Variable Difficulty Feedback

[vorshlumpf]

I haven't seen much commenting on this feature (though I don't see much of the forum anymore). How is this working for people?

I just tried my first .34 game. I was very excited to try this variable difficulty feature.

My game:
- 19 civs
- Marathon speed
- Aggressive AI, raging barbs, and other standard stuff

I figured I'd start same as everyone else in the game: Noble. Soon into the game, I noticed that I was at Warlord. Huh? I didn't realize I was doing that poorly, especially since I got one of the sweetest starting positions ever.

I climbed into the top of the pack (of 19 total civs) and the difficulty quickly shot up to Deity. I was holding my own for a while, but got sandwiched by stacks of armies from two different civs on each side of me (I have no idea how they could make so many units, so quickly, and all of them at least 4th level - welcome to deity level, I suppose).

So, it's not looking good for this feature. I know it's only one game, but I don't think I like the behaviour of the difficulty level changes.

Does anyone know if this functionality is in the Python code?

 

[WCH]

Yeah, this feature sucks. Changes way too quickly. Doesn't work at all with Infernals/Mercurians... as Infernals I was doing quite well, poised to take over the world, and on Settler difficulty. WTH.

 

[civ_king]

oh... i think the AI gets free xp the high the difficulty, i think MagisterCultuum or Kael said it

 

[Grey Fox]

The one time I used it I started at emperor or immortal, and after a while I was stuck at deity even though I was at the last three in rank.

 

[vorshlumpf]

Hmm, that's too bad. I've been fighting with Civ to get a balanced game experience, and so when I saw this Variable Difficulty thing I got quite excited.

 

[ShadowDrgn]

I've used it on quick speed and thought it was great. I suppose the number of turns between difficulty changes doesn't depend on your game speed?

 

[[NWO]_Valis]

I was also very exited with this option. Started 2 games with it. My main goal was to even the odds at start so the AI wont get the second settler [I am aiming to win at deity but with no success] but later play against everything the AI has in its slew.

It did work as I hoped but there were some issues too. When I got too warmongery and destroyed two of my opponents and nearly killed the third my economy plunged cause I took over some of the cities doubling my city amount. After some turns the difficulty dropped again from Deity to Monarch cause my research plunged.

My suggestion would be that the difficulty change happens only 3 time in game or one time per 50/75 turns. Othr would be that the player would get a prompt askim him if he wants to change the level he is playing on [maybe even give the player a permanent option to change the difficulty up or down all the time]

 

[MagisterCultuum]

No, I tend to think making it change less often (or especially setting an arbitrary maximum number of changes) would just make it worse.


The "Top Third/Bottom Third" thing has to go. I love the option, but those are very arbitrary conditions. When all the scores are close together it means essentially nothing, and when you actually fall really far behind or get really far head it doesn't do enough. It really needs to be based on how far ahead or behind you are. Calculating the standard deviation or something might work, but if that is too much work how about just say that if you are more than double or less than half the average score you move down/up? Somehow making it so that the requirements for moving up/down are lower at lower/higher difficulties could be good too.

 

[tharg]

One use for the variable difficulty, might be to set up a Hyborem or Basium game. If you start off on Deity, it’s likely you wont get to Infernal pact first. I haven’t tried it but it seems to make sense.

 

[Xuenay]

The description of it is rather confusing. When I read it, I figured that your difficulty would at most move three steps up or down from your starting difficulty, but I've had games where I was bolted up to Deity from Noble. Does it work so that if you e.g. end up as number 3 your difficulty goes up by one, then if you fall to number 4 and go up to 3 again your difficulty goes up again (which is the only way I can explain the current behavior)?

If so, that doesn't make sense. You could theoretically start at Settler, then spend a while alternating between the top three positions before falling squarely to a middle position and spending the rest of the game on Deity. When you fall away from a position that caused your difficulty to be notched up a level, your difficulty should be decreased back. The same applies for when your difficulty gets decreased.

 

[Demus]

the difficulty goes up every X turns when you're in the top 3, and down every X turns you're in the bottom 3.
Basically, if you can manage yourself in the middle of the field on deity, then deity is the correct difficulty you should be on at that stage of the game

 

[Xuenay]

Oh, I see. I thought from the description that the difficulty only gets altered once, when you reach each position. Hmm.

 

[xienwolf]

The way I would prefer it is for your rank to directly control your difficulty. First place means Deity, last means Settler. Specific ranking is gained by dividing the number of players alive by the number of difficulty options, and assigning you the correct setting the moment your rank changes. (as num players goes < num difficulties, remove top/bottom difficulty type so that in 1vs1 you are stuck on Noble)



But the MAIN issue I feel is that the difficulty change affects the future, not the current. If the AI built 3 stacks of deathwhile you are at Deity, you will not see them get any weaker (or lose the free XP) when you get knocked to last place and are defending your final city at Settler difficulty.

 

[slowcar]

vorshlumpf you played with some brutal settings there. ffh is not balanced against marathon speed, something well known in the forums i would suppose.
aggressive AI and deity level with that many AIs is kind of a suicide course.

i like the feature very much, but i played deity anyhow before it was released. would be great if it would get a bit of refinement.

all in all i dislike the free promotions a lot more, especially with the flawed way the AI produces troops. without relying to unfair things (like magic) it has become a lot harder to defeat the AI without it being an inch smarter.

maybe we should hire blake or something

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I just got to thinking that it could be a good idea not to give the AI free xp based on the difficulty level, but to give it a discount in the amount of xp needed to gain promotions, like how Charismatic works. For one thing, that would mean that their current units could get more promotions immediately instead of just making their new units stronger. This also means that when the difficulty goes down that the units requirements to get levels will go back up, so getting new promotions would be harder.

 

[icarussc]

Since I was also excited when I saw this feature, I may as well throw in my two cents.

I have no skills at all, so I started at Warlord, and I wanted to play a defensive fight. I picked Ljosfar with whats-his-name as the leader (Defensive and Raiders, but I don't remember his name).

Like the rest of you, my game pretty quickly ramped up to Deity. Unlike the rest of you (probably because of my freakishly high defensive powers afforded by the most defensive civ in the game), I was able to win without too much trouble. It also helped that I had a level 22 Gilden Silveric by the end. He was my army.

It was a lot of fun, but I was basically stacking the deck as much in my favor as possible. MC's suggestions seem like good ones to make the feature more generally useful.

Overall, though, a cool improvement. I liked it