AI: What Challenge Rating are you setting your games at?

from Elemental Forums

I'm wondering what challenge rating people are playing at. When I started playing I was setting the game on Normal but found the AI to be very bad. On Challenging the AI was able to match my power curve but was still very bad. It is only after setting the rating to Hard that I've found the AI to be worth anything.

I bring this up because I feel that a lot of people are complaining that things are over powered without properly testing it against AIs that actually pose a challenge.

In my opinion, a lot of things that have been nerfed aren't necessarily over powered. They are over powered because the AI is unable to take advantage of the same tactics. Scaling back all the over powered items and tactics turns this game into a bland fantasy world instead of a wild untamed world with encounters that genuinely need to be feared.

5,076 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

World to normal and AI to challenging.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top


I did a game with the enemy AI on hard recently.  They had like 100 points on the scoreboard and I had like 20.  I declared war on them and steamrolled their hordes of armies with my sovereign alone lol :).

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

At this stage of the beta it doesn't matter. play any setting

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

AI on challenging and creature rate at dense - But I'm waiting for the next patch right now with the "XP FOR ALL" bug finally fixed and try that again on challenging before I go up to hard because that will really hurt my hero stack of doom ;-)

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Normal -> Challenging -> Hard -> its easyeasyeasy. Small, Medium, Large maps, whatever.

Ridiculous (on the previous builds) was actually difficult - if 900% production bonuses can be qualified as difficult :rofl:

The AI isn't really fully functional yet. It can 'play' the game, but its vulnerable to any number of exploits - and there are so many aspects of the game that are exploitable right now it barely matters what you set it to.

Or to put it another way - no, the AI is not the reason people are complaining about everything from the heroes to the quests to the units to the tac combat to the spell system. There are major issues with just about all of the systems, some of which are glaringly obvious, regardless of difficulty.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Rather than nerfing every overpowered strategy, I rather leave them in and have the AI exploit them so that players have to worry about getting steamrolled by the AI's champion stack or blizzard of doom. I really think that balance issues should be looked at after the AI has been improved. Finding and fixing crashes and bugs should be the focus of this round of beta.