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Vhorthex

Join Date 11/2009

Tips for a "Challenging" Game

Hello everyone,

I've been reading the posts of a few people, who seem to be saying that the AI isn't strong enough and is easy to break down early in the game.

I was playing a Epic, Large Map, Challenging AI & Challenging world. I didn't expand very aggresively but around turn 200, I realized that the major factions had grown to gigantic proportions, their power level was probably 2 to 5 times mine. (depending on the faction).

Also, A lot of the people posting that they break the game down even with Ridiculous settings set to both world & AI and picking the max # of factions didn't help make their games harder.

I am curious if the following points could NEGATIVELY affect AI difficulty:

A ) Putting MAX # of opponents;

Could that inadvertently have an impact major faction expansions, by limiting the available real estate without the need of major conflicts? Should this be true, then maybe having large maps with less amount of opponents might lead to harder games. Since the Faction will be able to annex smaller factions around them and expand more aggressively. (that's the "theory"...)

B ) WORLD difficulty > or = AI difficulty;

Could that also impact how successful an AI is at expanding? Wouldn't higher world levels make the monsters around AI towns harder? As well, as given them less resources (as it does to us). I'm curious how much does this impact the AI's expansion?

C ) Playing on Medium and smaller map sizes;

From what I heard the AI seems to be a bit "slow" on expanding and defending himself properly, leaving him open to early rushes. I'm guessing that playing on larger maps will help give the AI some room to grow and get stronger. This would limit the possibility of rush attacks.

My only good suggestions for a "challenging" game:

#1) Custom made Oponents;

Given the fact that some of the traits don't work or have no value, and that some of the premade factions make poor use of teh available pool points for creating a faction. I decided to put myself against custom factions, each of which I tried to give them as many traits as to increase their viable bonuses.

#2) Avoid exploits;

I'd suggest staying away from any of the major exploits, like rushing or stacking rings and magical items to reach super high attribute levels.

So sadly I have more open queries than actual tips, but I wanted to know if anybody else shared these thougths or if someone had better suggestions to make the game more challenging. To be fair, in my first "real game" like I said before, I reached turn 300 to realize that I was about a quarter of the size of the biggest "faction". Ouch.

Hope this is an interesting read or helpful!

Regards,

elemental

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A ) Putting MAX # of opponents;

Could that inadvertently have an impact major faction expansions, by limiting the available real estate without the need of major conflicts? Should this be true, then maybe having large maps with less amount of opponents might lead to harder games. Since the Faction will be able to annex smaller factions around them and expand more aggressively. (that's the "theory"...)

B ) WORLD difficulty > or = AI difficulty;

Could that also impact how successful an AI is at expanding? Wouldn't higher world levels make the monsters around AI towns harder? As well, as given them less resources (as it does to us). I'm curious how much does this impact the AI's expansion?

C ) Playing on Medium and smaller map sizes;

From what I heard the AI seems to be a bit "slow" on expanding and defending himself properly, leaving him open to early rushes. I'm guessing that playing on larger maps will help give the AI some room to grow and get stronger. This would limit the possibility of rush attacks.

This is just my experience, but all of these things sound true. So I'd recommend playing a Large map on Ridiculous with 4 AI opponents and it should be a bit more fun.

I played a Large map with 4 AI opponents on Ridiculous. After 500 turns when I finally defeated one AI, he had 9 cities, all level 3 or 4 when I captured them. He had several very strong armies, and he wasn't afraid to use them. At one point he attacked a city I had just captured with 5 or 6 500-600 CR armies in one turn, I had all those battles in a row without chance for mana/hp regen. It was tough. The only thing that saved me was the Deflect spell which lets you attack without triggering counter-attacks. He also had one Stack of Doom that took me several reloads to kill without losing the majority of my army.

And this was the first AI I found, I haven't seen the other 3. Note, though, that I don't play to min/max or cheese. My Sov and imbued Champion in the army don't have crazy numbers of stacked jewelry, and about 30 int/essence on each (would be more if the +essence buildings were working properly). My army is mostly composed of summons from all the Element books, and a pair of 9-unit Ogres from the minor faction city. Those and the 2 Ice Lords are my main heavy hitters, the rest are backup/supporting casters.

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i'm going to make a faction to every races

i give them good bonuses, but i keep style (and everybody will have influential bonus)

thanks for the good idea

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Quoting ,

quoting post

Hello everyone,

I've been reading the posts of a few people, who seem to be saying that the AI isn't strong enough and is easy to break down early in the game.

I was playing a Epic, Large Map, Challenging AI & Challenging world. I didn't expand very aggresively but around turn 200, I realized that the major factions had grown to gigantic proportions, their power level was probably 2 to 5 times mine. (depending on the faction).

...

C ) Playing on Medium and smaller map sizes;

...

#2) Avoid exploits;

I'd suggest staying away from any of the major exploits, like rushing or stacking rings and magical items to reach super high attribute levels.

So sadly I have more open queries than actual tips, but I wanted to know if anybody else shared these thougths or if someone had better suggestions to make the game more challenging. To be fair, in my first "real game" like I said before, I reached turn 300 to realize that I was about a quarter of the size of the biggest "faction". Ouch.

