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Rendorax

Join Date 06/2006

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The game is too easy

I heard this game had good AI...

I'm a veteran Civilization player, used to playing on the higher difficulty levels and facing overwhelming AI bonuses and advantages not available to me, due to the pathetic AI in the Civ series. I was excited when I heard about this game, because everyone said the AI was so great. I'm sitting here, looking at the victory screen again, wondering what they were talking about.

I'm currently playing on Painful, with no real challenge. I'm thinking of skipping the other difficulty levels and going directly to Suicidal.

Am I doing something wrong? How do I make the AI actually challenge me? I've tried small galaxies, medium galaxies, huge galaxies, random everything, abundant everything, common everything, etc.

What settings give the AI a fighting chance? Not that it can wage war worth crap, but... maybe... with a good enough start, it can be at least a challenge to defeat.

And, yes, I've tried winning all four different ways, though it's usually a bit boring and tedious to do the tech win. I hate pressing enter fifty times.

edit: forgot that there are four ways to win, and originally said three.

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Have you turned on CPU Intensive Algorithms for the AI? That should make a difference, otherwise ramping up difficulty level would be the way to go.

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Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I got pretty excited when I saw that option. It seems to have helped a little, but I'm still crushing the AI. It seems to still have absolutely no plan in mind when it declares war, nor does it realize that my fleets are customized specifically to fight their fleets. For example, the AI will blindly send fleet after fleet after my fleets, even though I have a 50 attack and 50 defense, and they have 50 attack and NO defense. Weird.

I did lose one game on Painful recently -- rather amusingly, too. I decided to try out a new strategy of being a peacenik, with no standing army, but the Iconions declared war on me and killed me. And I was Good-aligned, too! Hmph. So much for the Good races always being buddies with each other.

Maybe I should try more oddball strategies like that, I guess.

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Where's the CPU intensive algorithm option?

Thanks.

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Well....
Why this may not be the official alleviator, go in to RaceConfig and edit each race a bit, if you want to be a real masochist, give everyone 500% Attack, 2000% PQ Bonus, give everyone 9000% Population growth, etc. Be sure to back up your files, then play a game an see how far you get.

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If the game is too easy, then just turn up the difficulty setting until you try everything you can do and still lose. Try maximum difficulty. Then back it down until you can win a game.

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I think people that post "this game is too easy" are the absolute coolest people walking the planet. I am in envy of their gaming prowess and genuinely hope to someday have a fractional level of their awesomeness.

But sadly, I know it is never to be...

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Use your immagination as a first AND last resort

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i have a feeling that your colony rush may be to efficient for your own good. try playing a race without ion engines from gitgo. with that small handicap the best speed you can get is 3 for your rush. maybe changing how you spend your starting 5k if that is not the issue. if you rush buy factories try rushing ships instead. or vice versa.

giving the ai plenty of planets is the best way to give it a chance. turns into either you being able to pick it apart a bit at a time, or you just being swamped, not much inbetween. but it can be fun if you can just barely hold it off long enough to get your empire together

there are 1001 other lil handicaps you can accept if that doesnt work out. try building no research improvements, that'll give you a different experience, i guarentee

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Before you say the game is too easy play Suicidal first. Painful is not hard at all and I would say Masochistic is where you start needing more then just military might. In Suicidal I have to do a lot of diplomacy by using everything at my disposal like location, alignment, trade routes, and tech trading.

If you want to just lose so you feel the game is tough just do Suicidal and create no alliances.

And I always play the largest map with max races as I like big games.

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Post some tips on how you do soo well? LOL.

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I've played 3 games all on gigantic maps with 9 opponents and with a custom race of my liking. And i regenerated maps till i got a homeworld with tile bonus's of my liking. I had no trouble winning 1st game at tough difficulty; even easier 2nd game at painful. Won the last game at suicidal level but it was a good tough game.
From what i see, the difficulty level is for setting AI of the comp players.
The main thing for how tough the game is for you is your starting homeworld and
what tile bonus's you get. However, i will say that at painful level the comp players didn't get aggressive ( war ) till around 100 moves while at suicidal
level, got attacked around 60 moves.
Same background as you-- played civ2, alpha-centauri-colonization at highest
difficulty levels.

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Try masochistic or above with tech trading off and intensive algorithms on. Then pray.

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I find it difficult for you to justify that the game is too easy when you're playing five difficulty levels below max. That might be your problem.

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Well looks like i was wrong about tile bonus's being that important --
playing a game at suicidal level, gigantic map, 9 opponents, and no tile
bonus's on my homeworld -- and looks like I should be able to win -- just
wiped out one comp opponent and in pretty good shape.
Another thing you can adjust for the difficulty of the game is what race bonus's you get at the start. I'm not really into scoring games, but i have played games that gave higher scores for not using all of the race bonus
picks.

