What difficulty level do you normally play?

[him_15]

I am just curious of what difficulty level everyone normally play with, and how much do you boost the AI? (custom setting) For me I normally play with hard and boost the AI by one level, I feel that would give me a little bit of a challenge without overpowering the AI and over-weaken me.

 

[BrotherJonathan]

I tend to play on Normal with no AI boosts to make the game as "fair" as possible. But I also play with an AI mod, so that might skew things a bit for me.

 

[blue_yonder]

I used to play on veteran, no boosts, but have recently discovered it's more fun to go normal and play for casualties instead. So I set myself a target for taking out Italy with under 50k losses, then Germany with fewer than 100k etc. It's a lot more immersive and makes me play more carefully.

 

[coffeelingfine]

Just normal with no AI boosts

Also, tried expert AI but didn't like that it gave a bunch of buffs to the AI even with all settings at normal

 

[Avatar2312]

Regular, when trying out a new nation (finishing the game is not mandatory) and then veteran, when I get the basics. No boosts, because always ironman and always historical focus off.

 

[Hoi Neuling]

I play on Medium difficulty. No advantages for me or the AI.

 

[Aldahen]

I do not know if they have shared more recent statistics, but this is from 04/2018 when they added the new difficulty levels:

https://forumcontent.paradoxplaza.com/public/342017/upload_2018-4-4_15-56-30.png

Here is the full post:

HOI4 Dev Diary - 1.5.2 Update #3 and Telemetry!

Hi everyone! Today we'll be talking some more about the continued post release work as well as share some cool numbers we have gotten from our telemetry system about how people play. 1.5.2 Patch Work has continued on the patch and it should be...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[squid_hills]

I play at whatever level the default difficulty is, because I'm good at this game, but I'm not great at it.

 

[RELee]

I play at the lowest difficulty because I'm old and lazy.

Edit: I suppose I should add "honest to a fault" as well.

 

[uberjedi]

Depends on what country I play.
When playing the UK, I usually boost the US so they actually can contribute to the war effort.

 

[el nora]

I play on normal difficulty with all my enemies set to maximum buffs. I really dislike being penalized for higher difficulty levels. I much prefer the AI get better, or if that's not a realistic option, that they get buffs.

 

[bitmode]

I play with everything on normal because I hate artificial modifiers.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Being penalized on higher difficulty levels to the point where you have to come up with completely different strategy (which won't necessarily be best regardless of difficulty) - is a bad idea, as is making AI fuel-independent. Kind of shows in telemetry.

 

[Leinad965]

Normal. Playing as a France on higher difficulty with negative PP is frustrating

 

[spartansociety]

I play with Expert AI which gives me a good challenge. Currently playing a Japan game and my Initial run actually failed because all my naval attacks and paradrops failed.

 

[pheonicia]

Regular, game is already hard enough.

 

[dasaard200]

Regular here, trying to 'grok' the new LaR set up; seeing how they apply TO ME, and learning how to counter this, while I figure out how to use these new methods on THEM .

 

[Orbs]

Normal became too easy for me, so I started doing veteran difficulty and that was ok but like many have mentioned I wanted a better opponent not me being weaker.

So I tried expert AI, my first mod ever after so many years of playing this game. Normal difficulty is more challenging than veteran, air is so much more important and the AI is definitely smarter. Also getting a lend lease is nice too.

Interesting side note late game expert AI definitely heats up my CPU something fierce and eventually my computer starts to sound like a Spitfire taking off. Nice for the realism but annoying for every Other Reason especially the heat in my game room during this hot summer And my computer acting like a coal-fired forge oven. This never ever happened on vanilla. It’s unit spam right?

Just hate how expert AI changed the equipment reinforce rate from 2 days to I don’t know what (varies by infrastructure and distance but God it feels like 6 months or more sometimes). I know that’s more realistic as 2 days is a joke, but 6 months? That’s frustrating. I like tweaking my templates and that huge lag makes it way more challenging/annoying To plan around.

 

[Harin]

I typically enjoy these type games on normal. That is because I believe when the developers try to build a gaming experience, their vision even, it is found strongest on normal.

So, I started off with Normal. After a short few thousand hours I started playing Veteran and eventually began to experiment with Elite. That is when I logged into the forums and starting asking questions. The forums got me interested in MP, so I decided to try and get really good at Elite and then try to join some MP games. Unfortunately, my work schedule changed and playing MP was not going to work for now.

Without MP in the future I stopped playing vanilla, because I really was not having much fun with Elite or even Veteran, for the most part. I felt so far outside the developer's vision that the tokens on the map could have represented anything from cavemen, to space ships. They sure did not represent WW2. The buffs/debuffs make the game to different. On Elite you have to use exploits to win and those exploits never felt like WW2, or any war of any time period for that matter.

Now I enjoy the mods I have seen mentioned in the forums and play them on normal. They are typically harder (but not hard) than normal vanilla, but feel much closer to a WW2 simulation than vanilla ever did.

 

[kettyo]

Just normal with no AI boosts

Also, tried expert AI but didn't like that it gave a bunch of buffs to the AI even with all settings at normal

I don't think EAI buffs the AI on default.