AI Easy - Where is the fun factor ?

I would definitely not recommend playing against Insane AI. As it's name suggests it is not for sane or proper people.

There does appear to be a massive difference between Beginner and Easy difficulties. It might make sense to have an additional AI difficulty level between beginner and easy ("Very easy"?) to smooth out the learning curve.

Beginner AI:

Metal: 0.5

Radioactives: 0.5

Build: 0.25

Research: 0.5

Easy AI:

Metal: 0.9

Radioactives: 0.9

Build: 0.75

Research: 0.75

Relatively speaking, Easy AI is a +80% increase in resources and a +200% increase in build speed than Beginner AI, I can see how this would be a bit of a jump.

If you are keen in experimenting with editing the game files, you can adjust the AI difficulty with a text editor such as notepad++.

In the "steamapps\common\Ashes of the Singularity\Assets\GameCore" folder, the variables are in the "DefaultPlayerAI.xml" file.

Alternatively, a solution that might suit you in the short term is the handicap feature which is present in custom multiplayer which is missing from single player.

If you select: Multiplayer -> Custom Match -> Create Private Match. Then you can add Easy AI, and set yourself a +100% resource handicap and remeber to tick the ready box before you start the match.

tbh beginner is the one far lower than the average difficulty progression. Not because of handicap but by thir code behavior. It's almost like a sandbox.

I believe anyone can beat the easy AI, it may take just some concepts of the game that might still be missing. I'm sure the OP can beat the easy AI if he see's any video teaching a trick or two. Getting the first two nodes with engineers for example make the game a loooot easier.

We intend to add a new difficulty level between easy and beginner post release.

I've not played in a number of weeks. Fired it up last night. Had to turn creeps off to have more of a chance. That gave me a few more minutes of life, anyway.  My goal's to be Easy before the weekend's over!

The new level promised between Beginner and Easy seems like the most straightforward way to address this.  But I do have a thought: Frogboy has previously explained that the AI in Ashes is non-cheating, in the sense that it doesn't know things that a player opponent wouldn't know.  What if a "training" AI mode was created that DOES cheat, but only in a limited fashion so as to always present some degree of challenge but to not be dramatically stronger than the player?  For example, it could attempt to maintain troop, production, and/or resource levels comparable to its opponent at any given time, and only make conservative advances beyond 50% of the map.  I realize that might be too much work to implement when the rest of the AIs don't cheat, but it could be a neat feature.

Just to follow up, I had more time yesterday than I expected and focused on making the Easy level as do-able for me as possible. As I've said many times here, I'm lousy at these types of games but really enjoy them as do some gaming friends - who are very good at these types of games. I simply lose track of all that's going on rather quickly and can't execute on plans I come up with for just that reason.

Anyway, I turned off creeps. It just takes way too long to make a factory and takes too many units to take each point otherwise. And since I know nothing of the other race I made them PHC. I also exposed the terrain for two reasons. First, even though I've played this map (Deneb) a LOT, this helped me figure out which areas I want to take first and how to better defend them. And second, it let me know where the enemy was and how fast they were moving.

One MAJOR note: I paused. A LOT. Often. Again and again. In the early game, every time I got a new scout (and every time I got an engineer) I'd pause and review the map to double-check which was going where and where I wanted the next one to go. By late-mid- to late-game I hardly paused. But I wasn't really being attacked by then and I had the game in-hand.

I made two factories to start, building scouts and sending a single scout to key, connected points. Then I built 3-4 armories, all the while cranking out an engineer here and there and using engineers to assist factories/armories. I also used 2 engineers to build a series of 12 Quanta Arrays (is that their name?) as soon as the two factories were rolling. I had engineers building metal and radioactive extractors. I built one sensor array near a key point with some Smartys. Otherwise, engineers were all assisting factories and then I had 2 (eventually 3) engineers building one Dread factory and stay to assist.

I essentially took two Tirinium cores early and hesitated to take the third thinking that might provoke the AI. Early-to-mid-game I took the third and rolled my first Dread up there in a small army to support.

I ended up with two Factories, Four armories and one Dread factory. I eventually paused the original Factories.

Early Quanta upgrades were Logistics, of course, as well as damage, followed by health. With two engineers building my queue of Quanta Arrays that seemed adequate. I might consider having three engineers take care of that next time.

At any rate, I absolutely crushed them. Would this work multiplayer? Absolutely not. Would the pausing be necessary on a much larger map? Probably not. Could I handle this with creeps? I don't believe so. At least I don't have a plan to handle that type of game in my head yet.

Anyway, thought I'd share. Maybe it'll help someone else. And, trying this a couple more times I think I'm ready to step up the difficulty - with these same settings, that is!

Love the game, thanks!

And last night I was able to win at Normal setting. Time to change to a map I don't know!

In my experience, the ease (or not) of beating the AI is heavily map dependant.  The easy AI on the proving grounds or fringe, for example, is much easier to beat than on less 'linear' maps.  The way the AI expands is very different on those two maps from larger maps with more complex node inter-connections.  It also helps to have the map uncovered rather than hidden if you're struggling against the AI.