The thing that keeps me from playing more: an inconsistent difficulty curve
Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2026 11:11 pm
I've been playing SE off and on for a while now but having a hard time getting back into it, and I think I've pinpointed why. I've put some thought into this, I hope it's helpful as a discussion starter.
In Shadow Empire, the difficulty you select in the world generation is almost irrelevant to the actual difficulty of a game. The early game difficulty is determined by obscure world gen details and random selection and placement of enemy empires. And the late game difficulty is determined by early game snowballing from the above. This is very opaque to players, as none of this is communicated in the world gen options.
As a result, it's impossible to fine tune the world gen to have a fun and challenging experience throughout the game. Either the early game is too hard, or you get through the early game and the late game is too easy. I can't find the in-between. If you are bordered primarily by arachnids and minors that don't have a city, you won't survive, and if you're bordered by farmers, you will snowball and won't be challenged later. This is also modified a lot by how many good GR weapons you find, which is totally random and therefore not a very fun game mechanic; and, by availability of critical resources.
So my feedback is that the game needs 1) more consistent early game difficulty and 2) more consistent late-game difficulty.
Some suggestions on how to handle that:
- There need to be more ways to handle early game aggressive AI empires, especially ones with built-in resistance to Tech Level 3 small arms like the arachnids. For instance, even aggressive AI empires should respond to diplomacy, they should just be more demanding when they do so. Right now there are plenty of games I play where I never encounter a minor that actually responds to minor diplomacy for the entire game, and not a single card from that category is used. The status quo with slaver empires (you're a customer or you're a target) is a good example of something that works pretty well, doubly so because there buying slaves impacts your government type, though they also don't respond to diplomacy cards, which makes me wonder why I even have them.
- Either more minors should be amenable to solidifying borders, or it should be more easy to control borders without a unit on each tile. I understand the appeal of the current system, but tons of weak units holding territory is a really boring and silly way to interact with a minor that doesn't respond to diplomacy but isn't hostile yet.
- Minors that don't have a city AND that don't respond to diplomacy should be somewhat less tough than they are now, because you can't defang them by capturing the city and there's no reward for beating them. Minors that do have a city should be more tough, because the reward for beating them is huge snowball potential.
- If you spawn right next to a major on tech level 3/city state settings, you will forever be ONE tile away from hostile territory until war changes it. This is way too punishing. These settings should have a larger buffer zone of territory, keeping in mind that you have a very large percentage of the global population in your borders at the start.
- On tech level 4 you start with a metal mine, but on tech level 3 you may or may not even be in proximity of a metal mining tile. For people who want the option of better consistency in their starts, I suggest there be an additional worldgen switch for guaranteed metal availability - similar to tech level 4 except you don't start with the mine. In fact, if you turn it off, maybe you don't even get the mine at TL4.
- Midgame, if the player is head and shoulders ahead of other empires in terms of population and power, then that should start to trigger endgame events that dramatically shake up that balance of power. Stellaris has "crises" that invade as an outside context and start eating up the map. That's one idea; another more simple idea is that majors realize the balance of power is against them and start to ally up or even merge much more aggressively to counterbalance the player. Or both. This could also be governed by a difficulty setting. Likewise, maybe there could be better balancing to help out a player empire that never started to snowball because of bad but survivable starting conditions. Rimworld's "storytelling system" is a good model here - I understand Shadow Empire clearly doesn't want to be a story generator like Rimworld, it's a very ardently simulation-style game, but even in that context I think that the option of adaptive difficulty would make the average run more fun.
In Shadow Empire, the difficulty you select in the world generation is almost irrelevant to the actual difficulty of a game. The early game difficulty is determined by obscure world gen details and random selection and placement of enemy empires. And the late game difficulty is determined by early game snowballing from the above. This is very opaque to players, as none of this is communicated in the world gen options.
As a result, it's impossible to fine tune the world gen to have a fun and challenging experience throughout the game. Either the early game is too hard, or you get through the early game and the late game is too easy. I can't find the in-between. If you are bordered primarily by arachnids and minors that don't have a city, you won't survive, and if you're bordered by farmers, you will snowball and won't be challenged later. This is also modified a lot by how many good GR weapons you find, which is totally random and therefore not a very fun game mechanic; and, by availability of critical resources.
So my feedback is that the game needs 1) more consistent early game difficulty and 2) more consistent late-game difficulty.
Some suggestions on how to handle that:
- There need to be more ways to handle early game aggressive AI empires, especially ones with built-in resistance to Tech Level 3 small arms like the arachnids. For instance, even aggressive AI empires should respond to diplomacy, they should just be more demanding when they do so. Right now there are plenty of games I play where I never encounter a minor that actually responds to minor diplomacy for the entire game, and not a single card from that category is used. The status quo with slaver empires (you're a customer or you're a target) is a good example of something that works pretty well, doubly so because there buying slaves impacts your government type, though they also don't respond to diplomacy cards, which makes me wonder why I even have them.
- Either more minors should be amenable to solidifying borders, or it should be more easy to control borders without a unit on each tile. I understand the appeal of the current system, but tons of weak units holding territory is a really boring and silly way to interact with a minor that doesn't respond to diplomacy but isn't hostile yet.
- Minors that don't have a city AND that don't respond to diplomacy should be somewhat less tough than they are now, because you can't defang them by capturing the city and there's no reward for beating them. Minors that do have a city should be more tough, because the reward for beating them is huge snowball potential.
- If you spawn right next to a major on tech level 3/city state settings, you will forever be ONE tile away from hostile territory until war changes it. This is way too punishing. These settings should have a larger buffer zone of territory, keeping in mind that you have a very large percentage of the global population in your borders at the start.
- On tech level 4 you start with a metal mine, but on tech level 3 you may or may not even be in proximity of a metal mining tile. For people who want the option of better consistency in their starts, I suggest there be an additional worldgen switch for guaranteed metal availability - similar to tech level 4 except you don't start with the mine. In fact, if you turn it off, maybe you don't even get the mine at TL4.
- Midgame, if the player is head and shoulders ahead of other empires in terms of population and power, then that should start to trigger endgame events that dramatically shake up that balance of power. Stellaris has "crises" that invade as an outside context and start eating up the map. That's one idea; another more simple idea is that majors realize the balance of power is against them and start to ally up or even merge much more aggressively to counterbalance the player. Or both. This could also be governed by a difficulty setting. Likewise, maybe there could be better balancing to help out a player empire that never started to snowball because of bad but survivable starting conditions. Rimworld's "storytelling system" is a good model here - I understand Shadow Empire clearly doesn't want to be a story generator like Rimworld, it's a very ardently simulation-style game, but even in that context I think that the option of adaptive difficulty would make the average run more fun.