Going from Normal AI to Impossible AI...

[Atreidi]

Im just curious what difficulty level most of you guys play and feel confortable with.

I usually play against a combination of difficulties but mostly Difficult.

1. What is the difference between difficulties?
2. What does the AI do differently as the difficulty increases?
3. Does the AI cheat in higher difficulties or is it simply more efficient?

[Atreidi]

I've been looking all over the manual for an explanation on the difficulty levels and cant find anything. I dont know if im not looking in the right place or if its just not there

[Loren]

The AI gets more points as the difficulty goes up.

At impossible I've seen pretenders with 4 paths at level 9.

[MaxWilson]

If by "cheat" you mean extra resources, yes, it cheats. I believe the AI at higher difficulty levels gets 200% of the gold, resources, and (I think) gems it actually "earns." I don't think it "cheats" in the sense of having extra information about your status of forces, except that it knows who owns every province whether it has a scout nearby or not. That's really the only difference between difficulty levels except for the AI getting more points to design Pretenders. I think Difficult = 130%, Mighty = 170%, and Impossible = 200%. I'm not sure, though. KO or JK posted about it once in the forums here but my memory of the details is fuzzy.

I usually play against Impossible AIs using Edi's Better Independents mod. I have found that the AI is actually more challenging with a mix of difficulty ratings (probably because the Impossibles eat the Mighties and Difficults) but I usually don't set games up that way for some reason. I also lose fairly regularly. If I really want to do some role-playing instead of feeling constrained to play "efficiently" I will play against Normal or Difficult AIs.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

Loren said:
The AI gets more points as the difficulty goes up.

At impossible I've seen pretenders with 4 paths at level 9.

You can actually do this if you take the right Imprisoned pretender and poor enough scales. EA Mictlan can get a F9W9D9B9 Smoking Mirror with Dominion 4.

Not that the AI was doing that, it just had more points. The frustrating thing for me is that it still frequently takes Death scales and I'm too lazy to mapedit smart pretender designs in for it--so I just use a lot of opponents and let the good ones eat the bad ones.

-Max

[NTJedi]

Loren said:
The AI gets more points as the difficulty goes up.

At impossible I've seen pretenders with 4 paths at level 9.

With some programming effort the AI could be designed to take smarter scales on higher difficulty. Smarter scales... such as never taking Death_2 or Death_3 or never taking Unluck_2 or Unluck_3. Human players know how to manage these scales where as AI opponents really suffer. Other useful scales for the AI would be taking Order and Production.

[quantum_mechani]

NTJedi said:
Smarter scales... such as never taking Death_2 or Death_3 or never taking Unluck_2 or Unluck_3.

Misfortune is a staple of MP players, and there are plenty of times when a build has need of points from death scale as well.

[kasnavada]

I think you missed the second part of NTJedi's reply...

What I would actually like is to be able to set the AI before starting a game...

[Edi]

I'm too lazy right now, but somebody should dig up the references to just how much bonus the AI gets at what difficulties to make sure so I could add that to the FAQ.

I'm not quite sure, but I think the bonuses to gold, resources and gems were something like
Easy -30%
Normal 0%
Difficult 30%
Mighty 60%
Impossible 100%

[Herode]

Only +30% for "difficult" ?
Considering the intense troop spamming I have to face at this level, I would have guessed almost 100%

I often play at difficult level, until mid game. I never went past mid game since this adverse spamming is boring in SP. On the other hand at "normal" level, the AI is far too weak and easy to beat and it is #my# spamming which becomes boring