WHAT THE HECK!!!

I found this game horribly difficult on even the normal setting! I used to beat Master of Orion 2 on the Impossible setting. This game on Normal is harder than that.

Hey, if you want to make the game even harder on the harder difficulties for those with personalities like Handsome Jack... fine with me.

For the rest of us, I'd like you to ease up on things a bit on Normal and below.

Thanks!

FarOceans wrote:
WHAT THE HECK!!!

I found this game horribly difficult on even the normal setting! I used to beat Master of Orion 2 on the Impossible setting. This game on Normal is harder than that.

Hey, if you want to make the game even harder on the harder difficulties for those with personalities like Handsome Jack... fine with me.

For the rest of us, I'd like you to ease up on things a bit on Normal and below.

Thanks!

You are just not used to it yet.

It is very possible to beat an AI on Endless difficulty.

Porcinet wrote:
You are just not used to it yet.

It is very possible to beat an AI on Endless difficulty.

Umm... NO

Tried again on normal. I used to be able to beat the game regularly on that setting.

Got to turn 100 and had fleets of 18 ships each with a total fleet strength around 5000. No invasion capability, pure fighting/defense.

Horatio show up with slightly smaller fleet with this single fleet having a strength around 10,000.

I'm not sure how I'm supposed to "just get used to that"



Seems to me this game has been ruined by over achievers who whine about "how it's just never hard enough for them" and force the devs to spoil it for everyone else.

You want it harder, fine, whatever, go have fun. I no longer enjoy playing this which is too bad because it USED to be a lot of fun to play.

I don't know which race you play but I have had fleets of 52k MP by turn 120 with a race with decent research power and at this point i usually fight fleets with ~20k MP.

I really wonder how you end up with such low MP fleets on turn 100.

5000/18 is ~277 MP per ship, that´s the MP of a ship you can get on turn 1.



You are missing something, maybe you do not research enough in the military tree or forget to upgrade your ships.

I'm genuinely curious.

I just finished my first real game,normal difficulty, 7 players on medium sized map, ovoid galaxy (first played 2 matches on tiny 1v1 to learn basics) and have to agree...the AI is quite weak. In these departments;



1.Combat. AI cannot build ships or fleets that can compete with the humans military, i have barely learned the combat yet my fleets are routinely winning even when under strength (in the prebattle stats) and barely taking damage. Use of repair modules, repair heroes and the nanorepair card when possible now results in my fleets never getting worn down, and plowing through incredible numbers of enemies. You would think when the human is focusing heavily on missiles or beam weapons the ai would design ships with heavy defences against that but they seem to design ships completely randomly. Also the AI sends unescorted fleets of siege ships with zero combat strength into the waiting arms of my fleets with clockwork regularity.



2.System development. Ive noticed the automatic colony manager is horrible, and the AI seems to be using the same, their systems are horribly configured when i capture them and i believe they are focusing heavily on colonizing every planet possible in a system, instead of growing one or two good ones high then colonizing the next. This results in alot of unhappiness from the bad anomalies and wasted time, my automated systems really struggled to develop compared to the ones i managed personally. This element desperately needs improvement benefiting both AI and human,helps humans for reducing micromanagement and helps AI as a strong economy is the basis for everything it does.



3. Colonization and fleet development. AI is very slow at colonizing, and i managed to obtain 63% towards an expansion victory in my game fairly early on with no warfare. Meanwhile they have enormous fleets of ships in their worlds doing...nothing. The cravers adjacent to me had a considerable amount of ships when they still had colonizable worlds nearby...they should use their fleet to secure the worlds from pirates and get colony ships in their ASAP. Even while i colonized such a vast area of the galaxy i was still able to make enough fleets to thwart the cravers attempts to attack me. Im sure the AI had enough production to make more colony ships if only they tried. And it wasnt for lack of room, horatio for one had a vast area of unclaimed systems near them, but instead of claiming them they seemed to prefer colonizing all the planets in each world they already owned



Playing Disharmony. Haven't played a earlier version, and im definitely gonna check out that Super Nova mod, looks promising.



Edit :Ive been using the automatic governor more since my last post and its been performing better, and ive been putting it in more favourable positions to succeed as well. Maybe the difference was the systems i gave it had more of an industrial base to get rolling with.

As for the "endless difficulty" discussion I can confirm it being a problem of not being used to the game. It doesnt matter if you beat Master of Orion on Impossible setting or not. Its two different games mate. You gotta learn the ropes in ES before you can become as good as you were in MoO. And thats a good thing else why bother with new games of the same genre at all?



