How hard is max difficulty?

[🐉Kesseleth🐉]

I've had my eye on this game for a while, and the sale is enough to convince me to buy it. The difficulty is both frightening and enticing to me, but I must ask about something I read in a review.

And if you do manage to win at difficulty 10, it's a bug. Report it on the Arcen games forums... with pride.

This is an exaggeration, right? The max difficulty is not intended to be literally impossible, is it? And, if so, well... how do you beat it?

[LikeableHades]

It is possible to beat. But it definitely will give you a run for your money. The statement that if you manage to win at Difficulty 10, its a bug comes from the fact that most players have to use quite a lot of cheese to withstand the onslaught. So most players end up reporting the bugs they used that let them win, which are subsequently fixed, which leads to a never ending cycle of death for players.

The AI is designed to be stronger, faster, smarter, better than you. And at the max difficulty, it doesn't pull any punches. You are fighting an enemy that is in no way, shape, or form your equal. It is far more powerful than you. So you have to stab it in the heart before it even realises what you're trying to do. If your AI Progress gets too high on any difficulty, you _will_ lose. On max difficulty, the best analogy is like standing in the middle of the highway. With semi-trucks barelling towards you at 100 mph. If you're lucky, you can dodge them, but odds are, you're going to go splat.

[smidlee]

There are many different "difficulty levels" and options. There are so many options that you can make a game with two level 9 AI easier to beat than two level 7 AI. Some options have there own separate difficulty which can make the game easier or harder. In another words AI Wars is not like most game where you have a few difficulty options, you basically have unlimited variety of difficulty heavily depending all the setting you place at the beginning of the game.
(I'm referring to the game with all the DLC)

[shiverczar]

Personally, I'm insane, and find games with only a few options enabled too easy and boring [no, i'm not even going to pretend I'm skilled enough to play on the higher difficulties] so I'll turn on literally 100% of the minor factions (on the "hard" setting for those that have it because it feels weird being able to get golems and the only real cost being that they're super energy expensive) and then find spawn locations for rocketry corps and everything like that in the worst possible locations which only adds to the !!FUN!! [yes I play DF too] and usually, after a while, everything I own explodes. Partly because multiple "hard" faction settings means a large number of powerful waves, and also partly because I am not particularly skilled at the game

I like it when there's a lot going on in the universe that I need to pay attention to and sometimes find myself charging down pointless space highways to stop zenith miner golems from wrecking AI planets because I might want to own them one day, and ticking off the AI worlds everywhere from departure to even ticking off the defenders of the world I saved because my large fleet is hovering in orbit. And then realizing that my fleet won't get back in time to defend against the next AI wave, and I just saved one of their planets only to be scrambling to scrap ships to recover capacity and pump more out back at base to save my own planets.

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)]

We actually aren't joking when we say it's a bug, by the way. :) Sometimes people do win on 10/10, and then they gleefully come and tell us about it. The process typically goes that they tell us ways in which we could have stopped them, and we adjust the AI accordingly, and then nobody can win in that particular way again.

Then sometime in the future someone else finds a way, and the cycle repeats. That was one of the chief ways in which we made the AI better over the years. Well, "we" -- I primarily mean Keith, on that area. I wrote the original AI, but he's the one who went through the bulk of this process with players.

[Horoai]

Haven't tried 10/10 but 9.6/9.6 already gets out of hand. Managed to win the match but fights with 200,000 ships in a gravity well at once were frequent and we had to sit them out on all low settings with 4 fps.

That said, difficulty =!= difficulty!
There are countless options to change your game experience and it's practically a different game in mulitplayer. So, for example, we decided go back to 9.0/9.0 and thus reduce the ship count. In return, we gave the AI more gimmicks, like boosting what they get out of minor factions and choosing more difficult AI types. The matches we played since then actually became harder despite the lower difficulty setting.

[CBR JGWRR]

I have studied the art of war for over a decade, I have analysed the history of over 3000 years of human conflict, I have seen the rise of Alexander, tutored under Sun Tzu, I understand how to construct and use just about every weapon from a stick with a piece of stone to a nuclear bomb, and understand how to take raw, frightened recruits and turn them into world conquerors. So, when I bought this game 2 days ago, I felt reasonably confident that the AI would fall.

After the tutorials, I went for my first match - me, against two difficulty ten "The Core" AIs, no handicaps. As the saying goes, "Go big, or go home".

Once the fight started, I lasted about 45 seconds against the AI.

They deserve the stories told of them.

[Geothermal1159]

Originally posted by CBR JGWRR:

I have studied the art of war for over a decade, I have analysed the history of over 3000 years of human conflict, I have seen the rise of Alexander, tutored under Sun Tzu, I understand how to construct and use just about every weapon from a stick with a piece of stone to a nuclear bomb, and understand how to take raw, frightened recruits and turn them into world conquerors. So, when I bought this game 2 days ago, I felt reasonably confident that the AI would fall.

