AI Difficulty

The ai in beta 3 now defaults to easy. I'll suggest we move it back to normal for the next update.

I play on challenging and I have noticed a clear drop in armies coming my way. Ofcourse I havent played that many games yet, but it seems a lot tamer to me. I play with dense monsters. I wonder if that is limiting the AI much?

That's quite possible Joasoze. I've seen how monstears can tear AI's appart. They can often become an effective barrier between you and them.

That said, I'm not sure if this explains the more passive AI some people are seeing. In my (still little) experience with 0.9, the only time where I faced a very aggressive AI was in ridiculous difficulty.

AGREED - Default should be normal

I think it is less aggressive against me because seemingly its way easier to level my sovereign, and he counts like a big shift in power after 10-13 levels into the game, and they know I will have something to defend myself with...  Just speculating, I know they don't dare touch me after I get a lvl 30 ish sovereign.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I play on a medium map with all races with Relias with dense monsters, sparse resources & magic and the ridiculous world setting with challeging AI. The AI does fine and keeps up with me only Tarth and Gilden are stronger of the other 7 factions, but I'm larger by land in comparison to Tarth (haven't build up my army yet). I haven't gotten into a war yet, but Tarth is growing restless and is sharing a river with me (,two settlements each). I've got Yitrill locked up with only one settlement. I'm not sure, but Pariden looks locked up with one or two settlements. Kraxis is also another player at my far border. It's quite interesting if war would break out before I'm ready. If it doesn't, I'll start over since I won then.

I like the availability of the option, frankly.  It should be possible to play (as it is, now) with differing numbers of monster challenges.  I'd also like to see the player have the ability to set the "ownership" distance for the monster--the area in which it will seek-and-destroy tourists--as well as randomly created monsters that appear frequently/moderately/seldom.  But then, I'm all for player customization.

Right now I'm playing a relatively challenging game in a large world with fairly dumb AI opponents, just to see how much of a Civ-like experience I can have.  I enjoy city and nation building, and I'm facing good challenges, especially from monsters placed in close proximity to one another.  There's something to be said for attacking one monster stack, and being attacked immediately afterwards on the same turn by a second.  Ramps up strategic planning.

Wonder if we'll have the option to change weapons during a battle?  Unless I'm missing this, it's not in, now.  Wait and see, I suppose.

Regarding AI difficulty.. on the setting below normal I'm fine and bored by 150 turns in.  Nothing can hurt me.

On Normal I'm penetrated violently.  This is the 3rd game I've lost to a 'normal' AI.  I read posts about other players annihilating the AI and I'm starting to wonder if I should move on to games like tetris or if there's something a little off in the settings I've chosen.  These are the settings I play with:

Kingdom of Pariden - default Queen Procipinee

Map: Random, Medium World size, Map type: Mountainous, Difficulty: normal, Monster frequency: dense; pacing:normal, Magic Strength: Moderate, Resource Freq: moderate.  All victory conditions.  All AI set to normal.

My typical game starts by roaming around and killing easy monsters with my sovereign until I can hire some clubwielding punching bags.  I claim some resources etc but never have more than my sovereign and one champion.  This is because it takes too long to build units to accompany additional champions and I usually can't afford the upkeep.

A couple hundred turns in I'll meet another soveriegn, who even if they're of the same alignment will declare war because I am 100-150 points behind them militarily and then the game ends shortly after.

What I'd like to have is a way to watch what the AI is doing - Did they get rid of the "two heroes in your army together halves their exp" rule?  Am I missing something?  Is there a happy medium between beginner and normal?  People beating it on advanced levels of AI - would love to watch them play. 

/shrug.  Enjoying the game.. I admit I'm not good at it.  Just not happy that I'm this bad at it either.

I believe, someone correct me if I'm wrong, that challenging AI is the best AI where the computer players don't receive bonuses.  If you go up to Hard, the computer heroes get x2 hit points, for example.   

try building a few cities?

what do you research btw?

with procipinee you should really power level her, dont hire champions unless veeeery good, proci is incredibly strong early due to summon, you can get experience traits, than path of the mage, and then boost summon/school of magics

summons are enough to kill medium stuff and so you should get lvl 10 very fast and then be able to stomp most opponents, try to hire a tank then

Will give this a try.  I do build some cities but had bad luck in getting all 3/2 2/3 style cities that take ages to level to anything meaningful.  Are those areas worth settling?  I know the AI spams pioneers to go anywhere it possibly can.  Is this the "strategy" players should be following?

Just played a game with a custom tank/yithril sov I made.  It was more balanced except for getting caught between a 300 hp haridan spider, a drake on the other.. and then Altair who sent an unexhaustible set of armies after me.  In the end since I had nowhere I could settle I had to give that one up. 

For research I generally try to go for either the civ tree or the warfare tree just so my peasants have *some* protection.  Even then for the effort they are I wonder if it's worth it or not. 

well i dont play like that but a minimum of 3 cities is needed on challenging+, imo

about bad city places im not sure, ofc i try and find something better, but if nothing pops i usually build a second city anyway

ok i tried a chall with proci now, dense monster and  3 enemies

i started wandering a lot since i can kill all wolves/spiders/bandits easy, i found only a good spot for a second town and nothing more, researcin civics to improve prod in case i need to build up for a war

im leveling VERY fast, also i was lucky to find ignis (too bad not yet fixed)

then i found 2 opponets that are  quiet for now, im switching research to magic since i found a great champion to hire, but probably wont have the money anyway so im gonna research somethign in civ to improve my income and eventually raise taxes

ai is very aggressive in expanding, i see already 6 7 small cities so they probably have many many more

This is probably the thing I find least enjoyable in the game so far is it seems like the 4x concept implementation is mostly just build as many cities as you can.  It also seems like players build improvements much slower than AI.  Insofar as my original problems, spamming out a bunch of cities helped me at least keep my 'rating' as high as theirs so they didn't attack with such glee.

in the while my game is probably gone, im doing well my exploring team byt there is some lady irane who really run away, she is lvl 15 (im lvl 11) and she is uberequipped and steamrolling everything, i probably need to start the war soon and try to steal some city if i want a chance to win

I'm finding the game easy too, even on the hardest setting - maybe the AI should get bigger bonuses? I personally hate it when the AI gets bonuses in these games but maybe thats whats needed to raise the challenge level, I don't know TBH

Maybe it's that the AI isnt fully utilising it's sovereigns; they have been nerfed twice now but with careful development they can become one man powerhouses - I never see the AI level it's champs to the extent that I do and that might be the deciding factor possibly becuase the AI seems to do a pretty good job with its trained units

On that point, I have seen AI troops get stuck behind a neutral unit, because the AI chose the path through that slot and is not trying to walk around it.  Since it can not pass through a stationary unit, its own unit just stands there waiting for the other unit to move. I saw a Pariden Army waiting for my scout to move of the road. (There was space to side step my unit.)  I did not therefore that army just stood there for ages, as I did not move my scout either. (Was meant to be on the watch therefore I did not want to move it anyway.)

I am playing on normal, so maybe the pattern changes on a different difficulty level, but it could explain this aspect of "locking" it self in because of inefficient unit use.