difficulty discussion

[Nelphine]

As I don't have a lot of experience with CoM yet, I'm wondering where the difficulty levels actually are right now.

For instance, my ideal is that on normal, a new player could probably win - even with sub optimal play, like not expanding fast enough, and 'poor' race/retort/book selections. (There are enough balancing changes done that I don't think there are actually poor selections. More like non synergistic selections that could be easily at odds with one another - like conjuring plus life.)

Hard could be beaten by the 'poor' selections, but not always, and would require a very experienced player to do so. On the other end, with very strong selections, hard could be beaten 100% of the time. But its aimed for good, not very good, selections.

Extreme should not be beatable by the 'poor' selections without incredible luck. But should it be beatable by very strong selections 100% of the time? This difficulty I feel should be aimed at the very strong selections.

Impossible should require very strong selections, and even then, not be winnable all the time.



That's my thoughts. Is that where Seravy is aiming at? Do other people find the difficulties match their expectations?

[Seravy]

This is my goal, and I have no idea if I managed to get anywhere near it :

Easy - 100% win even for beginners unless intentionally trying to lose.
Normal - 100% win for experts, an enjoyable game with a high but not 100% chance to win for beginners.
Hard - 100% win for experts with a very strong wizard, very high chance to win for them otherwise, none to medium chance for beginners, depending on how badly and what wizard they play.
Extreme - High chance to win with a stronger wizard for experts, medium chance with an average wizard, no chance for beginners
Impossible - Low to medium chance to win with a very strong wizard, very low chance with an average one, pretty much no chance with a weak wizard unless with extreme luck on starting location and enemies.

All of this refers to 4 wizards and medium settings on everything else. Land size and such can have a great impact on difficulty.

I would like to hear people's opinions as well. It's pretty hard to judge difficulty from my viewpoint because I know much more than what expert players know, including AI behavior etc.

[Nelphine]

OK, so similar to what I expected. I like playing max power because I like getting more books/retorts (current hard game I have 9 picks worth from nodes/lairs, and opposing wizards have 5 picks from nodes/lairs.) I've been choosing poor/wet, because that benefits my strategy the most.

I've confirmed my strategy dominates the hard difficulty, so I'll be moving up to extreme.


My biggest question right now is what to do with research. My strategy only uses a few common spells (but I would love to cast them dozens of times per turn), although some global enchantments, city enchantments, and rare spells will improve it, but the hard game was won before I had any of those.

[Nelphine]

I didn't realize there was a maximum on the historian graph. Definitely time to stop the hard game.

[Nelphine]

I feel like something is off. I'm not sure exactly what is bothering me, but in the scoring system, the time bonus doesn't reward you for earlier than 1420.

I've never actually played for score, although I look at it, so I'm not really worried about this from a scoring point of view.

Instead I'm wondering about this from a tuning point of view.

If scoring assumes that anything earlier than 1420 isn't an improvement, my gut feeling is that if you do win before then, you were using some kind of early game strategy - for instance, in vanilla, hunting down all the enemy capitals with Gorgons you got from 11 nature book start.

The implication is then that a game won through late game strategies (champions with create artifact, spell of mastery, armies of very rare summons) probably won't win until at least 1420.

Now, I realize I was only playing hard, but the outcome of my game was already decided around 1411 (meaning - I had at least 3 stacks that none of the AI could hope to defeat, at least 4 units in all cities, and 2 additional stacks on my home continent I could buff to undefeatable status in less than 3 turns if anyone seriously threatened me). In 1414 I hit the maximum historian power, and in 1415 I had researched everything except spell of mastery, despite having 18 books, capped mana and gold despite more than 1000 mana maintenance per turn, and had more than 600 spell skill (not including heroes in my capital). If I had actually started conquering opponents, I probably could have started as early as 1409, although without wind walking it would have taken years (maybe.. 1413-1414 by the time I won? I would have had to slow down node/lair conquering, so I'm not sure). If I started in 1414, I could have finished by 1415, simply due to 5 windwalking heroes each leading an invincible stack (the 6th would be kept on my home continent for defence, although I can't imagine that would matter.)

All this despite not building any new cities since 1407 or so (I only had 20 cities), and without conquering any opponents (by 1413 they were using disjunction on me semi regularly, but since I could replace my globals in at most one turn, it didn't mean much.)

Obviously, things will be different on harder difficulties, but these numbers still feel like they ate at odds with the idea that winning before 1420 is not seriously expected.

Again, my concern is from a tuning point of view. Are these numbers normal for strong starting picks? Is 1420 designed around games where the difficulty matches your starting picks? (Effectively, using a starting pick much stronger than the difficulty counts as an extreme early game tactic, even if its not an actual early game.)

[Seravy]

I don't want to discriminate against slower races and realms in the scoring system. 1420 is reasonably doable even when playing a slower game, if you play especially well. My experience is, games usually end between 1420-1435 on higher difficulties, unless playing a rush strategy and getting lucky.
Hard and below certainly doesn't offer enough difficulty to need all that time for expert players, but those difficulties are targeted at less expert players, and they will probably need it anyway.

[Nelphine]

Using a slightly modified strategy (dwarves instead of alchemy/lizardmen/5th life book, tactician instead of mana focusing, since dwarves bring in tons of power anyway), extreme difficulty, I'm on target to have similar numbers. My 'unbeatable' stacks came around the same time (1408-1410), although without water walking, and FAR less bonus books/retorts (I found 13 bonus picks on hard, I've only found 4 extra on extreme - my opponents got 5 extra on hard, and didn't get any extra on extreme. Both games were max power, fair land size. On hard, the AI cracked several towers, and all 4 had significant presence on both planes - on extreme, I cracked, and controlled, every tower), I don't think I'll truly dominate until 1417 or so (meaning, hit max historian power, research everything, have enough unbeatable stacks to simultaneously take out all dangerous opponents).

One difference on extreme, the single Myyran AI declared war on me very early (1404 maybe?), and conquered 3 of my 5 cities before I could start rolling him up. I've now banished him 4 times. None of the other AI ever got strong enough to risk fighting with me.

Obviously, not a large sample size, so take this with a grain of salt. For instance, the only arcanus wizard with life books (3 of them), was also the only one with enough death books (9 of them) to get shadow demons - and that wizard was peaceful. By smashing the single Myrran wizard, and simply allowing the peaceful wizard to (very late, 1411 or 1412) colonize one continent on Myrror, the towers were the only route for the ruthless and maniacal wizards to get to me - and they couldn't crack the towers. Simply by leaving my tower cracking team on the tower, I was assured that nothing from arcanus would ever threaten me. (The ruthless wizard did declare war on me, but literally never did a single thing about it, and eventually my army strength made him sue for peace. Since I was busy node farming on myrror, we never fought a single battle.)

Also, unlike on hard, I'm fairly sure the AI could have taken my 'unbeatable' stacks, if they'd been willing to just smash it with everything they had. I had to guard a lot more places, and couldn't take the time to actually buff anything to unbeatable status - instead I was constantly buffing different stacks to 'very dangerous' status, so I could protect everything I had. My node farmers also got killed a few times (hordes of gorgons, horde of great drakes), or turned into tower guard duty, so I was constantly rebuffing new node farmers; only in 1414 can I really say I could have developed an unbeatable stack, but with no threats, buffing multiple node farmers is still more helpful.