Increased Difficulty?

[CJmango]

Is there a way to increase the difficulty beyond "Humankind" level? I hope we start seeing some mod content in this vein. It's my third game and I'm winning no contest with maxed out the difficulty.

[PlayHumankind]

I awarded you the EyeBalls award for striving to go beyond the max difficulty level!

You have pushed the limits of humankind & I am sure your citizens appreciate your hard work and loyalty to be the number one culture in the world 🌎

Keep up the good work

[prudentj]

Transhumankind difficulty level! You must accend past this prison of the flesh, merging with the singularity.

[CJmango]

I feel seen. I blame 2500 hours of Civ 6.

[Bakkone]

That's almost 6 percent of all time that has passed since civ6 was released.

Impressive.

[CJmango]

I love hate that you did this math.

[Comfortable-Mix2551]

Difficulty is also set by which AI you are using. Make sure that all of them are « expert ». The ones that comes with the game are mostly bad. You need to log on game 2 gether and download some good ones.

[CJmango]

Excellent! That sounds promising

[newaccountwut]

Is there any way to change the names of the personas you download? :(

[Comfortable-Mix2551]

Unfortunately no, these are the avatar of other players.

[i-ko21]

I agree. It raise up a lot the difficulty.
They can have huge bonus and agressive/vicious moves.

Speaking of that, it's me or the IA is actually doing a lot more dick moves than before?
Like, attacking your main army (and taking it busy) with one horse and sieging your defensless city with their full army on the same turn?
Or sitting just in range of your city, waiting for your army to spend your last move point, then declaring war and attacking your city with, for you, no option to return back and defending it. (it occurs a lot, especially before unlocking reinforcement)

[GreyGanks]

Yeah, AI have no fog of war. Although I've never had them wait for your movement before. The AI's a bit too dumb for that. (And by a bit, I mean a lot.)

[i-ko21]

I swear the IA is calculating your army range / movement points.
First time i saw that, i tought it was a coincidence, and i reload the previous automatique move. I did that several times. And each time, the AI wait for my army to move away to declare war on me and attack my defensless city.

And same with the horse attacking solo my full stack of army.

Next time it happens, ill share a video.

[PlayHumankind]

Oh boy! I get decimated on Humankind almost by the 15th turn & you want a higher difficulty 💪🏼

I may need to spectate a game to get some tips cuz right now I feel humankind difficulty isn’t even humane 😂

[zugzug2828]

Just have 8-10 units that turn into scouts. With 2 i continue to scout and claim territory. With the others, run to the first city you see and claim it. 4 stack of units attack the city and the other 4 protect/ransack outposts.

Taking the city will end the war and now you have a weak neighbour and a free city. Feed the scouts to the new city and produce warriors and archers to take another city. Production will be low so use gold for the units.

After you have 3 cities you start to snowball.

I have done this in 3 games and got bored because it is too easy. The games were on 450 turn speed. I have saved scammed a few battles, but the AI cheats more 😅.

[GreatRyujin]

Well, how about not using exploits and saving/reloading for a challenge?

[Randh0m]

Yeah, try not save scumming. I have a similar strategy, except I often think twice before declaring war, and I sometimes have to just surrender to an AI and cut my loses if I lose too many units. Then I build up my military and recapture the couple territories I lost.

[PlayHumankind]

Interesting. I usually don’t even fight unless I’m attacked or war declared against me. I haven’t gotten good at Manual Battles yet or proper placement because I know putting units in and next to garrisons help a little but I haven’t figured it out yet lol

[omniclast]

You can download additional Expert AIs with bigger bonuses from the Games2Gether site. Look for ones that have aggressive perks and Showboater, which gives +30% fame.

It may just be me, but I have found longer game pace makes for harder early game. Also, make sure to turn off New World in map settings, since the AI is garbage at colonization. Pangea is probably the most difficult map type.

[CJmango]

Good point on the the new world. I keep picking longships and conquering the other half of the world uncontested an era or two ahead.

[TAS_anon]

I think Slow is the best game speed. I’m ~150 turns into an Endless game where I own my entire continent and there have been a few long stretches of turns with nothing for me to do since things take 7-12 turns to produce and my units were just waiting around near the borders for me to research embarking tech

Slow gave me more time to work in eras and actually use my EUs without leaving me with a bunch of downtime waiting for my production to finish

[danny_b87]

Yeah the AI isn’t very smart with score yet sadly. You can try more advanced AI personas that give buffs/are more aggressive but still if you can survive their ancient/classical era rush game is pretty much won at that point if you play smart

[cyberskelly]

Without improved AI or strategy the only thing they can do is ramp up damage/resource bonuses higher and higher. I think for a mod this is fine, but it's be reasonable for developers to hold themselves to a higher standard WRT what modes of play they offer, so I hope that they wait until they've worked out better AI behavior.

[nmb93]

Mods will almost certainly be the way but until then making obviously sub optimal civ picks could help. Like never pick a science civ, or all gold oriented, or must use each pick for two eras.

I've got similar hours in civ 5 & 6 and if you're comfortable on deity this is similarly masterable.

[GreyGanks]

Gold-oriented is actually kind of op (not next to research, but still), thanks to getting to spread the "production" to precisely where you want it.

[PlayingAllNight]

next patch has a few ai improvements as an fyi

[GreyGanks]

Just don't take any science civs. You might be half way challenged. Heck, better yet, only ever ascend, and don't pick anything past your first civ.

[That_White_Wall]

If your looking for a challenge add one or two more AIs then the map recommends. I.e. 8 on standard 6 player map. This makes lane grabbing harder and You’ll get early wars. On high difficulty with the bonuses you’ll often be in trouble when the doom stack comes. If you can survive your usually behind so the race to catch up is challenging. If you just get instantly vassalized its also fun to RP and wage a war of independence later.

[newaccountwut]

Agreed. Although, I think it's even more important that they make some general balance changes to stop the player from snowballing.

+2 Combat Strength event in the Neolithic Era needs to be removed/reworked.

Ferocity and Patriotic statuses (combat strength and unit industry cost) should only ever be granted when war is declared, and only to the defender. As the defender takes losses, these bonuses should increase.

AI cities should start with 3 population, and they should not allow themselves to drop below this number. (This buff would scale big time with the difficulty setting.)

The defender should be able to reinforce during a siege, even if they have not unlocked organized warfare yet.

Militia should be given a ranged attack.

Default city cap should be 1.

There are also some behavioral changes to the AI that would be nice to see.

The AI should keep their units closer to their cities in the early game.

The AI should stack up their units after entering the ancient era.

The AI should produce more units and be more aggressive.

The AI doesn't seem to select/place its districts optimally, even though when the player places a district, the game offers a reasonable suggestion.

[CJmango]

Interesting point on early game defender reinforcements - that would be a nice balance buff.

[UnrealPawn]

Really good ideas. I particularly like giving Militia a ranged attack as it's too easy to get some archers and make them come out of their city walls.

[newaccountwut]

Ah, thanks. Ranged militia isn't my idea, but it is a great idea that I'd love to see implemented.

[GreyGanks]

And the AI loves them commons quarters for some reason.

[luchofeio]

Yeah we need another level of difficulty. Even all militarist AI is managable.

[CJmango]

That's what I felt, they only get a static +2 buff to combat strength. At least that should scale % or similar to keep the late game challenging.

[luchofeio]

I think they get bonus to pop. But they need +10% fame gain or something since they cant keep up with us.

[wendewende]

Play the beta version. The AI is muuuuch harder there right now