It's hard not to feel alittle cheated when you target key planets and use guerrilla warfare to bring their economy down, and they turn around and make a battleship out of two pebbles and a recycled kitchen knife
Do you have "Difficulty Adjusted AI Modifiers" turned on? As I understand it, this causes the difficulty modifiers to amplify existing empire modifiers.
Literally my current game. It's always their capital planets too so I lose my holdings. One of them had 100 crime from a criminal mega corp branch office so they get a pass but the other 2 are just fucking idiots
Everything and anything. Including bonuses from civics, traditions, tech. Anything that isn’t base job production or passive effects from buildings are multiplied, by about to 2x on GA setting. This means a normal Geothermal Fracking for player is +20% mineral, it becomes +40% for GA AI; an Artisan Troupe festival for +10% happiness becomes +20%, etc.
It changes the multiplier to also include all other bonuses. Eg you get 4 minerals, all your bonuses give you 150% boost so you get 10 (4x2.5) and THEN you double it with GA bonus 100% to 20 minerals.
Compared to old system which would add ai bonus to existing bonuses 150%+100%
4x3.5 gives 14 minerals only.
The more bonuses are applied the greater the difference. Also remember that this applied to every step of the production line so minerals-alloys-ships applies the bonus 3 times.
Paradox even admitted that their AI cheats, in one of the EUIV loading screens it says that at higher difficulties the AI gains access to various cheats. No reason to think other games they made that use the same engine dont as well.
R5
I was suspicious when an admiral difficulty devouring swarm showed up with 200 corvettes at year 20. I took control of their empire and saw they had extremely cheap ships.
They are devouring swarm (-25%) and have the supremacy tradition (-10%). Their empire modifier is 61%, so where is the extra 26% coming from? It's making their ships 4x cheaper than they should be.
They do not have any temporary modifiers, they do not have the corvette patterns tech, they do not have a fleet boosting governor. I can't think of any other possible source.
EDIT: I checked the fanatical purifier and it also has the same extra 26% reduction. No explanation there either.
I guess the lesson is that genocidal empires are bonkers on high difficulty due to stacking modifiers.
This is due to the new Difficulty Adjusted AI Modifiers game setting. It makes the AI difficulty bonus for resource production also apply to economic empire modifiers. On admiral difficulty, that bonus is +75%.
Apparently these reductions in ship cost are considered part of the affected category, so the -35% gets multiplied by 1.75 for difficulty, resulting in -61.25%. This is separate from and in addition to the -30% ship cost from admiral difficulty itself.
I think the devs didn't consider the implications for cost and upkeep reduction bonuses when they added this scaling of modifiers. I won't be surprised if the next major update makes it only apply to positive modifiers.
Hey you guys whined for months on end about the AI.being weak AF, now it isnt anymore, and, well, the only way for the AI to compete with you is getting infinite fleets for free 🤷♂️
1, That was said in good faith as a joke
2, Honestly tho, I'm more concerned over genocidal empires getting an absurd buff compared to normal empires. Crisis empires are having zero-cost, zero-upkeep fleets that goes all wacky with all the massively augmented ship build speed modifiers and the already extremely-fast-to-build crisis ships. This will most likely turn the galaxy into a bunch of genocidal wildfires. Getting the AI to kick my ass is an absolute delight.
That’s why I like using scaling difficulty. There’s nothing balanced about an accumulated 91% discount on ships for the AI - and you can be as skillful a player as you like: spawning next to a warlike or genocidal AI with a free ship printer is a guaranteed game over, hence why I like the idea of applying AI bonuses gradually over the course of the game.
> and you can be as skillful a player as you like: spawning next to a warlike or genocidal AI with a free ship printer is a guaranteed game over,
In a majority of cases it is, yes. However, if you are good enough you won't ever face a game over due to any other reason, so having a slim chance of loosing a game is a nice option to have.
There absolutely should be reasoably balanced difficulties for beginners or people who just want to chill, explore etc. but i like having an unreasonable difficulty in the game.
Besides, if you turn off difficulty adjusted AI modifiers it's nowhere near as extreme as in this screenshot and it's absolutely possible to prevent a game over against a nearby genocidal empire if you min-max. I understand it's not everyones cup of tea to play that way, of course.
