User Guide

Spanish Empire
Starting Technologies: Fishing, Mysticism
Unique Unit: Conquistador (replaces knight)
Leader: Isabella
Trait: Spiritual
Trait: Expansive
Favorite Civic: Police State
DIFFICULTY LEVELS
As you improve at playing the game, you may want to increase
the difficulty level to provide greater challenges for your civi-
lization to overcome. This section details what actually takes
place when you change the difficulty level.
SETTING DIFFICULTY
The difficulties range from Settler (used for the Tutorial) up
through Noble (the default difficulty level) eventually to Deity
(a nearly impossible level!).You choose which difficulty to play
at during the game setup.There is no way to change the diffi-
culty once a game has begun. (For a Custom Game, you can
select the difficulty by changing your own difficulty setting in
the drop-down menu.)
EFFECTS OF HIGHER DIFFICULTY
Increasing the difficulty level will have the following effects.
Barbarians
On the lower difficulties, your units enjoy substantial advan-
tages in combat against barbarian animals and units.As the dif-
ficulty increases, these combat bonuses decrease until they dis-
appear entirely. Barbarians appear more often and are more
numerous on the higher difficulties as well – and they start
appearing sooner too.
Free Units
You receive a larger number of “free units” on the lower diffi-
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culties; in other words, you can build more units before having
to pay gold to support them.This number declines as the dif-
ficulty level increases.
Research
Techs are cheaper to research on the lower difficulty levels,
more expensive on the higher ones.
Maintenance Costs
Maintenance costs, civic costs, and inflation also all increase
with difficulty level.The net result is that you will have a much
more strained budget on the higher difficulties.
Health and Happiness
All of your cities always start with a certain amount of health
and happiness.This amount decreases as the difficulty increas-
es; for example, cities start with 3 health and 6 happiness on
Chieftain, but only 1 health and 3 happiness on Deity. Your
cities thus hit the health and happiness limits much sooner on
the higher difficulties.
Artificial Intelligence Penalties
The difficulty level affects how quickly the AI civilizations
develop and expand. On the lowest difficulty levels, it takes the
AI civs longer to train units, construct buildings and wonders,
grow their cities and research technologies. On Noble difficul-
ty they play under the same conditions as the human players,
and on higher difficulties they receive discounts on these items.
AI Freebies
On the higher difficulty levels, the AI begins receiving extra
units to start the game. Notable jumps in difficulty come from
the free worker that the AI civs start with on Monarch, the 2
free workers they get on Immortal, and the free settler they get
on Deity.The AI civs also start with additional technologies on
the higher difficulties.
Tribal Villages
The results that you get from entering tribal villages also scale
by difficulty; in other words, you are more likely to get some-
thing really good on the lower difficulties. Note that it is only
possible to get a Settler or a Worker from a village on Warlord
or lower difficulties.
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