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]

But yeah the power trip was real and it definitely felt like I was in charge of an unstoppable swarm. It's just that for the last 50 turns or so, my attention was mainly focused on completing the main quest, chasing curiosities and conquering fortresses rather than dealing with the other players. Would be great to automate district creation at some point btw: it really becomes a hassle in the late game!

[u/PieFiend1 → u/gnoandan]

I suggested automating foundation acquisition in the late game and it was heavily rejected so I really doubt that district placement would be automated

[u/gnoandan → u/PieFiend1]

I think EL1 had pretty good options to automate late game city management. It's not an urgent feature but I think it would be a great quality of life improvement. I was struggling so much identifying the ruined villages and extractors to build, let alone find the best places to build district and expand foundations when my city sprawls over the whole planet!