Is there any way to make the game more challenging?

[Monokuma Red]

What I mean by this is that the AI never attacks you or other AIs so it's too easy to just get in their face and steal all their resources.

[Evrach]

Yep. Play against other humains instead of bots .

[Copernicus]

Originally posted by Monokuma Red:

What I mean by this is that the AI never attacks you or other AIs so it's too easy to just get in their face and steal all their resources.

Actually, on higher levels the AI is quite happy to attack you (or other AIs) when they recognize that they have an overwhelming military advantage. I've been playing on Deity for a while now, and I'm guessing I get crushed by an early-game rush from the AI in about 25% of the games I start.

[Monokuma Red]

Originally posted by Evrach:

Yep. Play against other humains instead of bots .

Ain't nobody got time for that, I'm just temporarily addicted to the game and will probably play it very rarely after.
In short it's not worth the effort.

[Monokuma Red]

Originally posted by Copernicus:

Originally posted by Monokuma Red:

What I mean by this is that the AI never attacks you or other AIs so it's too easy to just get in their face and steal all their resources.

Actually, on higher levels the AI is quite happy to attack you (or other AIs) when they recognize that they have an overwhelming military advantage. I've been playing on Deity for a while now, and I'm guessing I get crushed by an early-game rush from the AI in about 25% of the games I start.

I'll just try setting the AI on highest difficulty then and see if it works since on king difficulty the AI just builds a bunch of troops to look intimidating and never attacks.

[Copernicus]

Originally posted by Monokuma Red:

I'll just try setting the AI on highest difficulty then and see if it works since on king difficulty the AI just builds a bunch of troops to look intimidating and never attacks.

Yeah, King is generally quite nice to human players. I went pretty quickly to Emperor level to get a decent challenge when I first started out. And now I still find playing on Deity to be quite stressful at times. :)

[Babbles]

Originally posted by Monokuma Red:

Originally posted by Copernicus:

Actually, on higher levels the AI is quite happy to attack you (or other AIs) when they recognize that they have an overwhelming military advantage. I've been playing on Deity for a while now, and I'm guessing I get crushed by an early-game rush from the AI in about 25% of the games I start.

I'll just try setting the AI on highest difficulty then and see if it works since on king difficulty the AI just builds a bunch of troops to look intimidating and never attacks.

Rubbish, they almost ALWAYS attack.

[Copernicus]

Originally posted by Babbles:

Originally posted by Monokuma Red:

I'll just try setting the AI on highest difficulty then and see if it works since on king difficulty the AI just builds a bunch of troops to look intimidating and never attacks.

Rubbish, they almost ALWAYS attack.

The AI chooses whether or not to attack for a number of reasons. Relative military power and diplomatic relations are two of the top ones: if you are powerful and friendly, nobody attacks you. If you are weak and annoying, you get attacked.

[Monokuma Red]

Originally posted by Copernicus:

Originally posted by Babbles:

Rubbish, they almost ALWAYS attack.

The AI chooses whether or not to attack for a number of reasons. Relative military power and diplomatic relations are two of the top ones: if you are powerful and friendly, nobody attacks you. If you are weak and annoying, you get attacked.

I think game speed is the main decisive factor here, I've tried normal , quick and online speed.
Out of the three the AI attacks more often on online speed regardless of the difficulty setting. Maybe difficulty is part of AI's aggression but so far it doesn't seem like it.

[Copernicus]

Originally posted by Monokuma Red:

I think game speed is the main decisive factor here, I've tried normal , quick and online speed.
Out of the three the AI attacks more often on online speed regardless of the difficulty setting.

That might be possible; there could be an aspect of "having more time" that would have AI players wait until they have built up a larger force before attacking.

Originally posted by Monokuma Red:

Maybe difficulty is part of AI's aggression but so far it doesn't seem like it.

Yes; so far as I can see, difficulty does nothing to the aggression level. That said, higher difficulty levels grant the AI more military units, more production, and better technology, so they are much more prepared to go to war against humans.

Even on Deity, so long I as I manage to create and maintain good diplomatic ties with all the AI players, I can usually avoid war (at least until they notice I am nearing a victory condition). The key, however, is just how long it takes me to establish good diplomatic ties; if it takes too long, I'll get crushed.

[ACS36]

Diety and Immortal can be challenging. Getting a win condition on diety with any level of consistency takes a very high diegree of skill. MOST people playing on deity just restart a lot until they get a good start or use settings that undermine the AI.

IF you're not winning over 50% of your deity matches without restarting a lot, then you haven't really mastered the game in any sense of the word.

I find it interesting that when people say the game is too easy, they're nearly always never mention the fact they handicap the AI in some fashion or restart a ton.

[plaguepenguin]

If you want to increase the challenge in the game there are all sorts of methods beyond playing MP or dialing up the difficulty level.

You can set yourself all sorts of limitations, tactics and strategies that help you win, but that you forego to make your life harder. These are too numerous to list, but, since you mention the AI never attacking you as an unattractive feature of the game, a limitation you might consider is on your army size. Keep that small enough, and you will attract attacks even on Prince. I can't suggest any hard number for the "military strength" in the HUD yield display, that you should keep below so you would have to play around with this limitation at first to get it right by only letting yourself build new units under emergency conditions, reacting to AI or barb attacks.

One limitation that doesn't require any such hard number standard is to try to win in fewer turns. Even on Prince, winning in under 150 turns on a standard size map is challenging. That may not even be possible depending on how good or bad a starting location you luck into, so a hard number on how soon you have to win isn't really going to work. You just set your goal as finishing the game in as few turns as possible. This limitation dovetails with a desire to minimize time spent on each game.

[sirkerry]

Try one of the AI improvement mods like Roman Holiday's AI Overhaul or Real Strategy (AI).

[Copernicus]

Well, I've already finished four games on Deity this morning; each time, I was placed within six or seven hexes of an AI's capitol (two capitols in one case), and they just immediately wandered over with a force of four warriors and a slinger against my lone warrior and crushed me.

Deity is challenging. Starting game five now... :)