I'm dead after 6 turns of my first game.*



I picked the vaulters, just like the tutorial. I didn't start with 2k Dust, but I can get past that odd design choice. I did start with a hero and two marines instead (although frankly, I'd prefer the money).



I had my starting marines plus a hero, which is better than what the tutorial gave me, on my first pacification quest, just like the tutorial showed me.



The ruins spawn a monster, just like the tutorial, and I've got 66% power over them. Not as good as the 99% in the tutorial (sure would have been nice if the tutorial pointed out what the relative strengths actually mean).



Unlike the tutorial, and despite superior strength and numbers, my marines are destroyed by the 2nd round of manual combat. I'm not even 10 turns into the first game, and I've been set back ~32 turns (The time it will take to build two more marines).



Maybe manual mode is for suckers, which is the lesson I learned during the early release. But I figured it was because I didn't know about the tactics, keeping units together, etc, and not because the game mode gives the advantage to computer opponents. Perhaps I was wrong. If that's true, perhaps easy mode should disable manual mode, and the tutorial should have a big fat warning about how you should always pick auto (there was even mention of there being cases where a player would want to pick auto instead of manual, but of course, theses reasons were only left to my imagination - perhaps the reason is "every single time you get into combat").



I don't think easy mode should mean I win everything. It's training wheels. If I fail to research and expand at a healthy pace, then the odds will naturally stack against me. However, when I have a commanding advantage of odds, then the reward shouldn't be complete destruction and a dead hero.



Easy mode should mean that the monsters spawned in the first few turns of the game are things that can be defeated.



Easy mode should definitely mean that if I follow the lessons outlined by the tutorial, that I will experience success, as least as far as the first ~10 or so turns go.



Maybe this was designed only for hard core players who enjoy a punishing experience, and as such, easy mode is only supposed to be the easiest version of that punishment. However, my experience playing Endless Space through the difficulties makes this a shocking new direction in the design goals for Amplitude, if that be the case.



I've played many hours of the early access, figuring that my lack of success (which, by the way, was always able to make it farther that this) was due to an in progress game and figuring everything out on my own. It seems that, other than some of the new features, I did know what I was doing, the game was just too damn hard for my tastes.



Please fix the game balance, including "random" spawns, to make easy mode something that's actually easy. Leave the other difficulties alone for players who actually enjoy misery.



*Okay, not dead. Just all my troops gone, hero dead, and an angry Alt-F4 to abandon that game.

Easy mode does not mean cannot lose mode.

I 100% agree with the OP



Experienced players who play on higher difficulties know the dangers of attacking monsters in the early game, but I feel like its a put-off to new players who don't know all the little nuances yet.

Easy mode should mean that the monsters spawned in the first few turns of the game are things that can be defeated.

I agree things like this should be specially implemented for easy mode Early game ramps to help players get going.



Or specific warnings in the tutorial like: "Not all monsters are this easy though. Exercise caution when undertaking this quests."

I like the various warnings and disclaimers, but what you're both describing should be the newbie setting. Easy should have less penalties and more bonuses.

Who the hell would prefer 2k starting dust over a hero with governance bonuses and two free units. Seriously.

With 2k dust you could buy a decent hero, and enough buildings to compensate for the lack of provided bonuses, as well as a few units.

Assuming you have the tech to buy heroes. And assuming you have the tech to have buildings to buy. So basically a custom faction running multiple bonus techs. Any other situation the starting bonuses of the hero are going to net you equivalent or better progress from turn one.

There is a problem between "easy" as whole game and "easy" as map difficulty. You have to set minor factions to weak to have it really easy. AI will have that easy too.

I had the same experience the first time I played, and it was frustrating. What can make it worse is that it depends on what minor faction you run into - some of them are tougher than others. On easy difficulty, the game shouldn't throw armies at you at the start of the game that you can't defeat with your starting units, and you shouldn't have to go into custom game settings to get an easy start.

Well... The thing is - that EL seems to be at early parts of the game a little bit survival-like. I mean - c'mon! Civilizations just rise up after big cataclysm! They have poor knowledge of outside world and it's inhabitants. Definitely EL isn't like Civ4 or Civ5 where you can easily obliterate barbs with primitive maceman brutes. This difficulty early-game mechanisms are similar to these used in Paradox's games like Europa Universalis or Crusader Kings II. You just need to think like... Well - like Vaulters you've chosen.



But! Here's the thing that I can't disagree - said by @Stealth_Hawk:

I agree things like this should be specially implemented for easy mode Early game ramps to help players get going.

- Clearly... easy difficulty should mean that you can easily experiment with multiple ideas and plans of advancing your faction - not just striving to survive among unpleasant world with problematic amount of angry-shitted mobs obliterating everything what you've dumped from your first city.



