Skirmish difficulty is actually... okay?

[Gulli]

Yesterday after finishing the campaigns I tried a couple of skirmish games and was bracing for an impossible unbeatable AI on the normal difficulty setting, based on all the chatter about it online.

Maybe the devs rebalanced the skirmish AI in the past week, but I found it was actually okay both for GDF and Dynasty. I'm a mediocre RTS player with bad micro who would get smoked in PvP, but I still beat the AI without too much effort.

Game 1: 1v1 as GDF against Dynasty (on "Altitude") on the first try using only the Sky Crane loaded with an engineer and drone operators. I only built a second harvester for econ and sent out two engineers to capture two tempest processing centers early on. And my "aggressive" gameplay consisted of sending out the Sky Cranes a couple of times to kill low level enemies and Tempest Rigs leaving the enemy base. Once I had 3 fully loaded Sky Cranes I simply flanked the enemy base on the least defended side and destroyed their construction yard. The only "micro" involved was focus firing on priority targets (the Tempest Rigs and anything that can shoot at air).

Game 2: 2v2 on "Dam" where I was Dynasty and had a Dynasty ally against two GDF AIs. I got bogged down on my first try because my Hammerhands couldn't kill enemy units faster than they could build new ones. On the second try I went with a ground army of Boars, Voltaic Tanks, some Pillagers (probably didn't even need those since Assault Gunners are better in every way, except against bunkers), Salvage Vans and crucially Assault Gunners because the Dynasty campaign had taught me how useful those are. For econ I built 3 Tempest Rigs and sent engineers to the middle of the map to capture Tempest Processing Centers. Again the only "micro" I used was deploying the Salvage Vans from time to time and researching the correct doctrines quickly. I barely did any harassing, just carefully pushing my army forward until was in one of the enemy bases and focus-fired their two construction yards.

In both games I didn't really need base defenses, didn't get rushed from 3 sides within 5 minutes, and didn't have to be a Korean APM god to keep up. So no, it's not nearly as bad as the internet would have you believe. Sure, "Normal" in Tempest Rising is a bit harder than "Normal" in C&C3, or RA2, but it's nothing like "Brutal" in Kane's Wrath or Starcraft II. I also didn't get the impression the AI cheats with resources or build times and didn't experience any nasty pre-programmed things like the AI air-dropping a bunch of engineers inside my base, also there are no base-wrecking superweapons to worry about, so even if you're deadset on turtling that's one aspect that's actually easier than in older RTS games.

I think a lot of it comes down to memberberries, people not getting that the "Normal" difficulty setting doesn't have to mean the exact same thing in every game, and the AI in this game actually trying to expand for resources, but in a way that's very easy to stop. The only way I could see anyone really struggle is if they go for a 100% turtle, never leaving their base, not even sending harvesters or engineers outside their base (which would be stupid because the AI takes its sweet time before it tries to harass/capture your Processing Centers or mining operations). Even then, turtling should still be possible if you combine the right defenses (and doctrines), depending on the map. You'll just struggle more than in older games if you exclusively turtle or only spam 1 unit, because the AI is better at using combined armies to counter your stuff than the AIs in old games were.

TLDR: if you're holding off on buying the game because you've heard it's only playable for the competitive multiplayer elites then I'm here to tell you that that's not been my experience at all. The campaigns (I finished them on hard) are also perfectly beatable and actually get slightly easier later on when you get access to better tech. It's a lot of fun and while there's some Starcraft II elements mixed in there it really does feel (not to mention the excellent soundtrack) like a spiritual successor to the C&C games.

I do hope the devs add more maps and throw in a few like "Unfair Advantage" or "Tiberium Gardens" from C&C3 for people who like slow comp-stomping games, because the more people who can find a home in this game the better obviously for the future of RTS games.