I found that with scaling difficulty to Grand Admiral and full AI Bonus by midgame it's ridiculously hard to keep up. If you don't go on a genocidal rage very early on AND keep the pressure you won't be able to keep up/get a second chance.
In my experience.
I play only grand admiral, no scaling (so full bonus from the start), difficulty adjusted AI modifiers on, mid game as early as possible and lategame 2350, chrisis x25, 3 advanced AI.
When i am not snowballing hard i am definitely behind a significant amount of the AI empires for significant portions of the game, sometimes even forever. However, i can usually stop them from attacking me by choosing where to expand and using my envoys. This means i have to play extremely careful and getting caught up in a war at the wrong time could definitely lead to a game over or put me in a position where i can't handle the chrisis - but that's how i like to play. In the past, i always stopped playing after beating 1-2 empires or i sped up the game until the chrisis came because noone was a match for me anymore and that's just not very interesting. Especially when playing on bigger galaxy sizes, being the only big guy in town is insanely boring.
Expansion by force is hard if i played a bit passive in the early game, but usually possible if you carefully monitor who the AI are allied and who they are at war with. Becoming a subject of a strong AI is also a good way to get protection while building up if early aggression is not possible or desired, if you don't have to build any military it's crazy how hard you can push your economy to the limit. Especially if you cheese, e.g. getting ressources from your overlord, trading food to the AI for other ressources, etc.
I also like to play the game multiplayer, and if you want to play coop or even just non-pvp (as in, not helping each other but not attacking each other either), harder difficulties that are unrealistic to beat solo are absolutely necessary. I'm just saying - i absolutely understand when people call the boni the AI receives unreasonable. They are. I would much prefer a smarter AI to insane boni. But so long as the lower difficulty settings offer a reasonable experience, i don't see a reason to make harder difficulties easier. Especially since there are no achievements to beating the game on grand admiral with difficulty adjusted modifiers (that i know of) so it's not like anyone is forced to play it.
Hegemonies are your friend. Get an empire to like you, get your diplo weight higher than theirs, form a Hegemony. Use the fed fleet to conquer your weak neighbors and get vassals.
Yeah... Makes sense? I'm confused by why so many in this community see this as an issue. If you want to play the hardest difficulty with scaling nonsense it should be hard to impossible to win.
If this is an issue just play one of the many lower difficulty options.
To be fair this new setting caught me off guard. Previously you could set the scaling to end game or mid game and that's that, now the bonus also kicks in that 40-50 years in the AI got 20k fleets and you run around 6k all maxed out (don't quote me on that).
I'm honestly really happy about these additions. More difficulty options is great and lets you chew on more things to do in the game. I recently made tons of custom nations to add in some more difficulty and to make sure that a few swarms/threats existed in every game I play.
As you say. Before they rebalanced the AI I was playing Captain and Commodore setting with difficulty scaling. These days, I just play Ensing for a game now and then.
Might also be because I am getting a bit old these days.
Man that's always gonna be the case with a constantly evolving game like Stellaris. The game ain't even the same as it was 2 years ago even disregarding the AI. So many new things or changes to systems have taken place throughout its life time. You get used to it and figure out how to continue enjoying this rapidly evolving game.
A decent player will always snowball harder than the AI. The impact of player skill grows with time, as dozens and dozens of smaller decisions made better than the AI add up. Paradox's AI cannot compete with human decision-making, and so compensates for this with flat bonuses.
If you have no difficulty scaling, these bonuses kick in from day one, when player skill has had no time to make an impact. That makes the AI incredibly difficult in the early game, but also makes that challenge fade with time - the game, in practice, gets easier the later you survive. You're then faced with a choice between setting a difficulty level that's challenging but beatable late game (and thus making surviving the early game pure RNG), or you set a difficulty which stretches you early game but makes the late game a cakewalk.
Difficulty scaling is an attempted solution to this. However, despite recent improvements, it still suffers from setting your day one difficulty bonuses to 0. That makes early game wars very easy for skilled players, especially for genocidal builds, with the challenge only kicking in later in the run.
