I've been playing ES for a while now but have always found the challenge lacking... I play on Endless Difficulty with various map sizes and AI counts, yet I win about 75% or more of the games. This number increases to 100% if my friend joins the game (We don't like fighting each other but do not trade either).



Does anyone know of a mod that increases the difficulty? or how I could make one? (I know I could make a single race with more malus's/fewer perks but would prefer not to) Even if it is simply modding the original difficulties to make them harder. (How would I do this as a mod and not in the core files)



I have tried both the Fair Fight mod and Imperium Aeterna Mod but neither made the game harder. (some of the features made the game better though, good job to the creators of those mods)



Any help will be great.

drake159 wrote:
I have tried both the Fair Fight mod and Imperium Aeterna Mod but neither made the game harder. (some of the features made the game better though, good job to the creators of those mods)



Any help will be great.

Sad you did not find my mod (Fair Fight) any more challenging. I did try to make the AI better, and i do think it is miles ahead of the vanilla one, but i guess it's still not on par with a good player who knows what he his doing. Also changed a few features that should have made it harder to beat the game, at least not make it as easy once you take the lead in tech. Would be nice to have some feedback to tell me what i could do to make it harder for you (i'm unfortunately unable to mod the game right now). Of course, if you are using custom races or the stock sophon, you are playing it easy...

Play as sowers.



Instant difficulty.

Igncom1 wrote:
Play as sowers.



Instant difficulty.

Play as Sowers

Lie Down.

Try Not To Cry.

Cry A Lot

The most effective way to up the difficulty easily without giving the AI more boni is to change the ship maintainance-cost back to pre "Rise of the Automatons" level.

This will drastically increase the number of ships you'll have to deal with.

Sweet amoeba, those were the dark days of the mighty Hissho wars.

Foraven wrote:
Sad you did not find my mod (Fair Fight) any more challenging. I did try to make the AI better, and i do think it is miles ahead of the vanilla one, but i guess it's still not on par with a good player who knows what he his doing. Also changed a few features that should have made it harder to beat the game, at least not make it as easy once you take the lead in tech. Would be nice to have some feedback to tell me what i could do to make it harder for you (i'm unfortunately unable to mod the game right now). Of course, if you are using custom races or the stock sophon, you are playing it easy...

It was more challenging...just not where I would like it to be. A lot of the changes you made were definitely for the better. I think my main problem is using a custom race. In your mod I was playing a custom with Sower Affinity and simply dominated the galaxy in every game I played being #1 in FIDS and Tech by somewhere around turn 30-70 each time. The runaway population and industry were insane. This was on both 1v1 tiny maps and on huge maps with 7 AI. (On endless difficulty.)



I will try out the stock factions with Fair Fight and then see if I can give any feedback on your mod balance wise. Also, if the custom factions give a large advantage have you considered lowering the available points for customs to bring them more in line with the non optimized stock factions (perhaps a 10 point decrease would help)? Or modding the originals to optimize them making it more of a "Fair Fight" with the Custom Factions.