What difficulty level do you play?

[romelus]

weired, i'm playing my 3rd game on impossible (1st one was won easily and 2nd one crashed) and haven't had much difficulties at all. on this game i started very near the brazilians and they managed to settle the land around me very quickly, it took me a long time to found my second city.

after founding the 3rd city the brazilians attacked me so i started pumping out military units. i took the first brazilian city with 12 units of hoplites and archers, and had to use 2 full stacks for the 2nd city. the 3rd brazilian city was tough to take and i had to spend 3 full stacks as they had already developed pikemen, knight and catapult. after that battle it became easy for me, i developed feudalism and just started conquering, no real chanllenge at all.

[phoenixcager]

Maybe it favours a particular style of play over others. It seems like those who like to concentrate on a military game tend to have no problems, but those who tend to have peaceful style of play suffer

[Men]

Yes, if your into military victories the game is far too easy. I play on impossible. I trail behind other civs in technologies. When I get nationalism I steal their tech. Once I get bombers and tanks the game is over for the AI civs. They cannot mount an effective offence or even defence.

[Shaka II]

I found pretty much the same thing, but my tech advances have been mostly obtained through my ally's research. I haven't been successful at stealing tech (I miss civ II).

Men, any good spy tricks?

[MrFun]

I don't know about you guys, but the difficulty levels that are available on CTP II for me are:

So Easy, Not Worth Playing

Ultra-Super Easy

Super Easy

Very Easy

Easy

[phoenixcager]

Yes....thank you very much for making people like me look like idiots

[avonlea]

Fun or Victory? That is the real question. I play the impossible level if I want a real challenge. After years of experience I can consistantly win. However, I cannot pursue any pet projects like trade, city design, or wonders, I simply find who the top dog is and take city after city. With catapults I can usually do this. Just get 10 catapults and two escorts (maybe pikemen or just archers) and pound away. If you can hit them before they get tanks, this usually works.

If I want fun, I play medium. Then I don't have to worry about my catapults having to blast machine gunners or being bombarded by battleships. I can grow my cities the way I want to. I can tend to their happiness and converse with other civilizations.

[Coflek]

I haven't finished the first game yet, (started on impossible with toughest barbarians, gigantic map and 8 civs, as a Mongol, with no alterations to .txt files) but it seems that life is getting harder now, i managed to lose abour three stacks of 12 units and one stack of 8 unisrt so far, an it slowed me down a lot, couldn't keep with expansion. About 1400 AD it seemed that I will win easily, but now until 1880 I only conquered 4 cities in between , and I am starting to get behind in the science... i will have to start using spies. (haven't used retreat either -might have saved me many units)anyway it turns out to be a challenge now, but it is only the first game so I still think it might be too easy for someone who used to play and win on hardest levels in CIV II , CTP I. Anyway I expect that after tha tweaks suggeted on the forum to enhance AI, the game will be a challenge later on as well.

[Men]

Shaka II:

I try to spy on smaller cities. They seem to have a better chance for some reason. Also if your oppenent is a fascist its very hard. The fascists see your spies and wack em.

If at first you dont succeed send more =)

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Tanks and bombers, I'll say it again tanks and bombers

[wysiwyg]

I suspect that the difficulty level affects AI cheats and handicaps the player. As suggested earlier, I'd increase the AI time slice in const.txt to give the AI longer turns. Otherwise the AI's turns end before it has a chance to complete its actions.

[cdo2001]

i played ctp1 before.

i just bought the game a week ago, i played ctp2 once on median level 8 civ, random map, with heavy slavery, i am in a huge lead by 1945 and i quit.

i played again at hard/toughest barbarians as Americans on Activition world map with a full offensive strategy and got a big lead and stopped.

now i am playing japanese at impossible/toughest barbarians with 8 civ popultion on, on Activition world map.

A big advantage of starting on a world map is that u know the exact starting location of each civ after checking who are the enenmies through the score window. With AI's lousy war intelligence, this enables u to carry out a full offensive strategy.

it takes me about 50 turns to research shipbuilding since japanese starts from a tiny island, reasonably accomodates only one city, without the simpliest ship, japanese can't expand at all. during the research i keep building warriors/hoptiles, etc, with this strategy i never build any wonders or settlers or slavers (since my sci is so much behind, by the time slaver is available, all enemy cities got city walls) i only build sometimes happiness enhancing city improvements only at those borderline happiness cities so that i can keep production, sci and food at the extreme levels.

initially, it appears AI only has one defenders in a city, so with 2-3 warriors attaching each city, i took 3 size 3-4 cities from Thai. After that, archer becomes available, so i build 3 6-unit armies with 3 archers in each army, such army in turn takes 3-4 cities from Persians. My territory expansion slows down by the time i reaches Greek, who uses full 12-unit army to defend each city, the way i defeat such defense is to build 3 12-unit armies, surrounding the city, the first 2 armies will attach the city and by the time the archers are on the front line, i retreat the army (lost 4-5 units), and the last (3rd) army finishes the job.

Now the time is 40AD, i have been Republic for a few turns now, forgot to mention that with so many cities adn trading goods, once trade is available i give sci a huge jump by producing caravans at fast as possible to utilize all avaliable trade routes.

i am setting research goal to Geometry to build (catapults) bombard units, since Athans has a nice wonder and only has one land tile connecting to it, which makes my surrounding attack tactics useless with with 6 pikemans and 6 archers.

checking the status score, only native Americans got more armies than i do, and i am already top in econ with the largest number of cities i got (assume), and my sci speed is catching up very close. After about 2.5 hours playing my territory now covers the whole asia.

[Jonny]

I play on medium level, but I plan to move on to hard soon. Medium is starting to become too easy for me.

Jonny

[SirMatthew]

I have played and won on every difficulty setting so far. Now, I'm playing on impossible. As mentioned by others in the above posts, the AI had an enormous tech lead at first. I lagged behind for about a thousand years, but now that it's around 1500 AD, I'm well ahead in tech, commerce, and size. Not that anyone of those makes my empire the greatest, but they have aided me in the takeover of several of the remaining civs. I find that the AI I'm primarily concerning with (Irish), tends to only build 10-15 cities. I have around 40 or so. I'm looking forward to finishing this game, hopefully still alive, and get more into MP as I did in CTP.

[SirMatthew]

I have played and won on every difficulty setting so far. Now, I'm playing on impossible. As mentioned by others in the above posts, the AI had an enormous tech lead at first. I lagged behind for about a thousand years, but now that it's around 1500 AD, I'm well ahead in tech, commerce, and size. Not that anyone of those makes my empire the greatest, but they have aided me in the takeover of several of the remaining civs. I find that the AI I'm primarily concerning with (Irish), tends to only build 10-15 cities. I have around 40 or so. I'm looking forward to finishing this game, hopefully still alive, and get more into MP as I did in CTP.

[SirMatthew]

sorry for the double post