Game is easy on Hard and nothing matters

[StrangerDanger [EN]]

I cleared the initial world and the rank1 world on Hard. My first build was Icy shadow full magic build and the tutorial was incredibly easy on Hard. The next world on Hard was even easier with my holy paladin heals for days and high defensive build.

The AI was really stupid most of the time during the fights and most things could be just auto (in my favour).

Does this game get really challenging, or is the AI just incredibly bad the whole way through?

The second thing is that nothing felt like it mattered. How I upgrade and build in my towns..books later on becoming I chore to plan and read because I'm already too OP for this AI who are supposed to be at peak difficulty.

Lastly what is the point of the underground lol. I went there once and it was a waste of time.

[shifted]

Did you just come here to tell us the tutorial was easy? Maybe try the Brutal difficulty on a Tier 3 map and get back to us.

[Dumah]

Originally posted by shifted:

Did you just come here to tell us the tutorial was easy? Maybe try the Brutal difficulty on a Tier 3 map and get back to us.

- you cant play on "brutal" in story mode. And stacking everything against yourself just in order to make game a literall chore to play have nothing to do with OP complaints.

[Viltae]

OP is right. There is a serious challenge problem. I stopped playing as soon as I realised that the AI was brain dead, especially on the hardest difficulty. They weren't besieging cities, they weren't developing their towns and so on. All you had to do was sit back and send doom stacks with auto-resolve each campaign. In fact, I wonder who ever lost a game? I'm waiting for the update, hoping the AI will be turned on this time.

[~ Fabulous ~]

Originally posted by Viltae:

OP is right. There is a serious challenge problem. I stopped playing as soon as I realised that the AI was brain dead, especially on the hardest difficulty. They weren't besieging cities, they weren't developing their towns and so on. All you had to do was sit back and send doom stacks with auto-resolve each campaign. In fact, I wonder who ever lost a game? I'm waiting for the update, hoping the AI will be turned on this time.

the demon king do thou.

[Sifer2]

Originally posted by Dumah:

Originally posted by shifted:

Did you just come here to tell us the tutorial was easy? Maybe try the Brutal difficulty on a Tier 3 map and get back to us.

- you cant play on "brutal" in story mode. And stacking everything against yourself just in order to make game a literall chore to play have nothing to do with OP complaints.

Well if he is talking about story mode it doesn't even get slightly hard until Map 3. I found the tutorial to be harder than mission 1 of story lol.

[アンジェル]

Originally posted by Sifer2:

Originally posted by Dumah:

- you cant play on "brutal" in story mode. And stacking everything against yourself just in order to make game a literall chore to play have nothing to do with OP complaints.

Well if he is talking about story mode it doesn't even get slightly hard until Map 3. I found the tutorial to be harder than mission 1 of story lol.

I consider the whole story campaign a single tutorial.

[BigJ]

Try a run with the pretender kings snd tell me game is easy.

[HolyGrail]

I think Magic Victory ruined this game because the AI doesn't seem to adapt when it's disabled, even "militant AI".

There's a problem with the AI retreating even if they have superior forces that they're gonna fix it, I hope that fixes it, otherwise Imma have to see if there's a mod that makes it better,

It was painful watching the Demon Prince occupied on a smallfry faction for 70+ turns after wiping out their armies, he just never followed through even though he wasn't at war with anyone else and besieged outposts then gave the faction time to rebuild their trash army and I think he just went to do something else?

[Sotnik]

I wonder what map and difficulty settings are meant to be "fair" or "canon" and to be used as a benchmark for skill and build as well as what map settings are ment to be standard "balanced" ones for multiplayer.

[StrangerDanger [EN]]

Map three is more fun. I went evil necro build, TBF necro is not as strong as my other two builds. It's keeping me on my toes fighting on two borders and trying to complete the quests. Obviously this could be easier by playing the map as intended lol, but that is not fun. Even now though - these ai could destroy me, however, they never attack my cities and let me kite them wherever I want them in battle. The AI really is a weak point in this game.