If your 5000 AP fleets meet 18K AP fleets that hints at your gameplay being not optimal from turn 1. The huge difference you see in your example is just the cumulation of many wrong turns which end up in your ass whooping. I dreaded Endless difficulty and stayed away from it for the longest time. Then came the point where the only achievements missing were the endless ones so I hunkered down and looked for help and tried to improve/get used to it.



Well what can I say? Its brutal but you learn small things and after a while you realize there are things you can do to even the whole thing. Now I consider endless quiet "easy" not like "hell I gonna slap that AI around like a red headed stepchild" but more like seeing openings and realize how starter systems and heroes will affect my winning chances.



While more moderate settings allow you a fighting chance in the long run regardless how you start out Endless difficulty will shrink that margin to a degree that will only give you a realistic fighting chance on certain galaxy settings and proper enemy races. Not getting an administrator hero on turn 1? Just give up...stuff like that.



The weaknesses of the AI dont disappear on higher difficulties. They even become much more exploitable. Its just really only the massive bonuses the AI receives that make it so overpowering at first.



I often rely on AI governers for my systems and am quiet happy with the results I get. The configuration you get on invaded systems dont really help here as often enough the AI uses complex changes in a single turn to accomplish the massive dust income they have to generate to accomodate massive fleets. When observing the AI on my own systems I can spot slight weaknesses but overall it does what its intended to do. Not on endless of course. The need for micro-managing is very strong as even 1 missed turn can put you at a disadvantage you cant allow (too often) to happen. Thats why large maps become a bore quickly. Micro-managing 30+ systems gets tiresome quickly.



Overall it seems to eased into things and are having fun playing the game now....which is a good thing and I m happy for ya /cheers

The AI does cheat, on any setting higher than Newbie.



ENDLESS DIFFICULTY

x 0.4 overpopulation disapproval

x 0.6 expansion disapproval

+50 happiness

-90% buyout cost

-60% upkeep

x 0.4 production cost

x 0.75 tech cost

x 0.2 healing cost

+100% damage

+65% defense

+50% food & production

+30% science & dust

You might find the AI in the Heavy Nova mod more challenging.



/#/endless-space/forum/37-modding/thread/16275-heavy-nova-mod-launched

Was this in Vanilla or Disharmony?



Edit: If it was Vanilla, was the game started before the recent Hotfix that repaired the Ai previously broken by the last patch?

I find its a tad too easy as well. The Endless difficulty is usually super hard until late game when you've got everyone out tech'd, but all the other difficulties are a joke from start to finish. On endless though I find Im never ever ahead in points, Horatio always always dominates from their population and fids scores. I think the real challenge is trying to beat the game earlier or limiting yourself to certain points in the tech tree as the enemy doesnt seem to catch up tech wise, even the sophons are usally behind me and I play automatons (soley based on the fact I like their ships appearence the best but dont like custom factions as I dont have enough self restraint to keep them balanced.)

Ail wrote:
Was this in Vanilla or Disharmony?



Edit: If it was Vanilla, was the game started before the recent Hotfix that repaired the Ai previously broken by the last patch?

That's a good question. I'd like to know as well.

Certainly sounds like Vanilla to me personally, as I'm finding the AI behaviour and numbers on hard difficulty interesting enough with Disharmony enabled since the last update.



The AI certainly still makes some daft decisions, but its ability to hit you hard early and blockade several systems at once to stop you making ships is much improved.

Theres always that achievement for using a faction with like -100 trait points.

The AI is still easily defeated in Disharmony on Endless. Give a shot at the achievement for beating Endless with -195 or less racial picks!

In my opinion, I feel that's because the AI(even Endless difficulty）hardly cheats.



Without cheating, it is impossible for the AI to invade like how players do and to pose a real threat to us.



It does sometimes use new Disharmony mechanisms to capture your star systems instantly or cause some damages to them (like us, bomb improvements or kill populations), but not frequently and aggressively like us.



The AI seems like newbies who are not familiar with new Disharmony stuff.



And its strategy to build ships and organize fleets is very weak and inappropriate, like building large ships for invading, wasting high HP and industrial points on that.



If the AI takes any experienced player's strategy to build forces and invade, it will be a nightmare for players.



Simply because new Disharmony mechanisms allow any vicious opponents to ruin your empire in several turns easily...



Just cross the border, bomb, capture, do anything they want(even meaner, pillaging and razing) , your economy can decline significantly and lead to a disastrous defeat.

you seem to think that Endless seeting with max number of AI opponents is considered to be a hard game?



