Hello. I am a casual player and greatly enjoy coop with my friends against the AI. However our big problem is that hard has become far too easy, but the jump to hardest is way too steep and it feels unbeatable. I know some might just say “git gud”, but we’re casuals, to us having to do a lot of homework in the form of watching endless tutorials and doing grindy training to perfect a build order or get high APM isn’t fun, it’s tedious and hurts our enjoyment of the game. We just want to play and have fun. And I would argue that the AI is there to begin with largely for the sake of casuals, people who truly want to become great tend to play PvP. So big please, can we get an extra level so the curve isn’t so harsh?
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One temporary solution is to give yourselves another AI as an ally
You can give “Hard” a handicap to be better without being as good as “Hardest”.
Unfortunately the steps between all levels of AI are pretty big because it’s just hard to learn an RTS.
I don’t understand how a handicapped “Hard” is a middle-ground?
As for the jump, well, it’s like this: On Hard I can win no problem with one TC and just having 2 or 3 military buildings constantly running. However on Hardest I can have 3 TC and 12 military buildings constantly running, and have done significant damage to its economy, and I still get outproduced so hard it’s not even funny. That’s an absurd jump.
handicap is named counter-intuitively.
A handicap makes that player stronger. so A hard with handicap set to eg 150% collects resources 50% faster and gets 50% extra bonus damage (and a few other things), so it’s stronger than a basic hard AI
alternatively you could play against hardest and give yourself a 150% handicap. i wouldnt recommend this though, as you might start relying on it
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Also, even a small handicap goes a long way. Like, I would recommend starting at 110% on hard to see how that goes before increasing or decreasing it further.
Alternatively, if you’re normally playing 3v3 you might just add one more AI.
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Ahh alright. Well, if it also gives things like damage bonuses I don’t think I like that solution because it’s going to completely mess with my perception of the game balance. I stand by my request, I really think the AI progression needs to be more gradual.
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They removed the bonus on bonus damage a long time ago. Now Handicap just improves the economy and train time.
It is still better to not play with Handicap yourself because you won’t be able to learn timings this way but you can give it to the AI to make it stronger.
Collecting resources 10% faster and then training all units, including villagers 10% faster just makes everything faster and therefor easier but it doesn’t make the actual units any stronger.
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Okay, so handicap can serve as a band-aid. However, how would the game be worse if there were a couple more AI levels? I think one between medium and hard, and another new one between hard and hardest would be quite healthy for the game.
Of course not.
Also adding AI personalities like AoMR has them would be really nice.
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oh, i think nobody is opposed to adding more AI levels. We just don’t think it will happen, so we are offering alternative solutions so you can enjoy the game
Adding new AI difficulty levels provides no immediate benefit (aka money) to the dev team so they are unlikely to add something like this
I for one would pay good money for something like “The Advanced AI DLC” which makes the AI smarter/more diverse so it goes for other strategies than archer spam and adds 2 or 3 new levels between the ones we have now for a smoother learning curve.