Annoyances with difficulty levels

[Blue Moose]

I think I am a pretty good Civ3 player, but there is something about the two highest difficulty levels that really irks me. I guess it is just the blatant cheating of the AI...totally impossible not to notice. On Emperor it gets an extra settler, and 6 extra land units, and deity gives it two extra settlers, a worker, and 12 extra land units.....to say nothing of the fact that everything is cheaper for the AI to build.

I recognize and understand that in any game on those difficulty levels you are going to be behind the AI for a long time...but I just can't get myself to play for very long. Maybe it's my ego, or maybe I just want a fair fight, but I just feel irked whenever I am playing on the high difficulties.

It seems the AI cheats even more in Civ3 than in Civ2....I don't think the game is that much more complicated...so you'd think they'd have had some advances with AI development so it wouldn't need to cheat as much. Anyhow, does anyone else feel the same as me on this?

It would have been nice to have multiple difficulty sliders, some for giving the AI cheating abilities, and some for just a harder AI. As it is though...it seems the AI is basically the same on all difficulty levels, and only wether it is handicapped or allowed to cheat is changed.

[miccofl]

it seems the AI is basically the same on all difficulty levels, and only wether it is handicapped or allowed to cheat is changed.

That is correct. Open the editor, click on the dificulty levels tab and you will see how it is set up - you can change it if you like.

[vondrack]

Re: Annoyances with difficulty levels

Originally posted by Blue Moose
It would have been nice to have multiple difficulty sliders, some for giving the AI cheating abilities, and some for just a harder AI. As it is though...it seems the AI is basically the same on all difficulty levels, and only wether it is handicapped or allowed to cheat is changed.

Blue Moose, you are mixing two different things together. The AIs are playing with an advantage on the higher difficulty levels (more free units on turn 1, lower production/research requirements etc.). IOW, they do not have to be that good in terms of their intelligence to be worthy opponents.

OTOH, cheating is something different. The amount of "cheating" (doing things you can't) is the same on all levels and AFAIK there are only very few cheats actually confirmed.

IIRC, there is no difference in the AI intelligence between various difficulty levels, the only thing that gets adjusted are production/research bonuses, free units on turn 1 and support costs. Maybe the agressiveness level, too, I am not sure.

You can't have your "AI intelligence level" slider, as the AI engine is not scalable. It's the same on all difficulty levels, at least AFAIK.

If you consider Emperor/Deity no fun, play on Monarch. You are facing the same AI brain all the time, just your handicap is different.

[jshelr]

If you are beating Monarch too easily and getting bored, then I'd advise moving up. If you keep bashing at Emperor, you will find it is regularly beatable and that you can catch up from the early deficit quite quickly.

Deity is, for me anyway, another story........

[wohmongarinf00l]

there is indeed a change in the AI aggression level on the higher difficulties. basically it just becomes a more brutal environment. it gets so that things left alone, they break down faster.

[HazieDaVampire]

don't worry, some people find it a nice challenge, some people find it off putting to be 200 units, 20citys and a hole age behind the AI.

[Thrawn05]

Emperor and Deity are mostly for those Warmongers out there, because a building a like me can't handle it, and even my resent warmongering ability are unable to handle it (see the second link in my sig).


I can play monarch, but I lose usualy due to an AI culture, Diplo or Space Race win. Somthing I have to handle.

I general stay a Regent. It makes for a nice even game, of course I increase corruption a little to make more fun.

[vmxa1]

All levels are beatable, you just have to learn the curve. It was the same in Moo/Moo2. Once you figure out where you have to be at what point, you get that peacefulness. When you first try the highest level, you get intimitated, but then you see the milestones and learn to reach them and you can handle it. Knowing the AI will not make good use of its extra resources, allows you to get back in the game at Deity. You can even take down a city while they have their 14-16 warriors as they will foolishly spread them out and they will seldom have anything but regulars. Just don't fail at the attempt. You just have to find the level that is fun for you. That could be Warlord, Monarch or Deity, it is all good. Like Thrawn05 said, builders will not enjoy the higer levels, warmongers may.

[Minmaster]

hang in there, when u get ur first diety victory it will be sweet...i, like many others was diety only player for civ series and smac series. diety on those games were way too easy though and i like the challenge of the civ3 diety. yea it does tick me off when the AI has 3-4 cities with a horde of units when i get my first settler, and most of the games i play are huge struggles just to stay competitive. although i exclusively play diety only on civ3, but i am not saying i dominate it by any means. i find emperor although just one level below not tough enough. one thing i do is, at some point in the ancient age, i know whether i have a chance or no chance in being a world power. if i am too behind in AI, i usually give up and start another one. yes, i too had to learn to be a warmonger because on diety i've only won maybe 2-3 diety games without fighting wars. however, the warmongering makes the game so tedious for me that even when i find myself whoopin AI ass, i usually dont have the urge to finish the game. however, i think diety level is a good thing, we always need more challenge. it is diety after all, u have to be very good to win. but i dont think there will be a simple strategy for winning on diety. i just accept the fact that most diety games, ill lose, but few i will win.

[Lord Merciless]

I have to say that I don't enjoy the Deity level. It basically requires non-stop warmongerings with (maybe) some short peace times between. Any game that only allows 1 type effective strategy is boring.

