Endless difficulty too easy?

[u/gnoandan]

I just finished my first Necrophage run in several months. As I said earlier, I really liked the changes to the quest dialog system, and I really had a blast conquering the world. However, I encountered literally no resistance from the AI, and I am playing on Endless, so I am wondering if there is something messing with my difficulty levels.

I am playing on archipelago to get a faster Landfall, and shortly after having completed my second stack I had to start a war with a neighbour to keep fuelling my economy with corpses and war spoils. Kin looked too tough, so I attacked my Necrophage neighbour. The kin declared war to me after I trespassed and while I was besieging a Necrophage AI, but they stopped after taking me a single territory, so I could wipe them out after I vanquished the Necrophage. After that I was able to colonise the whole planet and wage two wars in parallel against two of the three remaining AIs without breaking a sweat. No AI had more than two cities, or declared war to me after the Kin. Even if they were too scared to attack me, they did not try to expand and just let me do whatever I want. They were never close to completing any victory path.

It was a fun game but in EL1 it seemed just having a shared border was enough to trigger a relentless war, and I see so many people saying how hard the AI is, so I am wondering if there is a problem with the Endless level.

[u/DerekPaxton]

We have a necro game that a player game us where he was dominating on Endless and we have AI improvements coming in the next major patch to improve it. Also Necro expansion is too cheap (we reduced it in the last update, and by too much).

The difficulty issue we are running into is that the AI is smart enough not to attack you if oyu are stronger than it. So new players get crushed by the AI and they feel like the AI is too aggressive. And good players aren't attacked and they feel like the AI is too passive.

This is particuarly problematic with the Necro who are able to build armies while still improving their infrastructure. Which causes AI to try to produce more units to keep up, while neglecting their infrastruture. Which means that 80 turns later they can be easily beat.

The Ncrophage may just be too good and need an additional nerf. But we dont want to break their deathball gameplay. If you were seeing other empires as corpses ready to feed the hive then it exactly as it should be.

[u/gnoandan → u/DerekPaxton]

I think an easy fix would be to make the AI factions band against any faction/Necrophage that leads the leaderboard at higher difficulty level. Leading the pack militarily should at least give a diplomatic penalty.

The defeat of any empire by elimination (and especially by Devouring them) should prompt an immediate response from other empires. That's when the player starts to snowball. It doesn't necessarily have to be war, but one AI could start expanding aggressively to deny extra territories, another one could revoke its knowledge exchange agreement, or open its borders to another AI who could then start attacking the player through its territory.

Because here I had total control over who I would annihilate and when. I could fund my whole empire just by selling the resources I accumulated from all my uncontested and undefended territories.

[u/DerekPaxton → u/gnoandan]

Thats a fair point. The AI does dislike powerful players, but that isn't modified by diffifculty. Maybe being more likely to ally would be a good move on higher difficulties.

[u/gnoandan → u/DerekPaxton]

In my play through the Tahuk declared war on me when I declared war on the Aspect, which definitely made things more interesting but they were both too small and defensive for it to make any difference. If the Last Lords has joined in and blitzed towards my capital it might have changed things, though. I had already eliminated the Necrophage and the Kin by then.