What difficulty level do you play Civ IV on?

[TinCow]

Scienter and I have been on yet another Civ IV kick for the last several months. We've had some discussions about difficulty levels, since we play on different single-player difficulty levels and thus have to negotiate when we play multiplayer. Scienter just started playing on Prince and I currently play on Monarch. I find that's the sweet-spot for me, where I have a realistic shot at victory but also lose regularly enough to keep it interesting until the very late game. So where are you at? Are there any true masochists out there playing at Emperor or above?

[seireikhaan]

Noble. Most even matchup, pretty few bonuses or penalties. Challenging, yet winnable if you play your cards right and get a bit of luck. Probably the most fun I'd had on Civ IV was on Noble, when I had to fend off a dual Ottoman/Russian challenge on land, sea, and air, turning it into an epic drag-down war of attrition. Ended up losing to my buddy, who was playing as Persia far off on a distant continent and up snatching a cultural victory.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

I voted Gah! because 1) I like that option and 2) I have only played the demo.
Considering the fact that I played a true Civ game ages ago then I would be in the Chieftain level.

[Veho Nex]

Prince, Noble is too easy while monarch is unfairly hard.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I suppose I'll find out soon. I just got Civ 4 + All Expansion packs in a sale. Any mods I should try? Right now I'm just going to start a vanilla Civ 4 game and hold off on the expansions.

CR

[seireikhaan]

I suppose I'll find out soon. I just got Civ 4 + All Expansion packs in a sale. Any mods I should try? Right now I'm just going to start a vanilla Civ 4 game and hold off on the expansions.

CR

The expansions all mostly add to the vanilla game, although there's some extra scenarios. I would recommend starting up Beyond the Sword, its not significantly more difficult than pre-expansion. Otherwise you'll end up having to re-adapt to a couple of the new features and trying to figure out what to build and when all over again.

[jabarto]

Any mods I should try?

Depends on what you like. If you want a massive expansion of content, try Rise of Mankind. If you want a fairly vanilla experience, Legends of Revolution is pretty good. In any case you'll probably want Blue Marble Terrain to make the map not look completely terrible.

[al Roumi]

Noble too, I don't like feeling like I'm being cheated by the AI and I'm honestly not prepared to micro the pop of my cities closely enough to be confident/relaxed on Prince.

[naut]

Uh. I'm pretty rubbish at Civ. I have been ever since I started playing Civ 2 back in the day. So Noble or lower if I can't be bothered.

I suppose I'll find out soon. I just got Civ 4 + All Expansion packs in a sale. Any mods I should try? Right now I'm just going to start a vanilla Civ 4 game and hold off on the expansions.

CR

Total Realism + "Perfect" World Map Script.

[tibilicus]

Monarch. It means the game is challenging but to a point where the AI doesn't receive an obscene bonus and isn't to the point that it's researching tech 3 x fast than you.

[Centurion1]

i play deity. i know your going hes lying...... but ive only won three games out of like 50. its still fun though fighting till the last breath.

the game cheats though which can be annoying.

[aimlesswanderer]

Warlords and BTS: SP prince or monarch, though it is heavily dependant upon having good city sites near where you start.

Warlords MP (we found the BTS AI was a bit too dumb): my brother and I can win (50% of the time) with us as a team and both on monarch, against 3 teams of 2 AIs. Sometimes the AI is pretty bad - it has massive military and tech advantages but instead goes for a space race victory. That just let us stuff up our economies going for a cultural victory and failing by 20 turns... If they invaded us it would have been all over much much faster.

I'd recommend the Dune mod, and the Three Kingdoms mod if you like Chinese history.

[Crazed Rabbit]

THanks for the advice guys. I've got one more question, though; I'm playing BTS and I clicked on something that rendered all military units invisible on the map. They can still be selected and moved, but I can't see them, nor can I find which button to hit to make it so I can see them. What do I need to do to fix this? Thanks.

CR

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Coincidentally, I just picked this up recently and I've been enjoying it a lot. Started and quit about 10 different games before I got the hang of city development and how to actually fight with any level of success. Messed around with the different map types too.

I have a nice game on noble now and just managed to wipe out another civ for the first time. Playing on epic speed, standard map size, pangea. How much harder are the other levels? And what map size/speed etc do you like best?

[TinCow]

Coincidentally, I just picked this up recently and I've been enjoying it a lot. Started and quit about 10 different games before I got the hang of city development and how to actually fight with any level of success. Messed around with the different map types too.

I have a nice game on noble now and just managed to wipe out another civ for the first time. Playing on epic speed, standard map size, pangea. How much harder are the other levels? And what map size/speed etc do you like best?

Each difficulty level is a noticable jump up from the previous one, with the Prince -> Monarch jump being extra-large. Generally, move to a higher difficulty when you know you're win 90%+ of your games on that difficulty level.

Large/Epic is my preference, but occassionally I'll get myself dug in for a Huge/Marathon. I'm a huge fan of multi-continent maps though. My favorite map scripts are Fractal, Big and Small, Medium and Small, and Hemispheres. For shorter battle-map style games, I'm fond of Inland Sea. That said, thanks to Psycho's post above, I've started playing with the fan-made PerfectWorld2 script, and it's my new favorite (harder than OOB scripts though).

[Vladimir]

Scienter and I have been on yet another Civ IV kick for the last several months. We've had some discussions about difficulty levels, since we play on different single-player difficulty levels and thus have to negotiate when we play multiplayer. Scienter just started playing on Prince and I currently play on Monarch. I find that's the sweet-spot for me, where I have a realistic shot at victory but also lose regularly enough to keep it interesting until the very late game. So where are you at? Are there any true masochists out there playing at Emperor or above?

I'm there with both of you. Prince is my usual but results in a victory 90% of the time. Unless, for some reason, space race victory is enabled.

Monarch is a dangerous and competitive level. I shift back and fourth. The key to victory is to go to war in the late medieval. Any earlier than that and you lack the technology. The longer you wait, the more the AI spams units at you. However, once you finish off the spam, the rest is easy as pie. The thing I don't like about it is that it usually requires you to go to war. For some reason I'm a real when it comes to the Civ games.