Looking for advice / Changing habitability from 1.0 to 0.25x

[KingAlamar]

TL/DR: I can handle Admiral difficult with no mods and 1.0 habitability. If I use Glavius and 0.25x habitability what difficulty level should I shoot for?? Crisis strength??

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Recently I've been using the following game settings:

• Small 400 star galaxy
• 2 [additional] guaranteed starting planets
• 1.0 habitability, 1.0 tech speed, etc.
• No mods + Ironman
• Admiral difficulty
• No Advanced Starts
• High AI aggression
• Max FEs, Max Maruders, Max "standard" AI Empires
• Crisis strength: 1.25 x [too easy now ...]
• Delay midgame by 25 years ; Delay endame by 50 years.

Because of the brain-dead AI and tiresome micro [if you don't play really tall] I think I'd like to change the following:

• Use Glavius AI mod
• Reduce habitability to 0.25x
• Reduce [or eliminate] the crisis delay because I'm delaying WAY too long so the crisis events are boring
• Opt into the BETA test branch

If I do the above what difficulty settings should I use? I've heard Ensign is difficult but I'm not sure if playing w/ habitability would really hurt the AI? Does scaling AI make sense here -- I.E. if I play on Admiral now and assuming I survive "early" then the rest of the game is a non-event.

 

[Evangeline]

I have no experience with the Glavius mod, so can't really advise you on that, although it seems to me that scaling AI would make sense for keeping it challenging. WHat you need to keep in mind is that 0.25 habitable planets doesn't actually divide their total number by five. Especially in small galaxies, it's hardly noticeable due to the large amount of special planets that are hardcoded to appear in all galaxies.

In a huge galaxy, you'd have around 207 (0.25) instead of 255 (1.0) habitable planets, in a tiny galaxy, there would be about 47 instead of 52. Here's a link to a relevant discussion:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...bitable-planet-slider-work-correctly.1085022/

I'm not sure if this still applies to 2.2 since this was tested before 2.2 came out. If you'd like fewer but large planets, why not choose the life-seeded trait (only gaia worlds) together with something xenophobic which prevents other species from migrating into your empire. And if you still grow too much, just turn on sector ai management for the majority of your planets so they'll build automatically. Just food for thought, hope it helps!

 

[KingAlamar]

I read over the thread and it makes some sense. Each empire will always generate their "guaranteed planets". FEs & Marauders always generate the same no matter what settings ...

I guess I could just go to no guaranteed habitables. That would cut 20+ planets [with max empires thus max crowding]. Then minimizing the slider would have closer to it's intended impact ... Not perfect but I'll see what happens.

 

[Evangeline]

That's a good idea, good luck and let us know how it went!

 

[KingAlamar]

From what I can tell the Glavius AI mod is probably working better than vanilla AI would in the same situation HOWEVER I think my game settings are wrecking the AI's ability to keep up from a fundamental level.

I opted to go with 0.25 habitability, no guaranteed habitable planets, Glavius Mod, 2.24 beta, Captain difficulty, Ironman, Small galaxy, max # of empires/FEs/Marauders. After hearing reports that Ensign was really challenging I figured that I'd give Captain a shot -- that's two levels of difficulty lower than my last Admiral run in vanilla.

Except for a single Fanatic Purifier[FP] I was Equivalent or better across the board to all empires by 2030 In 2050 I'm now superior to all standard empires --- took a while to catch FP as they've been expanding like crazy.

Basically the lack of planets, esp. the guaranteed planets, is crippling the AI's economy and thus their ability to keep up even in the early game.

My thoughts are if you try the Glavius AI mod with settings similar to mine maybe you shouldn't drop ANY difficulty levels [if you were on 1.0 habitability w/ 2 guaranteed planets] because that's just how crippled the AI is when it only has one or maybe two planets in its whole empire.

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As for the habitability slider it's either broken OR I got fiendishly lucky. In my prior game I only had 12 planets at 2400. I've got 9 in 2060 and might have 10 relatively soon [without warring at all].