Asking advice regarding difficulty in 3.4.4 (2024)

I've played most of 2.X at non scaling grand admiral difficulty, but since 3.4.4 and the real improvement of the AI it has becoming extremely hard (as it should be), and now I struggle to find a difficulty setting that suits me. Now I realize it can never be perfect, it would require an adaptative difficulty to get the perfect match. But I'm not after that, I'm just looking for a setting that will provide some challenge at least for a part of the game. I've tried scaling GA with early mid/end game, but it makes the AI way too weak in the early game. I'm just not willing to use mods since I'm still chasing achievements.

So I'd like to hear about the settings the community uses.

I am talking about:
- Difficulty
- Scaling or not
- Number of empires
- Number of advanced empires
- Bad empire build

Troyen said:

If you found non-scaling GA too hard, what has your experience been with non-scaling Admiral? What are you specifically looking to scale back?

Click to expand...

Well I have the same problem as many, on lower diff I can mindlessly roll on AI empires, on hardest diff the early game is extremely hard and after that the huge boni can be frustrating.

(I read Admiral and though Captain, don't know why. haven't tried admiral but i will). Non scaling difficulty, wherever the cursor is, will always have the same limit, it's a linear bonus to the ai. I'm not complaining about it, just taking it into account, that's why I asked for the uses you may have of other means to adjust difficulty, like advanced empires, etc...
I'm willing to try setups on my own, i'm going to try :

• GA, lot of ai empires (but not max) and no advanced empires.
• Scaling GA with only advanced empires.
• Commodore with only advanced empires, bad empire build...

But there is so much possibilities and I only have limited time, so I could do with the community insights.

I also felt a sharp increase in difficulty on GA non-scaling. I barely managed to arrive at a white peace with no losses after a hostile attempt of subjugation, and only because I managed to catch one 2.6K attacker fleet with my combined fleets of about 1.8K while they were trying to take out my strongest starbase (1.5K).

I'm now being threatened by another hostile empire at the other end of my territory, and the only thing that keeps them from declaring war, I think, is that I managed a defensive pact with another empire that's stronger than me, at least for now.

Given I started as Void Dweller, I expected to take the lead by ~2250, but it's 2243 already and I'm still struggling just to survive.

Congrats, Paradox - maybe I shouldn't have lowered the victory year and increased crisis strength all that much - I'm wondering if I will be able to beat this game!

The AI is better at researching a bunch now, but they haven't fixed the 3 massive issues the vanilla AI has that causes it to be completely uncompetitive later on:

• Mixed fleets: The AI has never gotten the memo that building a bunch of cruisers, destroyers, and non-torpedo corvettes in the age of battleships is a horrendous waste of alloys and fleet cap.
• Bad ship design: The AI still seemingly throws components on it ships at random, instead of creating coherent designs, let alone actually effective designs. A good player knows to go proton launchers --> X slot artillery ships, which leaves the AI in the dust.
• Not expanding enough: This has multiple causes, from the AI simply not claiming nearly enough land, to surrender acceptance being way too low in vanilla such that wars for 2-3 marginal systems can last over a decade. In any case, a player that can take another empire's homeworld has already expanded more than what 90% of AI empires will be able to achieve in 2+ centuries.

There are other issues of course, like the AI spamming crappy gene clinics and robot assembly plants on EVERY planet for some reason, but these are the main ones.

This means the difficulty is still only really present in the early game, when there's fewer degrees of freedom that the AI can mess up on. But even the early game can be cheesed through diplomacy, as you can make practically any AI your friend by sending an envoy to improve relations and giving them a +100 gift. This lets you sign some longer term agreements to lock in good relations to fish for guarantees or to go for a full federation. Once you have a federation the game is basically over, since AI empires can be turned into compliant battle thralls that will freely send thousands of energy + alloys your way, if you know how to use the federation system.

I pretty much always play with the max amount of advanced-start non-scaling GA empires, which is about as difficult as you can make the vanilla AI. As long as I don't start near a fanatical purifier or have a neighbor rival me before I can get a gift their way, victory will be assured as soon as I sign a federation agreement.

Try adjusting the mid and end games to lower setting and raise the crissis strength a bit. The AI my not be as tough on lower difficulty settings but the great khan spawning around 2250 and crissis at say X10 spawning around 2325 will add real challenges for you. They do for me anyway.

My preferred settings are admiral non scale, medium map, max hyperlane, 2250 mid game, 2325 end game X10. Its a good mix for me.