carn112004

Join Date 05/2012

Please include the wonderful feature, which practically no game has and which is:

Difficulty sliders.

Reason:

Civ4 on deity sucks for being too hard, on immortal its boring fast.

Civ5 the same.

Civ3 the same.

Age of Wonders 2 sucks on hardest diffculty for being too easy, like Heroes of Mightnmagic all versions.

GalCiv has similar issues.

The reason is simply, that the difficulty steps are steps and if the fun would be just between two difficulty levels, fun is gone. The solution is fortunately simple:

All (or nearly all) difficulty settings are anyway coded in some variables (e.g. production bonus for AI, health bonus, research bonus, XP bonus, which AI subrountines are switched on, ...).

Therefore for solution, its just one sub-menu accessible via option "Difficulty: Custom", with sliders (or fields to type in values or whatever) which directly change these difficulty variables, which are anyway changed by difficulty settings.

E.g. want to have tough instead of numerous AI opponents +200% HP, +0% production, which will be a different game experience as simply a high difficulty.E.g. diverse opponents, one AI opponent could be given swarm bonuses (production bonus for many units), one AI heroic ones (XP bonus, better souvereign) and the last just durable troops (kingdom/empire bonus points, health bonus), which will be a completely different game from simply 3 hard AIs.

A nice addition would be, that player bonus or malus could be set that way as well, e.g. player +100%xp bonus, AI +200% production could yield a "hero wades through hordes" game experience without being too difficult.

As a sidenote, i know exactly 1 single game with difficulty sliders, Empire from 1987, no other game ever seen again with them, always wondered why. Anyone idea why?

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You can mod this if you want.

You will want to enter the "CoreDifficultyLevels" XML document, and change those around. You can see the path, although I have installed FE in a custom directory, the XML file is still located in "Data/English" from the FE install directory.

PS. Supreme Commander 2 had moddable AI to the point of choosing between 56% or 57% production bonuses, if you wanted to

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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Damn thats a good idea!

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Ok, apparently nobody cares about such a feature.

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athelasloraiel

Join Date 12/2011

+10

excellent idea. shouldnt be hard to add to UI?

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Elder Scrolls games have difficulty sliders.

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Quoting ,

quoting post

Difficulty sliders.

Reason:

Civ4 on deity sucks for being too hard, on immortal its boring fast.

Civ5 the same.

Civ3 the same.

Age of Wonders 2 sucks on hardest diffculty for being too easy, like Heroes of Mightnmagic all versions.

GalCiv has similar issues.

The reason is simply, that the difficulty steps are steps and if the fun would be just between two difficulty levels, fun is gone. The solution is fortunately simple:

All (or nearly all) difficulty settings are anyway coded in some variables (e.g. production bonus for AI, health bonus, research bonus, XP bonus, which AI subrountines are switched on, ...).

Therefore for solution, its just one sub-menu accessible via option "Difficulty: Custom", with sliders (or fields to type in values or whatever) which directly change these difficulty variables, which are anyway changed by difficulty settings.

E.g. want to have tough instead of numerous AI opponents +200% HP, +0% production, which will be a different game experience as simply a high difficulty.E.g. diverse opponents, one AI opponent could be given swarm bonuses (production bonus for many units), one AI heroic ones (XP bonus, better souvereign) and the last just durable troops (kingdom/empire bonus points, health bonus), which will be a completely different game from simply 3 hard AIs.

A nice addition would be, that player bonus or malus could be set that way as well, e.g. player +100%xp bonus, AI +200% production could yield a "hero wades through hordes" game experience without being too difficult.

As a sidenote, i know exactly 1 single game with difficulty sliders, Empire from 1987, no other game ever seen again with them, always wondered why. Anyone idea why?

THis game doesn't need difficulty sliders. Just set the difficulty of the world AND the opponents to ridiculous and then make all the AI opponents (maximum allowed on the map) as ONE TEAM together and you'll have all the difficulty you need. If you beat that then you shouldn't be playing games you should be making them.

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It's a good idea, modding the XML to add custom difficulty levels that are between the existing ones. It raises all sorts of interesting questions, like can the AI beat you if it has all these cool cheats, an HP bonus for example, but has an economic crunch/slump going on?

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Quoting willie sanderson,

reply 7

The problem isnt that game is too easy to beat, the problem is difficulty x too easy and x+1 too hard. And/or that while beating higher difficulty level is possible, it narrows down game options.

E.g. civ3-4 on medium difficulty wonder building nice, on high absolutely stupid. In civ5 they have altered AI bonuses such that AI doesnt get production bonus for wonder building -> on high difficulty civ 5 wonder building not absolutely stupid-> difficulty does not just make game more difficult, it alters game.

In FE for example the usefullness of the wealthy trait changes strongly with difficulty level, on medium levels its +500 gildar, on high its +50% cities because the 500 gildar translate into pumping out 2 pioneers earlier allowing to claim 6 instead of 4 city locations, due to faster AI expansion. If the difficulty increase would for example focus more on higher HP bonus instead of production bonus, the usefulness of wealthy is less effected.

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I agree. Being able to alter exactly specific parameters of the difficulty instead of bumping up everything by a notch could make for a highly customizeable experience and thus very interesting games.

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Quoting Kongdej,

reply 1

You can mod this if you want.
Reduced 29%Original 1920 x 1080

You will want to enter the "CoreDifficultyLevels" XML document, and change those around. You can see the path, although I have installed FE in a custom directory, the XML file is still located in "Data/English" from the FE install directory.

