masochistic difficulty setting

[Conf]

I got a little bored and decided to try this.
I then gave up laughing

 

[Supreme Shogun]

So how long did you last ? Get a few colonys or what ?

 

[Conf]

I lasted quite a bit at first, I got a few colonies. I played with rare stars, occasional planets. So I was on par with the A.I at first because I simply bought 3 colony ships. And there was not much more room to expand.

But after that. Oh my, the A.I is like a locomotive that just keeps accelerating in speed. Before long he had all the resources, I saw fleets and fleets and fleets of fighters, so many I wondered how on earth he managed to crank out so many constructors and fighters. Felt like he must have build a fleet every turn or so, and still manage to keep his economy going, his research going.

After seeing that I gave up. Quit the game, restartet with cheat mode. And decided for fun to try one more time, except with infinite cash, only that.
After a dozen turns or so I gave up again, even with infinite cash it's tough. Me setting the sliders accordingly to someome with infinite cash, planets tailored to someone with infinite cash, amazing the A.I somehow managed to keep up well . Anyway I don't see how you can by playing fair. And I think at these levels the A.I does a fair bit of cheating itself

p.s. A small note, I always play with all victory conditions off, so that means everyone needs to be obliterated .

 

[Supreme Shogun]

That high a level the AI does get bonus cash in addition to playing as smart as it can. Good luck you'll need it.

 

[matthewv]

If you are playing with infinate cash then The AI has no bonus over and about you. The only way the AI cheats on the highest difficultly is that they have a small economic bonus.

 

[SonicX]

A small economic bonus ? No, a 100 % economic bonus ... quite a diff

 

[Conf]

And I've seen on normal that the A.I starts with a xeno lab+factory prebuild.
Whereas the player does not

 

[SonicX]

They could've been immediately bought ... play on "Battle of the Gods" (full tech, 30k money) and sometimes you'll see a message like "The Arceans have built Economic Capital" within 1 second upon game load.

 

[Conf]

But they start with two buildings and you can only buy one.
I looked at their planets at the start of the first turn, before pressing end of turn. Their cash also indicated no buying.

I used ctrl+u mapreveal and ctrl+shift+z to look at the planets.

 

[JavalTigar]

Sorry for the bump but I don't like starting new threads if there is something similar already in play.

Regarding difficulty settings:

Has all my Civ playing payed off in spades or is the AI incredibly shafted at lower levels? I played the first GalCiv didn't really get sucked in by it. (felt the interface was too clunky and overall feeling just didn't grab me)
But all the reviews for GC2 kept using it in the same sentence with MOO2 (best damn civ type game until Civ4). So I DL the demo and fell in love.

After buying the retail model, I started a sandbox game on easy/small galaxy to really get the feel for the total package. I won on influence pretty quickly with zero resistance from the AI. So moved up to normal/large and the AI is still showing very little developement. I out class all 4 of my opponents by at least 3 to 5 times in all aspects charted on the graphs.

Do I really need it to be set on Suicidal/Gianormous to really feel challenged??

Or am I not setting something else right?

PS. I am playing a custom race, industrialist with my bonus traits going to growth, research and morale. Trying for a very balanced civ.

 

[Vizzini]

So moved up to normal/large and the AI is still showing very little developement. I out class all 4 of my opponents by at least 3 to 5 times in all aspects charted on the graphs.

Do I really need it to be set on Suicidal/Gianormous to really feel challenged??

Nope - a single bump to "Challenging" where all your opponents have their intelligence set to Bright should be anough to give you a run for your money and if not, Intelligent almost certainly will.

From the manual/WIKI

• Fool - The AI's economy is run at 10% of normal, no higher level algorithms are enabled
• Beginner - The AI's economy is run at 25% of normal, no higher level algorithms are enabled
• Sub-Normal - The AI's economy is run at 50% of normal, no higher level algorithms are enabled
• Normal - The AI's economy is run at 75% of normal, AI evaluates common human tactics
• Bright - The AI's economy is run at 100% of normal, AI evaluates most known human tactics
• Intelligent - The AI's economy is run at 100% of normal, AI expertly picks abilities and all known human tactics are searched and countered
• Gifted - Unknown
• Genius - The AI's economy is run at 125% of normal, All AI algorithms in place (same as above)
• Incredible - The AI's economy is run at 200% of normal, All AI algorithms are in place (same as above)

 

[JavalTigar]

OMG!! Vizzini!! You were sooo right!!

I bumped the difficulty up 2 places past normal (tough, I think) I am now in a struggle to see if I can keep up. I'm barely holding on to 8 sectors and rushing to get my military in place so I don't look like to tasty of a target.

I might be in over my head but I will ride it out and try to learn from my mistakes.