Love the game, but it's too easy!

from Sins Forums
So I love this game, it really pushes all my buttons, but I'm finding it rather too easy to hold my interest.

I've played 6 games so far, and all but the first two I've had with all opponents on Hard, but I've creamed them every time!  I've tried going for bigger and bigger maps each time, until now, where I'm on the HUGE map, but my comp can't really handle it and everything starts to slow down pretty badly after an hour or so of playing.

Am I setting something up wrong?  On a medium map, with all opponents on hard, the AI still never seems to build proper defences.  The only challenging bit is getting my empire to a point where I have all my front line planets defended properly.  This can take a bit of back and forth with neighbouring enemies, which is fun, as my resources are stretched and the chance of losing planets here and there is real.  Once I've got proper defences up though, it just becomes a matter of time, and the rest is really easy - I just roll my 10+ cap ship fleets through opponents territory no problem.  In the end the games become a bit of a grind to mop up remaining planets.

Maybe I'm just ub3r l33t h4xor or something (i'm definitely not :) ) but I figured that if you put a game on HARD it should take you more than a few cracks at it before you win.  I'd just like to feel that, in the endgame, there's a real possibility of me losing, that my enemy is as powerful as me and we're gonna go toe to toe until one of us cracks.  As it is I barely lose any ships in my fleet once I get it up to strength, and the AI just runs away or gets slaughtered.
strategy
9,291 views 22 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Maybe I'm just dumb, what type of defenses are you setting up at your planets? How many of each are you placing? I'm having a tough time moving forward on the Normal difficulty.

Also, what race are you playing?
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Ya I found that too. Played a comp stomp online just for the hell of it, 3v3 all Hard and on aggressive. They only attacked once, and that was against my ally with seige frigates. My other ally ended up beating his opponent with Disa Vessels =S Anyways, you should try and play online. Ive seen some pretty good people. For example 3v3, I was going for Illumintors early, my enemy noticed this and massed defenders and Disa Vessels. Since I couldn't get a good number of Illuminators yet he pretty much creamed me so I was forced to stay on defence.

You can also try Sins Enhancement. I read that they made some improvements to the AI so they build more defences and such. You should really be playing online if you want a challenge though. If your computer lags then just play on single star maps, they are the most used anyways.
CursorFX - Customize your Windows cursor
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Maybe I'm just dumb, what type of defenses are you setting up at your planets? How many of each are you placing? I'm having a tough time moving forward on the Normal difficulty.Also, what race are you playing?
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Have a read of this ... I pretty much follow it's advice for defence.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/?forumid=402&aid=175318

15-20 Gaus turrets, 2 repair stations, 2-3 hangar defences, level up your planet to max health
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
You'll have a tough time finding many strategy games which can really test an experienced human.

Go online and play multiplayer. I think you'll find it VASTLY more challenging and VASTLY more interesting, exciting, and fun.

Javaslinger
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Ya I found that too. Played a comp stomp online just for the hell of it, 3v3 all Hard and on aggressive. They only attacked once, and that was against my ally with seige frigates. My other ally ended up beating his opponent with Disa Vessels =S Anyways, you should try and play online. Ive seen some pretty good people. For example 3v3, I was going for Illumintors early, my enemy noticed this and massed defenders and Disa Vessels. Since I couldn't get a good number of Illuminators yet he pretty much creamed me so I was forced to stay on defence. You can also try Sins Enhancement. I read that they made some improvements to the AI so they build more defences and such. You should really be playing online if you want a challenge though. If your computer lags then just play on single star maps, they are the most used anyways.
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Aye, I guess online is where it's at if you really want a challenge. It's just that I can't really predict when I'm going to be online or able to play, and I can't be doing with the hastle of finding a game and people dropping out on me and wasting time and all that. It'd just be nice if the AI was a little smarter at defence building!

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
@B Boy

Play online, and don't forget the vaseline.

-edit- Oh, and sometime early march IC/SD is releasing the v1.03 patch which will address the crummy AI.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
Well, you made the game easy by reading a guide on how to stomp the AI... what did you expect?