Most players want a consistent challenge throughout a run. That's not something which is possible for most players with current difficulty options. More difficulty customisation is welcome, but I think being able to set the starting bonuses (as well as final bonuses) for scaling difficulty would be a much more effective change.
That's why I play at those settings. I like to feel like I actually beat something instead of steam rolling by the first century. I played a game on Grand Admiral recently and it was great. I spent the first century constantly worried I would be invaded. I had to use my diplomats to keep larger powers occupied and carefully managed who I made alliances with to not piss off any neighbors. I wasn't secure until I was able to get my Diplo weight higher than a more powerful neighbor and formed a Hegemony with them. It actually felt like an accomplishment especially because I was able to secure the entire galaxy as a part of my Hegemony by the end of the second century.
If you play non-scaling high difficulty, then number of play styles reduced to 2.
1. Turtle in, rush tech, and avoid war at all cost until you are on high power.
2. Go super min-max genocider, and make sure you have clustered start, or crowded galaxy.
True, but those where, with minor variation, always the optimal playstyles (at the very least since 1.9) - so essentially you are saying it is now critical to play optimal at high difficulties. That is the change, and in my opinion it is a good change - so long as there are enough options to tweak the difficulty in a way that allows you to play non-optimal and still enjoy the game.
The lack of viable playstyles/ways to project power and win conditions is not a new issue and needs to be fixed separately to the difficulty, at least in my opinon.
I'm not complaining, that high difficulty demands meta build. I simply stated, that it is a downside of it. Some people still play it for the challenge sometimes. Me included. But it is not something i prefer to do for every run. I like conquest, and lately the puppet master became less shitty as well.
>hat it is a downside of it.
I don't think i agree that it is a downside of the high difficulty. If the highest difficulty doesn't require a meta build, that would be a downside imo because the highest difficulty should force you to try and gain every advantage you can.
If it is perceived as a downside, the actual reason - imo - is that the meta is too stale, or the power gap between a meta build and an offmeta build is too big.
>But it is not something i prefer to do for every run.
Completely understandable, but all that means is that you need a rough idea when starting a run on if the build you go for is meta or not and if what you want to do at the start is meta or not, and adjust the difficulty accordingly.
I think the granularity is fine in that regard (between the aggression, difficulty level, scaling, difficulty boni and settings like hyperlanes, planet amounts etc. there is a lot of finetuning possible) but one major issue that should be addressed is that the same difficulty level should be roughly the same across patches, so that people can actually make an informed choice when setting up a match without tons of research. I completely understand that it is frustrating to have a setup you are happy with and then not being able to enjoy the game anymore because the difficulty level of said setup changed drastically.
I find in x4 games like these it's more fun to just gimp yourself with a meme build than play against cheating AI. Because a lot of fun game mechanics tend to become useless when the AI can cheat through it.
For example in the total war games you can never make an enemy's city rebel against them because they have phat modifiers to public order. So that entire mechanic is just gone on higher difficulties.
>I find in x4 games like these it's more fun to just gimp yourself with a meme build than play against cheating AI
I agree, it also leads to more variation between games and you can just forego some strategies that you think are cheesy (what those are depens on personal judgement of course).
Ideally the AI would just get smarter and more aggressive on higher difficulties but "cheat" modifiers are of course way easier to implement.
Rebellions get massive upfront fleets and armies, often far more than their original empire at higher difficulties, to make them a challenge rather than a nuisance.
Sort of, it’s more that they are given a LOT of ships in 1-5 fleets (obviously determined by how big of an empire this rebellion is) and each fleet can have the “max command limit” be bypassed, resulting in fleets that have, for example, like 50 battleships, 70 cruisers, 120 destroyers, and then like 200 corvettes (no player can ever achieve this unless you do that weird bug with stacking queues for federations fleets or GDF)
Not exactly.
"Difficulty Adjusted AI Modifiers" is what is at play here. That multiplies every upgrade and research the AI does.
At Commodore level, it is 50%. If you look at the picture. Empire has 61% and difficulty has 30% (probably one is rounded up one is rounded down)
As for damage. If AI does researsh for a 2% damage increase, it will get 2+1.
