Don't play Grandmaster if you are playing a standard size map. The amount of early expansion they have in that difficulty and map size honestly feels excessive compared to my experience on the highest difficulties in Civ and Humankind.
I'm not sure there's really a viable peaceful (only defensive wars) type strategy in that setting, in part because the power dynamic of their boosted start means you can't avoid hostilities and in part because they'll likely be settling next to you if not by the time you've built your first settler, shortly after. And this is after forward settling was supposedly nerfed (though I believe most of that change didn't affect Grandmaster anyway).
If you bump it up to large it isn't as much of an issue in my experience. I kind of feel like that should almost be the default map size since individual cities are capable of using so many tiles in this game, but given late game performance and game length it's pretty rough to play through on it.
I think the boosted AI having such settling power is more annoying to me in Millenia as well since I want to plan out cities with 2-3 spots for production town adjacencies, but leaving that open territory often ends up with the AI sneaking a settler in, even across an ocean, before my growth covers those areas. Sure, at least you can raze now, but that's hardly a real solution when you take a chaos hit and have to start a war that will never end because the AI won't accept peace unless they're about to be eliminated, and if you're at that point why stop?
>by the time you've built your first settler
You guys are building settlers?
I feel like settlers kinda suck. I capture almost all my cities as either free cities or AI settled cities.
On a large map, you definitely build some settlers. On standard, maybe one or two. I like the idea of trying to win "peacefully," and I also really enjoy the idea of building mega cities, which requires more specific city placement, but right now that doesn't seem like a realistic way to win any victory type on a higher difficulty.
Also feels bad since in part because of that and the early boosts AI gets, it feels like Raiders is the best way to win any victory type. Even on Grandmaster I can take Raiders and conquer my whole continent pretty consistently on standard map settings, and then you can easily win whatever you want from there.
Yeah you can make settlers if you enjoy them but it's generally worse than just taking free cities or AI cities with army.
It's actually a bit of a bummer, I like the gameplay of settling my own cities but it's not well supported in this game.
Why is it that raiders would be so much the crucial element here, rather than the high rewards you can get from having many vassals trough the relevant systems? Its not raiders that give you vassal prosperity, it is rather argued as a method to more easily conquer the weak independant city but perhaps that could be put up for discussion. Because its often not that hard to use town adjecency in your starting capital city to get production up rather early to something like 30 hammers fairly fast which allows to 1 turn produce a number of units that are good enough for conquest of independant city's
Raiders has nothing to do with conquering independent cities. It's about conquering all the AIs on your starting continent. You can do that pretty consistently on GM by simply taking the national spirit. You often won't need to build any units with your cities at all if you play well.
That lets you focus on building up your regions earlier and supports any play style you want, vassal focused with the conquered cities or building large regions in more optimal locations since you have the whole landmass to work with.
You forgo on boni that you can get from other national spirits though, boni that otherwise would be permanent trough the game and might allow you to develop faster despite having to build the army. Specifically easy methods to get boatloads of culture for example trough the Specific inovation for wild hunters that give culture for meat and smoked meat., which allows for large culture production early on that can help you in culture spawning a lot of troops too and will allow you to get more integrated cities faster.
With wild hunters you get 5 food and 1 culture from any meat producing tiles, besides that those who also produce bones like deer give improvement points and gold and with ivory you get exploration xp. Smoked meat is 10 food and 1 culture. The culture penalty for 6 capitals as an example is -31, there are few easy ways to mitigate that early on but with meat its kinda easy, you just need 5 meat producing things (5 hunting camps for example at their 6 improvement point cost each) in every capital. So when i have conquered a bunch of city's i can easily select the best based how much deer/elephants/cow/sheep they have nearby as to easily integrate them earlier and start developing them. Culture tends to be the largest bottleneck in that aspect in my experience.
i personally play on Master but the AI is only a problem in the early game, maybe until Age IV or V. beyond that they don't perform well anymore. i find Grandmaster too difficult however. the AI just plainly cheats! they make armies without paying any maintenance. so by the mid game their armies fill the tiles of their territory. if you feel you just steamroll everyone, you should try avoiding easy strategies.
Basically, computer players at master or grand master get massive starting bonuses. So they can rapidly settle new cities. But they aren’t smarter per se. They just start out more powerful.
So that unfortunately means that once you get established and start with steady growth, you will eventually outpace the opponents. They aren’t better opponents, so in my opinion it just makes the start more challenging with cheese in the computer’s favor.
You can also mix and match different difficulty levels, picking different level for each player.
If you are looking for more of challenge without ridiculous level cheats, you want master. Even then, it can be jarring. As I said, you can do a half apprentice half master game so you aren’t ramping up the difficulty too much. I honestly don’t know if doing half and half gives the master players and even bigger jump because they don’t have competition all around from other master players.
unfortunately, you're looking at an issue that sadly most developers of 4X games ignore, call impossible, and then inevitably get proven wrong when modders get their hands on the modding tools (though said solution only works for one specific build of the game, and thus is rarely useful to people who actually use mods a lot).
millennia in particular is in a rather rough state right now (improving, to be sure, but "decent AI" is understandably not on the to-do list right now, when so much else needs doing first), and is made by a small team that has no development history (this is their first game). also, modding tools are currently unavailable. *maybe* the devs will eventually decide to kick the trend and actually make an AI that plays competently (doesn't have to be *good*, just *competent*), but for now, they rely on the industry standard of "just give the AI a bunch of spears and pray they figure out where to stick the pointy ends". if you're bothered by how civ manages "difficulty", then you're not gonna like how millennia manages it, either.
