Suggestion - rework the difficulty system for the campaign missions to include Extreme and Legendary, and include both the legacy AI and the new AI for various difficulty levels

Age of Mythology: Retold Discussion
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Reasons & backstory

According to one thread (thread link), the AoM Extended Edition is retiring and will be eventually removed from Steam completely. The AI vs walls behavior and general campaign difficulty seems to be a controversial topic and both about equally balanced camps have good points for having one or wanting to keep the both. However, after the removal of the legacy version the people will have no way to go back to the old experience and it shouldn’t be lost like that with just Retold available.

The old/legacy AI always looked for non-walled off holes which made defending much easier even against larger armies as they were funneled - can’t deny it was easy. The new new AI destroys any walls in its path as needed and continues destroying them wherever the wall leads it and it is more challenging - can’t deny it’s hard either (defending multiple places on multiple sides is objectively much harder even generally!).

Apart of the AI, the legacy titan difficulty was generally easier than Retold’s titan as in Retold the titan difficulty armies are usually more numerous and/or better upgraded than in the legacy titan difficulty armies (I can provide specific examples if needed). What I noticed - the YT-bers who are experienced AoM players (both MP and campaign oriented) tend to use 2 words for the new Retold’s titan difficulty - “insane” and/or “intense” (for example Moose AoM, Boit Tv or Saw AoM). And since I have won all the Retold’s campaigns on titan too, I agree.

But I think most of us will agree that we need some middle ground!

The suggestion

Make both the legacy and the new AIs a feature and keep them both. Specifically, I would change the difficulty levels somehow like this, in order to make and keep everybody happy for their preferred amount of challenge:

  • Story mode - the current Retold Story mode difficulty, but with the legacy AI
    …
  • Standard - the current Retold Standard difficulty, but with the legacy AI
  • Moderate - the current Retold Moderate difficulty, but with the legacy AI
  • Hard - the current Retold Hard difficulty, but with the legacy AI
  • Titan - the current Retold titan difficulty, but still with the legacy AI, still the legacy AI vs walls behavior
    …
  • Extreme - the Retold’s titan difficulty with the current (new) AI vs walls behavior (basically the current Retold titan difficulty fully moved from titan to here)
  • Legendary - the above suggested extreme +allow the AI to rebuild the lost production buildings on all the possible campaign missions for basically ultimate challenge

Story mode, Standard, Moderate, Hard and Titan would use the original old/legacy AoM’s AI vs walls bahavior. Extreme and Legendary would be using the new AI that destroys all the walls it wants in its path.

People suggesting to make it yet even harder - keep the following in mind:

I noticed that some people suggest even more nerfs for the player for the campaign missions in various threads posts for larger challenge, but they always look at them from the point of view of someone who knows the campaign mission from top to bottom by heart - what’s going to happen, what the triggers are and every detail. But the player who plays the mission for the first one time and even other 1st few times, doesn’t have all this knowledge at all and implementing all the anti-cheesing nerfs could make the missions unplayable for the causals even on the currently lower difficulties. Such casual player won’t know how to cheese it in the first place. The old vs new AI plays a strong role in the overall difficulty, and I believe adding the old one as a part of the difficulty system rework, would make it fair and acceptable for everybody.

In short - the missions should be winnable on harder difficulties even for the players without the deep knowledge about cheesing and the mission’s trigger development. The legacy AoM titan was such a thing and should be kept that way. Hence another reason to add Extreme and Legendary.

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Yeah, make AI smarter, make them atak walls and so on. Original AI in campaing is SO freaking DUMB and its just cheating. I want AI play like a real person. And remove all abuse mechanics and bugs in campaign.

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I don’t understand, you want the AI to be dumb and cheesable…? Like, the new Retold AI is still tunneled by Walls and leaving an opening, but now sometimes they attack and destroy walls. That’s good, no…? They are finally doing something that every campaign player is annoyed by how the AI is cheesed by walls.

I understand the main focus should be the campaign be playable for the normal and casuals players, but I think currently there is very easy difficult for everyone…?

Story difficult you basically cannot lose unless on purpose, Standard is easy ## #### everyone can win, Moderate I did not tried so I dont know if its soo much harder.

Hard is very hard indeed, I play RTS a lot and strugled in Hard difficult in some missions, but it was generally very fair and winnable.

Titan is very bullshit, the difficult is very hard. But the main aspect is how fast the enemy attacks. The attack waves are too frequent even for the big waves. If the enemy send smaller attacks and then a very bad army wave at non frequent intervals, it would be better than the current grindfest of big army every X minutes.