Try 1 versus 1 on small with endless settings now THATS hard to beat.



Large maps and lots of opponents actually give you more breathing space because the AI tends to going-all-out on each other often ignoring the player. Whenever I set up more AIs harder difficulties actually become easier.



Even tho the disappointing thing is due to AI bonuses on endless setting the actual challenge comes from the fact that he can raise more ships faster and with better tech then you can. If you somehow manage to break his first attack wave hes dog-food

I find that the biggest problem with the AI is that it's rather unintelligent at times. Perhaps most damning is the AI's ineptitude with system development, specifically, what exploitation they put on their planets. I've conquered 6 planet systems with a myriad of different planet types and each one has Hyper Scale Farms on it. And this is before the convert all food to industry improvement. Really? I've also likewise conquered systems loaded with Finance Commissions. Sometimes I'll encounter a system with 3D Replication Plants but it's not nearly as common as Finance Commissions or Hyper Scale Farms, and I don't think I can ever recall conquering a system loaded with Global Tech Parks. Good system planning would go a long way to making the AI harder. I've sort of come to the conclusion that, if the system isn't full on population, the AI dedicates everything to Food, if the system isn't fully developed in terms of system improvements, everything is dedicated to Industry. If both of those are satisfied, everything is dedicated to Dust.



Another example of sheer stupidity (this one has only really appeared in Disharmony, the previous example I've seen in both Vanilla and Disharmony) is sending fleets with nothing but siege modules. No guns, no defenses, no armor, filled to the brim with siege modules. And to make matters worse, they'll sometimes send these fleets at systems I'm besieging. Now, maybe their intention is to actually go and besiege one of my systems, but I can't say for for certain since I always blockade when I besiege.

Commander wrote:
I've sort of come to the conclusion that, if the system isn't full on population, the AI dedicates everything to Food, if the system isn't fully developed in terms of system improvements, everything is dedicated to Industry. If both of those are satisfied, everything is dedicated to Dust.

It seems that the AI governs our star systems in the same way, so that's why we have to do everything ourselves even when we have a handful of star systems.



It is tiring but sometimes rewarding since Endless Space is kind of a game about managing the whole civilization, not just battles or one specific thing.



But I have a feeling that if the devs are willing to make a Mass Effect 3 multiplayer style co-op, that could solve the whole AI problem(at least, in multiplayer games).



In my opinion, the AI of Endless Space is unwilling to cheat. At least, not as obvious as many AIs in RTS or other so-called strategy games.



But if you have played Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, you will probably know that the devs of the game show no mercy to the players, and offer all kinds of challenges.



On insanity difficulty in Mass Effect 3 single player games, that could be a problem because the AI of the teammates is too weak, and cannot compete with numerous enhanced enemies (Of course, experienced players have no problems at all).



But in multiplayer, it's not a problem because the players are better than the stupid AI and work together.



And it is easy for the newbies to watch and learn, which is more efficient than the traditional forum discussions.



The devs no longer need to worry about hurting the players' fragile little hearts and causing all kinds of bad responses if they make the AI more aggressive or cheat more (the latter is not recommended).



I am not saying that the devs of Endless Space don't know what to do, and it's just my humble opinion.



(I am not the ones complaining about the devs and the AIs, so please don't misunderstand and say the MP things to me...)

Now, maybe their intention is to actually go and besiege one of my systems, but I can't say for for certain since I always blockade when I besiege.

considering the fact that the AI is ultra-carefull with is colony-ships and goes to great efforts to save em I dare to say the siege-fleet behaviour is an oversight because I too get bombarded with siege-fleets like theres no tommorow. Usually when a scout comes by the info gathered by the AI shows in its next few moves but he seems to "think" of his siege-fleets as really powerfull becasue he doesnt distinguish between Battle-MP and INvasion-MP.



An example I have on hand is the fact that whenever I invade a planet I have 1 escort fleet on the same planet to protect the invader. Now if I make the mistake to "click" the pile instead of selecting my battle-fleet it ll select all fleets around orbit and if I use the "attack" option the computer will use my most powerfull fleet versus the AIs most powerfull fleet. In the described scenario that means my INVASION fleet versus his invasion-killer fleet, yeah thanks.

Well i dont know about other people but i find the "Endless" difficulty AI ridiculously easy. Against 8 other factions and with only 3 systems i dominated the rest of the universe by turn 280. 230 of those turns were spent researching. Afterwards i quickly dominated the galaxy in 50 turns without losing a single ship and using only 4 fleets. We could use some serious innovation in the AI Department.