King and Above Difficulty

[boohboomagoo]

Can anyone point me to some good guides for how to do the higher difficulty games. I just played a huuuuuuge epic game on King... and LOST after 3 days... and it's burned my soul cause I was so close to winning but lost last second because of dipolomatic victory that I couldn't really undo by going back a few saves or rethinking the strat. I just want to get the upper difficulty achievements unlocked. But I'm getting annoyed that at the higher difficulty i'm paying tons of penalties for loyalty and the city states are doing the dirty work of my stupid computers... its like dude; I just wanna aztec thump the crap out of my neighbor in era one... but no... it's like you have to get the final era to just be able to have enough tech to breach a city wall! Is there a tips guide on how to get the latter difficulty settings playable? I'm feeling a bit frustrated and; F U Trajon for getting that two victory points that cost me the game! I'm almost feeling like maybe I should shut off the Diplomatic Victory settings cause... not that it isn't fun to compete in the challenges, but it sucks to try to catch up if you don't pay attention! it's almost a automatic win mode for computers... any links to explanations in regard to planning would be helpful cause. I feel like its cool but man... but god it sucks to mess it up 3 days into a game.

[Maya-Neko]

1. There's nothing special about monitoring victory conditions in higher difficulties. It's your job to look into it regularly to see, where you've to counteract or which Civ you've to eradicate from the surface of the planet, if the non-violent strategies are already impossible. It's not the games fault, if you get surprised by a winning AI. And the Diplomatic System actually favors players pretty hard, as the AI won't exploit it properly.

2. Loyalty is something your pops should actually be generating themselves quite easily. Don't build your cities to far apart each other, as that will make it harder to keep them loyal, without any real benefit.

3. It's actually quite easy to fight wars in early eras. Just concentrate on units early on. Get 2-3 warriors and 3-4 archers ready as fast as possible and you should easily be able to get a hand full of cities before anyone can build walls.

4. When walls are popping up, then use Siege units. 2-3 are quite good to have here. They're made to tear down walls. but also keep them up to date, so that they're at least matching the Cities combat strenght. You've to beeline for catapults to make them useful however, as they can be outdated quite fast otherwise, but walls are pretty much obsolete, once bombards are developed and when you're heading into the next eras, an artillery with a balloon is pretty much the best thing you can send into the AI, as they can't deal properly with units, who have 3 range.

[InedibleHulk]

Use the true start location Earth map. Then chose 5-6 civs in the Americas and expand fast in rest of the world.

[Akadai]

Pretty much what Maya said. Not sure why walls would be hard to deal with. Sounds like you weren't building the right units. Siege units ftw

I actually turn off Diplomatic victory, because I got annoyed by winning the game constantly by accident with it. It's also one of the more annoying ones to fight against imo. I just didn't find it fun

If I see a civ even get remotely close to any sort of victory, I march the largest army the world has ever seen over to them and destroy everything, even if it means going to war with other civs to do it. But as Maya said, you need to pay attention to each win condition your self and keep an eye on everyone. That's your own fault

Also, there aren't any player penalties at higher difficulties as far as I'm aware. The AI just have yield and combat bonuses. You losing loyalty sounds like you're probably doing something wrong. Cities too far apart, or maybe too many neighbors putting loyalty pressure on. I typically murder all my neighbors as quickly as possible (before they build walls). Sometimes I'll keep City States alive, depends on how things are flowing

If I have enough archers, I'll hammer those against walls, or wait till I have siege built. Sometimes I have to delay a war due to AI tech advancements. Mid/Late game, I use naval if they're close enough, or bombers

If you want to keep Diplomatic win enabled, I'd suggest looking up all the different ways to get diplo points. Certain wonders give quite a bit. You also have to be clever with the world congress. Sometimes voting for something you really don't want is the win, because all the AI will probably vote for it. It can take a bit to get a grasp of what the AI usually vote on

[D34DLY]

Originally posted by Akadai:

I actually turn off Diplomatic victory, because I got annoyed by winning the game constantly by accident with it. It's also one of the more annoying ones to fight against imo. I just didn't find it fun

^ this

[LordOfPants]

One thing that makes it way easier to keep an eye on enemy civs: Hit esc to go to menu, then options-interface, then set 'Show HUD Ribbon' to 'always show'. This gives a running total of Score, Military, Science, Culture, Gold, Faith, and Diplo Favor under each civ portrait, which makes it way easier to see what the AIs are doing.

