Legendary difficulty rework

[Jebe]

I think they should rework the legendary difficulty because taking away the minimap from an rts game is just stupid there is no other rts game where playing on the highest difficulty is taking away a key part of the gameplay

I guess they once did it for immersion to feel like a real general but it’s just annoying to play without a map on the highest difficulty

They should instead rework it and tweak other stuff like AI aggressiveness and cheats
I wouldn’t have a problem if very hard would be enough of a challenge but it sadly not

What do you think? Should they rework legendary difficulty?

[DaBa]

None of the difficulty changes will matter anyway unless they fundamentally change how the AI handles both the campaign layer of the game AND the combat. Which isn't going to happen so there's that.

Doing things like giving AI advantages or letting it cheat doesn't have the desired effect. It only changes how much do you as a player have to know how to exploit the AI. The more of those advantages and cheat you give the AI, the more players have to rely on cheese strategies and exploiting the AI to actually win. Until you get to the point where you make the AI's advantages strong enough that it's literally impossible to beat due to math, which obviously wouldn't be a good idea. The current highest difficulty settings for both campaign and battle already make you feel this rubber banding really hard, it doesn't really feel like the computer is more difficult to beat because it's smarter, it just has cheats on. And it's not like it's that difficult to beat anyway if you just play smartly and have a good army, and if you know how to exploit the AI with cheese strats then it's not even difficult, it just feels stupid.

The way to make the game actually more challenging is to make an AI that uses the same strategies as the players do, uses magic and unit abilities more effectively, builds army compositions that work with those strategies, reacts better to your moves during combat. The campaign AI could use some work too but I believe the chief offender is definitely the combat AI that needs improvement. Which, as I said, is not going to happen since that is not an easy task, it'd take a lot of work to make an AI like that. And I don't trust CA to understands how to even accomplish something like this.

Also another problem is the autoresolve, I don't know how can you make this feature ever work properly without making it unfairly favor either of the sides. It'd have to become an actual simulation of the battle between two AIs or something like that. But, again, that is a much lesser issue than the combat AI itself.

[The Sand Witch]

too much sense daba. Far too much.
Zeek is banned so you should be left alone at least.

[Captain T1]

Originally posted by The Sand Witch:

too much sense daba. Far too much.
Zeek is banned so you should be left alone at least.

Well your posting here Alt#0711 so that ain't exactly true now is it Zeek?!

[Sn3z]

The AI should get a bonus to gold income per turn on its base kings purse only income, I think it starts at 2500, well its that for the player, the purse would get incrementally more and more as turns roll over and that modifier may be tied to difficulty.

[The Sand Witch]

Originally posted by Captain T1:

Originally posted by The Sand Witch:

too much sense daba. Far too much.
Zeek is banned so you should be left alone at least.

Well your posting here Alt#0711 so that ain't exactly true now is it Zeek?!

Oh crap I got a number now. Like a clone. dammit

[The Sand Witch]

Originally posted by Sn3z:

The AI should get a bonus to gold income per turn on its base kings purse only income, I think it starts at 2500, well its that for the player, the purse would get incrementally more and more as turns roll over and that modifier may be tied to difficulty.

Yes so more sh.t armies controlled by a sh.tty mind for you to bash on. Just more of the same. It reminds me of chaos invasion. 30 armies u could defeat in 1 turn.

[Sn3z]

Originally posted by The Sand Witch:

Originally posted by Sn3z:

The AI should get a bonus to gold income per turn on its base kings purse only income, I think it starts at 2500, well its that for the player, the purse would get incrementally more and more as turns roll over and that modifier may be tied to difficulty.

Yes so more sh.t armies controlled by a sh.tty mind for you to bash on. Just more of the same. It reminds me of chaos invasion. 30 armies u could defeat in 1 turn.

sounds like you want unit caps.

[The Sand Witch]

Originally posted by Sn3z:

Originally posted by The Sand Witch:

Yes so more sh.t armies controlled by a sh.tty mind for you to bash on. Just more of the same. It reminds me of chaos invasion. 30 armies u could defeat in 1 turn.

sounds like you want unit caps.

Units caps don't change much. You can spam basic archers or abuse magic for factions that don't have basic archers. In the end, there's nothing an AI unable to use units or magic properly can do. You end up abusing even if you don't mean to.

But yeah, I did use unit caps. Fixed a couple issues

[Gnarl]

I think it should be so hard almost no one can win Legendary.

The whole only one save thing could be for any difficulty really.

[Human bean]

Originally posted by Gnarl:

I think it should be so hard almost no one can win Legendary.

The whole only one save thing could be for any difficulty really.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ppcLkALYas

[DaBa]

Originally posted by Gnarl:

I think it should be so hard almost no one can win Legendary.

The whole only one save thing could be for any difficulty really.

Again, it's not about how hard it is to win. It's about how satisfying the challenge actually is. You can give the AI players more income, fog of war cheats, instant unit veterancy, combat stat bonuses and so on, but none of this makes the difficulty increase actually interesting. You're still playing the same game in the same way, you're just going up against higher numbers. At worst you have to cheese the AI to win against overwhelming odds, which doesn't feel good either. I have played a short campaign on hard difficulty recently and I had just as much fun with it as I did playing on legendary difficulty, that's how you know you're doing difficulty wrong.

Now imagine if the AI on legendary difficulty would actually be smart in combat. It wouldn't approach you if it doesn't have a reason to. It would not fire all their artillery at a single unit that infinitely kites it. It would abuse it's range advantage and kite your units. It would engage it's units in favourable trades. It would use magic only when it had the most impact. It would utilize terrain to it's advantage. And so on. Even if this kind of AI would have no combat bonuses it would be infinitely more interesting to play against and would actually make you play against it completely differently than you do right now.

[Human bean]

Originally posted by DaBa:

Originally posted by Gnarl:

I think it should be so hard almost no one can win Legendary.

The whole only one save thing could be for any difficulty really.

Again, it's not about how hard it is to win. It's about how satisfying the challenge actually is. You can give the AI players more income, fog of war cheats, instant unit veterancy, combat stat bonuses and so on, but none of this makes the difficulty increase actually interesting. You're still playing the same game in the same way, you're just going up against higher numbers. At worst you have to cheese the AI to win against overwhelming odds, which doesn't feel good either. I have played a short campaign on hard difficulty recently and I had just as much fun with it as I did playing on legendary difficulty, that's how you know you're doing difficulty wrong.

Now imagine if the AI on legendary difficulty would actually be smart in combat. It wouldn't approach you if it doesn't have a reason to. It would not fire all their artillery at a single unit that infinitely kites it. It would abuse it's range advantage and kite your units. It would engage it's units in favourable trades. It would use magic only when it had the most impact. It would utilize terrain to it's advantage. And so on. Even if this kind of AI would have no combat bonuses it would be infinitely more interesting to play against and would actually make you play against it completely differently than you do right now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSj4xuunMbo

[Ashley]

Originally posted by The Sand Witch:

too much sense daba. Far too much.
Zeek is banned so you should be left alone at least.

Rent free

[Human bean]

Originally posted by WALTUH:

Originally posted by The Sand Witch:

too much sense daba. Far too much.
Zeek is banned so you should be left alone at least.

Rent free

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIMMZQJ1H6E ( blame myself for the last post)

[The Sand Witch]

Human bean, the man of culture