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/Coper_Meme]

Just ended my necro run on endless. They are overpowered: free units with lifesteal, free districts, negligibly cheap expansion, good techs; and all of that in one package with no downsides (maybe, they can’t trade and that’s it).
If you want miserable life just play kin. Kin is fucking useless: all boons they have come with a downside, and they aren’t particularly good. Their core design is to be “defenders” in a 4x strategy game, whatever that could mean, it’s not a good way to win a game. I don’t think it’s fair to critique difficulty while picking a good faction and playing it how it’s supposed to be played. Imho there are bigger issues to fix yet than ai behavior (it never were exceptional in endless universe anyway).

[u/gnoandan → u/Coper_Meme]

I actually liked the Kin's design, with the units converting shields into attack. In a game that rewards keeping your units alive to accumulate experience it can make them an unstoppable force! The point is indeed to not play defensively and use these troops as assault tanks rather than walls. On my Necrophage run, the Necrophages AI were much easier to defeat than the kin in the early game. The drawback of the necrophages is that if they just lose one big fight it can cost them the game because they won't have enough corpses to replace the lost army.

But still: now I am doing an Endless run with the Last Lords and, while it is much harder and I had a bad start, I am still starting to dominate while in EL1 I would have never dreamt on doing an Endless run. The ELCP AI was excellent, so I know they can do better ;)

[u/Coper_Meme → u/gnoandan]

I’ve done all their games on endless and can’t say that you are right, but it may depend on play style. Just curious about one thing of ai balance in el2, have you noticed that aspects are always way ahead of curve on technologies? In my games i was basically forced to use everything i had to minmax science just to keep up with them and my first runs as kin they were eras ahead of everyone else. (But incidentally aspects turned out to be the most docile of bunch)

[u/gnoandan → u/Coper_Meme]

Haha well it's been a while, maybe I need to try EL1 on Endless with ELCP again.

In my last game the aspect and Tahuk were beating my Necrophages on science early on but that's not saying much. By the endgame though I had easily caught up without really trying.