Advice for Hard difficulty?

[Iskander]

I'm a total noob. Played it a while back and recently started playing again.
I dominate on normal difficulty, but when I try hard difficulty, I'm always behind in points, always losing legendary deeds to the AI and generally constantly feeling like I'm falling more and more behind. So I have two questions:

1. Should I aim to keep up/be ahead of the AI in terms of points during the first 50 or so turns (normal speed)? Or can I just accept being behind in points and relying on better strategy/tactics in the mid/late game to still manage a victory? i.e. "Points are just a number and don't necessarily mean you will win or lose"

2. Any advice on how to handle the big jump in difficulty? I try to roughly stick to the 1 new city per 20 turns guideline, but I always find myself short on Dust at the start, unable to afford any mercs/heroes/goods until well after I research the trade tech.

I've been playing Roving Clans mostly. Any general or specific advice is appreciated.

[Stealthkibbler]

Points only matter for score victory. If you have score victory turned off they're irrevelant for the purpose of victory, in the event you have it on taking enemy cities will lower their score and increase yours.

My advice for the higher difficulty is that they tend to use stuff that the normal ai doesnt, for example they will use spies a lot more in the forgotten dlc ontop of generally being more aggressive if they think you're weak in the base game.

Grabbing fortification technologies whenever possible helps a lot more than it seems especially defensive wards when put on your most populated city. It can be near impossible to take down a heavily fortified city in the early game and can take many turns to attrition it.

Ontop of that whenever you tech up you gain access to a new tier of common gear for your soldiers and heroes, always apply this gear and try to refit existing armies when possible. At the same time take full advantage of spare strategic resources even if you're only giving your units titanium weapons it can make a huge difference, I normally put normal gear on my melees early on and rotate my ranged fighters to use glasteel or titanium bows. Harder AI will take full advantage of the gear system and you should too.

Research Imperial Coinage and the Slaver Market, having access to the market early on can help so much, not only can you buy new heroes on demand but later on when you are swimming in dust(which you should if you plan to compete with the AI) you can buy tons of needed resources since later on almost all buildings will start needing lots of glasteel, titanium etc.

When warring with an AI you need to go all in, while denying them land early on might sound like a good idea you should only do it if it benefits you. Like all 4x games, the ai ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cheats, it will always have a resource advantage over you in the early and possibly mid-game. Dont just stop at 1 city, take all of their cities, the AI invest a number of resources into their cities early on that you would be physically impossible at doing.

If you're using the Allayi dlc take full advantage of retaliation damage, defensive wards and the eye of auriga buildings can easily have your capital doing 500 retaliation damage a TURN!

If you're using the Forgotten dlc dont bother with damaging the city since the ai gets such a large boost it will barely dent them, instead steal technologies from them since they will usually be ahead of you until you get into mid-lategame or are super lucky with your first settle.

If you're using the Tempest dlc then abuse the hell out of the water strongholds if you're lucky enough to settle next to an ocean. The resource bonuses they give are absurd and are very easy to take early on. They can allow you to start earning HYperium before you even have the tech to harvest it. I've had friends ask for this dlc to be disabled because the strongholds simply give so much more of a boon than land resources.

[LeaderEnemyBoss]

You really shouldnt feel bad about being behind in turns or losing some legendary deeds. Its a good sign, if you arent ahead the whole game. Get some allies, chose smart engagements and wars, or just focus on a strong economy, and everything will turn out alright. And even if it doesnt, you'll learn something along the way.

[Gilmoy]

Ignore the AI's empire scores. Scores value units, and the AIs with cheat bonuses from difficulty level will always outproduce you in units.

As Roving Clans, you can't declare war, so most of my expertise won't help you. (I launch an invasion near the end of Era II, and so my first 40 turns of everything are all building harmoniously toward that one big goal.) To pump dust, the standard way is to do the early subset of the buyout economy:

- On turn 20, set your empire plan to include Economic (leftmost) tier 1 (+3 dust/pop);
- Hire a governor with some +dust capacity or skill tree;
- After building your core improvements (science, food, dust, approval), move some pop into dust;
- In Era II, research Alchemical Armor for the +2 dust/pop tome, and equip on your governor. Now your capital generates 4+3+2 = 9 dust/pop.
- Era II trade routes. You are Roving Clans, after all.

Early anomaly RNG can help +dust greatly. Maximize your city's approval (and later, your empire's approval). Search ruins for loot. Invest 1 early tech slot to research Language Square, then parley with minor faction villages and do their quests for loot, pacifications without combat, and the race for the Era I Visionary Leader legendary deed when it's pacify 8. (Don't bother racing for destroy 10; you can't win that many early fights faster than AIs do.)

