Diffuculty WAY up in AP????

Hmm... I've been finding AP easier. The aliens usually arn't as tough because there is less space for them to expand... and more races means more trade... are you just having problems keeping them happy?

AI hasn't been changed in AP builds recently.

What level of difficulty are you playing at?

More Info:

I am playing Large Universe / Abundant Yellows
7 Alien Races - 5 set to Bright - overall difficulty is Challenging

As far as keeping them happy - I seem to be their favorite target. This last game, I didnt even have Trade yet and they showed up and within a few turns (before I could even get the freighters across the map to their planets), they had decided that I looked tasty. They generally do me the courtesy of demanding lots of $$$ before attacking. If I pay them off, they wait to attack, but sooner or later Im out of money and I cant pay.

thanks
khariV

Try building banks and econ exchanges earlier than you normally would. Also try to bribe them BEFORE they make a demand. It goes much easier.

Also take a diplomacy pick. It makes the bribes more effective.

Also, if you keep your military might high, they won't start turning hostile towards you.  The key is to research military techs early enough so that you can start building offensive/defensive ships on the planets that are too far from the frontier to be worth building colony ships.  I usually start by researching propulsion techs until I have Artificial Gravity, then switch to military techs until I have phasers.  Then I research the next range tech. 

and keep treasury from going down into negatives as the AI's seem to look at this when thinking about asking for tribute...
every time (without fail) that my treasuey gets bellow 1000 or so bc they start...... and they'll keep increasing their demands trying to keep you in the negatives... once in the negatives you'll find it extreamly hard.. if not impossible to succeed.... unless you can get out of it quickly (a turn or 3 tops....)

No? I am quite sure that in 1.20 you could trade Techs for money on Intelligent-Level.

I used to put my techs on the table, then take as many techs from them until it becomes green, remove the cheapest one and fill the gap out with money.

When I try this gap-filling now I get like 0-3 BC or so...

I also had the impression that the game is much harder.
While I almost won every Intelligent-Game in prior versions I now have 1 embarassing defeat and one really lucky victrory, where a spacemonster or whatever dealt with the drengins until me and my ally had wiped out the allies of the drengins.

I love the fact everybody has their own strategies, that actually work for them. I play Masochistic, and I don't research military techs, and don't build a military until very late in the game. I tend to have a booming economy and just keep the other aliens happy with gifts and trade. I don't build any military until my key infracture buildings are built: factories, banks, economic exchange, stock market, all the moral boosters, research booster, etc...

The AI civs play the game like thugs, demanding tribute of anyone weaker than them, although the good civs often ask nicely. The key is never give in. Tell them to go to hell. The chances are that that civ is threatening loads of the other civs too and has become widely hated. If you hate that civ, everyone who also hates that civ will become you're friends. Never fails.

What I don't like is that you can no longer sale anything to minor races for cash. What is the reason for even having them if you can't trade with them. Now instead of dealing with them, I guess the only thing is to invade them and take their planets since they serve no other useful purpose. Can we turn off minor races?

It's an option in the scenario editor, I haven't tested it though.

~SDC~

AP is both *easier* and *tougher* then regular GalCiv, from what I've noticed.

Here's why I say that...

On smaller maps, the AI is in touch with the other AI very quickly. And they all act as one big research engine, shooting straight for Battleship/Dread. After that, they shoot straight over for Galactic Stock Exchange and then Galactic Monument. And until Alignment drives them to hate each other, they happily keep exchanging every tech they get their hands on to reach those critical strategy items/tech. (Well, critical to them)

This means that for my standard play (All Colony rush to grab as much of the yellows as I can, then go for all out Trade (swap and pop 2 freighers) and then all out for Diplo Translators), I find the AI is already popping out Death Knights by the time I've just got FREIGHTER tech to start building Freighters. Now, here's where I find it gets easy... Once the DKs appear, the Majors split down alignment lines and start worrying about each other. Having all those DKs kills their economy, grounding them all to a halt. Only once my trade arrives (to those I want to be best friends throughout the game) do THOSE AI can once again start doing things. But, I slingshot past them, catching up on all the tech not along BS or Dred (AI happily trades them to me for silly techs on its own initative, every game so far where it doesn't crush me from the start, or the AI will just gift them to me!). I end up getting all Trade Goods and Wonders, EXCEPT Galactic Stock Exchange (whoever I trade more money with out of the first 2 AI civs, gets that) and 50% of the time, I miss the Monument (they or the #2 I choose for starting trade gets that).

