I've noticed in most of the games I play I have the biggest military power but the least amount of command points out all the AI players (in the end game stats). I normally play on normal difficulty so there is no advantage between me and the AI other than faction traits. The AI seem to go for quantity over quality. First of all that makes no sense, because that would take more maintenance to keep all those ships and it's very annoying when you're attacking a system and you have 1 or 2 fleets there when your opponent has 20 of all weak ships that retreat as soon as you attack them.



I'm wondering how do you deal with this problem? and if a similar thing happens to anyone else? (I'm sure this has probably been discussed before.)



Also I've never played online against other people (and thinking about doing this next), so in pvp do you still use the same strategy? (probably not) and how does it differ between the AI's strategy? (I understand if you don't want to give up your pvp gaming secrets.)





One more quick question that's a little off topic: If you use a mod when playing the game are you still eligible for steam trophies? I've also never used mods cause I still wanted to get the trophies and didn't know. I do have some mods downloaded though.

Weak A.I.



If you want it to be more fair, you need to handicap yourself.



1) Play at a higher difficulty.



2) Do not upgrade your ships as often.



3) Play without heroes.

@Nasarog thank you for your reply. Since you said the AI is weak I have a follow up question (for anyone): is there a mod to make them harder? not necessarily more aggressive (I did see an aggressive AI mod), just harder.



Talking about the AI I have another question: Does the AI ever use the troop invasions? It seems significantly unfair to them against the AI, since I can wipe out an AI player in a few turns using troop invasions, but I've never seen the AI use them before.



I think I will start playing at a higher difficulty though and I forgot to mention that I played as Sheredyn faction last game cause I got tired of the AI retreating (if you didn't know: their affinity prevents the enemy from retreating) and I ended up winning an econ. victory in the middle of a massive war I was winning at. I prefer to win by conquest but like the challenge of multiple ways to win and stopping the AI from wining through them if they get close.

I don't play with mods (since I'm on a mac), but a higher difficulty should help.

Griffon wrote:
@Nasarog thank you for your reply. Since you said the AI is weak I have a follow up question (for anyone): is there a mod to make them harder? not necessarily more aggressive (I did see an aggressive AI mod), just harder.



Talking about the AI I have another question: Does the AI ever use the troop invasions? It seems significantly unfair to them against the AI, since I can wipe out an AI player in a few turns using troop invasions, but I've never seen the AI use them before.

I find this mod (another one of Ail's) to be very useful for weak AI problems: /#/endless-space/forum/37-modding/thread/16305-released-ai-ship-templates.



Also, the AI can use troop invasions. However, it only does so very rarely. I have over 200 hours in Disharmony and I could count on one hand the number of times the AI has troop invaded/bombed. But I wish they did it more, since it really caused me some problems ^^

You already know that playing Sheredyn is one way to counter the AI retreat fetish.



The other is to use long-range kinectics and long-range beams as your primary weapons on the vast majority of your ships.

Im not sure you need a mod on the AI. They already offer a very interresting tactic challenge from "Hard" difficulty to "Endless".



Try to beat a Hard AI first



But thats true , AI is fan of the "retreaaat tactic" ^^

Thanks for all the suggestions, I will try a game on hard now, but I am curious what the exact advantages and disadvantages are for the player and AI for each difficulty level. Btw I think some of the mouse over descriptions of the difficulty levels are kinda funny (Endless: "You shall not pass!").

Griffon wrote:
Btw I think some of the mouse over descriptions of the difficulty levels are kinda funny (Endless: "You shall not pass!").

Yea, that's the best one ^^