Difficulty levels?

[Seravy]

As game balance is finally reaching the place where -hopefully - no major issues remain, it might be a good idea to consider a final adjustment of AI bonus on higher difficulty levels.

The INTENDED difficulty is :

Fair and Advanced : what most people will play who already know how the mod works but aren't particularly good at playing it yet.
Expert : Consistent wins for veteran players with good strategies.
Master : Consistent wins for veteran players with their best strategies only.
Lunatic : 30-50% win rate even for veteran players with their best strategies.

[teelaurila]

It's rather hard to gauge where my skill would be. With most strategies I try, I seem to lose at master but win at expert. So perhaps a difficulty in-between would be best, but maybe that's just where I am atm.

[MrBiscuits]

My problem with difficulty is that I can easily beat the wizards on my own plane every time on expert and sometimes on master, but then the wizard with a plane all to himself has just run away with the game due to having it all to themselves and all the bonuses they get. 

I've got into the same routine in games of taking over the starting plane, breaking a tower and then just giving up as they have power + army strength about 5 times that of mine. Even if I was to win it would be a very long war of attrition that I don't find as fun as the earlier parts of the game.  I think 3 on the starting plane and 2 on the other plane is a much more fun and balanced game. Also it creates more variety on the other plane so that it isn't just dominated by one race when you get there.

It would be cool to have an option of choosing the number of starting wizards on your plane if at all possible.

[teelaurila]

At higher difficulty, I've found you definedly need to break a tower and hit the myrran wizard after dealing with 1 or 2 on your home plane. If you get to choose, go to Myrror after beating the nearest wizard on your home plane. Often one of the wizards left on arcanus will declare war on you, though, so you have to deal with that. If you are caught in a everyone-against-you war on arcanus, you might still win that war without too much sweat, but lose just by the Myrran running away.

So bribe early, bribe often, and make friends before you expand too much to get the diplo penalties.

[Slingers]

Personally I think that difficulty levels in COM are good as they are. 

7 levels instead of the 5 in MOM  v1.31 !  That one was impossible to loose, except by game-crash.

I imagine renaming Difficulty option “AI-Bonus” and having some kind of tuner to adjust it from like “Minus max possible = -2000” to “Plus max possible = +5000” with “Normal = 0 Bonus”. 
That would be a scale to toy around with, leading to short games on both ends and the new Difficulty settings “You win !” and “You loose !”.

No worries about finetuning of difficulty levels anymore !

Maybe it´s fun to have lousy opponents with only one book and scared rampaging monsters (child-mode ) or to try to survive as many turns as possible before getting eaten by invisible Sky-Drakes ... 

More possible options and variety is always better.
7 is better than 5.
12 is better than 7.
And so on. 
 
More opponents are not possible afaik. Who ever chooses less than 4 may raise his hand.
 
To have Myrror for myself, to try out things, my last game had only 1 opponent …
2 turns before my “unbeatable Doomstack” reached Auras capital, she finished casting an epic Game-Over-Timestop. That was Lunatic Difficulty - perfectly balanced !
Right now I am playing the same game one more time from the beginning …
 

@MrBiscuits: It would be cool to have an option of choosing the number of starting wizards on your plane if at all possible.

I vote for always having 4 opponents and to choose between 0-4 opponents on the starting plane.