Civilization

hardware: Mouse,

display: raster

The 5 difficulty settings consist of 5 mixed and matched options of money to start with ($300 to $0), scientific advancements to start with (), settler units to start with (1 or 2), quality and frequency of tutorial advice, barbarian strength (barbarians are rogue forces that can basically only be killed or bribed), rate of scientific advancement, happiness of citizens, riot threshold, duration of revolutions, maintenance and initial cost of buildings, deadliness and frequency of disasters and plagues, number of wonders enemies get to start and/or receive at random and how fast they can develop them (might seem like cheating AI since they are 'gifted' wonders and/or can build them faster than the player, but there are lesser-known means for the player to perform these same feats), how quickly technology becomes obsolete (on Emperor, the hardest level, a phalanx might defeat barbarian leader unit at the beginning of the game but can't defeat the same barbarian unit the moment knights have been invented even if you haven't started training a Knight unit yet). At Emperor level, a player must know and perform successfully and consistently, a wide variety of tactics that will not be mentioned by tutorial or in-game help.
There are two confirmed ways to change difficulty aspects and one additional possibility.
The common difficulty aspects are choosing 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 opponents. They all have to deal with each other and the player. With 7 opponents, civilizations can/will gain rapid advancement as all are parties are working on science simultaneously whilst trading, stealing and conquering each other. The player is pretty much required to enter the fray immediately and stay continually engaged just to keep up or they may find themselves sitting on the bottom of the tech tree for the later battles. Civilizations are wiped out at a steady rate until 2 or 3 super powers are left. On the other end of things, starting with 3 civilizations can leave all parties alone to advance undisturbed for much of the game. Later meetings might be between advanced super powers or a huge tech discrepancy between them (you might discover it is hopeless only very late in the game). Difficulty level cannot really be assigned based on the number of civilizations as there are advantages and disadvantaged to having more or fewer. But in general, having more civilizations is more forgiving to a new player (or at least then know sooner if they cannot win the game, or they die faster); while starting with fewer civilizations allows a knowledgeable player to follow a long term plan without early interference.
The other way to change difficulty aspects is to start a game in "Customize world" mode. The player can adjust the amount of dry land, temperature (warmer creates more zones of developable land), climate (wetter creates higher quality developable land in each zone), Age (older creates more hills and mountains that can be mined but not farmed)
The last possibility to alter difficulty aspects is by exploiting differences that the AI may or may not impose of the different nationalities available to choose from. Many players insist that the various nationalities have unique behaviors. The game programmers say they did not create differences. However, Civilization as a computer game has an unusually high number of variables. This is an almost unheard of level of variables for console game (SNES); there might be some emergent behavior occurring that means behaviors unique to each nationality are more likely to occur. What is even more likely (I think), is that players start to see things that look like unique behaviors and alter their own strategies because of it (nationalities do act uniquely because players treat them uniquely). Players share their 'Russians demand more tribute' theory with another player who then decides to avoid situations where Russians will demand tribute form them and the AI increases tribute variables for the avoided nationality. One especially important aspect to unique AI behavior is the fact that not only does the AI adjust tactics based on player actions, but also the fact that the machine code of the game is designed so that randomness is seeded by player behavior. This can be confirmed by playing a saved state using an emulator. A battle almost certainly (but not guaranteed) fated to be lost by a mismatch of units (ie: rookie phalanx vs veteran musketeers) can be won simply be doing different things before the battle. Repeat the same action 1000 time and never win the battle. But find a combinations of actions that wins once (ie: when on the phalanx unit, switch to a certain frigate, move one space forward, switch back to the phalanx and fight) then try the 'once won' strategy 1000 times. The 'once won' strategy results in many wins. Well, bottom line is this: Decided which nationality is the worst enemy to have (or worst tactic to face, and a certain nationality uses it frequently) and play as that nationality so you don't have to deal with that particular AI behavior. *It doesn't matter if it is tactics, seeding, emergent behavior, or some interplay of them, playing as the 'worst enemy nation' will make the game easier.


Here's an interesting insight into the mind of Sid Meier. The SETI Program (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) never results in finding aliens in the game but continually advances science by %50 under a Democratic regime. While a real Democratic regime is the only government system where people could vote not to "waste money on a failed project". But before delving too deep into that well, remember that Sid Meier's SETI Program continually advances science forever, is never made obsolete, and has a maintenance cost of $0.

zerothis # 2017-01-27 01:40:23

prequel of
Civilization II (Windows)

version of
Civilization (MS-DOS)