Hm. Already I need to rethink my intended policy of tackling Civ5 at high difficulty levels.
At least I can rest confident that it isn’t simple cowardice or bad sportsmanship. Turns out I can win at emperor, and I’m pretty confident I can win beyond that with some practice. But at what cost?
My last two games pit me as China against Germany, and Greece against France, and I thought I was getting creamed both times. Had I not shifted mental gears, I would indeed have been creamed. My opponents, despite holding perhaps half the territory I did (and thus half the reserves of strategic resources), and perhaps 70% the population (and thus productive capacity), both handily out-wondered me and remained quite competitive in science. Grinding an economy was sending me to the loser bin. Hoping for some kind of insight as to how Germany was keeping up, I started scouting the world only to discover Bismark only had two cities.* This made me even more curious how it he could keep ahead in the wonder race, when I had several cities producing wonders in parallel—admittedly, not the most efficient strategy.
More confused than ever, I signed an open borders pact and started scouting Germany by land. I learned nothing from his terraforming, but discovered something even more valuable: Bismark had a horde of landesknechts and little else for military power—bad news for the horsemen donated me by a city-state, but good targets for the chu-ko-nu (superior Chinese crossbowmen) I had just learned to build. I popped out four of these and swept the continent. Four. I expected to need more, but figured I had best get started quickly before the Germans upgraded, and heavy reinforcements proved unnecessary. An almost identical victory over France followed, only it started earlier, since I knew what to look for.
So I can easily conquer enemies with numerical and technological superiority, yet can’t compete in the peace race. Moving up the scale from emperor difficulty will just accentuate the problem: you can whip the computer at deity, but only one way. Replayability withers in that scenario. You can struggle as long and hard as you like for other victory conditions, but whenever it looks like things will go bad, there’s always the nuclear option—figuratively if not literally. Worse, the victory won thereby is every bit as much a form of handicapping as playing at middling difficulty levels in order to enable peaceful, building play. Either approach robs triumph of its savor.
* On a side note, I call shenanigans on settling. The landform, which was supposed to be small continents but was in reality a single stringy one, was neatly divided in equal halves of natural spheres of influence. Bismark settled only half of his until my caravel found a wealth of unused territory. As if by magic, without anyone nearby to witness my scouting, Germany abruptly decided to settle this area. Napoleon did the same on a pangaea continent the next game, and I’ve seen the same behavior three times already. A bad omen for hopes that Civ5 wouldn’t be so cheat-dependent as its predecessors.
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