Difficulty setting, what changes?

[TommyWL]

I have seen threads mention that corruption increases and planet quality decreases on increased difficulty settings. Has anyone noticed other changes or know specific numbers?
Thanks!

[OloroMemez]

Planet quality does not decrease due to difficulty, that's specifically colony abundance settings. Just to make that clear. Idk why Erik kept saying it over and over.

[EsoEs]

It almost certainly is not doing anything to actually boost the AI, or maybe the AI is just terrible either way. On Extreme/Chaos, I consistently feel like I have won the game by the time I get to Cruiser tech even when I give the AI more advanced starts than me. They don't expand well, seem to have little to no fleets, dont defend their home spaceport, and pretty much spend all their cash on troops. Anecdotal certainly, but this has been true for me in my last 3 playthroughs.

[OrnluWolfjarl]

Planet quality does not decrease due to difficulty, that's specifically colony abundance settings. Just to make that clear. Idk why Erik kept saying it over and over.

I play on Extreme, and colonizeable planets are routinely 10-40% less habitability than what Galactopedia suggests for each type. I think you are confusing it with colony prevalence.

If you put Colony Abundance to Low, then you get less colonizable planet types than normal.

If you increase the Difficulty, then the "typical habitability range" of colonizable planets becomes lower.

It almost certainly is not doing anything to actually boost the AI, or maybe the AI is just terrible either way. On Extreme/Chaos, I consistently feel like I have won the game by the time I get to Cruiser tech even when I give the AI more advanced starts than me. They don't expand well, seem to have little to no fleets, dont defend their home spaceport, and pretty much spend all their cash on troops. Anecdotal certainly, but this has been true for me in my last 3 playthroughs.

Yes, that has been my own experience. The AI, sadly, doesn't really know how to build an empire. I don't really know why, but it seems that the AI is always broke, causing it to lag behind on everything.

[Es78]

Quality of planets do not drop on harder levels.
What happens on hard levels is your corruption gets higher = less income. Thats it
I am playing on hardest difficulty, harsh starting system (That lowers your home world quality big time, you start with a negative income even before you build anything or run into pirates) and chaos galaxy.
I think in my next game i need to set the other empires to tech level 1, just to give them a chance. It´s still to easy. But thats due to the AI´s loussy ability to build exploration ships. Once you get 50 exploration ships out, you have won the game. Your rolling in passive income and will quickly catch up in tech from all the research locations you find.

[OloroMemez]

Planet quality does not decrease due to difficulty, that's specifically colony abundance settings. Just to make that clear. Idk why Erik kept saying it over and over.

I play on Extreme, and colonizeable planets are routinely 10-40% less habitability than what Galactopedia suggests for each type. I think you are confusing it with colony prevalence.

If you put Colony Abundance to Low, then you get less colonizable planet types than normal.

If you increase the Difficulty, then the "typical habitability range" of colonizable planets becomes lower.

Sure, abundance/prevalence of colonies.

Your claim about colony abundance/prevalence producing "less colonizable planet types than normal" - the setting does not change the raw number of habitable planet types. It just modifies the quality range that they use by multiplying the minimum and maximum values by some decimal, e.g. Normal is 0.85, Abundant is 1.0.

I've been researching this for over a week now, plotting all the data from entire or multiple galaxies. To be thorough, I've tested your claim that on Extreme difficulty there is a difference on number of colonisable planets.

Generated two galaxies of 2000 stars each. One on normal, and the other on extreme.
Besides small deviations on total numbers - which is due to random galaxy gen of probability of planet types, the number and distribution is basically the same. So I'd rule out difficulty having any effect on planet number or quality range.

Planets way below normal quality range are damaged planet outlier thingies. Major axis ticks slightly different due to automatic numbers (Python doesn't know it's bad).

[OrnluWolfjarl]

Planet quality does not decrease due to difficulty, that's specifically colony abundance settings. Just to make that clear. Idk why Erik kept saying it over and over.

I play on Extreme, and colonizeable planets are routinely 10-40% less habitability than what Galactopedia suggests for each type. I think you are confusing it with colony prevalence.

If you put Colony Abundance to Low, then you get less colonizable planet types than normal.

If you increase the Difficulty, then the "typical habitability range" of colonizable planets becomes lower.

Sure, abundance/prevalence of colonies.

Your claim about colony abundance/prevalence producing "less colonizable planet types than normal" - the setting does not change the raw number of habitable planet types. It just modifies the quality range that they use by multiplying the minimum and maximum values by some decimal, e.g. Normal is 0.85, Abundant is 1.0.

I've been researching this for over a week now, plotting all the data from entire or multiple galaxies. To be thorough, I've tested your claim that on Extreme difficulty there is a difference on number of colonisable planets.

Generated two galaxies of 2000 stars each. One on normal, and the other on extreme.
Besides small deviations on total numbers - which is due to random galaxy gen of probability of planet types, the number and distribution is basically the same. So I'd rule out difficulty having any effect on planet number or quality range.

Planets way below normal quality range are damaged planet outlier thingies. Major axis ticks slightly different due to automatic numbers (Python doesn't know it's bad).

Ha, that's interesting to see. Guess I was suffering from confirmation bias. That's some good statistics you've drawn up!

[TommyWL]

That is some good research Oloro!
I have also noticed that Hive ships seem to have higher initial strength on higher difficulty.
I also wonder whether research is slower?

[Es78]

That is some good research Oloro!
I have also noticed that Hive ships seem to have higher initial strength on higher difficulty.
I also wonder whether research is slower?

It´s not slower, as long as you can get a profit and allocate cash for research.
It´s only the income of your empire thats lowerede as you raise the difficulty.