Since I've learned the AI will give me BS and Dreds, I don't worry about the whole military or defense lines at all. If I want something to pump up my military until the Drengin decide to trade me Dred or the Altarians gift it to me, I can pick any of the AI I'm on decent terms with, and pick up Corvettes or Frigates to let me build a decent military with.

And it's NOT unusual to have the AI gift me half of their fleet if some AI decides it wants to knock me out for my worlds before I have build my own Dreds or AMMs.

So, I find all smaller maps to be much easier in AP compared to GC v1.20.

Now, on larger maps, they are even easier then small maps in AP, or they are much harder then normal GC. The determiner is amount of worlds. If there are *lots* of colonizable worlds, the AI tends to get a big head about itself, and will just *invade* you like it does with all Minor races using full Combat Transports and Dreds, when you are just working on getting Trade/Freighters. However, if the world count is low, then it *includes* you in the tech trading chain to get to BS, Dred, and Galactic Stock Exchange. It trades through you like mad, so you stay effectively on level with it tech wise, despite the fact all your empire is doing is making colony ships and maybe doing a little research or soil enhancing on the side. These sort of games are easier then playing GC on Cakewalk. Also, you are part of the trading tech chain, so all the AI love you without any trade and regardless of your alignment.

Just my experiences with AP so far.

I've experimented with upping the world frequence on smaller maps. And if you get the count high enough on medium, or get a lucky over bounty on small maps, you get the same effect as in the larger galaxies with too many worlds. ALL the AI are then demanding pay offs even while their combat transports are headed for your worlds. And that's because you are just one more Minor to them at that point.

So, if you are getting knocked on/over by the AI in AP, I'd suggest you cut down on the number of usable worlds; when the strength difference isn't very significant, the AI will be respectful of you as a major, so long as you trade with it, gift/bribe it (that's expected behavior, remember? They do it to you as well), or have a military rating that isn't the worst for your alignment that isn't the same as theirs. Strong Military rating does deter them, but they get their military rating up much quicker now then they did before, due to the added races to exchange tech with.

Just my experiences.

I think a thing that also makes it harder is the larger number of Evils...

While Altarians and Torians don't care about your military, the evils will.

In Vanilla GC I lost 1 out of 10 games on Painful. In AP I lost 2 out of 3 on Tough yet.

And I find smaller maps harder! My losses where both on small maps.

The Korx beat my Colony-Ship to colonize the only world in range and then I was far behind in tech. Drengins, Yor and Korx came asking for much money or Sol.

Then Yor declared war and Korx folled even tough I gifted them 500 BC just before. I got some ships from the Altarians and the Torians but they where quickly wiped out and the Korx landed a Transport and killed all of my people by using Core-Detonations to aid their soldiers.

Game Over, lasted less than 30 minutes.

When you are the 1st one who is getting declared war on and the civs who like you are not stronger than those who don't, I don't see how to avoid becoming to be toast quite soon.
[Message Edited]

Now its 3 out of 4 AP-games I lost on Tough (all Intelligent, was Painful before). :notsure:

Either I've lost a lot of skill or the game is definately harder!

However, it's good, that it is more of a challenge now!

Btw. The one victory gained me ~30k Mpts, 3 times more than my prior highscore... but I could not submit because it was scenario (constisting of exactly 1 small difference from the default rules because disabling minors only works for scenarios).
[Message Edited]

The Trend seems to be, that those who are finding it easier are playing on normal and below while those who find it harder play on challenging and above...
[Message Edited]

I'm finding it a lot easier than 1.2, playing at maso. I've only been playing the original game for a couple of weeks, but the extra 2 AIs mean so many extra trade opportunities.

