Cannot win on king level

[Tony_UK]

despite having 13 cities and investing heavily in science as the latest Victoria. The trouble is Rome with any of the 4 civs, wipes the board and is OP in my opinion. Julias Caesar has twice the number of points as me by 1850, so I might as well give up. I have tried different strategies and varied my game, but to no avail. Been playing for many years, so maybe I am just too old at 73!

[🅺🅴🆁🅸🆅🅴🅽]

Just take his cities. I'm winning science victory even when the AI is x2 ahead (check my screens). They adjusted the AI recently and it does better, but not that better lol Btw, all that mostly on Deity.

[Tony_UK]

Yes you have make war mostly to win, that not my strong point.

[Copernicus]

Originally posted by Tony_UK:

Yes you have make war mostly to win, that not my strong point.

I don't. I've spent most of my time on Emperor level, and I agree a Science win is pretty difficult. On the other hand, a Culture win is usually pretty easy, as is a Diplomatic one, as the AI tends not to focus on these two categories. Religious wins are decent too, if you get the right kind of starting conditions. I've never even tried to win at that level through warfare, as it is a pain to manage large armies in this game and not something I really enjoy.

And yeah, just switch off the Julius Caesar DLC if you don't like him. I try to switch off most of the DLC in my games (unless I'm interested in using it in that particular game), as it tends to be pretty unbalanced.

[Tony_UK]

Yes I switch off now and UN

[plaguepenguin]

When you say you have been playing for years, but now find it impossible to win on King, I assume that you do find it possible to win (often? always?) on Prince or lower.

The second assumption I'm going to make is that when you say you cannot win on King, that judgment is based on more than one game, that you have tried several times and found it impossible. Just one bad outcome is probably a fluke, and if it's just the one game with JC, then you can't say that you cannot win on King, just that this one game has reached a point of futility

Based on those assumptions, I suspect that you can't win on King because of habits that served you well on Prince and lower difficulty, but become dysfunctional the more bonuses you give the AI.

This suspicion is based on my own experience. I started on Prince, with the plan of playing every civ once on Prince, then moving up to higher difficulty after I had won on Prince as each of them. Well, I don't get a chance to play that often, and the devs kept giving us new civs and leaders faster than I could keep up, so I never went past Prince for years. I played enough to get good at that level, able to win any game, and almost always by turn 250. I did this by settling on a one stereotypical strategy I used in every game, as every leader, no matter what uniques that civ and leader possess.

I got ahead of the AIs by ignoring non-core elements of the game so that I could develop the core (expanding, moving up the tech and civics trees) more quickly than the AIs. I never built Holy Sites, Encampments, walls, Entertainment Districts, or spies. Within the core defined by expansion (by settling or conquest), and churning out Campuses, Theater Squares and Commercial Hubs or Harbors, I tended to advance on a very balanced, even front, from Classical to Merchant Republic to Democracy . The AI, in comparison, tends to get distracted with one or more of the non-core priorities, so I could always claw ahead of them and then stay ahead of them easily, coasting to a science victory while they were Renaissance or Industrial.

Your particular rut is probably different in the details than mine. Maybe you do all the little optimizations very aggressively,things like district adjacencies and eurekas/inspirations. Maybe you played more widely on Prince than I did, but you stayed ahead of the AI by using different combinations of all the many enhancers (your civ's and leader's uniques, policy cards, religious beliefs, govt types, Govt Plaza buildings, suzerainty bonuses, etc.) plus beelining vs bypassing techs and civics, more assiduously and strategically than I did.

But as the AIs get more bonuses on King and beyond, you become more and more dependent on being flexible in using the combinations that are available in order to get and stay ahead. Optimizing is no longer enough. Ignoring non-core subsystems of the game is no longer enough. The AI yield bonuses still let them stay ahead of you no matter how ruthless you are at optimizations and ignoring parts of the game. And then, you are more dependent on something like a particular religious belief to form a killer combination with other enhancements that happen to be available, so you have to splurge on Holy Sites and get a damned religion, for example, or build Encampments because you need Great Generals.

You mention not being very avid at making war. While you can definitely still win without war on higher difficulty, there is a definite tendency to force you to be less picky about the means you use to get and stay ahead. Conquering one of your neighbors by the end of the Classical Era is the most obvious way to get past even the AI's Deity bonuses,because if you have double the land to exploit, you can almost always get past them, but the higher the difficulty, the less doable that is. Get as high as Deity and there is an excellent chance you will be attacked by one of your neighbors, so you will get war no matter how little you want it,so you have to get good at least at defense. The picture gets less stark as the game progresses and you have survived to the Renaissance, but it is still not infrequently the case that mid-game conquest is your best way, maybe your only way, to get ahead.

In general, every game will be more different from any one stereotype progression the higher the difficulty level. Now that I am playing at Emperor to Deity, I find the game so more often so much more interesting and varied, that I am going to go back and play again on at least Emperor as all those leaders and civs I skated through on Prince. For many of them, I never used any of their uniques, at all, ever, in those games I won with them using my stereotyped path to victory, and that was just sad. The game opens up more the higher the difficulty level.

