Question about difficulty effects

[haphazard1]

Can anyone point me to a description of the effects of the various difficulty levels for MoO? What is different on Impossible vs. Hard vs. Average? (Or even Easy, for completeness, not that I intend to play on Easy. ) I know that you have more starting pop below impossible, but what other changes are there?

I am looking at going back and playing some of the old Imperia, and (hopefully) posting some shadow reports. Some of them are not at impossible, and I am curious as to what differences I should expect.

Thanks!

[RefSteel]

I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but if I remember correctly, the AI gets a +25% bonus to production (of everything) on Average, +100% (I think) on Hard, and +300% (I think) on Impossible. They also tend to get free colony ships more slowly (and therefore expand more slowly) at lower difficulties, though there is a random element involved. AIs also build far fewer missile bases on lower difficulties (they stop building bases when they reach a bases : max-pop ratio of N on a given planet, and N increases with the difficulty level, but I don't remember the exact figures).

Tech costs are also lower for the player at lower difficulty levels; I don't remember if the AIs' costs are also higher though, and again I don't have the actual numbers in front of me.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the info, RefSteel!

I had forgotten about the missile bases -- that is definitely a significant difference. Tech and build costs I had assumed would scale; the exact numbers don't really matter that much, although they would be interesting to know just for curiosity's sake.

On colony ships, do the AIs actually get free ones? I thought they just did not get consumed by founding a new colony like the player's colony ships do, and the AI still had to build new ones when their tech changed (better drives, upgraded colony bases, etc.).

[Ianus]

No they absolutely appear from nowhere.
My most blatant example: I had a containment fleet parked over the AI's last planet and was bombing each turn to eliminate factories and keep pop low. Suddenly there was a colony ship in transit toward one of my worlds that hadn't been there the turn before.

[haphazard1]

Interesting...thanks, Ianus. I had assumed that AI colony ships just did not get consumed; it seemed to explain how they could grab so many worlds so quickly and still always have one or more in their fleets.

[Ianus]

Yes they typically appear in established fleets which is why one doesn't often notice them. Sometimes though...