zustifer | (no subject) (Reply)

Oh yeah, I wanted to complain about this, too. I've been playing CivIII again because I remembered we had the expansion pack, and it's fun and all, but I've found kind of an unreasonable gap between the first two levels of difficulty. Now, I know I'm lame and incompetent, but I'm able to win in various ways handily on Chieftain level (because I have a central nervous system), but once the difficulty is bumped up to Warlord, all of a sudden I can't pick up a win to save my life. And it's not even close; the AIs almost always beat me to both wonders and technologies simultaneously, I get stiffed in irritating ways by not being able to trade with neighbors early (because THEY haven't built enough roads) when I'm resource/luxury-poor (which also means I can't trade for tech), and I swear that enemy cities, closer to my capital than my own best-producing cities, defect at a really low rate (culture isn't nearly as persuasive).

I know that I could do a bit better by micromanaging _everything_ (and thereby lengthening the game session by 200% or something; turn-by-turn spending and what have you), and by really learning each benefit/cost that each improvement gives, and whether it's more effective to build [thing] instead of [guy] on this particular turn and blah blah etc, and making a plan to win by some way OTHER than space race, but GOD! Why such a gulf between levels?

Maybe I will just play Chieftain in german.