As far as your early game difficulties go, build your cities closer together, if you're trying to fight early then you certainly don't need space for them to work 20+ tiles. Generally placing cities with 3-4 tiles between them (3 is the enforced minimum) is best. I don't have loyalty issues even on immortal unless I'm in a situation where enemies start right on top of me (like playing a true start map as the Vikings with Russia and Germany in the game).

[tiamats4esgares]

Diplomatic victory is actually the easiest to win if you "just want achievements" and want to exploit that. It seems you have this "DUR ME HIT FACE" mentality that only domination is viable. Not true at all.

Furthermore, domination should be won much sooner than anyone has time to do anything else or you're doing something wrong. As mentioned above, it's not hard as the aztecs to get a bunch of cities early. And on EPIC difficulty, domination is favored among all victory types.......

Try the Mongols if you absolutely must do Domination, but you're going to also have to use your brain as well and not just mash buttons if you want to win.

[CondorDrake]

It seems to be somewhat harder in CIV 6 on king. I remember winning just about every round on King in Civ 4 - but on CIV 6 I just tried a round with the Arabs, defeated India and had a huge continent and a strong religion for myself, and when I met the Vikings from another continent, I learned they're in atomic age while I'm still in renessaince, and that's about 1100 A.D.

[-=Maure=-]

For epople who disable Diplomatic Victory because it's too easy, there's a mod that increases the amount of diplomatic victory points required to get it, so you actually have to work for it to win before time runs out.

[Maya-Neko]

Originally posted by Equinox:

It seems to be somewhat harder in CIV 6 on king. I remember winning just about every round on King in Civ 4 - but on CIV 6 I just tried a round with the Arabs, defeated India and had a huge continent and a strong religion for myself, and when I met the Vikings from another continent, I learned they're in atomic age while I'm still in renessaince, and that's about 1100 A.D.

you can't really compare both games and when you're using civ4 or civ5 strats in civ6, then you'll most likely loose in higher difficulties, as you've to approach many things differently. Once you understood civ6 enough to beat immortal, then you should easily win every match against king AI.

[CondorDrake]

Originally posted by Maya-Neko:

Originally posted by Equinox:

It seems to be somewhat harder in CIV 6 on king. I remember winning just about every round on King in Civ 4 - but on CIV 6 I just tried a round with the Arabs, defeated India and had a huge continent and a strong religion for myself, and when I met the Vikings from another continent, I learned they're in atomic age while I'm still in renessaince, and that's about 1100 A.D.

you can't really compare both games and when you're using civ4 or civ5 strats in civ6, then you'll most likely loose in higher difficulties, as you've to approach many things differently. Once you understood civ6 enough to beat immortal, then you should easily win every match against king AI.

The thing is, I don't know what I could have done differently in that game. With Arabia I understand I could go for religious victory (rather tedious to micro manage all the missionaries and apostles though) or scientific victory, since I get +1 science for each foreign town converted to my religion.

I even killed off my direct neighbour and took all his cities and wonders and converted every other city on my continent (two more smaller civs) to my religion and I was still WAYYY behind the Norwegian guy on the other continent in terms of tech, despite completing all the science labs by buying them with faith as soon as possible.

At the end I managed to catch up quite a bit (completed earth satellite and moon landing when he ended the game with the mars colony), but I never really got close to them.

So my only idea for a replay would be to get naval sooner and start converting cities on other continents way earlier, but I'm not sure if that is even feasible.