Effect of Game Speed on AI Difficulty

[ZEE]

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[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Almost all my games have been on Marathon... it would be amusing if I was actually making it harder on myself by playing on that setting!

[Solver]

Slower speeds are probably marginally easier. In essence, slower speeds make warmongering more powerful because your units take longer to obsolete, and that makes the game a bit easier.

Then again, it's also balanced out by map size. On Normal speed but a Huge map, warmongering may just prove to be nearly impossible in some situations. If your army needs 10 turns to just arrive at the enemy, it might be that you build an Axeman army but the enemy gets Longbowmen while it's on the move.

[ZEE]

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[Solver]

The game speed affects everyone. The AI does not gain any explicit bonuses on other game speeds.

However, there are some indirect bonuses. For example, the upgrade discount. On Normal, you pay X for upgrades, the AI pays, say, 0.4X (depends on the difficulty level). On Epic, you pay 1.5X for upgrades, but the AI still gets its discount. So it'd pay 0.4*(1.5X) = 0.6X for upgrades. At least I think that's how it works, I haven't re-checked now.

[ZEE]

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[Solver]

No, there are no hidden game speed bonuses. As I said, there are AI discounts, but those depend on the difficulty level, and not game speed. It's just that on slower speeds things become more expensive for you, which means that the AI discounts are marginally more useful.

I do not see a big problem here. Humans are better than the AI at warfare, and slower game speeds make somewhat warfare more powerful. That is countered by the AI discounts being marginally more useful (to the AI), to maintain a more-or-less consistent difficulty throughout levels.

I haven't noticed any significant difficulty change between speeds myself. Noble vs. Prince or Prince vs. Monarch is definitely a change, but Epic Prince vs. Normal Prince isn't too different.

[ZEE]

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[Solver]

What you want is impossible. Any AI is dumber than a human and that will continue to be the case until our science makes some groundbreaking discoveries. Therefore, it's even impossible to make sure difficulty remains the same no matter what settings you choose. As it is, the difference in difficulty is not really big, it's fairly negligible in my opinion.

What Blake wants to do is to make the AI smarter as much as possible, which would mean that its bonuses can be reduced or even, in some cases, eliminated. Needless to say, that's the ideal approach.

[ZEE]

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[Solver]

The formula crossing benefit is minimal. Let's assume you need 100 gold to upgrade a unit. Now, you're playing on Prince, so the AI pays 25% of the gold for the upgrades. So, it pays 25 gold instead, that's 75 gold less than you pay.

Now imagine Epic, you'd be paying 150 for that upgrade instead. The Prince AI will be paying 38 gold - that is 112 gold less than you pay. If you'll notice, 112 is 50% more than 75.

The point is, everything costs 50% more on Epic. So the AI saved 50% gold more, fine. But the 112 gold on Epic will be as useful as 75 gold is on Normal, because it takes 112 gold to do something on Epic that would take 75 gold on Normal.

Therefore, if there is an economical benefit to the AI on the higher levels, it's absolutely negligible. If its economy becomes overall stronger by half a percent that doesn't mean. The human player gains more through warfare being more powerful on the slower speeds.

[ZEE]

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[Solver]

I am not too familiar with the inside workings of the Civ3 AI. Besides, I don't even remember a Double Production option (was it from an expansion?), so no answer from me there.

Marathon in Civ4 is actually the only speed that is inherently unbalanced. On Quick, Normal and Epic everything costs the same. Units, buildings and technologies cost 50%, 100% and 150% respectively. On Marathon, it's different. Buildings and technologies cost 300%, but units cost 200%. That makes units easier to train on Marathon and means that Marathon is significantly more favourable to warmongering than any other game speed. Maybe you aren't kicking AI ass enough at warfare

Then again, if you could consistently win vs. Prince on Normal/Epic, you could also do so on Marathon. Duel maps where you're 1 on 1 are different. I'd go as far as to say that it's primarily a multiplayer setting, the AI doesn't thrive in a duel environment.

[ColdPhoenix]

It could be that you don't build enough troops. It happens me sometimes on the slower speeds. If the AI turns up with a stack of troops on marathon speed they'll be modern troops and you won't have time to build anything to stop them. On the quicker speeds the troops may be obsolete and as long as you can hold on for a few turns you'll be able to get a counter attack built up.

Also (I think) units are cheaper in the slower speeds so while the AI can build say 6 units while I'm building my library and market at quick speed the AI can probably build 10 units at marathon. This leads to bigger stacks.

I think that peaceful/builder type players find the quicker speeds easier and warlike players find slower speeds easier.

I'm a builder but prefer the slower games even if I do find them tougher.

[ColdPhoenix]

Ah! Too late with my response I see!