on the AI

I agree it got buffed. The notes say the AI has access to units/buildings that were locked before, so that might be the difference. Maybe not.

As for toning it down, make the non-cheating AI as strong as possible. If the AI is too hard to beat at that level, then we should be playing at an easier level. I do agree that it may be necessary to rescale how much the AI cheats as the AI gets stronger. Is that what you are saying?

....need to rescale the range (not just the cheat part).  If normal takes everything a good player takes to win (where I am right now), that does not leave much on the lower side of more casual players or learning to play players.

You are essentially asking the devs to rename the difficulty levels solely for the purpose of allowing people to feel better about themselves. Renaming difficulty is not a big deal to me one way or another, but we don't need to pretend doing so makes the game easier for new players...it's just a naming convention. Is it so hard for a new player to play on beginner or easy, and then move up to normal after they improve? Is it important for experienced players feel better if they can beat the AI on "hard", even if "hard" is just renamed from "Normal"?

I'm getting a "participation trophy" culture kind of vibe from this thread.

I disagree. I am saying that you should have a certain number of "steps" above and below a base level.  If the base level is at the bottom, that does not make sense

BTW...on Deneb, I found Normal to be at about my limt but on Proxima, it was much easier.  So either bug on Deneb or somehow related to resources and the algorithm for the AI

Well "base" means bottom, but I realize that's not your point. It seems you agree this is all just about the names of difficulty levels. Maybe you want to change name of normal to be "hard" because you find it hard at that level. If normal is the strongest AI without cheating, that leaves beginner, cake-walk, easy, intelligent then normal. After that is challenging, tough, hard, and very hard. The game handicaps the AI below normal and cheats for the AI above normal. There's your steps below and above.

yeah it did, i played on normal to try some stuff out..got stomped hard lol wasn't expecting ai to come at me like that..and that soon

I didn't actually buff the AI, just removed some bugs that were keeping it from doing what it was supposed to.  At Normal, the AI has no production/resource bonuses.

Well keep up the good work. The normal AI is a good challenge.

The goal is to have 7 difficulty levels with the middle one being the one that provides a challenge to the people in the middle of the bell curve of skill.

When we get into late beta (let long after leaving ALPHA) we will start o decide where that is.  

kinda feels like the hard-unfair ish  aggressor in sins, i still suck at the game thou lol but good work guys.

Do you think you could comment about planned improvements to the AI?  Just asking for general information, nothing crazy specific.  What goals and plans do you guys have in terms of the functionality of the AI?  

I have played one game, it was on one of the large desert maps with 3 AI ffa. I thought that normal was about perfect(a little on the easy side), other than not using air.

There's still a lot to do on the AI.  It's a real challenge for the team because we want to iterate on design based on feedback but we also don't want to have to throw out AI code.

When I wrote the AI for Fallen Enchantres www.fallenenchantress.com I ended up basically starting over a few times and besides being frustrating, it's expensive.

So what we're doing here is implementing the AI in bits as the game solidifies.

So what changes are coming up"

1. Air units of course.  We're still deciding the particular use of these units and you guys will have a lot tosay on that.

2. The global abilities.  Coming up, you'll gain global abilities from constructing buildings. Using these abilities will cost radioactives.

3. Refinement on unit composition.  Very hard to do.

Sounds good to me.

I hope you guys make a big post about air units later on when the game is more stable.  Those unit in particular are going to need alot of changes

I know coding AI is very hard take your time and do it right guys