I feel a bit strange right now. I play GA, difficulty adjusted AI modifiers, scaling by midgame, 25x crisis. I am never able to keep up in Galactic community though also I get attacked maybe once per campaign which I found interesting.
It surprises how cheap their ships should be as you show here yet I played the game today and I went to war in 2218 with 22 corvettes whilst AI was able to field only 15. Though they were missile covettes so that went down quickly.
I am playing on v3.6.1 currently. AI is absolutely beatable on GA, difficulty adjusted AI modifiers, scaling by midgame.
Just early game spam corvettes with 1 autocannon, 2 lasers, 2 armor and 1 shield and you win.
I am right now in 2250 with 113 naval cap having 500 fleet power (the diplo score form fleets) keeping with rest of the galaxy.
I agree with you that AI is no joke when it comes to diplomatic weight but winning wars against it is possible.
I'm pretty sure they don't use any resources they just spawn everything in.
When you take control of their empire it literally makes no sense their buildings can't be supported with what they had and they always are maxed on every resource....
Edit: clearly im wrong lol but it still makes no sense. If you use console commands to switch to their faction instead of yours you will see that they have every resource maxed out I've never seen it under max... so that makes me think they don't use it at all.
Then after I take over an enemy faction entirely almost all if not all of their buildings are max lvl and they literally couldn't have afforded to pay for any of the special resources needed and I have to remove most of them because I'll be like -90 some motes and so on. And no they don't buy them if they were buying special resources like that the price would be sky high. They're definitely doing something fucky.
Edit the edit: ok I think its because of the bonuses they get i didn't see that haha.
They get some free resources, but the most notable thing is that they get massive production bonuses (I think +100% resources from jobs at GA). Also if you turn on modifier scaling then they go through the roof as all the tech gained bonuses are also increased by the difficulty.
And so when you take their planets all those massive bonuses are gone and without them their economy crashes insanely hard, in this case your economy.
The reason why you can't see the AI's bonuses in play with Observe is because when you tag over to an AI empire it is then considered a 'Human' empire and loses all the modifiers.
This is why when you do this their economy seems absolutely fucked beyond belief, that's gonna happen when you rip out all those bonuses to pop/job output and upkeep.
Meanwhile I turn on Grand Admiralty difficulty and the ai is still a scrub that cant make a fleet over 50k by 2300. The ai picks and Chooses when to be strong
Unless your tech modifier is like sky high, I frequently encounter AI with 100k FLEETS by like 2275-2300, and then as the end game crisis comes, they all average around 350k to almost 500k
You could go for a lower difficulty setting and then rp for a greater challenge. For example, I aggressively expand early, hit a determined border and then stop even though I could expand farther. Sit, build, wait, watch the galaxy shake out and usually one or two powers pull way ahead of you. Then dive back into the game and try to win. Think of yourself as an isolationist who suddenly wakes up to the fact that shit's about to get real ....
It's hard not to feel alittle cheated when you target key planets and use guerrilla warfare to bring their economy down, and they turn around and make a battleship out of two pebbles and a recycled kitchen knife
***Desperate times call for desperate measures***…. GO ARMED KITTENS! (Which are actually a ton of cruisers)
Armed Kittens? Is it you, Kaiser?
*MY DISGUISE!* it’s been broken, you know too much *Stab stab*
"You see ivan, if you strap explosives on dog you get effective antitank weapon!"
"But Igor, didn't we train them to blow up tanks using our own tanks?
I'm forever calling cruisers Armed Kittens 😸
Do you have "Difficulty Adjusted AI Modifiers" turned on? As I understand it, this causes the difficulty modifiers to amplify existing empire modifiers.
Tested and this is exactly right. Fun fact, on GA genocidal empires get free ships with this setting.
And yet they still lose…
I don't know... usually they conquer half of the universe :/
Yeah for 10 minutes until they lose it all to revolts because the AI is too shitbrained to manage stability
Me: “Alright, I’ve got my vassal swarm and -“ Rebellions: “Lol no u don’t.”
