what's the highest difficulty you finished?

[The Mad Monk]

Monarch, cultural victory -- cultural victories are so easy for me (hardcore builder) that I turned them off.

[alva]

Old style deity ( how it was pre-C3C, not that much changed)

The achievement feeling winning deity is good, but the game is as SR said before; work and not fun (work), more like a chore(sp?)

Normal level : emperor

[gunkulator]

Monarch, Conquest victory. I'm kind of an old fashioned civ player. I only allow Conquest and Spaceship victories - the way civ should be played! Domination and Cultural victories have always seemed like odd ways to win.

Emporer is too hard. It's too depressing to finally contact your neighbors and find them 5 techs ahead of you so that you have nothing to trade.

[Dain]

Sid - Conquest.

I think anything other than conquest is impossible at this difficulty level, well, domination is also possible, it is just easier for me to destroy than conquer as the last 20-30 odd turns of the game is where you destroy the bulk of the enemy civilisations.

If you can win in Emperor mode you can win in Sid mode, you have to come to terms with similar issues, lack of happiness, stupid numberical headstart by AIs and the ability to hold as large a military as possible without shutting down your growth.

Any militaristic civ is fine, it is a must if you turn to communism like me.

My start is a little unorthodox, most like to get involved with the tech swapping early. I start building a wonder with one of my cities early and then research straight for education and then switch my wonder building from whatever to great library. Its low on the priority of AIs because they practically give eachother tech so I turn research right off and go for expansion, grab as much land as possible.

Can usually get 5 odd cities down before being blocked off typically. From there on I go for barracks, then temples and then walls. I make sure i have contact with every civ physically possible then ride the GL tech whilst I boost happiness and the surplus cash goes into supporting an unnaturally large military.

I can get to around 40 to 50 units at this stage before I am bursting at the seems and will then wipe out my nearest neighbour, replace losses, build up. Should capture at least three or four cities in the first wave which allows for a larger second wave.

Second wave is annhilate second closest civ, 10 to 12 cities are around the most you can expect to maitain without massive corruption.

Once I hit the second age only then do I start to build libraries, I head for normal development once the GL goes obsolete. That is the consolidation phase, usually occupy alot more space than the AIs, with a bit of luck I have all but removed the AIs from my continent and I move towards defensive units.

This stage is just survival until I get to communism. I then build more cities and work on developing several cities which can produce workers almost non-stop.

Who needs a functional economy when you can rush build everything with workers. Even with maxed out corruption you can still build workers quickly enough at later stages. Then anything you want is just a matter of how many workers you need to ferry to a town.

So if you do not plan to actually build anything conventionally you can have a far larger civilisation and numbers of cities.

Conscription and the large military police allow you to get away with murder, literally. Because people that are unhappy are only unhappy because they have not been put to death to rush build tanks.

Newly captured cities giving you grief? Rush build a airport, drop the population and dump a ton of workers into the city.

Build a good fleet able to sink any noteworthy invasion force and build up to the modern age and build as many ICBMs you can. I will stop building when I have one for each enemy city on the next closest continent I plan on attacking.

By this stage the AIs are stupidly building a spaceship whilst I am building the instruments of their destruction. They unwisely usually elect to foregoe the noteworthy defenses until its too late. I will nuke the lot of them in one fell swoop and turn the planet into a dustball. Who cares, I can get off it at my leisure latre on when everyone else is dead.

Send your invasion force in (including a ton of workers), just before you land cover their continent with nuclear missiles then land in. You should of wiped out a large portion of their military, severed many railroad links and put them in enough dung that they would take an eternity to recover had you not invaded.

Take the first city, dump in your 30 odd defensive units and see out the storm of retaliation attacks from what is left of the civ, as soon as you put down the rebellion (should be one turn when you start dumping your workers in with a huge military presence). Rush build an airport, then you can airlift tons of tanks into the new city each turn.

Start to crank the whip by conscripting a ton of extra units from your own cities, airlift a ton of tanks every turn and you should conquer the new continent in about 5 or 6 turns.

Militaristic helps a fair portion of the conscripts make it to elite, they are semi-worthless without militaristic. I wiped out an AI that was 3x my size in what was 5 or 6 turns in Sid mode.

They just can't handle modern warfare. With the tanks you have, plus modern artillery, plus railroads, plus airports plus nuclear weapons they are easy to wipe out.

The trick is surviving to that age, it is a mix of very early offense followed by a lengthy defensive stage until you get to the modern age. Then its mop up time.

[siz]

Grats on beating Sid level. What civ did you start out using?

I think I have to agree that conquest may be the only way to win at this level. I wonder if spaceship is possible but you would need to catch up 1.5 era of techs though by that time too late?

[Hagbart]

I've beaten monarch and mostly play on that level. I don't enjoy playing if it's too hard.

[Dain]

Originally posted by siz
Grats on beating Sid level. What civ did you start out using?

I think I have to agree that conquest may be the only way to win at this level. I wonder if spaceship is possible but you would need to catch up 1.5 era of techs though by that time too late?

That was with Aztec. Militaristic and Agricultural.... mmmmm, so good.

It means even in a bad starting location you can generally squeeze cities in alot closer and they can maintain reasonable population sizes if need be until you can liberate some of the AI cities. I am not one to restart when getting a poor starting location, although in Sid mode you are more likely than not to be overrun in a bad spot.

I would lose if I tried to out-build them in the Space race because they can have far more cities than I can and have less corruption, happier people, more culture. The only way to stop them from building components is to attack them.

You just have to be aware if any of the civs are getting close to finishing it. Sometimes I have been forced to prematurely launch an invasion because they were getting close to close to winning.

By the time you catch up in tech you are so far behind the building process that it is not really possible, well, not the way I play. I dont really think its possible to get to the modern age without a conquest achievement in mind.

Just as an example, in one game I am trying which is a production based civ the AI (polite) is refusing 200 gold per turn for a middle age tech and would probably give it to another AI for peanuts. If they are tech swapping and you are out of the loop then it becomes close to impossible to keep even remotely close enough to have a shot at outbuilding the space ship.

Your future survival is also largely dependant on getting rid of your AIs on your continent. The only thing that prevents you losing city after city to culture is having some water between you and the next civ and thus extending the distance between your cities and theirs.

Their culture and production is far superior to what you can achieve, at least with the corruption pre-patch.

I like the challenge of winning at this mode but its a game of frustration rather than accomplishment. The AI's are annoyingly stupid and just rely on a different rule set to be competitive.

It is like playing golf against Tiger Woods and you have to play with a beachball, the only way to win is to break his arms and legs.

I find player only games far more enjoyable and challenging without people playing with different rules.

Someone who isnt very good at civ or even strategy games in general still can be more competitive than an AI in Sid mode. The reason is a human will react to things you do and will learn from their mistakes. Once you figure out the AI it becomes predictable and you know how to push its buttons.

Knowing what they will do and wont do gives you an advantage they can not overcome. Once you can start to win in Emperor mode you tweak your game so you can win faster, more effectively and more consistantly then you can win in Sid mode.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Dain
It is like playing golf against Tiger Woods and you have to play with a beachball, the only way to win is to break his arms and legs.