PS. Supreme Commander 2 had moddable AI to the point of choosing between 56% or 57% production bonuses, if you wanted to

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

You know what this is:

"<AIIntelligenceFactor>10.0</AIIntelligenceFactor>"

It cannot (should not) be the variable controlling the AI intelligence, as it rises with every difficulty level, although full AI should be on with challenging.

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more generally:

"AIDifficultyLevel InternalName="AIDiffLvl_Hard"> <DisplayName>Hard</DisplayName> <AIEconomicRatio>1.1</AIEconomicRatio> <AIFOWCheat>0</AIFOWCheat> <AIHPRatio>1.0</AIHPRatio> <AIStartingFundsRatio>5.0</AIStartingFundsRatio> <AISovereignHPRatio>1.0</AISovereignHPRatio> <AIUsesCombatMagic>1</AIUsesCombatMagic> <AIIntelligenceFactor>1.5</AIIntelligenceFactor>"

10% eco bonus, but 400% more start funds?

Instinctively i would say the AI should not get much boost bonus but more continous bonus. A boost means the AI power starts high but increases slowly, meanind human must just "holdout".

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Quoting carn112004,

reply 12

Instinctively i would say the AI should not get much boost bonus but more continous bonus.

Someone thought otherwise
That said, I would tend to agree with you, but it doesn't matter much to me

Quoting carn112004,

reply 11

You know what this is:

"<AIIntelligenceFactor>10.0</AIIntelligenceFactor>"

It cannot (should not) be the variable controlling the AI intelligence, as it rises with every difficulty level, although full AI should be on with challenging.

Hmm, my old brains thinks about it.
In truth I think only "Frogboy" knows what it is.
From OLD posts, I remember it from being AI intelligence, something about how long the AI uses to do calculations.
But I think it have a cap...
But honestly, I don't know/remember.

Try switching it to 9000 and see what happens

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2415

GalCiv for OS/2 had this. People didn't like it for some reason. But maybe we're reaching a point where we can bring it back.

In the code, we use a number anyway.

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 14

GalCiv for OS/2 had this. People didn't like it for some reason. But maybe we're reaching a point where we can bring it back.

In the code, we use a number anyway.

Had what in particular?... Cursed curiosity...

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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StevenAus22

Join Date 06/2010

+110

Difficulty sliders. As said in the first line of the OP.

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Quoting StevenAus,

reply 16

Difficulty sliders. As said in the first line of the OP.

Nah, can't have it be too easy to use...

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 14

GalCiv for OS/2 had this. People didn't like it for some reason. But maybe we're reaching a point where we can bring it back.

In the code, we use a number anyway.

Thanks for considering this, the intent is not to replace the standard difficulties, but as an addition.

In that game it was obvious, as 6.0 HP means +500% HP, the game was smooth sail with outgrowing all AIs economically (was an awesome start location), the only thing keeping me realy nervous were those 500 HP juggernauts at my border and the nagging question, if there is something in the AI logic compelling it to start a war even although the power rating indicates AI would lose (which probably would not have been true, 500 HP is just a lot). Problem was solved by someone else declaring war on him and winning.

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 14

GalCiv for OS/2 had this. People didn't like it for some reason. But maybe we're reaching a point where we can bring it back.

In the code, we use a number anyway.

It depends on how it was presented, I suppose. A setting that says "Easy" and "Normal" is more intuitive than an abstract number.

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Quoting Mtn_Man,

reply 19

It depends on how it was presented, I suppose. A setting that says "Easy" and "Normal" is more intuitive than an abstract number.

Therefore:

"Therefore for solution, its just one sub-menu accessible via option "Difficulty: Custom", ", which ensures one can safely ignore the complication if one doesnt care. An additional more complicated setup is already included via option to set the AI enemies individually and giving them differing difficulty.

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Quoting carn112004,

reply 17

As a sidenote from the test game i had with economy bonus ~ 1.1, start bonus ~ 2.0, AI intelligence bonus 2.0 and hp bonus 6.0, i noticed that power rating and therefore probably AI is not aware of the HP bonus. Which would mean that the AI is too cautious on ridicolous (already having a +50%) and insane in deciding to attack, as it does not consider its HP advantage.

In that game it was obvious, as 6.0 HP means +500% HP, the game was smooth sail with outgrowing all AIs economically (was an awesome start location), the only thing keeping me realy nervous were those 500 HP juggernauts at my border and the nagging question, if there is something in the AI logic compelling it to start a war even although the power rating indicates AI would lose (which probably would not have been true, 500 HP is just a lot). Problem was solved by someone else declaring war on him and winning.

I understand now, why in that game expansion and outpacing the AI was so easy due the AI not calculating its HP bonus.

The monster difficulty was set to ridicolous, meaning the monster number was noticeably increased compared to no bonus. The AI had little production bonus, meaning compared to standard no bonus game the AI had relatively the same or less number of units available for beating back wildlife. While the HP bonus would have easily taken care of that, the AI does not know about it, therefore its expansion speed was equal or slower than AI expansion in a no bonus game - said simply it probably calculated "Uh, have not yet sufficient fight power (cause i do not know i have a tremondous HP bonus vastly offsetting any disadvantage in numbers) to clear wild life -> do not build pioneer now as i cannot hold expansion".

So if i shift AI bonus from production to HP, i should leave so much production bonus that wildlife does not pose a problem for AI.

As a further note that means having AIs in game with differing HP bonuses (e.g. 3 AIs with expert, 1 with ridicolous) is at least problematic, because it will screw decision making of the AIs, especially a lower HP bonus AI might due to not considering HP bonus assume it is superior and attack, although the others side HP bonus actually means it is inferior.

AI programming looks complicated, keep up the good work Frogboy .

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