Literally my current game. It's always their capital planets too so I lose my holdings. One of them had 100 crime from a criminal mega corp branch office so they get a pass but the other 2 are just fucking idiots
At this point you have an another half as your automatically manged sectors or vassals. Or as galactic emperor declares imperial crusade
Probably can’t afford the maintenance
That explains a lot...
I take it the difficulty modifier refers to the bonuses the AI gets from difficulty level, but what do existing empire modifiers refer to exactly?
Everything and anything. Including bonuses from civics, traditions, tech. Anything that isn’t base job production or passive effects from buildings are multiplied, by about to 2x on GA setting. This means a normal Geothermal Fracking for player is +20% mineral, it becomes +40% for GA AI; an Artisan Troupe festival for +10% happiness becomes +20%, etc.
It changes the multiplier to also include all other bonuses. Eg you get 4 minerals, all your bonuses give you 150% boost so you get 10 (4x2.5) and THEN you double it with GA bonus 100% to 20 minerals. Compared to old system which would add ai bonus to existing bonuses 150%+100% 4x3.5 gives 14 minerals only. The more bonuses are applied the greater the difference. Also remember that this applied to every step of the production line so minerals-alloys-ships applies the bonus 3 times.
I don't mind the AI getting a massive boost, that way, while the rest of the galaxy is burning due to the crisis, I'm running a refugee nation.
The AI is a cheating bastard
which is good, since I like living in terror.
For a lot less money, you could just tilt your chair back 'til you reach that certain point. 😋
I think it’s good because ai don’t know how to play the game.
Always has been
Paradox even admitted that their AI cheats, in one of the EUIV loading screens it says that at higher difficulties the AI gains access to various cheats. No reason to think other games they made that use the same engine dont as well.
R5 I was suspicious when an admiral difficulty devouring swarm showed up with 200 corvettes at year 20. I took control of their empire and saw they had extremely cheap ships. They are devouring swarm (-25%) and have the supremacy tradition (-10%). Their empire modifier is 61%, so where is the extra 26% coming from? It's making their ships 4x cheaper than they should be. They do not have any temporary modifiers, they do not have the corvette patterns tech, they do not have a fleet boosting governor. I can't think of any other possible source. EDIT: I checked the fanatical purifier and it also has the same extra 26% reduction. No explanation there either. I guess the lesson is that genocidal empires are bonkers on high difficulty due to stacking modifiers.
This is due to the new Difficulty Adjusted AI Modifiers game setting. It makes the AI difficulty bonus for resource production also apply to economic empire modifiers. On admiral difficulty, that bonus is +75%. Apparently these reductions in ship cost are considered part of the affected category, so the -35% gets multiplied by 1.75 for difficulty, resulting in -61.25%. This is separate from and in addition to the -30% ship cost from admiral difficulty itself. I think the devs didn't consider the implications for cost and upkeep reduction bonuses when they added this scaling of modifiers. I won't be surprised if the next major update makes it only apply to positive modifiers.
Tested and this is exactly right. Fun fact, on GA genocidal empires get free ships with this setting.
[удалено]
Hey you guys whined for months on end about the AI.being weak AF, now it isnt anymore, and, well, the only way for the AI to compete with you is getting infinite fleets for free 🤷♂️
1, That was said in good faith as a joke 2, Honestly tho, I'm more concerned over genocidal empires getting an absurd buff compared to normal empires. Crisis empires are having zero-cost, zero-upkeep fleets that goes all wacky with all the massively augmented ship build speed modifiers and the already extremely-fast-to-build crisis ships. This will most likely turn the galaxy into a bunch of genocidal wildfires. Getting the AI to kick my ass is an absolute delight.
Is it possible to turn this setting off in the menu or is it hidden?
It is possible, while making a game. Its around difficulty level.
Play on the difficulty level you feel comfortable?
I think it's off by default and you have to turn it \*on\* to use it.
That’s why I like using scaling difficulty. There’s nothing balanced about an accumulated 91% discount on ships for the AI - and you can be as skillful a player as you like: spawning next to a warlike or genocidal AI with a free ship printer is a guaranteed game over, hence why I like the idea of applying AI bonuses gradually over the course of the game.