[Sarisin]

Hey Tony, don't worry there are players here your age...and older. You are never too old, just keep plugging away and experiment with all the game variables. IMO that is the best thing Civ has had going for it all these years - the many choices you can make for your games. If something is not working and you feel like you are hitting a wall, try something else.

I'll be 75 in a few months. ;-)

[Mr Fred]

Two small things you probably arent doing enough as other are saying :
Sell your extra ressouces all the times to the A.I to be able to buy extra builders and/or army unit.
You should pretty much always go to war early on even if you cant kill the other, pillaging really add up and help you catch up.

Watch some lets play by good players that play on deity to pick up more good habits, id suggest PotatoMcWhiskey personally

[Tony_UK]

Originally posted by Sarisin:

Hey Tony, don't worry there are players here your age...and older. You are never too old, just keep plugging away and experiment with all the game variables. IMO that is the best thing Civ has had going for it all these years - the many choices you can make for your games. If something is not working and you feel like you are hitting a wall, try something else.

I'll be 75 in a few months. ;-)

I have Parkinson's Disease this past 8 years, at least this keeps my brain active. Maybe I try Old World.

[Tony_UK]

Originally posted by Mr Fred:

Two small things you probably arent doing enough as other are saying :
Sell your extra ressouces all the times to the A.I to be able to buy extra builders and/or army unit.
You should pretty much always go to war early on even if you cant kill the other, pillaging really add up and help you catch up.

Watch some lets play by good players that play on deity to pick up more good habits, id suggest PotatoMcWhiskey personally

Ah yes, I tend too neglect that aspect but playing on continents you cant kill every AI.

[Tony_UK]

Originally posted by plaguepenguin:

When you say you have been playing for years, but now find it impossible to win on King, I assume that you do find it possible to win (often? always?) on Prince or lower.

The second assumption I'm going to make is that when you say you cannot win on King, that judgment is based on more than one game, that you have tried several times and found it impossible. Just one bad outcome is probably a fluke, and if it's just the one game with JC, then you can't say that you cannot win on King, just that this one game has reached a point of futility

Based on those assumptions, I suspect that you can't win on King because of habits that served you well on Prince and lower difficulty, but become dysfunctional the more bonuses you give the AI.

This suspicion is based on my own experience. I started on Prince, with the plan of playing every civ once on Prince, then moving up to higher difficulty after I had won on Prince as each of them. Well, I don't get a chance to play that often, and the devs kept giving us new civs and leaders faster than I could keep up, so I never went past Prince for years. I played enough to get good at that level, able to win any game, and almost always by turn 250. I did this by settling on a one stereotypical strategy I used in every game, as every leader, no matter what uniques that civ and leader possess.

I got ahead of the AIs by ignoring non-core elements of the game so that I could develop the core (expanding, moving up the tech and civics trees) more quickly than the AIs. I never built Holy Sites, Encampments, walls, Entertainment Districts, or spies. Within the core defined by expansion (by settling or conquest), and churning out Campuses, Theater Squares and Commercial Hubs or Harbors, I tended to advance on a very balanced, even front, from Classical to Merchant Republic to Democracy . The AI, in comparison, tends to get distracted with one or more of the non-core priorities, so I could always claw ahead of them and then stay ahead of them easily, coasting to a science victory while they were Renaissance or Industrial.

Your particular rut is probably different in the details than mine. Maybe you do all the little optimizations very aggressively,things like district adjacencies and eurekas/inspirations. Maybe you played more widely on Prince than I did, but you stayed ahead of the AI by using different combinations of all the many enhancers (your civ's and leader's uniques, policy cards, religious beliefs, govt types, Govt Plaza buildings, suzerainty bonuses, etc.) plus beelining vs bypassing techs and civics, more assiduously and strategically than I did.

But as the AIs get more bonuses on King and beyond, you become more and more dependent on being flexible in using the combinations that are available in order to get and stay ahead. Optimizing is no longer enough. Ignoring non-core subsystems of the game is no longer enough. The AI yield bonuses still let them stay ahead of you no matter how ruthless you are at optimizations and ignoring parts of the game. And then, you are more dependent on something like a particular religious belief to form a killer combination with other enhancements that happen to be available, so you have to splurge on Holy Sites and get a damned religion, for example, or build Encampments because you need Great Generals.

You mention not being very avid at making war. While you can definitely still win without war on higher difficulty, there is a definite tendency to force you to be less picky about the means you use to get and stay ahead. Conquering one of your neighbors by the end of the Classical Era is the most obvious way to get past even the AI's Deity bonuses,because if you have double the land to exploit, you can almost always get past them, but the higher the difficulty, the less doable that is. Get as high as Deity and there is an excellent chance you will be attacked by one of your neighbors, so you will get war no matter how little you want it,so you have to get good at least at defense. The picture gets less stark as the game progresses and you have survived to the Renaissance, but it is still not infrequently the case that mid-game conquest is your best way, maybe your only way, to get ahead.

In general, every game will be more different from any one stereotype progression the higher the difficulty level. Now that I am playing at Emperor to Deity, I find the game so more often so much more interesting and varied, that I am going to go back and play again on at least Emperor as all those leaders and civs I skated through on Prince. For many of them, I never used any of their uniques, at all, ever, in those games I won with them using my stereotyped path to victory, and that was just sad. The game opens up more the higher the difficulty level.

A good write up, will keep trying.