Difficulty levels?

[TommyBoy84]

Hey guys,

Let me say once again, thanks for all the help so far. I'm still learning, a bit more every time I play, but you guys have really helped me to understand a lot of the bits and pieces that the manual is vague on.

On to my question: How much of a difference do the difficulty levels make? I'm playing on "historical" right now, and getting absolutely mauled whil finding even small victories few and far between. Should I stick with Historical until I pick up a couple more months of experience, or am I really sacrificing realism by not playing on the harder levels?

Basically, should I be inching my way up to "very hard", or should I just go straight there now, and hope I learn faster?

[Son of Jorg]

Historical is just that, historical...the AI has the same advantages and disadvantages as you, and is the "realistic" mode. Hard allows the AI to 'peak' in to your moves, which some say is the only way to make the AI play a decent game. And Very Hard is the same as Hard, but your opponents units never run out of supplies; they are always considered supplied. (I believe these are the differences; there could be more.)

Generally the AI is frowned upon by most experienced players; I am not an experienced player, but I recommend playing vs the AI to learn all you can about the game, then posting in the Opponent Wanted forums above. You should be able to find a fellow player at your experience level, and start a PBEM game! The AI pales in comparison to playing the real thing. If time is an issue, there are plenty of those looking for a couple of turns a week type of game, and you can even try 2 or 3 day turns to speed things up.

Hope this helps!

-Nick

[Gem35]

You can change the difficulty setting at any point in your game, the higher difficulties will give the AI unlimited supply and some combat modifier advantages.
Also, it gives the AI the ablitity to "peek" in at your forces. Say you have a Carrier force closing in on a base, if the AI has some merchant TFs heading there the AI will alter it's course perhaps to stay away.
It won't make the AI "smarter" per se.

[Feinder]

If the AI on historical level is giving you sufficient challenge, then by all means, continue to play it on historical level.  You will to where it does reveal it's flaws (I once ended up stopping it at Singapore - it kept impaling itself and I could eventually see that was going to be game over).  And if you still want to play the AI, then wratchet it up to hard.  Hard means the AI is always in supply (and you'll find out just how important and challenging supply is in WitP).  And very hard is always in supply and he looks at your units and their orders.
 
-F-

[John Lansford]

Wouldn't playing the AI at the hard/very hard levels mean that it would be impossible to bypass bases and garrisons, since they'd always have supply and could continue to operate planes from the airbases?  I guess I could just keep bombing them to keep the damage up on the base but that takes a lot of LBA assets.  Kind of neutralizes the island-hopping strategy, doesn't it?

[Gem35]

just because AI is supplied does not mean they don't fatigue or get disrupted.

[marky]

artificial intelligence is a misnomer, i was able to liberate burma, thailand, malaya, singapore, indochina, the chinese coast all the way up to Shanghai, the AI put up very little resistance, even when i started bombing the home islands in 43


Asinine Intelligence is more like it

once you go PBEM, ull NEVER go back

EDIT: and i also left my flanks completely EXPOSED, just to see what it would do, NOTHING happened