Hard <<<<<<< Serious

[CNC]

I'm playing with the community patch and the gap between hard and serious difficulty settings is unbelievable.

Hard difficulty is incredibly boring and pathetic. The AI sits there and twittles its thumbs while I cruise to an overwhelming victory. I completely steamroll the AI like it's not even there. Or if I go for a peaceful victory it's like playing by myself. I could take on every AI at the same time and win without paying much attention.

So it's way too easy for me, right? So I turn up the difficulty just one level to serious, and...

The AI has 3 cities and two full stacks of 4 by turn 12. Or it wins the legendary deed for having 30 units around turn 40. If I do anything other than pump out military units, I get completely face stomped by the AI. But if I just sit there building military units for the first 30 turns, I might be able to cripple one of the AI's, but then the other ones are two eras ahead of me and have triple the population.

What's going on? How do you win serious difficulty with the ELCP?

[Gilmoy]

Yes, ELCP Serious AIs have stacked productivity bonuses that clown any human economy.
Yes, they will outproduce you in armies (and navies, if using Tempest).
Yes, they will enter every Era before you, one-shot every legendary building before you,
stroll to many of the Legendary Deeds before you, and build Guardians before you.

No, they aren't actually any smarter.
That means you can play the long game, win every tactical combat, and win wars.
AIs still can't form any coherent, long-term plan, esp. for naval invasions.

To win consistently:
0. Recalibrate your concept of pace until you see this as normal.

First, you'll think it's totally unfaaaaair in their favor. You're at this stage now.
Next, you'll think it's exhilarating, a palm-tingling head rush, and frantic.
Finally, you'll nod and think it's normal, as you sip orange juice and grind out another win.
Inevitably, you'll chuckle fondly and see them as unruly husky puppies behind a fence.

1. Don't build military units non-stop. You cannot outbuild Serious AIs' "cheat" bonuses.

Anyways, you don't need to match them in quantity.
"All" you need to win any 1 war is, minimally, 2 armies of 6+6 (and later, 8+8).

The ultimate key is to win every 8+8 vs. 8+8 tactical battle with 0 losses and 0 damage.
0 damage is special, because it scales up infinitely.
You can repeat that 5-12 times in a row, without ever pausing.
That usually captures all of 1 AI's cities, eliminating it and taking its entire continent.
Then repeat that.

So you want to build 2 armies that win, and learn tactical combat well enough to win.

2. Many Continents.
Against ELCP Serious, I must be alone on a continent, or have only 1 neighbor.
If you have 2+ neighbors, I think it's unwinnable. Serious AIs have too many bonuses.
Then their algorithm computes that you are the weakest military target, and that's that.

3. Build your economy. (Play the long game, you do have time.)
Era I is all infrastructure.
Era II, top half, is more infrastructure, for +Influence, +Approval, and +Industry.

Settle a good hex.
Build your city improvements.
Build as many of your Borough Streets as you can squeeze in.
Plan your capital city to grow to at least 2x10.
With Shifters DLC, leave a hole for Winter Borough on 1st turn of 3rd Winter.

Research Mercenary Marketplace and hire a governor for your capital.
Later, you'll also hire generals for your armies.
With Inferno DLC, exploit Dust Eclipses to rake in ~1.5k Dust in 2 turns per Eclipse.

Plan to settle 1-2 more regions.
The golden rule is: Keep Every City Fervent.
In Era I, you can't reliably keep even 1 city (your capital) Fervent.
In Era II, you can keep 2-3 cities Fervent. So you want 2-3 cities (and regions).
Also, you need their strategic and luxury resources, and to assimilate their minors.

The deeply brilliant rule, which sounds like a newbie rule, is:
Make the go/no-go decision on turn 14, 34, 54, ..., etc.
That gives you ~6 turns to build a Settler, walk it, and settle immediately after
a 20-turn Empire Plan boundary.

In Era III, you can keep 4-6 cities Fervent, and so on.
Build every +Approval improvement, research techs, run multiple luxury boosters, etc.
Build every city the same way as your capital:
a long 2xN stick that maximizes anomalies, misses unbuildables, with Winter Borough.

4. Build 2 good armies.
You don't need 10 armies of Era I junk units. 2 good armies suffice to invade.

Era II, bottom half, is the right time to shift to your 1st war.
Study the tech tree, and you'll find many crucial war techs here.

+ Native District, and go assimilate a healer minor faction (and go find one)
+ your Era II unit type, if it fills a tactical role you need
+ Meritocratic Promotion for army size 6, and +1 accessory slot per unit and hero
+ Alchemical Armor for insignia on generals, and tomes on governors
+ Shipyard, if you're alone on a continent and you must invade across ocean

You want, at minimum, (6 + general) + (6 + general).
You start the game with 2 units. So you must build 10 more with your cities.
Always design them with latest Iron gear, and flute/car keys/shoes for +1/+2/+3 Map Move.

