Difficulty Level

[Snoipah]

Vanilla scaling is pretty horrible. AI is basically as bad as Ensign... They don't have bonus at beginning and once they get bonuses, they suck so hard anyway that this won't matter. I've tried "Grand Admiral+Scaling" and "Grand Admiral+Scaling+Advanced start on everybody" and each time the AI was a joke. Commodore and above on the other hand can easily kill you if you are unlucky and have a strong neighbor that hates you. 50%+ bonuses on all jobs are pretty insane... I mean they get those bonuses on every step of a resource chain.

- Produce minerals: 150 instead of 100
- Produce consumer goods: 75 instead of 50, and still have 50 minerals from the last bonus left
- Science: 150 each instead of 100, and still have 25 consumer goods and 50 minerals additionally...

(same for a lesser degree with alloys)

And they seem to go pretty crazy on alloys with those bonuses, create a huge fleet at the beginning. Though if you survive that, they horribly fail in expansion and (for some reason I don't know) science and also don't update their ships. Thus the game will become boring later nevertheless...

Thus, IMHO the only way to currently get a challenging game that isn't pure luck in what neighbors you get is using one of my Dynamic Difficulty mods. There you get set Captain as starting difficulty (to make sure the AI does not instantly fail in their economy as they do on Ensign) and do a scaling starting from there. Or increase/decrease the bonuses manually if stuff becomes too easy/too hard.

NEVER use scaling, it doesn't help them get out of their downward spiral.

I wish there was an option to set "what year scaling finishes" seperate from "end game start year" because the Crisis ends up kicking their butts if you turn on scaling.

 

[Kryndude]

NEVER use scaling, it doesn't help them get out of their downward spiral.

I wish there was an option to set "what year scaling finishes" seperate from "end game start year" because the Crisis ends up kicking their butts if you turn on scaling.

Well his mod does that. You can turn off scaling whenever you want mid game. I'm currently trying to figure out which numbers I want with his mod.

 

[TarnishedSteel]

AI is currently borked in a number of ways. They routinely fail to produce enough housing for their pops. They hyperfocus in certain areas, so they're always flush with some resources and not others. This causes numerous budgetary shortfalls, which exacerbates other issues (e.g., being short on energy causes you to mine fewer minerals). All AI enemies have difficulty taking planets in war, save by or against Threat AI (that is, those AI who declare and can be declared on for total war). By late game, I often have more population than the next five empires combined, even as a pacifist. I haven't tried Glavius's mod, though. I suppose I'll do that next (after writing another grad school application and schoolwork, and...)

 

[Gratak]

NEVER use scaling, it doesn't help them get out of their downward spiral.

I wish there was an option to set "what year scaling finishes" seperate from "end game start year" because the Crisis ends up kicking their butts if you turn on scaling.

Funny that you reply like that to me. The day Paradox released scaling for the very first time I started developing the mod to fix it and the mod has been released for quite a while. I was just testing the vanilla thing in the new version to check whether anything improved (and to collect the achievements). But yeah, you are right. It certainly has not improved.

Though I'm pretty sure that you suggestion wouldn't help too much. I think a faster scaling that still starts at zero would still lead to a weak AI (unless you make the scaling finish in less than 50 years). You can test this with my mod though.

 

[KingAlamar]

I think a faster scaling that still starts at zero would still lead to a weak AI (unless you make the scaling finish in less than 50 years). You can test this with my mod though.

I agree. The AI needs help early or a player will run all over it.

What I'd like to see in vanilla Stellaris [or a mod]:

• Ability to set the beginning difficulty
• Ability to set the ending difficulty [independent of the above]
• At what game year to hit "ending difficulty"

Any additional tweaks / controls beyond this would be icing on the cake.

This way you could start on Commodore and end up on Grand Admiral if you'd like. AI gets some starting bonuses but those bonuses aren't overwhelming militarily and as the game goes on the AI gets more bonuses to compensate for it "falling behind".

Combine AI fixes [mods?] with the above and you may find yourself with something really immersive -- or at least more flexibly challenging.