I think the most important starting pick is definitley +60% diplomacy now, coupled with Populists party and I am nearly always tech and economy leader. I don't build any military until AMMs are available and then decide whether to go for alliance or military victory.

With the huge diplo advantage it is easy to trade tech for AI freighters early in the game, and save a load of time in getting them to their destinations, quickly boosting your economy and relations.

If you find you're getting beat on by a particular AI, change their starting alignment and see if it makes any difference. A good starting point for giving yourself a chance is set all AIs to Pure Good and only take the good events yourself. Once you're comfortable with that start moving them back towards their proper alignments.

For reference, I'm playing Large or Huge, tight, rare, Populists, +60% diplo, +30% econ.

What's the point of playing on Maso then?
With all Civs set to good, youself beeing good aswell, you will never get a war declared on you!

Try the same strategy with default alignments and I bet as soon as the 4 Evil Civs get some ships built they'll start declaring war on you!

I think the difficulty-Level shall not only be affected by Intelligence but also by the Alignment of the other Civs!

Not quite true, they will still try to "assimilate" you into their empire if you're weak and I did say it was a good starting point only.

The strategy will work with almost any alignment combo - the AIs regard a strong economy almost as importantly as a strong military. Just keep them happy with gifts and trade, and they won't attack.

I have successfully used this with all 7 AIs set to pure evil and playing good myself - although reversing this (i.e. 7 pure good AIs and you evil) is as close to impossible as you can get in this game

Magnumaniac

Star Pilot

I think Star Pilot has it correct and Magnumaniac confirms it as well - AP is harder on the smaller maps and easier on the larger maps. But the play is also different. I now find that Alliance victory is the vidtory I go for. In 1.2 and earlier, I went for cultural victory until I found that that scored low on Metaverse. So I uncheck the conditions for victory and still did cultural swamping, but now it is called a military victory and a higher score. Very difficult to do cultural assimilation any more.

~SDC~

I play all AIs at Chaotic Evil and below, while I always play good. I finally had the Drath declare war on me in my last game. Before that, I've been able to maintain relations in every game.

AP certainly requires lots of different tactics to be successful, but I wouldn't say that it's that much different than before. I am enjoying the changes to culture bombing, although I'm not crazy about the strange reasonings behind the module costs. Making Culture Palace modules cost a lot while leaving other modules free seems a little odd to me. It almost seems to me that Culture Palace and Party Palace modules should be made like Terror Star modules. No cost for the "lead-up" modules, but a flat large cost for the actual finishing modules (say 1000 BC for Culture Palace and 2000 BC for Party Palace).

Anyway, I guess that's not the point of this thread. In my view, AP is a good challenge that just requires some new tactics. Maintaining relations is now vitally important. So, I've had to learn to get freighters out a lot quicker now.

I think I can bring some light into why we have made different experiences:

The Levels below Maso have been bumped.

Some of them drastically.
The reason is clear: Crippling was nothing compared to Masochistic and there was a need for something inbetween.

Tough now is harder than crippling was before.

Normal plays like Painful now.

But Masochistic obviously hasn't been changed.

For a more detailed view into that subject see my other thread: "Difficulty Levels have been changed". I hope Frogboy can give us the missing numbers.

Again, I like the fact everybody has their own strategy. My is the opposite. I almost always give in early in the game, if it won't bankrupt me. I avoid wars at all costs early as I build my infrastructure, before too long, they'll be paying me tribute.

Like someone already said in this thread, it is both easier and harder. The smaller maps are much, much harder as there are 2 more civs who try and pick on you (at higher difficulties anyways), since most everyone only has a handful on small/tiny anyways. On larger maps, this same thing happens, only to your advantage. The AIs rush each other to death, trying to beat themselves out for the far away planets (they dont go for the short ones first, except as stepping stones then come back later). My last game i submitted i had 35% military conquest done by the time my rush was over, with the torians in 2nd with about 10 planets on gigantic. The game was very, very easy as the AIs could never get going fighting amoungst themselves for a few fringe worlds. I think this was the first game on maso that i ever had a tech lead before frigates/battleships.