Javaslinger
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
Aye, I guess online is where it's at if you really want a challenge. It's just that I can't really predict when I'm going to be online or able to play, and I can't be doing with the hastle of finding a game and people dropping out on me and wasting time and all that. It'd just be nice if the AI was a little smarter at defence building!
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Ya if you are looking for that then Sins Enhancement is your best bet.
Linky
I have it downloaded, gonna try it today to see how it goes. Only mod I have seen that does anything with the AI
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
Well, you made the game easy by reading a guide on how to stomp the AI... what did you expect?Javaslinger
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True to an extent ... but that document is more to do with defending your own planets rather than what you face when you attack AI. Plus, just following that doc won't win you the game.

I find that, in games where there's multiple AI, the AI attacks much much more when you don't engage in any of the missions they set you (which makes sense of course). If you're at 0% with everyone, at about an hour and a half in, they all start attacking you and it's goddamn tricky and exciting! So maybe I'll just do that from now on, but it seems as though if you get one or two of your enemies to like you enough to offer trade and peace pacts, you just don't get attacked by anyone, and the remaining AI enemy is very easy to roll over.

But still, what I guess I'm driving at is ... why does the AI never max out it's tactical slots? The most i've ever seen is one hangar defence and a couple of gaus turrets. Why don't they use the full range of defences at their disposal? It'd certainly be a hell of a lot harder to take their planets if they did.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
Actually, in reference to my last post, what if you did, say, a 4 player map with the 3 AI on hard and all on the same team? That way there'd be no way to appease them by performing missions, and they'd permanently be your enemy. I'm gonna try that.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
@B BoyPlay online, and don't forget the vaseline.
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rofl :)

Oh, and sometime early march IC/SD is releasing the v1.03 patch which will address the crummy AI.
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Cool beans. I know that Ironclad are always listening to the community for improvements so hopefully if people have been seeing the same issues they'll be kind enough to do an update :)

Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
Try the large map called Grindstone, I cant get anywhere on that map even on normal. Its so crowded and there are virtually no choke points.
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
What we need is some havoc bots like they had in AoE 2. Let the computer cheat and build faster, that would make it more difficult.
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
what many people fail to realize, you can make the game harder by simply tilting the favor to the AI. What I mean is Instead of having a 3vs3 game, have a 2 vs 4 game with locked teams. Leave the AI Attribute at Random. If you want a challenge. Have a 2 vs 5 or even a 2vs6 on hard. I really doubt you'll find that easy.
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
1.03 will introduce improved AI. Just give it a bit fellas.
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
I agree with the OP, the game is challenging up to a point and then it just takes forever to mop up the enemy. I think it's mainly due to the pace of the game in general - when you're having exciting battles you don't notice the 2-3 hours of fighting, but then you sure do notice the 1-2 hours of mopping up the enemy. In standard RTS like War3 for example you spend the same proportion of time mopping up but you only spend 20 minutes fighting, the 10 minutes it takes to mop up the enemy doesn't so bad. And in turn based strategy like Galactic Civ, you can just pop turns to make it go faster, and of course there was enemy surrenders so that helped.

I think the following could be done (and yeah I know some of it is already being talked about by the devs which is great)

- add harder AI settings where the AI gets bonus resources.
- enable AI surrenders when they're overwhelmed and obviously can't win
- Add faster settings and also add the ability to change the game speed at will in single player, so you can play the bulk of the game on normal and then speed it up to finish (you can do this in most RTS games actually).



Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
This is what 1.03 will be addressing for the most part. It definitely plays smarter.
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
The ability to change the speed of the game at will in a single player is the top of my wish list. I can fiddle with maps/settings/teams/etc to get a sufficient challenge, but some parts of the game are far too slow paced.
Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top
CityMan,
"-" and "=" my friend. The first is slow down, the second is speed up. Really takes the tedium out of crushing the last few bits of resistance.
Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
Heh, thanks! There is no onscreen indicator of speed or any buttons so I thought it was static. I should have spent more time looking at the manual, instead of assuming the feature was missing.

Glad I found out now after I've only played a handful of games...rather than an year from now. :)
Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
CityMan, "-" and "=" my friend. The first is slow down, the second is speed up. Really takes the tedium out of crushing the last few bits of resistance.
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Wow that's useful info, these hotkeys weren't even on the keycard that comes with the premium edition
Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top
So I love this game, it really pushes all my buttons, but I'm finding it rather too easy to hold my interest.
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Hi,

Have you tried teamed and locked 2(or more) AI's on Hard, if not try this out on a medium random map without pirates. Here you should get a pretty tuff time :)

Happy gaming!

Redion