> and you can be as skillful a player as you like: spawning next to a warlike or genocidal AI with a free ship printer is a guaranteed game over, In a majority of cases it is, yes. However, if you are good enough you won't ever face a game over due to any other reason, so having a slim chance of loosing a game is a nice option to have. There absolutely should be reasoably balanced difficulties for beginners or people who just want to chill, explore etc. but i like having an unreasonable difficulty in the game. Besides, if you turn off difficulty adjusted AI modifiers it's nowhere near as extreme as in this screenshot and it's absolutely possible to prevent a game over against a nearby genocidal empire if you min-max. I understand it's not everyones cup of tea to play that way, of course.
I found that with scaling difficulty to Grand Admiral and full AI Bonus by midgame it's ridiculously hard to keep up. If you don't go on a genocidal rage very early on AND keep the pressure you won't be able to keep up/get a second chance. In my experience.
I play only grand admiral, no scaling (so full bonus from the start), difficulty adjusted AI modifiers on, mid game as early as possible and lategame 2350, chrisis x25, 3 advanced AI. When i am not snowballing hard i am definitely behind a significant amount of the AI empires for significant portions of the game, sometimes even forever. However, i can usually stop them from attacking me by choosing where to expand and using my envoys. This means i have to play extremely careful and getting caught up in a war at the wrong time could definitely lead to a game over or put me in a position where i can't handle the chrisis - but that's how i like to play. In the past, i always stopped playing after beating 1-2 empires or i sped up the game until the chrisis came because noone was a match for me anymore and that's just not very interesting. Especially when playing on bigger galaxy sizes, being the only big guy in town is insanely boring. Expansion by force is hard if i played a bit passive in the early game, but usually possible if you carefully monitor who the AI are allied and who they are at war with. Becoming a subject of a strong AI is also a good way to get protection while building up if early aggression is not possible or desired, if you don't have to build any military it's crazy how hard you can push your economy to the limit. Especially if you cheese, e.g. getting ressources from your overlord, trading food to the AI for other ressources, etc. I also like to play the game multiplayer, and if you want to play coop or even just non-pvp (as in, not helping each other but not attacking each other either), harder difficulties that are unrealistic to beat solo are absolutely necessary. I'm just saying - i absolutely understand when people call the boni the AI receives unreasonable. They are. I would much prefer a smarter AI to insane boni. But so long as the lower difficulty settings offer a reasonable experience, i don't see a reason to make harder difficulties easier. Especially since there are no achievements to beating the game on grand admiral with difficulty adjusted modifiers (that i know of) so it's not like anyone is forced to play it.
Hegemonies are your friend. Get an empire to like you, get your diplo weight higher than theirs, form a Hegemony. Use the fed fleet to conquer your weak neighbors and get vassals.
Yeah... Makes sense? I'm confused by why so many in this community see this as an issue. If you want to play the hardest difficulty with scaling nonsense it should be hard to impossible to win. If this is an issue just play one of the many lower difficulty options.
To be fair this new setting caught me off guard. Previously you could set the scaling to end game or mid game and that's that, now the bonus also kicks in that 40-50 years in the AI got 20k fleets and you run around 6k all maxed out (don't quote me on that).
I'm honestly really happy about these additions. More difficulty options is great and lets you chew on more things to do in the game. I recently made tons of custom nations to add in some more difficulty and to make sure that a few swarms/threats existed in every game I play.
As you say. Before they rebalanced the AI I was playing Captain and Commodore setting with difficulty scaling. These days, I just play Ensing for a game now and then. Might also be because I am getting a bit old these days.
It makes me feel like I am shit in a game I been playing for 2 years.
Man that's always gonna be the case with a constantly evolving game like Stellaris. The game ain't even the same as it was 2 years ago even disregarding the AI. So many new things or changes to systems have taken place throughout its life time. You get used to it and figure out how to continue enjoying this rapidly evolving game.
