Deggial wrote:

Wow, that was quick!

And: Oh my gosh! What a noob mistake! (Well, I am actually one; I hope, this will be forgiven! ;) )

I even know about the buttons (and used them for "obsolete items"), but didn't relate them to my problem.

Well, issue solved. Thank you for the advise! :)

Regarding the steep jump:

I understand your hesitation regarding balancing. It's a tricky topic, especially when different players give feed back.

Personally, I wouldn't mind a mild reduction in AI bonuses for the 'hard' difficulty level. That is the nasty consequence of making the AI better ... it doesn't need as many "artificial" help as before. But it's your call (of course!).

Speeking of help: Thank you for your tips.

You do hit the mark here.

I use the market (not often enough though), but never buy stockpiles.

I ignore diplomacy most of the time. (So much to research. Who needs all this stupid talking to other people? I want to conquer them anyway. Dead people don't talk. But on 'hard', this didn't turn out so well so far ...)

At least the happieness issue is on my radar - but oftentimes I do not know when to stop expanding. (Didn't I see a nice ressource deposit over there?)

Anyway, I'll try to embrace your good advise!

Cheers,

Deggial

(And nice to see that the forum is not as dead as suspected. It's still silent enough here, though. I guess this is the downside, if one picks up a game so long after it's peak time. Put at least, the available DLCs are quite cheap during sales now ...)

I'm pretty much in the same boat. Can fairly easily dominate at 'normal', but find it quite different at 'hard'. I also like an element of roleplay and peaceful play. Though if served on a silver platter, I won't turn down a good war.

One workaround to difficulty levels is that you could use 'normal', but give yourself a handicap of 10-15%. Hard, I think, has 20% bonus to AIs and (I think) that's the main difference. So, different side of the same coin, but more gradual.

And yes, great mod. Thanks again to EnemyLeaderBoss for excellent work and continued support.

By the way, if you want to taslk more extensively, I would recommend joining the official amplitude discord, there is a small but somewhat active EL community that can help with any questions you might have. Ofcourse there is also the ELCP discord for more ELCP specific questions.

CeltiK wrote:

I find it a fair challenge on Serious, yes the AI cheats but it is still behind compared to what a player can do. There is quite a gap between Serious and Hard which I find is quite easy, on Hard the AI just doesn't get enough bonuses to be challenging througout the whole game.

I find this is a conundrum to which there is no right or wrong answer. Some players find joy in getting a step by step memorization down of what to do in a game rather than just playing for the hell of playing, while others are fine being challenged by what the game offers on a relatively acceptable level of difficulty. 

I'm not super eager to jump to Serious. I find the AI does very well on Hard...hard enough that I have a tough time winning if I don't pay attention to things and am not lucky in certain situations. 

What LeaderEnemyBoss might consider doing is granting Normal AIs some low level bonuses so they are not as hardened as Hard difficulty but not absolutely flat as Normal usually is.

If a friend of mine just got the game and has no dlc can we still play together with the patch even though I have everything except Symbiosis?

Probably been asked before somewhere, sorry to ask it again.

turtle225 wrote:

If a friend of mine just got the game and has no dlc can we still play together with the patch even though I have everything except Symbiosis?

Probably been asked before somewhere, sorry to ask it again.

Yes you can!

Thank you.

Thank you for your work with this patch, it makes the game alot more balanced. I was actually wondering how the buyout cost is calculated. I've been trying to figure it out and have been unsuccessfull thus far. According to the wiki, the formula is:

dust cost to buyout = (remaining industry)^1.2

however this formula does not seem to work in ELCP (although I have not tried to check the validity of this formula in vanilla)

For example:

With the Empire Plan Building Cost Reduction (-33%) at Fast Game speed, the industry cost for National Military College (2500 Industry at Normal Speed) equals to 838 Industry and the game tells me that it will cost 5235 dust to buyout  (without any buyout reductions). However, 838^1.2 = 3221

But if I remove the Empire Plan bonus and calculate without it, it goes: 1250^1.2 = 5204, which is alot closer but is still not exact.

After having been on a slight break and back to EL again, I'm so happy to see some amazing patches! The Urkans are no longer a giant advance and rather a neat bonus that could better win you the game like the wonders, and overall the AI are so much better with dealing with them. Not just that, Mykara is so much better. I've not tried them yet, but the Mykara AI from last time I played is night and day. The AI barely did anything but not expands blooms everywhere and poses a bigger threat to other AI players instead of immediately getting stomped.

I've not yet tried them but I'll give them a thorough playthrough. Ever since trying them when Symbios was released I was disappointed by them, with bugs and being way too undertuned, as well as all the Urkan problems. It'll be fun to give them a go again and fully enjoy the new xpac!

@asikes, did you wait a turn after choosing the empire plan? Because it takes a turn until it is active (also keep in mind there is another plan that influences buyout cost). Other than that I need a save to investigate further.

@TheNumi There is another patch incoming that will include a (probably final) round of tweaks for the Mykara ;).

I agree that while it is not impossible to play on hard...it is a bit more pressure than I feel comfortable with. I think a small bump to resources on Normal would fix this. But you'd have to convince LeaderEnemyBoss to do that.

Did the Marathon quest (visit 3 villages with this centaur unit) get fixed in the ELCP?

LeaderEnemyBoss wrote:

Abrasax wrote:

Did the Marathon quest (visit 3 villages with this centaur unit) get fixed in the ELCP?

I have never encountered a bug with this quest, i would need a savegame with a reproducable bug to do something about it.

It's quite a simple bug. If needed I can reproduce it.

The Centaur must visit a village that is in a region which already has an assimilation quest assigned. This will prevent the Centaur from being able to use the Parley command to communicate with the village, making it impossible to complete the parley with all 3 villages.

Tested an Endless game with "enablemoddingtools" to see how it goes, is the CP unmodded.

Quite impressive, mostly AI really make things properly!! Also they manage their troops much better than before. By turn 70 they are true powerhouses. No problems at all, seems is a quite stable version.

These are the only things may worth noting, as feedback:

Seems AI spends all the money on construction buyouts, they usually have their units severely obsolete due to this.

When they enter a war-related status, they start retrofitting like crazy instead, as they quickly deplete strat resources, they are constantly upgrading unit designs, and start retrofitting again.

Seems retrofitting Guardians is not a priority at all, many AI players have theirs with the original design.

Necrophages trying to resolve quest "Wings of ruin" with a Lvl 3 flying unit (Lvl 4 is required). The unit tries over and over.

I see many times heroes with no army on the field. There's any type of hero assigning AI function used? seems weird.

In the missions to tame an Urkan they often go with their main army leaving the empire to cross the map with little defense. Some with "AttackAndTameKaijuDefault" end up making other things, does this status not change?

Incredible work, I'm truly amazed.