cheats substantially and has a big start advantage. It is actually really stunning that the AI didn't attack you when all you had was warriors on King (Level 5) as even when I maintain a reasonably updated army I get attacked all the time on that difficulty level.
ReplyDeleteYou should know that random settings make the difficulty *really* random. 2 player games on islands are hopelessly trivial, 12 player games on one huge open continent can be very hard. Basically islands are super easy, pangaea is much harder.
The computers generally will attack you quite regularly over the course of the game (even if they are hopelessly outclassed) so you need to be able to defend yourself most of the time.
Yeah, I was really surprised that they didn't attack me on King. I was on an island pretty much by myself (someone snuck a city on right in the middle but I had him surrounded) so maybe that helped. I was in no danger of dying though since I was floating a massive amount of cash to rush buy an army if I had to. When I eventually decided to start beating down I rush bought 3 carriers and 9 planes and still had money to burn.
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