[Blue Moose]

It isn't that I don't think I can win....I guess I am just annoyed by the fact that the AI isn't scaleable. I'd just prefer to be playing against a smarter AI, as opposed to what I shall call the "Hulk" system. There's just something annoying about it. I'll still try those levels now and then....but I guess it just peeves me a bit (as opposed to Monarch where the AI has the same resources as you...more or less). I guess it sounds silly, but it is sort of an aesthetics thing. I'm annoyed that the game didn't come with an AI that scales. (I guess I also get annoyed that CivIII seems a lot worse at giving you a decent starting location compared to CivII). It's all manageable....I think I'll like playing multiplayer.

To sum up. I'd prefer to play against Bruce Banner as opposed to the Hulk....I think they could have made a more scaleable AI. (They could have used genetic algorithms to make a good AI, I think).

I think I have been somewhat repetitive, hmm.

[vmxa1]

Maybe they could have, but understand the game has a lot to contend with. It is not just a simple chess game. Designing a game to be unique for several levels with this many variable to deal with is a big under taking. Look at all the fixes that were required to deal with the myrid of tactics that the players can come up with. The board is not even constant, it can be many sizes and content (water area,land, islands)

[Catt]

Originally posted by Lord Merciless
I have to say that I don't enjoy the Deity level. It basically requires non-stop warmongerings with (maybe) some short peace times between. Any game that only allows 1 type effective strategy is boring.

I largely agree with LM - it could be that I'm just not good enough, but my Deity games always channel me into one macro startegy - early, constant, oscillating warfare. I just don't have as much fun when I'm forced to follow the same overall approach regardless of civ, map, start location, etc.

I also think the early unit bonuses are peanuts compared to the production bonuses - 60% cost for pop growth, all build items, tech costs, etc. makes it (seemingly) impossible to keep up without aggressive expansion at the expense of your neighbors.

I have more fun on Emperor, with occasional forays into Monarch and Deity, and so that's what I play. (I also just had a good deal of fun playing a Regent OCC game).

Originally posted by Thrawn05
Emperor and Deity are mostly for those Warmongers out there, because a building a like me can't handle it, and even my resent warmongering ability are unable to handle it (see the second link in my sig).

I've actually found that largely peaceful games are more viable under 1.29f (assuming you play on a PC and not a Mac). The first couple of games I played under 1.29f I kind of got shafted with the random civ / random map selector and felt I was largely forced into a peaceful early game. Both early experiments were both winnable and won, and I now don't discount the viability of playing a largely peaceful game on Emperor -- I say largely peaceful because I generally will have to go to war several times because (1) an AI civ will attack, (2) I really need a luxury or strategic resource that I can get only through warfare, or (3) I just get bored playing purely peacefully .

Blue Moose - I found the biggest change between Monarch and Emperor was going from 2 content citizens to 1 content citizen -- once you get a better handle on happiness and city pop management under the 1-born-content regime, I think Emperor will provide a good challenge. By contrast, the biggest challenge for me between Emperor and Deity is the jump from 80% AI production bonuses to 60% AI production bonuses - tough to keep up for me without a lot of aggressive expansion and wars targeted at crippling other civs.

At the end of the day, I still lose on Emperor often enough to make the game both fun and challenging. If I can almost always win from a variety of start situations, maybe I'll mod Deity to follow the other levels' 10% progressions (making Deity a 70% production bonus instead of 60%) until I get a handle on that (if ever).

Catt

[cracker]

I am with Catt on most of this discussion of Difficulty levels.

I play at Emperor level most of the time because I still have a few extra drops of blood to squeeze out of different areas of the game play.

I would play diety type games more often, but I find that the "one size fits all" approach that Soren has hard coded into the game is absolutely irresponsible. There should be different AI cost factor advantages for: unit production, growth, tech research, city improvement/small wonders, and great wonders.

If I were setting the difficulty levels to match what I would think to be a challenging but enjoyable game then Diety would look like:

AI unit production costs: 50-60% of the human
AI city improvement cost: 60% of the human
AI growth advantage: 80% of the human (instead of the current 60%)
AI great wonder cost: 80% of the human (instead of the current 60%)
Human tech research cost: 125% of the AI (instead of the current 167%)

Current tech research in V1.29 on Diety is totally dependendent on the AI players. If you start on an isolated island or if the AIs engange in early wars and incapacitate each other then the game becomes a tedious mess where the human player is too incapacitated to even participate in research progression. The current AI cost factors and human cost factors lead the Diety AIs to research techs for 40 coins and then demand 60-80 coins for the same tech when they try to sell it to the human.

The current AI cost advantage applied to great wonders means that successful human players can rarely build even one of the early great wonders and if they do it usually comes at the substantial risk of loosing the whole game just because of a single great wonder decision.

It would also be nice to have a slider that would determine, the percentage of performance of the AIs so we could get a better distribution of high performers and low performers as opponents in the game. This slider would just let us select the probability that there would be more than one super AI in each game. Currently the AI's are very borgesque at the diety level because they all have the same advantages that play into and reinforce they singular hardcoded strategy

[Theseus]

Originally posted by cracker
It would also be nice to have a slider that would determine, the percentage of performance of the AIs so we could get a better distribution of high performers and low performers as opponents in the game. This slider would just let us select the probability that there would be more than one super AI in each game. Currently the AI's are very borgesque at the diety level because they all have the same advantages that play into and reinforce they singular hardcoded strategy

3B, wet, warm, on standard or large maps, will create a spectrum of AI civ success.

Of course, this means the AI winners will be that much harder to deal with... re-starting for a good position provides reasonable balance for the player.