What I remember from... well - Total War Shogun 2 - was that even if gameplay there was pretty demanding - it wasn't so unforgiving. You just need to be more like - "Crap. It's nearly like I'm playing chess" - and you won't lose. So actually going by the thoughts of OP, I would like to play difficulties from idyllic paradise where people of Auriga live in tranquility to even unforgiving survival mode. Game just needs more detailed and flaked initial conditions editor.

Verithar wrote:
Well... The thing is - that EL seems to be at early parts of the game a little bit survival-like. I mean - c'mon!

This is fine if that is what you are looking for. However, if a player is looking for a relaxing non-challenging learning experience and sets the difficulty to the easiest possible difficulty, that player should get a game that is very forgiving, where fights are very easy to win, and where beginner mistakes do not cost them all their units.



Normal and Hard difficulties are there for people who want a more challenging learning experience, a'la your "survival" mode, where you have to be more careful, and where it is possible to lose it all if you make mistakes. The game can please those players and at the same time please players who are new to the genre, or new to strategy games in general, younger players, or players who want to take their time learning the game at a leisurely, non-stressful pace.



The existence of a non-challenging easy setting does not spoil the game for anyone else.

Hmmm... maybe monster spawns on ruins should only happen after, say, 10 turns on an easy setting? Anyway, if you don't want to lose your units, just don't go exploring ruins with a weak army... Scout the terrain, find sweet spots for building new cities... There is a lot to do... A ruin is a risk. You can get huge rewards, but you may have a battle. It is part of the game...



You receive 2k gold on an easy setting? Hey, buying some extra marines should be a piece-of-cake, then...

That's fine advice, but if you just started playing the game, the tutorial just taught you that you can explore ruins with a small army and not get murdered early in the game. If the tutorial teaches that, it should work that way on easy difficulty.



EDIT: I just checked, and in 1.0.2 there is a "Newbie" difficulty that automatically sets the world difficulty to Easy (abundant resources, less aggressive minor factions, etc.). I don't know if this is new - I don't remember it - but maybe it solves the problem OP was having.

Thanks for getting my point, badken, and being the voice of reason. I have plenty of other things to play, I wasn't watching this space. You hit all the points I would have made, and hit them very well.

Verithar wrote:
Well... The thing is - that EL seems to be at early parts of the game a little bit survival-like. I mean - c'mon! Civilizations just rise up after big cataclysm! They have poor knowledge of outside world and it's inhabitants. Definitely EL isn't like Civ4 or Civ5 where you can easily obliterate barbs with primitive maceman brutes. This difficulty early-game mechanisms are similar to these used in Paradox's games like Europa Universalis or Crusader Kings II. You just need to think like... Well - like Vaulters you've chosen.

I was thinking like the tutorial taught me to think. I don't believe this game is an RPG that rewards me for ... well I'm not sure what the Vaulters should do differently. I was given a quest to kill some monsters, and told by the battle screen that it was a 50/50 battle with odds slightly in my favor. I also thought I knew from the tutorial, that this was a good thing to go for.



If I'm supposed to be treating this like Don't Starve, the tutorial is even worse at telling people what the game is about than I thought!



I've never played Paradox's games. However, I have played Endless Space, and I'd expect Amplitude's difficulties to run along the lines of their own games, not someone else's. Part of it that I am used to Civ games, and their lower difficulties also tend to hide how good the odds are for you (e.g. a 50/50 fight means you'll certainly win, but with heavy losses/damage). But not even that was the case.



I wish I had thought to take a screenshot before the fight. But here's the results:







Now, even accounting for the theme of a post-cataclysm, survival-dark-fantasy where its a hard fight to crawl out of your hole, the results of a 50/50 fight should mean that I killed at least one monster. Instead, they both were able to heal, making the fight a waste of time.



I'd been playing this game a bunch during Early Access, and never ran into this problem, even on higher difficulties.

badken wrote:
EDIT: I just checked, and in 1.0.2 there is a "Newbie" difficulty that automatically sets the world difficulty to Easy (abundant resources, less aggressive minor factions, etc.). I don't know if this is new - I don't remember it - but maybe it solves the problem OP was having.

I just checked the difficulty on my save (I haven't touched the game since 9/23/14), and it was Newbie already. Sorry for my loose discipline with my wording everyone. I wasn't playing a difficulty labeled "Easy," I was playing the easiest difficulty possible to select.



Although, I don't know if it set all the world difficulties and such at the time. But if it didn't, I'm glad they fixed it. It was so out of whack that I assume(d) it was not intentional and posted this thread to raise awareness.



There's not just the reasons people would pick Newbie, and what we expect from that choice. If the game is supposed to be a tough survival challenge, then the tutorial should set up expectations properly! It's like hiring a math tutor for calculus, and all the tutor does is make me practice basic algebra. Calculus is still an important skill, but I want to fire my tutor.



My problem wasn't just the difficulty of Newbie, but the chasm between what the Tutorial teaches us the game will be and what it ended up being.