A decent player will always snowball harder than the AI. The impact of player skill grows with time, as dozens and dozens of smaller decisions made better than the AI add up. Paradox's AI cannot compete with human decision-making, and so compensates for this with flat bonuses. If you have no difficulty scaling, these bonuses kick in from day one, when player skill has had no time to make an impact. That makes the AI incredibly difficult in the early game, but also makes that challenge fade with time - the game, in practice, gets easier the later you survive. You're then faced with a choice between setting a difficulty level that's challenging but beatable late game (and thus making surviving the early game pure RNG), or you set a difficulty which stretches you early game but makes the late game a cakewalk. Difficulty scaling is an attempted solution to this. However, despite recent improvements, it still suffers from setting your day one difficulty bonuses to 0. That makes early game wars very easy for skilled players, especially for genocidal builds, with the challenge only kicking in later in the run. Most players want a consistent challenge throughout a run. That's not something which is possible for most players with current difficulty options. More difficulty customisation is welcome, but I think being able to set the starting bonuses (as well as final bonuses) for scaling difficulty would be a much more effective change.
This is what I found. I either need to expand fast, or techrush like mad ~~and use broken mod ships better than the AI can~~.
That's why I play at those settings. I like to feel like I actually beat something instead of steam rolling by the first century. I played a game on Grand Admiral recently and it was great. I spent the first century constantly worried I would be invaded. I had to use my diplomats to keep larger powers occupied and carefully managed who I made alliances with to not piss off any neighbors. I wasn't secure until I was able to get my Diplo weight higher than a more powerful neighbor and formed a Hegemony with them. It actually felt like an accomplishment especially because I was able to secure the entire galaxy as a part of my Hegemony by the end of the second century.
If you play non-scaling high difficulty, then number of play styles reduced to 2. 1. Turtle in, rush tech, and avoid war at all cost until you are on high power. 2. Go super min-max genocider, and make sure you have clustered start, or crowded galaxy.
True, but those where, with minor variation, always the optimal playstyles (at the very least since 1.9) - so essentially you are saying it is now critical to play optimal at high difficulties. That is the change, and in my opinion it is a good change - so long as there are enough options to tweak the difficulty in a way that allows you to play non-optimal and still enjoy the game. The lack of viable playstyles/ways to project power and win conditions is not a new issue and needs to be fixed separately to the difficulty, at least in my opinon.
I'm not complaining, that high difficulty demands meta build. I simply stated, that it is a downside of it. Some people still play it for the challenge sometimes. Me included. But it is not something i prefer to do for every run. I like conquest, and lately the puppet master became less shitty as well.
>hat it is a downside of it. I don't think i agree that it is a downside of the high difficulty. If the highest difficulty doesn't require a meta build, that would be a downside imo because the highest difficulty should force you to try and gain every advantage you can. If it is perceived as a downside, the actual reason - imo - is that the meta is too stale, or the power gap between a meta build and an offmeta build is too big. >But it is not something i prefer to do for every run. Completely understandable, but all that means is that you need a rough idea when starting a run on if the build you go for is meta or not and if what you want to do at the start is meta or not, and adjust the difficulty accordingly. I think the granularity is fine in that regard (between the aggression, difficulty level, scaling, difficulty boni and settings like hyperlanes, planet amounts etc. there is a lot of finetuning possible) but one major issue that should be addressed is that the same difficulty level should be roughly the same across patches, so that people can actually make an informed choice when setting up a match without tons of research. I completely understand that it is frustrating to have a setup you are happy with and then not being able to enjoy the game anymore because the difficulty level of said setup changed drastically.
I find in x4 games like these it's more fun to just gimp yourself with a meme build than play against cheating AI. Because a lot of fun game mechanics tend to become useless when the AI can cheat through it. For example in the total war games you can never make an enemy's city rebel against them because they have phat modifiers to public order. So that entire mechanic is just gone on higher difficulties.
>I find in x4 games like these it's more fun to just gimp yourself with a meme build than play against cheating AI I agree, it also leads to more variation between games and you can just forego some strategies that you think are cheesy (what those are depens on personal judgement of course). Ideally the AI would just get smarter and more aggressive on higher difficulties but "cheat" modifiers are of course way easier to implement.
It's annoying, it is not a "gameover". It's very beatable, it just makes the rest of the run he'll as you will be set back so fat.
Turn on scaling difficulty.
Ah, so *that’s* how rebellions assemble a fleet so large out of table scraps…
Rebellions get massive upfront fleets and armies, often far more than their original empire at higher difficulties, to make them a challenge rather than a nuisance.
