Flexible Difficulty

[Milaga]

I've taken a break for FfH for a while and was looking forward to playing my first 0.34 game. I had wanted to play Auric Ulvin as he was intended for a while, so I was pretty excited and set up a huge game with 13 civs, 4 evil including myself, 4 good, 3 neutral and 2 random to add an element of surprise. I also noticed the Flexible Difficulty feature so I clicked that. Since I find Prince somewhat easy and Monarch has a tendancy to crush me, especially if I get a slow start, it sounded perfect.

I started very isolated, blocked from the rest of the civs by the Pristinus Pass (or whatever). I had decent resources and a fair number of grassland to counter the tundra, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

In a few turns, one of Cardith Lorda's scouts pops in to say hello and is immediately squashed by the gargoyles. There are a number of grassland hills near me suspiciously without trees so I beeline Bronze Working and decide to Warrior rush him. Sure enough, bronze just outside the city borders. Once I get God King I start building up my army.

Cardith Lorda seems to be doing very well for himself, with almost double my score. I seem to be on par with Ljosofar and Sidar, so I build an extra large army to be safe. Sure enough, he's got several settlements just past the gargoyle pass and I quickly steamroll over 3. It is then I notice the difficulty has increased to Monarch. Excellent.

There's a bottleneck to get into his larger cities and I get held up but eventually take two cities, leaving just his capital left. He had funneled all his forces back into the city, and there were about 6 or 7 warriors, some with hill defense. The city also has about 75% culture. I decide to build up another army to demolish him.

Just as I get my stack next to him for the final assault, I notice that the difficulty has advanced to Immortal. Not only that, but he has upgraded all his warriors to archers. With guerrilla. Defending a hill. I'm going to need seige weapons.

The army falls back to the closest city, but all the time I've spent with that monstrous stack in enemy territory has sapped all my plundered gold in maintenance. The maintenance fee is hurting, even with my army in town. I research construction after deciding to govern the empire as city states and build a seige workshop and a handful of catapults.

The difficulty is now on Diety and it's only turn 170. I'm at 0% research and losing money fast. The barbarians I hadn't been paying much attention to show up near the town I'd been stationing my army. There are a few stacks with about 8 lizardmen and 8 axemen, plus a smattering of goblins. Rather than risk losing those cottages that I desperately need I send my army to an easily defendable hill. The stacks attack and I lose a few highly promoted units. Unfortunately, by this time my economy has completely crashed and my units are on Strike.

Cardith Lorda has about 10 archers and a bunch of hunters. I manage to get the culture down to 15% before my last catapult falls apart from lack of maintenance. At this point I know I've lost. Even if I took the city, at Diety level I'm going to be too weak to ever recover. After deciding to restart, I decide to throw my stack at the city anyway. I get wiped out.

So ... this really sounds like the increasing difficulty challenge. I didn't check that one, I checked the Flexible Difficulty. Too bad, that really started off as a fun game. Is this a bug?

 

[Mailbox]

Were you in the top third of the scores the entire time? Because the difficulty will go all the way to Deity if you stay at the top of the score list and won't fall until you fall down to the bottom third as well.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I always play with flexible difficulty these days and sometimes I've experienced similar games

imho flexible difficulty would be better off based on score instead of "top third / bottom third" . say, if the player is #1 and his score is more than X% over the score of civ #2 , difficulty increases. similar for decreasing difficulty.

actually this would probably be pretty good for a "flexible, but not too much, difficulty" game option

 

[Valerarren]

I always play with flexible difficulty these days and sometimes I've experienced similar games

imho flexible difficulty would be better off based on score instead of "top third / bottom third" . say, if the player is #1 and his score is more than X% over the score of civ #2 , difficulty increases. similar for decreasing difficulty.

actually this would probably be pretty good for a "flexible, but not too much, difficulty" game option

These ideas seem quite good to me.

I've had the same experience as the original poster. What sometimes seems to happen is you can grow to a certain point where due to size or wonder-type reasons, you end up in the top one third for a long time. During this time it'll ramp up to deity quickly and you'll end up quickly and seriously out-teched.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I agree. Being in the top or bottom third when everyone is within a hundred points of each other doesn't mean much. Being thousands of points ahead or behind most civs is a big deal.

 

[slowcar]

i also agree here, the mechanism should work on relative points, not the list ranking.
deity is reached quite quickly and unexperienced players will be crushed by the economic implications.

 

[Milaga]

unexperienced players will be crushed by the economic implications.

Yup. Checking relative scores would be better.

 

[Khai]

I just played a game and it's still bugged or not working as the tool tip indicates.

My reading of the tool tip is that the difficulty level will go up by ONE point total (IE Prince to Monarch) if I'm in the top third and then down one (Prince to Noble) if I'm in the bottom three.

To me this makes more sense, I'm playing flexible difficulty to get around a potentially slow start and then have the difficulty ramp up a bit, not to have the AI get such outrageous tech and economy benefits that it isn't fun for me (For me it destroys the atmosphere and strategy when the AI doesn't play at least somewhat by the rules...)

If this is working as intended could you create one more option as 'less flexible difficulty' in which the difficulty can vary +/- 1 level throughout the game? This would be nice as I could still have a challenge without the feeling that the AI is rampantly cheating.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

it is working as intended. if it gets to deity and you don't like that, you should try starting the game with a higher difficulty so that it doesn't skyrocket. you see, the AI is TERRIBLE in the early game so it's not uncommon that they get very far behind ( which brings the difficulty up a lot ) . starting at a higher difficulty setting offsets this by making them start with some free extra techs and units. this should keep the difficulty much more stable