I wouldn't count rushing as exploit. Anyway, are you basically saying that player shouldn't try to win other factions? Isn't that the whole point of the game?

Also there is some bug that makes AI factions pretty much unbeatable, if they get too advanced. (AI factions will never run out of resources.)

Before combat and bug above get fixed, theres only two outcomes. Either you kill/suppress AI factions early or they get advanced enough to kill you by using bug above.

In my first game AI begged for mercy. Well, summoning book was a bit overpowered.

Btw, ice lords get pretty good when you buff them with spells.

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Voqar

Join Date 03/2003

+21

One should not need tips to play a freaking strategy game in a challenging way. The game should present the challenge, not how you play it!

The biggest problem I'm having lately is that the AI sovs are suicidal and kill themselves attacking when they have little to no hope of winning. Sov dies, empire vanishes.

AI cities don't change hands that much even with the screwy instant flip mechanics. Mostly I just see entire empires go poof as AI sovs attack each other or me and die.

This has been an issue in all my 1.06 games, mostly normal/normal, now challenging/challenging, with small maps (which don't seem small to me, no clue why anybody would want to suffer thru bigger maps than that!). I do beef up the number of AIs to 7 to fill the map more, but I seriously doubt this somehow makes the AIs dumber.

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Quoting Deneidez,

reply 3

#1
I wouldn't count rushing as exploit. Anyway, are you basically saying that player shouldn't try to win other factions? Isn't that the whole point of the game?

#2
Also there is some bug that makes AI factions pretty much unbeatable, if they get too advanced. (AI factions will never run out of resources.)

Hi Deneidez,

on your first point, I'd like to just say quickly that I understand that a "rush tactic" is not an exploit per say. What I meant to say is, if the AI is too weak at this point to survive a rush attack, I would suggest steering clear from that in order to get more enjoyment of the game. I apologize if it came out the wrong way.

On your second point, I wasn't aware of this. A lot of posts seemed to suggest that the AI would always be a pushover. I personally haven't noticed that, as I like to focus on City Building / Research for at least a 100 turns minimum. Also, as stated in this thread, I always play with "less" factions so that me (and them) have more space to expand. So I guess I might run into this "Invincible AI faction bug" .

And what exactly did you mean by "The AI Factions will never run out of ressources"? They don't have costs for building? or do they get "magically" more resources? I hope they don't have infinite resources literally. That would feel a little unbalanced when playing at "normal" difficulty for example.

Thanks for your feedback

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Quoting Voqar,

reply 4

One should not need tips to play a freaking strategy game in a challenging way. The game should present the challenge, not how you play it!

Hi Voqar,

I sympathize with what you said, but the point of this thread is a bit to help people find settings where the AI isn't a complete pushover, and also to explore the factors that seem to be contributing to their downfall. Well that was my original intent at least, if it didn't come out like that. Then I apologize.

If we could find out that a certain setting is not only making the game harder for the player, but also harder for the AI, it would be nice to point it out. As people seeking a challenge by putting everything to max difficulty, might be, unknowingly, making their game easier.

Quoting Voqar,

reply 4

I do beef up the number of AIs to 7 to fill the map more, but I seriously doubt this somehow makes the AIs dumber.

This would actually be a good example. From what I seen, AI's aren't a single entity holding hands. They war against each other as well. So in this instances, if you play a too small map, with too many AI's, the AI won't be "stupid". But it might not have enough space/time to expand to get into a position of power, and will start warring with it's neighboors, slowing it's progress. It is in this light, that I think experimenting with the settings might help until the game is tweaked. It can't hurt.

Thank you for sharing,

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Quoting Vhorthex,

reply 5

I have to say that I once saw the enemy faction with -1000 GP... I was curious as to how they even got to that point? I know that if you accept a 'demand tribute' request on the part of a neighbor, it can push you in the negative, but to get to -1kGP felt a little weird.

And what exactly did you mean by "The AI Factions will never run out of ressources"? They don't have costs for building? or do they get "magically" more resources? I hope they don't have infinite resources literally. That would feel a little unbalanced when playing at "normal" difficulty for example.

Thanks for your feedback

Hi ya V,

AI has infinite resources. It can go negative when building troops or buildings and there is no limit how low it can go. If it gets enough cities, it can build armies all the time with best armor it has and not to care about resources. I guess that is why one faction had -1k GP in your game.

Oh and yes, suicidal sovereigns are annoying too. Best way I have found to enjoy this game in its current state is to enclose one AI faction with cities so that it can't spread anymore and just do quests and kill monsters. However it gets boring pretty fast. :/

* Deneidez goes back to making his own game.

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As opposed to normal gameplay challenges, why don't we try unusual challenges. For instance, in Civ, there's the one-city challenge where you try to win a game while only having one city (you can conquer other cities but you must raze them).

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Quoting sagittary,

reply 8

Hi Sagittary,

Thanks for the idea, although I'm still hoping of getting a "vanilla challenging game" before I start experimenting with these crazy challenges.

thanks for sharing,

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