Difficulty setting

[Unforeseen]

How much of a differance do the difficulty setting changes actually make?

If I play on normal difficulty, even though it's been a significant amount of time since playing the AI has absolutely no chance of keeping up with me. Tax manipulation to get max population on my planets is enough on it's own to totally debalance the game in my favor. So I feel like I can't really have a 'fair' game without holding back. So I'm just looking at my options, I normally avoid increasing difficulty because I'm a sandbox player that doesn't try to win. Keeping things balanced is pretty important to me. I'm doubting I can have both though.

[Siddham]

Have a look here....Roger Bacon's post

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.a ... 2365533%3B

[Unforeseen]

Ugh only affects player. That's disappointing. Thanks for the reply.

[SirHoraceHarkness]

You can always edit the racial stats of the ones you typically play against to give them an extra edge. I upped the population growth rate and colony ship building speed of the boskara race to make them a plague you have to stamp out early or they simply swarm the map and choke everyone out of space.

[Unforeseen]

ORIGINAL: SirHoraceHarkness

You can always edit the racial stats of the ones you typically play against to give them an extra edge. I upped the population growth rate and colony ship building speed of the boskara race to make them a plague you have to stamp out early or they simply swarm the map and choke everyone out of space.

That sounds scary af lmao

[SirHoraceHarkness]

ORIGINAL: Unforeseen

ORIGINAL: SirHoraceHarkness

You can always edit the racial stats of the ones you typically play against to give them an extra edge. I upped the population growth rate and colony ship building speed of the boskara race to make them a plague you have to stamp out early or they simply swarm the map and choke everyone out of space.

That sounds scary af lmao

That's just for a simple custom game to give the ai races a bit more flavor. I made a sub mod off icemania's ai mod specifically focusing on boskara pumping up all their stats and creating custom starting characters with all the best traits maxed out so they are a nightmare to face as an ai empire or a bit of fun to use vs as a player race. Been fleshing it out with a custom map and other tweaks so might one day drop a link to it but for now it's just a bit of overpowered fun for myself.

[LordMM]

Bacon Mod and the RETREAT UE put together seems to increase the difficulty considerably if you are looking for a challenge..

[Unforeseen]

ORIGINAL: LordMM

Bacon Mod and the RETREAT UE put together seems to increase the difficulty considerably if you are looking for a challenge..

I'll give that a try thanks!

ORIGINAL: SirHoraceHarkness

That's just for a simple custom game to give the ai races a bit more flavor. I made a sub mod off icemania's ai mod specifically focusing on boskara pumping up all their stats and creating custom starting characters with all the best traits maxed out so they are a nightmare to face as an ai empire or a bit of fun to use vs as a player race. Been fleshing it out with a custom map and other tweaks so might one day drop a link to it but for now it's just a bit of overpowered fun for myself.

Feel like the Shakturi should have been something more like that instead of what they were.

[LordMM]

ORIGINAL: Unforeseen
I'll give that a try thanks!

Dhayuts AI, Pink folks Have like 60,000 military power.

[SirHoraceHarkness]

Feel like the Shakturi should have been something more like that instead of what they were.

That's my take too. The insect races in dwu feel more like evil humans instead of a relentless hive mind lowish tech but endlessly breeding and expanding menace which will simply overwhelm you if you don't keep them constantly in check. They kinda feel like star trek aliens when insects should be as inhuman as possible. I think the scifi movie district 9 portrayed them rather well in that regard as intelligent but not humans in an insect suit.

That's the feel I'm going for in the boskara with my minimod and it's coming along pretty well so far. Finding that fine balance between impossible to stop and a good long hard slugfest is proving difficult though and will probably require adding a few slightly buffed races to use as the player.

I really hope dw2 is this mod friendly.

[LordMM]

Bacon with RETREAT UE makes most insect races spread like the plague with 10 times as much ships...

[SirHoraceHarkness]

ORIGINAL: LordMM

Bacon with RETREAT UE makes most insect races spread like the plague with 10 times as much ships...

Yeah its a very nice mod but I prefer the vanilla game and icemania's mod solves most of the core games ai issues. It just needed some tweaks to fit my personal taste.

[Retreat1970]

I just read this and I should explain the RetreatUE mod a little.

RetreatUE is an AI fixer like Icemania's mod but with one difference that being the research build orders (rbo). The rbo streamlines what the AI can build for each race and they do not research useless tech. This is the most dangerous thing about RetreatUE imo. I've played games on expert that on vanilla I could sleep through, but with RetreatUE I struggle badly. It's disheartening to see Atuuk at end tech when I'm not close. That was the whole point though. Challenge. A lower difficulty game plays great but only the masochists play expert.

I haven't beat expert. Maybe someday.