Hire 2 good generals. Pick them for the best available capacities (built-in skills).
Equip them with shoes, and Army Initiative Boost and Army Damage Boost insignia.
Pay strategics for better gear with improved stats.
You probably don't have enough strategics to pay for all of your regular units,
but at least pay for your heroes.

Also consider their classes (which influences their factions).

+ Infantry general will eventually get +2 = 4 reinforcement flags, to bury the foe
+ Ranged general will eventually get +1 range for all ranged in its army
+ Support hero is a healer
- Cavalry hero (Kapaku) is a bit of a gimmick
- Flying hero (Eslek Tarosh) is a pure gimmick

5. Invading

You are not building to defend.
You are not building to trade casualties.
You build to invade.

Pick any 1 AI. It's fun to pick the #2 AI, who has 5x or 10x your Empire Score.
When you know how to fight combats, Empire Score means almost nothing.

Empire Score roughly scales with number of armies.
AIs build many armies, so they'll always score high for that, and you won't.
But then their armies tend to stand around and do nothing, all game long.
You shall beat them by doing the opposite of that, i.e. pick a target and go, go, go.

When you can reliably win every combat, your 2 armies can invade vs. 30, and win.
Every 1 combat usually involves only 1-2 AI armies at a time.
All the rest of that AI's military strength are only spectators, and contribute nothing.

+ when you attack, pick a target and a direction so that there's 0 or 1 AI army reinforcing
+ when the AI attacks, it does not carefully plan to reinforce

You may need to sail (as weak Transport ships) and land on a coastal hex.
Beware of landing on cramped peninsulas.
Remember that the nearby strategic map is also your tactical battle map.

It may look terrifying to have only 2 armies vs. an AI's 15 armies walking around.
Recalibrate to see them as your prey.
You will often need to stand somewhere and let any nearby AI armies attack you (or not).
Invite that, because you know you'll win those fights.

Soon enough, you can siege a city.
Enemy fortification can be very annoying, so it often pays to spend some turns to siege it.
This dovetails with the above. One good way to pull the AI's trumps is to hold a siege.
Just sit on (or walk around) the fence, don't attack inward, don't leave the fence.
As AI armies swarm toward you, judiciously walk along the fence and attack outward.

Then you win 1 fight per turn that you start yourself, plus 0-3 fights that the AI initiates.
Do that for 4-8 turns, and the Serious AI will literally run out of armies.
Then you're alone on its continent, and you can siege its cities 1 after another.

6. Winning Tactical Combats

+ Use mouse-key chords.
Alt-right click to really go there.
Ctrl-right click to really target that.
Combine both, for most units, every turn.
Go through your line-up in descending order of Initiative.

You can't anticipate how enemy melee will move and hit your guys, forcing counterattack.
So your intricately formed plan could get an unexpected interrupt anywhere in the middle.
Nonetheless, do unto them first, and shrug off the mayhem.

+ Use tactical healing. Assimilate a healer minor faction.
Design them with best weapon to maximize Damage stat, which is also Healing stat.

+ Use all tactical roles.
Infantry goons stop enemy goons.
Fast (flimsy) cav hit enemy flags, to halt their reinforcements, then rotate back to heal.
Ranged concentrate firepower for kills.
Healers keep your injured guys alive, so that you take 0 casualties, and keep 0 damage.

Infantry general with +2 = 4 flags means you can reinforce with 4, 4, 4, 4, ...
Your cavs hitting enemy flags means they reinforce with 2, 0, 0, 0, ... because you said no.
By round 4, the fight is 6+16 = 18 vs. 8 = 6+2, in your favor.

+ Era I legendary deed Visionary Leader for +15% Initiative
This is a good deed to go for, because a human player always has some edge in getting it.
As you noted, you can't outrace Serious AIs to any build-related deed.

Also, this deed, once taken, can never be captured. It might as well be you who takes it.

- When it's Destroy 10 (Armies), you'll never outrace a Serious AI.
AIs are hardcoded to kill every minor faction village, which counts as 1 army each.
You cannot win 10 fights (and heal the damage) faster than a Serious AI.

+ When it's Pacify 8 (Villages), you can win by racing to do village quests.
If you go for this, you must do it starting on turn 1.
Some AI will meet its 8th village by turn ~20. Killing a village counts as pacifying it.
Research Language Square 1st, to unlock the Parley village action.
Sprint your hero around (at speed 5, with flute) and parley every village you meet.
Get their village quest(s), and do them.