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Painful IS too easy. Crippling IS too easy. Masochistic starts to be a challenge but is generally always winnable. Obscene is actually hard and Suicidal is a real challenge now that 1.2 is out if you don't use cheesy tactics. There are 2 problems with the AI that make this so. One, they just don't develop their planets at all well. I would even say that for the most part they do it poorly. It may be that there is code that keeps them from developing a planet if it is out on the front lines at all. In that most planets are on a front line somewhere, only one or two planets seem to get decently developed. Fixing this would go a long way to providing a better gaming experience. The other problem is that unless the AI has overwhelming force, they just don't have a clue how to wage war. They never build effective defenses and they don't build enough military to kill you. Heck, it takes them months to kill a single minor race off, how are they ever going to deal with the player who out settles them?!

If you are finding this game hard on anything but the 3 highest levels, then either look at how you play or take the time to learn to play it well and you won't find it hard any longer.

So far I am finding that I get the best game from a medium galaxy with most everything abundant except that I only have habitable planets at common. I have 5 or 6 other races. This way most of the other races get plenty of planets (always a few winners and losers though) and if I take my time and let the AIs develop for a while then I can get a pretty good challenge. However, if I get aggressive too early or just focus on war the game can be over really quickly. Even when I take my time I rarely get more than half way thru weapons tech tree before the game is over.

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I find it difficult for you to justify that the game is too easy when you're playing five difficulty levels below max. That might be your problem

i couldnt agree more

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well you can try plaiy like a xenophobe and only colonize your home system... and then when you see the first alien craft build fleets to rid the universe of every one... -think the Krikkits-

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have you got the latest version of the game it dramatically improves the AI

oh and if you have version 1, are the rumours true is it a board game?

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Hi!

There are 2 problems with the AI that make this so. One, they just don't develop their planets at all well.

Why should they develop planets, when they get (on masochistic and above) 30+ research and 30+ production from a planet with only basic colony, and 150 money from 0.5B pop?

BR, Iztok

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oh how i wish a dev would accuratly fill out that difficulty lvl chart on wiki!! i can handle maso but i wont even try higher because it annoys me to not know the handicap i am facing. if i know it i can take it or leave it, but not knowing..... gets my paranoia up.(that's why they won't post that info, they are trying to make me paranoid so the gov has an excuse to grab me!!)

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Yeah I know the bonusses are that huge on Masochistic, it is just that even on Crippling or Painful they don't do any better job and they don't get those bonusses then.

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Thought this would be a good place to post this opinion. I think the game is probably way to easy for me to win with my best strategy at the suicidal level on a gigantic map ( only map i've played ). I'm currently playing a game where I hit control n about 10 times till I got a homeworld without any tile bonus's. Gonna win without much trouble at all. And I'm not taking advantage of the save/load game feature at all ( the extra round of ship moves you get with a save/load ). If I did a save/load when it was to my advantage, it would be even easier i believe. Of course they say it is a bug and they will fix it with update 1.3, hope that is true. But personally I don't consider it a bug -- they've known about it from the retail version and done 2 updates without fixing it -- so it is a feature that they intend to change in update 1.3 in my opinion. They're probably gonna change it because players are probably starting to use the feature to their advantage. Not really fair cause the comp AI cann't use it but heh....

I've seen posts by the developers where they have a hard time believing there are strategies that can be developed that work that well but personally I think the game is so complex that I think it would be hard to come up with an AI that could anticipate all the strategies that might be developed.

At any rate the game is loads of fun and am sure i can find lots of ways to play and have fun. However i was able to develop a strategy that wins suicidal level, gigantic map, 9 opponents ( less opponents would probably be even easier for my strategy ) --rather quickly. Is there a place the developers would like us to send strategies we develop so they can incorporate AI strategies to counter em? Would hate to post exact details and deprive others of the fun of discovering the strategies on their own.

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Hi, I have two questions:

1) Where can I find the "intensive algorithms on" option

2) What is the highest AI level that doesn't cheat?

Thanks.

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2) What is the highest AI level that doesn't cheat?

cheat? oh you mean the bonuses given to the AI...Cheating is only applicable if there is a hidden game mechanic reserved for AI's alone which would give them lets say...

1) An instant armada if they lose a load of ships
2) If they run out of cash they get a few million credits
3) and other stuff along these lines...

Bonuses on the other hand are known and you can factor them into your game. It really is a non issue because the Ai are never ever at full capacity due to poor poor planet management. so its pointless talking about cheating when there are real issues that need to be addressed.

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2) What is the highest AI level that doesn't cheat?

My understanding is that the AI plays its "best game" (using all available algorithms without having any bonuses that the player doesn't have) at Tough difficulty. Anywhere after that, they start getting bonuses.

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