What is so difficult about accepting simple fact, that Normal can be easy for someone, while Hard way too hard? Clearly people want to be challenged, if they did not, they would not complain about Hard being hard and would just play Normal, as its easy.

And the whole synonyme to Hard thing. Dont be ridiculous. What are the synonymes to Cruel or Vicious then? And how are they even relevant to anyone´s perception of the difficulty? It is just semantics. Hard can be hard even after "nerf", just less hard than before.

And actually, why such a strong opposition against change to this? Cause you feel Hard is a sweetspot for you now? But they could just move that sweetspot to unfair and nothing would change for you, basically. Unlike for quite a lot of people.

EDIT: And yeah, i partially agree with you. The AI is indeed smarter now. Cause it can put that handsome income advantage it has to a good use now. Thats why it feels harder than before despite the bonus ratios were kept at their original values in the end (apparently).

You have got to be kidding me!  Seriously dude,  to hard?  We take on 3 vs. 3 with the hardest setting for the AI and we still win against them.  yes, it gets very brutal at times, and I wouldn't have it any other way.  I personally like how they are now bringing in fleets with more Capital-ships now.  Learn how to play, or don't play at all. but seriously stop whining about the AI being to hard.

It can be true, not everyone reads instructions, and strategy tips, and they can find difference between normal and hard, or hard and unfair too big. When I first decided to go against Unfair I had no chance, but hard was easy for me and wasn't a challenge (and I don't like unbalanced numbers so like 2v3 or 1v2). I figured out how to defeat Unfair and improved a lot, but I read nice tips here, but I am sure most singleplayers never read forums and maybe even give up playing because of it.

Get better at the game or lower the difficulty.

/thread

The thing is, a lot of work went into making the AI better. It is more smart now.

And that is the primary reason that hard AI has become harder.

I cannot understand why people want them to make the AI dumb again. Especially not an the difficulty setting "Hard" or above.

I am fine with changes to easy AI and mabye even to normal. But a hard AI means that is should be hard to beat it.

If you cannot handle a hard AI.... I am sorry, but you will have to play against normal one.... or help yourself with other means. (AI allies, starbasing choke points, playing multi star maps (Stops rushing. 

If hard is to heavy for you but normal to easy, consider adding 2 or 3 normals teaming up against you. Or set the fleet limit to low, that makes digging in somewhat easier.

I read your gameplay description in the other thread - how you fought Vasari Loyalist AI. Nobody asks to remove this new new implemented "intelligence" and make AI dumb again. How did you came to that conclusion? Personally i merely suggested to decrease somewhat the income bonus the AI gets. That has nothing to do with AI being smart or not, but could help lot of players, who have problems to beat the hard AI, tremendously. 

If you read the OP, the complaint was about AI firing its superweapons, when he is just on tech level 4. Again, that has fuck all to do with AI being smart, it is down to AI having money to burn and being programmed to go for superweapons. Thats why it can field them so soon. 

@Darksxx, Apheirox - congratulations to your lack of emphatic skills.

Hard AI and the OP at level4.... You should understand he was too slow to develop. By the time Hard TL gets a superweapon it is well into the game, middle game, to say, and if he was only on level 4 he was doing something wrong..

Unfair AI can get superweapons quite early, but hard? maybe on super mega large maps where this AI owns a whole system, but it's not the AI's fault, OP gave him this possibility if this was the case...

AI's are meant to be harassed, to waste their fleets on your defenses or on your titan. If you leave him develop peacefully he will always build superweapons and titans sooner than you... If you kill his fleets he rarely builds superweapons.

Oh Sulley, I do pity you boy, I truly do...

Haha.

Well I'd play against only normal players, but they're too easy! I can just roll over them. Maybe that's what I'd like, something inbetween...

My thoughts exactly.