Your quest jackpot is something like Free Our People in a 3-village region.
You (necessarily) kill 1 other village, which gives you +1, then return to get +3.
That's 4/8 toward the deed, as early as turn 4

I usually combine this with the 6-MP exploit.
On turn 1, dock 2 slow units into your city, run your hero around solo.
Design a unit upgrade with all tier-1 gear + flute for 5 MP.
Hoard ~55 Dust to upgrade 1 of your starting units (only).
Have him chase down your hero and merge.
Thereafter, move normally until 0 MP, then split-join to get 1 free hex of travel.
So it's as if your 5-MP army has 6 MP.
It works about 4 turns out of 5 on level terrain.
It never works if you walked through any 2-MP terrain this turn.

~~~~

Overall, you must play ELCP Serious asymmetrically.
You cannot match AIs in a spending race.
AIs cannot match your careful preparation. So do that.

The reactive strategy of building units non-stop is a dead end.
Its results are exactly what you're seeing.

Instead, look at their 40+ early units in 8+ armies, with Empire Score 10x yours,
nod, sip coffee, and pick which #1 AI you shall invade and kill today.
They're actually sitting ducks, waiting on their hands for you to go to them and kill them.

[CNC]

You wait until turn 20 to settle your 2nd city, and turn 40 to settle more? By turn 40, the AI has claimed all the land on the map. By turn 20, the AI has claimed at least 3 regions, which means I often have nowhere to go. Are we playing the same game?

[Gilmoy]

Well, that's why I always play Huge Many Continents.
I'm not competitive vs. 7 ELCP Endless AIs if we're all on the same land mass.

Yes, I wait until turn 20, 40, etc.
EL's Expansion Disapproval tends to strongly discourage early city spam.
It's not strictly beneficial to have 2-3 cities in Era I, with all of them only at Content.

Balancing your cities' Approval vs. your number of cities is the key metric in EL.
Too few cities loses because your economy is too small.
Too many cities too quickly also loses because your cities lose productivity.
The sweet spot is somewhere in between.

You're right that Serious AIs tend to carpet-settle their entire starting continents rapidly.
AIs get massive cheat bonuses to Approval and Expansion Disapproval.
So their economy is not like a fair human economy, and they can get away with it.
https://endlesslegend.fandom.com/wiki/Difficulty

I also agree that, in certain games, you must aggressively settle the 2nd city
as early as turn 10, just to cut the continent in half and wall off the AI from the other side.

This works best when your 1 neighbor is Roving Clans, as they cannot Declare War.
In those games, I accept the early Expansion Disapproval penalty to block their city spam.
I've played out the alternative timelines in which I meekly didn't do that,
and Roving Clans settled the entire continent around me. That sucks worse.

In Era II, you can be a bit more aggressive about settling another 2-3 cities,
and still keep them all Fervent.

By Era IV, around turn 80, I tend to already be in my 1st land war (or 2nd ).
Then I'm capturing 4-8 enemy cities at my whim, so I skip my own Settler on turn 74.

ELCP Serious is, frankly, a very demanding level, even for me.
My win rate is maybe 80%.

Against ELCP Endless, my win rate drops to about 2%.
It's hard to overcome their production bonuses when you can't build combat advantage.

[ninakoru]

In vanilla you have a similar gap between serious and impossible, there are a few extra bonuses on impossible and buyout and industry discounts start to kick in. Endless is not THAT much harder than impossible in vanilla, as you can exploit the AI in so many ways, specially with the marketplace.

Community patch doesn't play well (well actually the AI abuses these advantages) with the absurd AI bonuses, mostly from vanilla, if you think serious is a hard step in difficulty, wait impossible is harder than vanilla endless, and endless in ELCP is totally nuts, hardly manageable.

Well, I could recommend you my own mod (heh) Harmonious difficulties, compatible with ELCP and with less absurd bonuses (specially on industry), the climb up into difficulties as you master the game is more smooth and AIs make more sense in how they play.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1781851243

[Druitt]

Originally posted by 1UP:

You wait until turn 20 to settle your 2nd city, and turn 40 to settle more? By turn 40, the AI has claimed all the land on the map. By turn 20, the AI has claimed at least 3 regions, which means I often have nowhere to go. Are we playing the same game?

I'm just a beginner at this, but in PvP games they do this via Salt the Earth. Create settlers early (cheaper in earlier eras), remembering that building a settler zeros Food production so you're setting your city size back, then settle regions, but use them to hold the region and earn influence but not to build buildings. Then on turn 19, you Salt the Earth and destroy the city and get a settler back, so on turn 20 your plan is much cheaper. Then resettle. (I think the AI could settle that region in that small gap.)

Not sure if the sacrifice and the setting back of growth is worth it against AI, just saying what I've read.

[CNC]

Just an update, I've now won a couple games on ELCP serious and lost a nailbiter and am currently fighting a very close game so I'm improving :) damn it's tough but I love it.

[ninakoru]

Serious on ELCP is quite the challenge, about endless in vanilla levels, so props of that.