+1 city per 20 turns is not a terrible benchmark, but it's way oversimplified. More deeply, have as many cities as you can keep Fervent. That means you need techs for +approval and -% expansion disapproval, and economy to afford luxury boosters that give +approval (and actually extract or buy them, and activate them). If all of your cities are Fervent by a big margin, that's too few. If you can't get to Fervent, that's too many.

~~~~~~~~

You can always outplan and outdevelop the AIs, in many areas:

- Empire plan tiers. Stock AI has some bugs that make it never take plan tiers. (AI+ Mod, and the Community Patch, are much better at this.) You should plan your entire economy around getting empire plan tiers; that means about 5-8 turns before every 20th turn, you shift population around as needed to make sure you generate enough influence.

- District layouts. The AI has no spatial reasoning capability, and doesn't level up its city districts well. It often settles in the worst possible hex, and then builds a snake around it, which crushes its approval. Stick to your coherent stick layout, focus on maximizing the number of L2 districts, and you'll do well enough that you can consistently build invasion armies.

- Unit equipment. The AI never equips +movement accessories. Combined with no empire plan tiers, this means in Era VI they're still speed 4, while you're all speed 10+. It prefers to load up individual units with 10-40 strategics' worth of gear; it will merrily sell off all of its luxury boosters and other strategics to buy what it needs. This floods the market with lots of those goods; ironically, the harder the difficulty, the easier it is for you to buy stuff in the marketplace. It prefers Improved Initiative and Improved Damage eating up two accessory slots on its troops (which leaves no room for shoes). It almost never gives its generals army boost insignia (but I think this was deliberately done as a nerf, so that the human player can always surpass AIs in this area).

Now, having to face full 6-groups or 8-groups of units with 20+ strategics of gear each is not necessarily fun, but it's just a bit more hp and damage. So it takes you 5 rounds to win instead of 4, and you need 3 healers instead of 2. Load up your guys with the best iron/dust gear, your generals with strategics, and win anyways.

- Tactical battles. The AI throws its units away. It plays like a chess program with 0 look-ahead and a valuation of 0 on its pieces. Bring enough firepower to score tag-team kills, and enough healing to shrug off a few hits each, and you can win every combat with 0 losses and not much damage.

Learn to fully control tactical battles: Ctrl-click to move-then-shoot, Alt-click to move-into-occupied, and both to move-into-occupied-then-shoot. Learn tactical battle roles, and weapon Slayer bonuses vs. the 5 different unit types. You generally want ranged to concentrate fire for kills, tanks to stop enemy tanks and cav, fast cav-likes to hit enemy reinforcement flags, and healers so your injured guys can stay in play.

N.B. this is why AI scores don't really matter, and why you can just go invade an AI even if it's 5x your score. Score just means it has a bunch of 8-groups roaming its home continent. You need only 8+8 with generals to overwhelm the AIs at your chosen point of attack. If you can win every combat with no losses, you'll mop up all of its 8-groups like Pac-Man eating dots. Put another way, the real threshold for empire strength is the strength of one 8+hero army, and that's almost a fixed target. Beating 10 of those in a row is not essentially different from winning the 1st one with no casualties; it's just more of the same.

Conversely, you really need to be the one invading. Don't wait for an AI to come after you, or you'll get buried by numbers.

- Governors. The AI doesn't shop for the best governors, and doesn't take the best skills. (I think all AI heroes simply fill in their skill trees, leftmost for generals and rightmost for governors, by breadth-first expansion from bottom-up. You can do better.) Shop for governors by their faction skill trees (you'll learn which factions are good for which kinds of bonuses), and also their governor capacities (built-in skills).

- Generals. The AI picks general skills from bottom-up. It almost never gives them Army Initiative Boost and Army Damage Boost insignia. You should always hire good heroes whose combat capacities aren't those, and then give them both insignia from Era II Alchemical Armor, and beeline their leftmost skill tree to the +1 accessory item so that you can have shoes + both insignia. Those two items are the single greatest concentration of combat bonus for your units; your two accessories total can match or beat the AI's 2 accessories per unit.

- Winter. Beeline your governors to Cold Operator, and your generals to the topmost left side (which confers the useful subset of Cold Operator, namely mobility and stats). Leave a hole in your city stick layouts for Winter Borough, so that you can build it at L2 on the 1st turn of 3rd winter, or ASAP thereafter. Save pearls for Winter Borough and the other pearl buildings. From about the 4th turn of 3rd winter through the end of the game, your food + industry should double in winter (or triple for Cultist); that's normal. Peek at the Empire Scores and you can see all of the stock AIs' food + industry plummet in winter, whereas newer AIs (Kapaku, and probably the new Mykara) will also double in winter -- which means you now need to do all this, just to keep up with those AIs.

- Diplomacy. AIs tend to aggro each other at mutual borders, and go to war frequently. Your ideal set-up is to be alone, or almost alone, on 1 continent, while you watch from afar as AIs beat each other up. (Conversely, the unwinnable scenario is that you're surrounded by AIs, and they see you as their weakest neighbor.) You can try researching Era II Diplomat's Manse and negotiate peace with 1 or more neighbors, or just lurk and hope AIs don't notice you for about 1.5 Eras.

[Iskander]

Thanks all for the advice, it is very helpful. I started a new game on normal to push myself to do better than before and better understand the Roving Clans, but my next game will be on hard difficulty again and see if I can fare better this time.