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No, I would want the AI to act differently on easier difficulty levels and make use of the new ones. I thought that’s logical enough for not needing any explanation. Or do you want to have this new and challenging AI even on the lower difficulty levels? Then why the other diff levels are there at all?

If you wouldn’t like it, nobody prevents you from playing your prefered higher difficulty with the new more challenging AI. But please, do the same and don’t try to force your personally preferred difficulty to others and to lower difficulty levels. That would be just selfish.

The point is for everybody to be happy. You don’t need to care about other difficulties except for your own. The Extreme would be acting as the today’s Retold’s titan - you feel free to play just that, but leave the room for others on the lower ones.

The games have multiple difficulty levels for a reason you know… or do I need to explain even that? Simple - play your own you prefer, don’t care about the others.

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A more practical solution would be to improve the AI for Titan difficulty so that it’s more challenging without resorting to cheap tactics like sending waves after waves and spawning units instantly out of nowhere, which frustrate casual players. Creating newer difficulty challenges would not pay homage to the original and most difficult campaign difficulty, Titan difficulty.

Plus…

People who have already completed all of the missions from The Fall of Trident to The New Atlantis to The Golden Gift to Reginleif’s Rally and earned the special Titan badge icons are going to be upset if they have to go through it all over again.

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I agree with the spamming problem, but the relatively large waves of enemies are something that is a must in higher difficulties and there are just as many thing that are available to adjust when it comes to the difficulty.

I believe this would be so easy to remedy dev-wise so people who would have completed the Titan already, would get completion badges for the Extreme if the Titan was moved there…

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But that just means the people still need to do Legendary on all campaign missions over again but this time… even harder? The devs are going to upset a lot of folks then…

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In that state, there would be still 6 other lower difficulties to choose from (Story mode, Standard, Moderate, Hard, Titan, Extreme). I would see no problem. Nobody would be forcing anybody else to play on Legendary.

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But it’s not ‘difficulty’, I understood that you just want to cheese the AI with walls…? You know that casuals players don’t do this, they wall their base on all sides, making the AI behave in the regular way attacking their walls, but advanced players know how to abuse the AI mechanic that they will always attack in a hole in the wall and then they wall everything except a hole so all the attacks go there.

When I was a noob I didnt knew the AI behave like this, so I never saw this as ‘easier’.

Why you are being so agressive…? I can say the same that you are trying to force your idea that the AI must be cheesable on everyone else, so why you want to walk this road…? Stop with this and lets discuss this in a civil maner.

But we have easy AI in the easy difficulties. And its like very easy to play the campaign in these lower difficulties. I will ask you again, in this ‘new AI’ you talk about just the fact that the ai SOMETIMES attack your walls instead of always pigeonhole into the hole that you leave on purpose…?

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The difference between you and me is that I am not forcing anything - the AI might be cheesable/dumber but just on the lower difficulties.

The current new AI has always attacked our walls. That’s the point, another extreme.

It’s the very thing I as casual started with long time ago actually. And therefore initially I didn’t even know that if I walled myself all over, the walls would be attacked. I didn’t build the walls where I had my units and defense… no reason to spend gold on walls in a position I know I am defending actively.

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Of course you are, you are forcing your chesable AI on everyone that want to play on lower difficulties. Why you want to use this agressive tactic instead of civil discussion?

I’m sorry, but no, I played all campaigns on Hard and i’m in the middle of the Titan difficulty and they are very inconsistent. Sometimes they attack your walls, sometimes they take another route to your base. It’s not guarantee. (and in fact they more likely to not attack than to attack)

If you are casual you will never know the AI will pigeonhole into your hole in the walls. You will always think they can come from all sides.

This is impossible as every Age game you a have mission where you have an walled base. All casuals will think in walling their base just like the enemy AI does.

No casual will think “no reason to spend gold on walls in a position I am defendin”. You are not a casual anymore if you are min-max your game. I think you forgot how a casual play these kinds of games.

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I haven’t been uncivil yet my friend. And the point of lower difficulties is that they are supposed to be generally easier, you make no sense imo.

When they take another route it is not necesarilly because I built wall somewhere, just because they intended to go that other way in the 1st place. At least that’s what I observed when I was speificaly testing the stuff.

So now you are telling me what I as casual when starting with AoM, was doing (or others)? And that I actually I wasn’t a casual or I knew it was a cheesehole? I am sorry man, but it already happened, you can’t change the past and what I am saying is true.

I didn’t expect them to come from all sides when I walled myself in except for non-walled places where I defended. I expected the walls to be useful. They were, so naturally there was no reason for me to change the tactics and fill the holes in my walling ever. That’s why I found out just much later that the AI attacks the wall when no hole found. I am quite sure many casuals (which you are obviously not), would tell you the same thing.