After the tutorials, I went for my first match - me, against two difficulty ten "The Core" AIs, no handicaps. As the saying goes, "Go big, or go home".

Once the fight started, I lasted about 45 seconds against the AI.

They deserve the stories told of them.

Ha scrub you only laster 45 seconds? I lasted 45.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds. Beat that!

[CBR JGWRR]

Originally posted by BFTPaul1159:

Originally posted by CBR JGWRR:

I have studied the art of war for over a decade, I have analysed the history of over 3000 years of human conflict, I have seen the rise of Alexander, tutored under Sun Tzu, I understand how to construct and use just about every weapon from a stick with a piece of stone to a nuclear bomb, and understand how to take raw, frightened recruits and turn them into world conquerors. So, when I bought this game 2 days ago, I felt reasonably confident that the AI would fall.

After the tutorials, I went for my first match - me, against two difficulty ten "The Core" AIs, no handicaps. As the saying goes, "Go big, or go home".

Once the fight started, I lasted about 45 seconds against the AI.

They deserve the stories told of them.

Ha scrub you only laster 45 seconds? I lasted 45.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds. Beat that!

It helps, when one lies, to at least make the lie plausible. Time can only be humanly measured to 1x10^-16 seconds, and to get that precise requires the European National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Teddington, UK; the French department of Time-Space Reference Systems at the Paris Observatory (LNE-SYRTE); the German German National Metrology Institute (PTB) in Braunschweig; and Italy’s Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (INRiM) in Turin laboratories combined efforts.

And you really want to sit there and claim accuracy to 1x10^-75? If you can substantiate this, then your method is worth millions and millions of dollars, because you've obsoleted all methods of measuring time known to man at this point.

[Geothermal1159]

Originally posted by CBR JGWRR:

Originally posted by BFTPaul1159:

Ha scrub you only laster 45 seconds? I lasted 45.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds. Beat that!

It helps, when one lies, to at least make the lie plausible. Time can only be humanly measured to 1x10^-16 seconds, and to get that precise requires the European National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Teddington, UK; the French department of Time-Space Reference Systems at the Paris Observatory (LNE-SYRTE); the German German National Metrology Institute (PTB) in Braunschweig; and Italy’s Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (INRiM) in Turin laboratories combined efforts.

And you really want to sit there and claim accuracy to 1x10^-75? If you can substantiate this, then your method is worth millions and millions of dollars, because you've obsoleted all methods of measuring time known to man at this point.

1) It is an obvious joke
2) Yes I can substantiate being able to accuratly meassure time to that degree but I am in the process of getting a patent for it so I can't afford to divulge my secrets to you.

[DedZedNub]

I believe his better excuse was that the AI itself told him how long it would gloat over its victory and let him live before it extinguished the last remnants of humanity. I'm not sure I would argue with the AI having such accuracy, not even after I lasted 45 seconds in its awesome presence?

Only the AI could possibly have such loving attention to the details of time, I should know this is how my community's life was spared ... with a total obsequious display towards its manifest superiority. I even clap out loud with feigned exuberance whenever I watch replays, since it may be watching me through the camera.

Hopefully, it didn't just scan that .... crap ... I hear footsteps at the door.

[Geothermal1159]

Originally posted by DedZedNub:

I believe his better excuse was that the AI itself told him how long it would gloat over its victory and let him live before it extinguished the last remnants of humanity. I'm not sure I would argue with the AI having such accuracy, not even after I lasted 45 seconds in its awesome presence?

Only the AI could possibly have such loving attention to the details of time, I should know this is how my community's life was spared ... with a total obsequious display towards its manifest superiority. I even clap out loud with feigned exuberance whenever I watch replays, since it may be watching me through the camera.

Hopefully, it didn't just scan that .... crap ... I hear footsteps at the door.

Footsteps? Nah dood you are fine then as it isn't the AI. You will know it is the AI when you turn around and see a drone silently floating there waiting for you to turn around so that you can realize your quickly dimishing time left before it.... takes care of you in whatever fasion it deems to use....

Better hope it choose the quick method.

[Tegga21]

Originally posted by Kesseleth:

I've had my eye on this game for a while, and the sale is enough to convince me to buy it. The difficulty is both frightening and enticing to me, but I must ask about something I read in a review.

And if you do manage to win at difficulty 10, it's a bug. Report it on the Arcen games forums... with pride.

This is an exaggeration, right? The max difficulty is not intended to be literally impossible, is it? And, if so, well... how do you beat it?

Learning on your own without resorting to stacking things in your favor (like removing AI auto progress etc) or reading some very nich exploits, it will take you alot of skill and learning to win on the highest difficulty.

All ship types, difficulty 10, random 2 AI harder/hardest types, 80 planet normal layout with hidden branches. Good luck, possible with skill but good luck :p

Smaller systems are much easier at hardest difficulty