[Olmer]

I don't know what game you guys are playing, honestly.
In my games AI conjures 8 stacks full of tier 4 units out of thin air every turn and those units easily deal 50+ damage with their attacks cause they're full of enchants. I also forgot how it is to cast spells cause they have jammers everywhere.

Not saying it's fun, or good design, but surely it's not easy. And everything matters and makes huge difference in battles. And makes me learn stuff about the game from my mistakes.

[Dumah]

Originally posted by Olmer:

I don't know what game you guys are playing, honestly.
In my games AI conjures 8 stacks full of tier 4 units out of thin air every turn and those units easily deal 50+ damage with their attacks cause they're full of enchants. I also forgot how it is to cast spells cause they have jammers everywhere.

Not saying it's fun, or good design, but surely it's not easy. And everything matters and makes huge difference in battles. And makes me learn stuff about the game from my mistakes.

- are you sure that you are not mistaken AI players with AI marauder guard? Because after a certain ammount of turns existing marauder guard stacks are upgrading to a higher tier and often game has scripted "secret" free city stacks that also auto upgrading ( this does not concerns infestation marauders, ancient wonders guards and AI players ). I have not seen AI players doo anything productive yet, they are either quietly sitting in their corner for the duration of the whole game, or idiotically declaring wars left and right only to be gobbled up by unlikely allies in result.

[Chthonic Guardian]

Originally posted by BigJ:

Try a run with the pretender kings snd tell me game is easy.

That was the first one I played.
I turtled up and didn't expand like I should have. My Ally brother King won the game which I thought would give me a win, but it did not.

2nd time I was aggressive and easily won. Did not enjoy the game though, and felt didn't really earn a victory, as all ti required was going through the endless tomes, while brothers declared war and made peace with me many time without ever doing anything.
That was when my eyes were opened how hollow everything was, and how boring the game was.

[BigJ]

Originally posted by Chthonic Guardian:

Originally posted by BigJ:

Try a run with the pretender kings snd tell me game is easy.

That was the first one I played.
I turtled up and didn't expand like I should have. My Ally brother King won the game which I thought would give me a win, but it did not.

2nd time I was aggressive and easily won. Did not enjoy the game though, and felt didn't really earn a victory, as all ti required was going through the endless tomes, while brothers declared war and made peace with me many time without ever doing anything.
That was when my eyes were opened how hollow everything was, and how boring the game was.

Lucky start then, dealing with 2 of the pretender kings early on because of conflicting focuses is the pinacle of a slogfest where you may even see 1 siege battle if you camo some units.

Rushing 1 also tends to lead to the other 2+ai to declare war on you in my experience so you dealt with 1 but you are back to grindfest.

"Difficulty" in age of wonders 4 seems to be to deal with the draft economical increase of brutal by just been better than the ai in combat and been persistent on it.

[Aranea]

imo brutal is easy, but i do need a brain to go trough the ai territories since they do have a insane amount of stacks, and i'm fine with that, imo the challenge comes from pvp, which this game does better than any other age of wonders before it, there you have a insane amount of combinations, counter strategies, planning, ambushes, etc.

really i don't see how anyone looks for difficulty in complex 4x games through the ai, literally all they can do is give them all the bonuses possible as the ai is just not gonna be intelligent enough to learn all the systems in the game.

AI's tend to only be competent when the game in question is really simple. Look at CIV 5 to CIV 6 for an good example, the ai just couldn't handle the added complexity of having every single hex be a new possible building, hence making compstomping in CIV6 much easier, and really to a point very dissapointing as often the ai loses the military/tech arms race to you.

And them people go back and say CIV4 had incredible ai, and of course it did, as combat back them was just stack a bunch of units together and go running around, the ai didn't have to think about terrain or using hex space efficiently like it has to do in CIV 5.

If you want to make this game hard, brutal ai, stack as many as possible against you in a team, good luck.
if you want OpenAI complexity from the ai, go ask someone with infinite money cause there is a reason that kind of machine learning is not used in games yet (IT'S EXPENSIVE AS ♥♥♥♥)
outside of marketing deals like the dota 2 one.

or go get into multiplayer, there is quite a few people on this forum that are really good that will be happy to stomp you till you actually learn that this game ain't that easy.