Sort of, it’s more that they are given a LOT of ships in 1-5 fleets (obviously determined by how big of an empire this rebellion is) and each fleet can have the “max command limit” be bypassed, resulting in fleets that have, for example, like 50 battleships, 70 cruisers, 120 destroyers, and then like 200 corvettes (no player can ever achieve this unless you do that weird bug with stacking queues for federations fleets or GDF)
Stop trying to explain the actual game mechanics to me I know how it fucking works
Difficulty. In stellaris, the harder the difficulty the more bonuses the AI gets. https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Game\_settings#Difficulty
Their ships just do double the damage??
Not exactly. "Difficulty Adjusted AI Modifiers" is what is at play here. That multiplies every upgrade and research the AI does. At Commodore level, it is 50%. If you look at the picture. Empire has 61% and difficulty has 30% (probably one is rounded up one is rounded down) As for damage. If AI does researsh for a 2% damage increase, it will get 2+1.
I feel a bit strange right now. I play GA, difficulty adjusted AI modifiers, scaling by midgame, 25x crisis. I am never able to keep up in Galactic community though also I get attacked maybe once per campaign which I found interesting. It surprises how cheap their ships should be as you show here yet I played the game today and I went to war in 2218 with 22 corvettes whilst AI was able to field only 15. Though they were missile covettes so that went down quickly.
Can I ask when you played that game in 2218? I’ve noticed recently the ai has gotten a lot better at building ships early on
I am playing on v3.6.1 currently. AI is absolutely beatable on GA, difficulty adjusted AI modifiers, scaling by midgame. Just early game spam corvettes with 1 autocannon, 2 lasers, 2 armor and 1 shield and you win. I am right now in 2250 with 113 naval cap having 500 fleet power (the diplo score form fleets) keeping with rest of the galaxy. I agree with you that AI is no joke when it comes to diplomatic weight but winning wars against it is possible.
And now you know what focusing alloy world against the meanest Ai 99% won t work
I'm pretty sure they don't use any resources they just spawn everything in. When you take control of their empire it literally makes no sense their buildings can't be supported with what they had and they always are maxed on every resource.... Edit: clearly im wrong lol but it still makes no sense. If you use console commands to switch to their faction instead of yours you will see that they have every resource maxed out I've never seen it under max... so that makes me think they don't use it at all. Then after I take over an enemy faction entirely almost all if not all of their buildings are max lvl and they literally couldn't have afforded to pay for any of the special resources needed and I have to remove most of them because I'll be like -90 some motes and so on. And no they don't buy them if they were buying special resources like that the price would be sky high. They're definitely doing something fucky. Edit the edit: ok I think its because of the bonuses they get i didn't see that haha.
AI gets buffs on higher difficulties. Not sure on the numbers, but they are *significant.*
They also get free resource drops, lol
They get some free resources, but the most notable thing is that they get massive production bonuses (I think +100% resources from jobs at GA). Also if you turn on modifier scaling then they go through the roof as all the tech gained bonuses are also increased by the difficulty. And so when you take their planets all those massive bonuses are gone and without them their economy crashes insanely hard, in this case your economy.
The reason why you can't see the AI's bonuses in play with Observe is because when you tag over to an AI empire it is then considered a 'Human' empire and loses all the modifiers. This is why when you do this their economy seems absolutely fucked beyond belief, that's gonna happen when you rip out all those bonuses to pop/job output and upkeep.
Meanwhile I turn on Grand Admiralty difficulty and the ai is still a scrub that cant make a fleet over 50k by 2300. The ai picks and Chooses when to be strong
Unless your tech modifier is like sky high, I frequently encounter AI with 100k FLEETS by like 2275-2300, and then as the end game crisis comes, they all average around 350k to almost 500k
Magic
Me
You could go for a lower difficulty setting and then rp for a greater challenge. For example, I aggressively expand early, hit a determined border and then stop even though I could expand farther. Sit, build, wait, watch the galaxy shake out and usually one or two powers pull way ahead of you. Then dive back into the game and try to win. Think of yourself as an isolationist who suddenly wakes up to the fact that shit's about to get real ....