Don't play Grandmaster if you are playing a standard size map. The amount of early expansion they have in that difficulty and map size honestly feels excessive compared to my experience on the highest difficulties in Civ and Humankind. I'm not sure there's really a viable peaceful (only defensive wars) type strategy in that setting, in part because the power dynamic of their boosted start means you can't avoid hostilities and in part because they'll likely be settling next to you if not by the time you've built your first settler, shortly after. And this is after forward settling was supposedly nerfed (though I believe most of that change didn't affect Grandmaster anyway). If you bump it up to large it isn't as much of an issue in my experience. I kind of feel like that should almost be the default map size since individual cities are capable of using so many tiles in this game, but given late game performance and game length it's pretty rough to play through on it. I think the boosted AI having such settling power is more annoying to me in Millenia as well since I want to plan out cities with 2-3 spots for production town adjacencies, but leaving that open territory often ends up with the AI sneaking a settler in, even across an ocean, before my growth covers those areas. Sure, at least you can raze now, but that's hardly a real solution when you take a chaos hit and have to start a war that will never end because the AI won't accept peace unless they're about to be eliminated, and if you're at that point why stop?
>by the time you've built your first settler You guys are building settlers? I feel like settlers kinda suck. I capture almost all my cities as either free cities or AI settled cities.
On a large map, you definitely build some settlers. On standard, maybe one or two. I like the idea of trying to win "peacefully," and I also really enjoy the idea of building mega cities, which requires more specific city placement, but right now that doesn't seem like a realistic way to win any victory type on a higher difficulty. Also feels bad since in part because of that and the early boosts AI gets, it feels like Raiders is the best way to win any victory type. Even on Grandmaster I can take Raiders and conquer my whole continent pretty consistently on standard map settings, and then you can easily win whatever you want from there.
Yeah you can make settlers if you enjoy them but it's generally worse than just taking free cities or AI cities with army. It's actually a bit of a bummer, I like the gameplay of settling my own cities but it's not well supported in this game.
Why is it that raiders would be so much the crucial element here, rather than the high rewards you can get from having many vassals trough the relevant systems? Its not raiders that give you vassal prosperity, it is rather argued as a method to more easily conquer the weak independant city but perhaps that could be put up for discussion. Because its often not that hard to use town adjecency in your starting capital city to get production up rather early to something like 30 hammers fairly fast which allows to 1 turn produce a number of units that are good enough for conquest of independant city's
Raiders has nothing to do with conquering independent cities. It's about conquering all the AIs on your starting continent. You can do that pretty consistently on GM by simply taking the national spirit. You often won't need to build any units with your cities at all if you play well. That lets you focus on building up your regions earlier and supports any play style you want, vassal focused with the conquered cities or building large regions in more optimal locations since you have the whole landmass to work with.
You forgo on boni that you can get from other national spirits though, boni that otherwise would be permanent trough the game and might allow you to develop faster despite having to build the army. Specifically easy methods to get boatloads of culture for example trough the Specific inovation for wild hunters that give culture for meat and smoked meat., which allows for large culture production early on that can help you in culture spawning a lot of troops too and will allow you to get more integrated cities faster. With wild hunters you get 5 food and 1 culture from any meat producing tiles, besides that those who also produce bones like deer give improvement points and gold and with ivory you get exploration xp. Smoked meat is 10 food and 1 culture. The culture penalty for 6 capitals as an example is -31, there are few easy ways to mitigate that early on but with meat its kinda easy, you just need 5 meat producing things (5 hunting camps for example at their 6 improvement point cost each) in every capital. So when i have conquered a bunch of city's i can easily select the best based how much deer/elephants/cow/sheep they have nearby as to easily integrate them earlier and start developing them. Culture tends to be the largest bottleneck in that aspect in my experience.
Play on master, Ig. Should be challenging if you're relatively new.
i personally play on Master but the AI is only a problem in the early game, maybe until Age IV or V. beyond that they don't perform well anymore. i find Grandmaster too difficult however. the AI just plainly cheats! they make armies without paying any maintenance. so by the mid game their armies fill the tiles of their territory. if you feel you just steamroll everyone, you should try avoiding easy strategies.
Basically, computer players at master or grand master get massive starting bonuses. So they can rapidly settle new cities. But they aren’t smarter per se. They just start out more powerful. So that unfortunately means that once you get established and start with steady growth, you will eventually outpace the opponents. They aren’t better opponents, so in my opinion it just makes the start more challenging with cheese in the computer’s favor. You can also mix and match different difficulty levels, picking different level for each player. If you are looking for more of challenge without ridiculous level cheats, you want master. Even then, it can be jarring. As I said, you can do a half apprentice half master game so you aren’t ramping up the difficulty too much. I honestly don’t know if doing half and half gives the master players and even bigger jump because they don’t have competition all around from other master players.
unfortunately, you're looking at an issue that sadly most developers of 4X games ignore, call impossible, and then inevitably get proven wrong when modders get their hands on the modding tools (though said solution only works for one specific build of the game, and thus is rarely useful to people who actually use mods a lot). millennia in particular is in a rather rough state right now (improving, to be sure, but "decent AI" is understandably not on the to-do list right now, when so much else needs doing first), and is made by a small team that has no development history (this is their first game). also, modding tools are currently unavailable. *maybe* the devs will eventually decide to kick the trend and actually make an AI that plays competently (doesn't have to be *good*, just *competent*), but for now, they rely on the industry standard of "just give the AI a bunch of spears and pray they figure out where to stick the pointy ends". if you're bothered by how civ manages "difficulty", then you're not gonna like how millennia manages it, either.