What difficulty setting do you play on?

[gathomas88]

What difficulty settings do you find provide the best challenge, without being absolutely ridiculous? I seem to be caught between something of a rock and a hard place myself.

Game before last, I played on Grand Admiral, with no scaling difficulty. It was fine, at first, but then I ran into a fanatic purifier who basically had the power level of an end game crisis (in the year 2350, they had 8000 fleet cap, basically all space combat tech, and dozens of fleets that clocked in at 50000+ a piece). I don't know if they were an advanced start, or what (no other empire was anywhere near that stupidly powerful), but the game was basically over, so I abandoned it.

Next game, I played Grand Admiral, with scaling. The first 100 years or so were fun (started off sandwiched between two hegemonic imperialists out for blood), but by 2350, I was bored. Every other power in the galaxy is pathetic in comparison to myself except for the Fallen Empires. The only regular empires which might have stood a chance, had all fallen victim to robot uprisings or civil wars and basically imploded. Even the Fed in the game is generally kind of pitiful.

Is there a "happy medium" here? I think scaling is the way to go, but the bonuses really need to max out by 2350s. The AI just isn't keeping up.

Without scaling, its just a complete cheating bastard and absolutely buries you as its bonuses snowball from day one onwards.

 

[Kryndude]

30% bonus to AI which is a bit higher than captain, and scaling difficulty from there with 1% increase every 2 years, which AFAIK is the equivalent of GA scaling in vanila.
I also add 1% combat bonus every 20 years to help the AI that usually fails to catch up with weapon tech after early game. Tried 1% every 10 years one time and it was way too much.
Crisis, FE, Marauders also get different degrees of combat bonuses. 400% for crisis, 60% for FE, 50% for leviathan, and 30% for marauders. I'm thinking of increasing crisis bonus and decreasing leviathan bonus for the next game.

Dynamic Difficulty 2.2.x - Ultimate Customization is the name of the mod. Pair that with Glavius AI mod and you'll get good games even in late game. Last game, I thought I was at that stage in which I've virtually won the game, but then got DOW from a neighboring equivalent status AI, easily defeated the first wave of 60k with my total 270k fleets, and then got recked by their second wave of 200k and only after losing my entier fleet I realized 16% combat bonus is too much. It was fun though.

 

[Typee]

Grand Admiral without scaling is the best.
Scaling difficulty doesn't help because
1 - it doesn't help the AI to recover once they are behind
2 - it makes all the AI get positively crushed by the crisis (since crisis size does scale too), making the endgame even easier for you

 

[hangry]

I typically play on grand admiral with scaling, but I'm not really happy with it. Scaling is a really good idea on paper, but the problem is that you can only scale the end difficulty and not the start difficulty. For example, I would like to be able to scale from commodore to grand admiral.

 

[Kryndude]

I typically play on grand admiral with scaling, but I'm not really happy with it. Scaling is a really good idea on paper, but the problem is that you can only scale the end difficulty and not the start difficulty. For example, I would like to be able to scale from commodore to grand admiral.

That's basically what I'm doing with mods.

 

[gathomas88]

Grand Admiral without scaling is the best.
Scaling difficulty doesn't help because
1 - it doesn't help the AI to recover once they are behind
2 - it makes all the AI get positively crushed by the crisis (since crisis size does scale too), making the endgame even easier for you

Yea, I'm honestly tempted to use the console to give all the major empires max resources at this point. Or, to possibly download that one mod that lets you manually set AI bonus levels. The shot in the arm might actually make them *move* a little bit.

My only major reason for not doing so already is concern over what it might do to the lag levels in the game.

 

[Tech Noir Synth]

GA + glavius, all empires are pathethic around 2300. At around 2350 you can easily challenge fallen empires. It helps to move crisis date earlier and increase crisis strength, aswell as increasing research time.

 

[trojan1234]

GA no scaling.

I agree it becomes too much, one of 4-5 games I spawned next to genocidal empire and had to quit in 20-30 years but other than that, AI needs that buff from starts because they are dumb.

 

[Magdaki]

Captain with Glavius mod, but I don't play optimally.

 

[KingAlamar]

I'm not at the level of the other posters but then again I don't claim to be an awesome player either ....

I like Glavius AI Mod + Admiral + no scaling + max crowded galaxy + high AI aggression + NO advanced starts + Ironman. If you play moderately well [even if you have self-imposed role play restrictions] you're almost guaranteed a win. The early game could trip you up if you don't have any combat bonuses and get a bad draw on neighbors but, unfortunately, that's about all I could give you.

I wish that we had more control over scaling. I think starting on Admiral and then cutting over to Grand Admiral in mid game (??) would be about right for me.

FYI: I did think I was going to lose last game. Played a Synthetic Ascension empire, with minimal galactic planets, not militaristic at all. Was barely winning the War in Heaven but probably should have lost against the crisis. Then the patch came, buffed the snot out of my empire, and it was a cake walk. YMMV.

 

[PanzerMan7]

I play admiral. It gives me a good run for my money. Scaling difficulty is a no go. Even on grand admiral I'll snowball

 

[Kami-sama]

I play Commodore since I design my empires for roleplaying rather than synergy. No scaling difficulty, I tried it with Grand Admiral once and like everyone said you snowball the AI.

 

[Catastrophy]

Normal, but haven't finished a single PT yet. I kinda get to point where I seem to outpace AI and then think of more interesting Civ to play and do that.

 

[Kunae]

There is no difficulty setting in this game. There is only "how much should the computer cheat", settings.

The AI is the same no matter the cheat setting.

 

[Slynx]

admiral to grand admiral. sometimes with advanced ai, sometimes without. with mod that force all leviathans and stuff to spawn and the one that enable multiple crisis. oh, and with gravius ai
0 gateways and 0 wormholes (to reduce lag, it helps)

 

[RoverStorm]

I normally play on Captain because I usually play with friends, and they consider AI cheats as a huge buff to Xenophile players (or anyone lucky enough to get good defense pact neighbors). No bonuses (Ensign) just doesn't seem to let the AI do anything though; so we give them the captain bonuses so they get a slight boost without being so blatant that conquering a planet from the AI obliterates our economy.

I think they'd be happy with GA if player VASSALS got the same bonuses because then it doesn't matter if you have vassals or allies; all AI's that fight for you get the same bonuses. Buuut since vassals contribute in some way to the player's economy (20% naval capacity for vassals, 25% minerals+energy for tributaries, NC and Energy for Subsidiaries) and cannot refuse a call to war, I get why vassals are not buffed the same way.

 

[Terkhev]

Always Grand Admiral (no scaling) + only advanced starts + Glavius AI mod. It's totally unfair, but I just have to go for max difficulty in all games or I feel like I'm cheating.

On the other hand I just survived 60 years with 2 purifier neighbors as a normal hive mind and am slowly getting back now that I got some allies.