Okay, I've released the latest beta update with the AI resource bonus change. Give it a whirl and post back what you guys think when you're able. Thanks!

Tried a game on hard and a game on unfair...hard is easy just like it was in original v1.82, but unfair was also much tamer...difficult to say if it is the same as hard from v1.80, only played one game, but it's certainly close...it would seem this is probably what's best for everyone, newbies get much more even stepping stones while vets still have a decent level that's cheating isn't too obvious...

I'll try a few more on unfair, and see how cruel and vicious are...so far so good though..

Cool, thanks.

I tend to agree with Sel's conclusions. Unfair isn't the spam machine it used to be. I have yet to try anything above unfair but with Easter weekend off from work I should get a chance to do more testing.

Any chance that the feed button will be updated? It will go a long way in reducing carpal tunnel syndrome among eco players.

Could we get the before and after values for the AI resource bonus at each level? Just curious what the spread is.

Can I ask a stupid question?

Why so late in the game is it necessary to play with the AI  settings?

Nothing else is or should be in the works...since your ramping up to GalCiv 3 anyway...

Awesome!

I'll give it a whirl over the Easter weekend.

I'd like the Unfair AI to be similar to if not exactly the same as the Hard AI from v 1.80. Is it just me or does it seem like it's easier to hold off against AI fleets when playing on a larger map, since there's more room to expand? 

Some numbers on the resource bonuses would also be nice. 

I don't see, why they do change something here and there, but give us no sliders to set the value we prefer. I for my part tested the ridiculous mode (one harder than hard) and i was spammed with low friggs on nearly every planet i conquered.

Because i play with pirates enabled, we were bidding like hell and it lost almost all of them. But after a few minutes, pirates were friend of it and so i got them all. So with pirates and a mass spam of low friggs (and some BS) it finished its game ender cannon and its titan and i finished taking this as a victom for me, because of cheating in a way i do not tolerate.

With this rules for me, i now win every game after a real short time, because of over-cheating. Might it be a good hint for this programmers to view some replays to laught with me?

So i see no reason to let the patch enabled and set steam to do not patch any more. Many thanks for this bad try.

For long term, this game has none, as it is not customable to balance it for personal use. So they should work on this, not on a wrong named ridiculous mode after a soft hard mode.

And before breaking the SI (scripted/hardcoded intelligence (it's not a AI in my opinion as it is not able to learn)), they should fix some of the pathing problems, the stuck of titans on jump if area is blocked from ships and reenable the scout anti mining operation (auto ability), as this feature was active in the early times of SINS. And for sure, they should fix the one core load of the game.

Why i have to disable core one usage and reenable it after a while to get it better balanced (the game becomes slow because one core is at max on a 17% system load (on a 8 core system))?

I agree with the above poster, the Unfair AI is still too unfair. Now hard is too easy while unfair is too hard. Why not just make unfair the same as hard from v 1.8 and make cruel the new unfair? Then vicious can be well, an over the top cheating sonofabitch. 

Guess I'll be going back to v1.8 for now since the Hard AI in that version is my sweet spot. Sometimes I come very close to losing, and it's extremely tense. 

I wasn't logged in, but you made me log in to post to your awful post...

1. Are you even able to fight Hard to begin with? Sounds like you need more training before taking on Unfair.

2. How else do you suppose they can make an harder AI? A way that preferably does not need a ton of coding to be re-done or newly made.

3. Have you heard of mods? You should check them out...Or you know, create your own.
Also there are a ton of options you can set already(Agree there could be another like no titan/no superweapons) and the amount of cheating an AI does.
Not to mention there is PVP if you want equal opponents.

4. I don't even know what you mean...

5. This game is made for single-core, not dual or quad or whatever. They have already stated often enough making it multi-core at this point is kind of useless.
Maybe in Sins 2(IF it ever gets made) it will be multi-core but Trinity/Rebellion...I don't think it will ever happen. 

Happy Easter Ya'll!

Hi, sorry if i sound a little bit strange, as english is not my native language. If you don't think i can beat a bot on hard, give my steam account a try. Regarding to this, i played this game 1631 hours till now. So yes, i am a fan of it...

And that is the reason, why i feal every change of it more than somebody who plays this game one time a week.

Regarding the core problem, this game is devided in two peaces, the grafic engine and the game engine. There is out a program for an other game with the same problem. It is named the core-optimizer (for the game supreme commander). This program monitors the single threads of the program and places them balanced on all cores you decide to use for the game.

So, if a fan is able to write this for a game, why not a company for their game? It might be done easily, if they put the one part of the game on one cpu and the other on a second, as the overall load is not that high. On my old I7 core it produced about 17% overall, but as i wrote, you have already the same effect, if you change manualy the core it is allowed to use.

I fully agree 

Because i was not sure, how long it will take to take down the "AI" on hard, i did a quick run and it surrendered on Random-Tiny as Human against Vasari-Loyalist after 1:13 hour. It was with all DLCs on, but random events off, on v1.80.4975 and pirates enabled (i use them as buffer for the cheating as i have to eco the money for the bets, if i like).

What in the actual fuck? Does this cover just Rebellion or all the Sins games from 2008? 

And i thought, those cca 300 hours i played the game myself, is a LOT. Its my fav game after all...

It covers just Rebellion as the early versions were installed from CD on my side and are not registered to steam 

Well, Rebellion has been out for cca 2 years and 2 months, give and take, including beta, under assumption you had it back then already...that is cca 780 days... 1631/780 = 2,1 hours per day....

you have my respect.

So, what I'm gathering overall is that folks preferred the levels the way they were in 1.80?

Any chance of the feed button getting updated?

There must be something wrong in this calculation, that means, i only play for 14 hours a week... 

Not realy, the gap between Hard and the next level is a little bit strange...

But as an other poster already wrote, how will you force the AI to play better without cheating as hell?

As i play supreme commander forged alliance, there is a mod out, where i can level the cheat level by my own, means, i have to set a cheatlevel in 0,25 multiplier steps. This would help better to find a personal best point.

With defined levels the programmer dictates how to play the game, with sliders in soft steps, the player does...

Is it to late in the game to ask for a pre game option that allows you to manipulate what the AI does, in example Anno 2070 you can choose many things that are broken down, what I suggest is something similar to the economist/aggressive/turtle idea but more in depth.  So you may have a AI set to hard but could be limited or expanded on other items.

Also why is the ally AI useless?  My AI counter parts seem to do nothing while the AI same difficulty enemy seems to team up and attack strategically?

The only other thing I have noticed is super weapons spoil the game, 20 to 30 mins in they are firing away.  Limits?  Why does the shield defense for tec still not work?  I understand that I can use the SB to keep the planet loyal so that I cannnot lose it, but its a bit annoying to have endless salvos shooting my same front line planets over and over.

Actually, the Hard from v1.80 is now too easy, so maybe the Hard AI can return to how it was in v1.8, and the Unfair can stay the way it is now. I think that makes more sense, the steps are still less drastic.

v1.82 unfair should be like v1.80 hard (it seems like it's close in its current state), and thus v1.82 hard would be between v1.80 hard and v1.80 normal...this gives us both the "ideal" level as well as more tapering for SP players...

I am not as certain about the other levels....v1.82 cruel should be like v1.80 unfair perhaps, and v1.82 vicious could be somewhere between v1.80 cruel and v1.80 vicious...