I have to admit, I didn't think of starting a game with teams. I like FFA because the end result is never the same, but perhaps starting with teams would be good. Also, I have been playing these games on random maps where there aren't choke points, that might be a good idea to play on different maps. My problem was that I was busy trying to kill the normal AI when the hard AI was sending fleets to my planets and pretty much raping them.

Ooooh. Well... that would explain things.

I am a very experienced player, though, and don't build ten capital ships, for example. I usually only build 2 and then build a titan (and a crap ton of frigates). Then I'll get around to building those other capital ships after my credit sum passes 10,000. 

By the way, money wasn't a problem for me. I had plenty. Coming out my ears. I had over 20,000 credits and 5,000-10,000 metal and crystal. I just hadn't expanded as fast into the other systems and now I have to fight tooth and claw to get there. Maybe there needs to be an AI turtle mode? I kinda like to do that. Turtle and then rape everyone's shi** (scuse my language). 

I always play on random maps.. You can decide where to put your chokepoint there, most of the times there is an option for it, 1-2-3 planets closing the way to yout inner planets from AI side, and if you move your fleet when AI attacks somewhere you can defend 3 worlds at once (of course with fully upgraded starbases)

Smaller maps (like medium ones) are better in the case you will not let him develop freely (and have a 2000+ fleet while you only have like 500). This is the key, not letting him do what he wants, and against Hard or Unfair you need to kill his fleets with minimal losses, to take away his extra resources so he will not surpass you in every field. A starbase with a moderate defender fleet and some repair strucutres is enough to destroy 5-10 times larger fleets, with capital ships, and with titan.. AI is really stupid, though sometimes it really wants to kill your starbase like 30 ogrovs..

I'm pretty sure Hard AIs do not gain any income advantage -- they just seem to spend it more effectively than we do because they have no sense of foresight or self-preservation.

Human player: "I'm gonna need X soon, so I won't get Y right now," when nine times out of ten you could afford X anyway.

AI player: "I don't even care, I'm just gonna research all the things, spam all the ships, and get all the planets."

But what makes an AI player ultimately beatable is their predictability. They will always attack when you're not at a planet (so leave choke-point planets only when you have adequate defenses), and they will inevitably attack with combinations of ships that can be beaten with proper fleet synergy.

................... Just check the end game results, he clearly gets advantage. Just think, how the hell would he get more credits if you had more population ad trade ports than him?

It should be your priority too... In the beginning grabbing as much planets as possible is key for victory.

Is it surprising? The game is all about counters... There is nothing that cannot be countered. It's not the AI's fault.

Look at all the bitching in here.  If it's too hard, turn down the difficulty (you have more than 3 presets for a reason), or find what the issue is, and mod it out.

Problem solved.

On a side note, I haven't played the new AI yet, but I'll be happy to play once my mod is fully converted over.  The mod is tech level expansions, racial/planetary (making each race/planet more unique) rebalancing , dramatically increased importance on roletypes, and gameplay optimizations.  It's much harder than vanilla, and more fun.  I recall the standard difficulty being "unfair" for the AI, in my LAN group.  Regardless, I'm working on making our SupCom modset smaller while I wait for TSOP to get done.  Plus, I don't know how many more times they'll be patching Sins.  I don't want to be in the middle of working on something before they break it.

Allow me to explain how difficulty settings work.

Easy - This is for those who are new to the game or still developing their skills. It is generally a non-challenge (or easy) and players will quickly move beyond this state.

Normal - An average game, players should still prevail, although victory will require more effort, planning and skill.

Hard - Difficult, which is defined by Google as:

1. Needing much effort or skill to accomplish, deal with, or understand.
2. Characterized by or causing hardships or problems.

"Much more skill", hmm, sounds tricky. Almost sounds like I may lose the odd game because of all the "HARDships".

But alas, I think I'll load a game and expect hard to be like easy then demand the hard AI nerfed when I'm defeated because I'm not willing to put in the "effort"  to gain the "skill to accomplish, deal with, or understand" SOASE and its hard AI.