difference between difficulty levels

[egervari]

What is the real difference between difficulty levels? Is it possible to play on the hardest setting? Which one is considered to be beated for 'really good' players consistently?

[Jamski]

The AI gets "hard" bonuses on higher levels, and you have less content people before they become Drones. The AI is also more aggressive. I'm not sure what the bonuses are exactly, but on Trancend they get a big one.

I have to say that a good player will always beat Trancend, and will often set limits (like only build one base for example) to make it harder. Ouch!

-Jam

[egervari]

what is the 'average' setting then? Like what would be the setting where your empire has the same bonuses/minuses as the AI players (other than faction modifications of course)?

[CEO Aaron]

The average settting would be the one in the middle of the difficulty choices. If you want the setting which the vast majority of the posters play on, it would be Transcend. I'm playing on Thinker myself, I've been trying to improve my game before proceeding to Transcend. On a side note, I'm of the opinion that in most difficulty levels, your starting position is far more relevant to your level of success in the game than the level of difficulty. Early availability of resources, proximity/aggression of neighboring factions, the amount of terraforming necessary to expand into neighboring areas, these factors are much more difficult to cope with than an extra drone here or there.

[Static Universe]

Here's a recent thread which has some good info about the differences between the levels.

Difficulty Signifies?

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=76323

[egervari]

Cool. The drone information and maximum base limit formulas were exactly what I was looking for. I guess that makes children's cache's so much more important at higher levels.

[Flubber]

and almost all people play here at transcend level. If level is not indicated, assume they are playing at transcend.

All levels are easily beatable once you know how.

I remember when I first found this forum and people were claiming to win CIV2 on deity while I struggled with king level. I thought they were full of crap. But I read the strategies and soon I won on deity and then started to win various types of harder challenges.

Smac/x is the same. Once you read up you can beat the AI at any level. In fact, I found the harder levels BETTER since the AI would actually have some tech to trade or steal and I wasn't forced to research everything myself

[egervari]

I'm just getting back into the game after some time. I used to be able to beat it at talent level and had some problems on librarian. I only had played it for a for weeks then but new games came along and I stopped playing. I just want to play alpha centauri to hold me over until march 26th =) I do want to get better at the game, but I have some relearning to do. It's an easy game, but when you start mircomanaging terrorforming, supply crawlers and knowing which technology is useful (it's all new to me again except for the first few levels of technology), it can seem pretty large. I'll probably be asking a few questions over the next couple of days =) I want to play on transcend too.

[Static Universe]

Originally posted by egervari
Cool. The drone information and maximum base limit formulas were exactly what I was looking for. I guess that makes children's cache's so much more important at higher levels.

The ecodamge info is also critical to playing the game well at transcend level. This was probably the area that had the single biggest impact on the game for me.

Before, I was constantly being overrun by worms at transcend level. Now, I'm shocked if I get a fungal bloom in the late game.

[Jamski]

Ah, another evil free-marketeer

-Jam

[Static Universe]

Originally posted by War of Art
Ah, another evil free-marketeer

How dare you!!!



Actually, I never went Free Market before because I was having such huge problems with pollution in the other choices.

My big mistake was trying to stave off that first bloom for as long as possible, and Planet would snap back on me with a vengeance at some point in the midgame.

I only became evil later.

[Straybow]

Yeah, I was shocked at the jump in ecodamage when I first started playing at Transcend. In midgame I switched from Green to Free and suddenly had triple digit ecodamage in my power bases!

[Frankychan]

Daaaaamn.

I played Transcend once and it was pretty hard but interesting. The faction leaders have more personality than the lower levels.

But since I only started playing again recently, I've had to work my way back up the difficulty ladder.

See this thread for details...

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=81166

this was only on the fourth difficulty level.