So I finally finished my first game of EL. I played the default starting nation (Wildwalkers) on default with only Shifters active (the only DLC I had at the time), no mods, and I had turned the difficulty to "difficult" for my first game since I have played 4Xs before. The purpose of this post is to ask how I can set up the game to get a better challenge for my next game and avoid late-game tedium or late-game boredom.

Please note I am not complaining. I like EL a lot and find it superior to e.g. the Civilization series in almost every aspect. I do find it suffers from the exact same problem that all other 4Xs suffer from, namely difficulty scaling from early- to late-game; in other words, all 4Xs I am familiar with share a similar trait, namely being exponentially easier as the game progresses, so that a certain point is usually reached at which your opponents no longer pose a threat once a certain threshold has been surpassed, while the early game can be very challenging. I dislike having to set setting such that the game is hideously challenging or farcically frustrating in the early-game only so that the late-game boredom phase gets pushed back a few dozen turns.

That being said, I do find the default AI on "difficult" difficulty quite passive. I could see that the AI never even bothered to gather pearls in its own territory. It failed to judge when a good time was to declare war on me, and only succeeded in giving myself a causus belli to trounce it.

This is merely the context for my question. 

I believe for my next game, I should

- enable that ELCP mod. That is supposed to sharpen the AI, no?

- have a slightly smaller world, but with more islands / water? Would that give the AI more time to develop in late game? 

- enable the Shadows and Guardians dlc (the others that I now own)? (Edit: oh wait, I also own Tempest. Maybe more water is then too easy?)

- Or are there any DLC that I should ensure are not enabled?

Any tips for making the game more fun in the late game without simply cranking up the difficulty to ugly in the early game?

Thanks much!

Thanks much!

Apotheosis wrote:

Great questions!

The main thing would be enabling the ELCP, this does wonders for AI decision making. They will make deals more often, make better wartime decisions like retrofits and attack patterns, and generally interact more. It also has plenty of quality of life changes and a few balance changes (minor faction stats, equipment, etc). Just be aware this does make the game more difficult, the AI gets a lot of free resources too. This isn't so bad on the serious difficulty for an experienced player but the impossible difficulty really ramps things up. 

World settings shouldn't affect much, with ELCP enabled AI will usually get boat tech early. With larger worlds on higher difficulty there's always the problem of a runaway AI - it manages to eat another AI or two and develop too much without the player being able to reach them due to distance/other wars and the like. Usually this isn't too much of a problem unless you're playing ELCP impossible on a large world. 

Shadows can be a fun expansion but I play with it off. The AI gets some boosts to the way spying works and with their superior resources can afford many spies, leading to late game sabotage spam which can be infuriating. If you want to play as the forgotten id say they're plenty of fun but one of the more difficult factions, may help you feel less dominant over AI. If playing with the expansion against a forgotten AI neighbour your life will be hell. They use spies ALOT and are generally a nuisance, arguably worse than a necrophage neighbour. This DLC is definitely preference-based. The best DLCs for adding content IMO are Tempest, Inferno and Shifters but that's personal opinion. On a side note there's a sale on for the next couple of days, so you can get each for a couple of bucks. 

Also try to experiment with different factions, wildwalkers are typically more straightforward, navigating the learning curve and playstyles of the more nuanced factions can help make the game more challenging. For this I'd recommend the forgotten, necrophages, cultists/mykara. But all the factions are great fun and (typically) very unique.

Against an Impossible Forgotten AI, you have to decide your game plan early: either befriend it or kill it ASAP.

An Impossible Forgotten AI can easily run away with the game and snowballs very hard (same with Impossible Allayi and Necrophage AI), so if you peace them early and keep trade routes going, you will get tons of Dust and Science. Once you have your elite armies up and running and several level 5 infiltrated spies on them, you can always just backstab them and start killing them from behind.

Thanks much.

I have never played EL before and was surprised how easy I trounced the AIs on my first game set to "difficult". I haven't started a new game yet since I am still debating whether to use Shadows or not (and also playing Planetfall as well as DRG). But I will definately use the community patch mod and hope that makes things appropriately more difficult without making the early game impossible. I dislike having nothing to do in the late game.

HeliumPrime wrote:

onomastikon wrote:

Thanks much!

Would you like to know how unit recruiting XP gain works and how to train level 10 units from your city?

City setup for recruiting Level 10 units in your Industry city:

> Built as many Industry-boosting buildings as possible (Ice Works (2nd winter pearl building for city with rivers), Winter Borough (3rd winter pearl building), Hydrology, Management Sciences, Industrial Processing, Borer's Guild etc.) and a high level Industry governor (the best for unit spamming are Necrophage governors with Slavery capacity and Slave Driver skill maxed, but you can also do the unit buyout strategy with a Roving Clans governor if you have tons of Dust income).

> National Craftworks built (doubles effects of luxuries such as Quicksilver in your city)

> Enough Quicksilver to activate the booster at least 1 time

> Army Manual and Inoculation Station built

> Dust Tome (+ XP on recruit) equipped on governor

> Meritocratic Promotion and Signal Corps researched (to increase the # of units that can be produced per turn from 4 -> 8).

Unit Designs for Level 10 units?

You have several options here:

1. Train units with fully equipped weapons and armor of your choice (if you have tons of Industry but not much Dust).

> You can either choose to modify your unit design and equip them with equipment or create a brand new unit design and then specialize that unit design. e.g. you want some elite Rangers who use ONLY Palladian Longbows with Dust 3 armor, so you make a new design named "Palladian Elite" and give it the Dust 3 Armor with Palladian Longbow.

> Now just spam click the unit design in your city.

> Depending on what unit you are making, you may not be able to produce 8 units per turn as you hoped, so if you want to do that look at option #2 below.

2. Train naked units with no equipment and then retrofit them as needed (if you have tons of Dust but not much Industry).

> Modify your unit design so that all equipment is removed, then train them.

> Once trained, modify your unit design again to give them the gear you want, then Retrofit them.

> Retrofitting in Era 4 and beyond will cost a lot so make sure you have enough Dust.

> Instead of training naked units, you could also train units with Iron 3 gear (still cheap in Industry cost) and then Retrofit them with a lower cost.

> Kapaku heroes have a skill which reduces Retrofit cost by 25%, so see if you can abuse that skill to save lots of Dust. This method only works for the 8 units currently assigned to your Kapaku hero, so you need to swap units out to another Army after you Retrofit them in order to Retrofit all of your 8-stacks with just 1 Kapaku hero.

Um, thanks - actually I wasn't interested in that, combat is the least interesting aspect of this game for me and i won the last game without really having to think much about it. 

onomastikon wrote:
Um, thanks - actually I wasn't interested in that, combat is the least interesting aspect of this game for me and i won the last game without really having to think much about it. 

Helium is giving you the heads up that if you turn up the difficulty or especially install ELCP, the AIs will no longer leave you alone if you are weak.  Generally the only way to avoid combat entirely in EL is bribing your neighbours into peace early and keeping them happy all game (more tech trades or gifts if you don't impress then empire wise as time goes on), or by having such an overwhelming military that they don't even want to tangle with you.

If you install ELCP, turn down the difficulty 1-2 notches for your first game and see how it goes, it will be a different experience than your previous game.

Thank you I will definitely consider that. Have not yet gotten the chance to start another game.