Difficulties???

There's still so much we don't know about difficulties.....

Like what determines the AP the AI will bring to a battle?
Is it simply a defined range % above your own?

Ie. Insane = +10-40% more AP than you bring?
or are there other factors?

I just played an Insane with the biggest AP difference I've ever had, and I got my ass handed to me.

My Army: 2789
Enemy AI (Undead no less): 3862!!

From previous experiences, I had not expected such a massive AP difference, and was simply not prepared for the resulting massacre.

Seek and you shall find...answers are in the Forums...

Anyways....here are some answers for you...

XViper wrote:

Like what determines the AP the AI will bring to a battle?

Difficulty and the AP value of the player's army.

XViper wrote:

Is it simply a defined range % above your own?

No, there is a modifier with a range depending on the difficulty of the battle.

XViper wrote:

My Army: 2789
Enemy AI (Undead no less): 3862!!

Check Tibr's post about a Suicide he had with the AI having 50% more AP..and he won...
You will also find there more information about difficulties, advantages and disadvantages...

They are called Insane and Suicide for a reason.

You misunderstand a little.

I wasn't saying it was too hard, I was just saying I wasn't expecting it, as ALL my Insane battles (Over 100) prior to this, and none of them had been over 3500. Infact, MOST were around 3100-3200, and some were as low as 2800.

It just appeared to be inconsistent. I do appear to suddenly be facing higher AP AI since one of my units turned level 15. Would this be causing this sudden jump? Even though my AP and the difficulty level remains the same, the AI AP is on average much higher now.

Oh yes. When your unit turns 15, every AI unit is 17 and gets more gs. This is a significant jump in difficulty. I think 9999 said he cant do suicides anymore because his unit turned 17 or 18. Optimally your core survival units, the HI should be the highest level, but sadly they level slower than lia or cavs.

Also here another picture of army and the standard losses against 148% AI, if you face that and dont lose few units you were really lucky or have perfect items. It is suicidal, often too much, also because my heroes need 32minutes for a full resurrection

I would prefer to do suicides and be able to take the hard earned xp home, thats another flaw with superhard battles.

XViper wrote:

You misunderstand a little.

I wasn't saying it was too hard, I was just saying I wasn't expecting it, as ALL my Insane battles (Over 100) prior to this, and none of them had been over 3500. Infact, MOST were around 3100-3200, and some were as low as 2800.

It just appeared to be inconsistent. I do appear to suddenly be facing higher AP AI since one of my units turned level 15. Would this be causing this sudden jump? Even though my AP and the difficulty level remains the same, the AI AP is on average much higher now.

Ok, got it now!

Each difficulty has a min lvl of units that it will spawn and also a lvl range depending on the level of your units. So, if the level of your units is less than the min. it will probably spawn the min level of units of the difficulty you chose...In the case of Insane, min lvl of units spawned is 13 with a +1 to +2 level range. In your case, and since you have a level 15 unit, it will spawn from 16 to 18.

hmm, i did many suicides on old server and always enemy units has +2 to my best unit lvl. No matter if this lvl from my side was 15 or 18. When my cav reached lvl 18 all enemies units had lvl 20, but it was still fun and profitable to fight against them

I am not sure how fun it will be to fight against them with new gl repair times ...and less gold income for the repairs

I was assuming the AI range is capped at 150% player AP. Turns out i was wrong... Here are 152.4%



Could you please tell us where exactly are the AI AP limits for the difficulties?

Tibr wrote:

I was assuming the AI range is capped at 150% player AP. Turns out i was wrong... Here are 152.4%



Could you please tell us where exactly are the AI AP limits for the difficulties?

Close to the 50%...It is not exactly 50% as it has to calculate both player's AP and the min/max lvls per difficulty level. On top of that, you have to add the tech and the items, so the number cannot be defined exactly and cannot be restricted to a specific value. Suicide.....................................

Well, Tibr can't complain, since he's CLEARLY destroying the enemy EVERY TIME... (unless he just avoids showing his losses!) wow, victory against 5k AP with only 3200 AP yourself? you're obviously a master general.

BTW, as a level 8-10 player, Insane is ridiculously easy for me, Suicide is only challenging if I bring cavalry. Heck, Nightmare with cav is harder than Insane without cav.

Of course, racial differences change that- every time I see Undead, I prepare for 50% more losses (or more) than usual; AND every time I see Dwarves, it's the same story. on the other hand, seeing Elves, Humans, or Orcs makes me laugh a bit inside...

(Figured I could post this under the thread "difficulties" as it's an observation of variances in difficulty)

However, the enemy has (so far) brought no more than +400 AP to any Insane; It's been a while since I last did Suicide so I can't tell you the range.

As a note, I've discovered I'm easily able to win Insanes with only 1 piece of epic or GL gear per unit (no lower gear at the moment, either)

Realf Lantow wrote:

BTW, as a level 8-10 player, Insane is ridiculously easy for me, Suicide is only challenging if I bring cavalry. Heck, Nightmare with cav is harder than Insane without cav.

         

Whaaat...?

You are winning Insane and Suicide with level 8-10 units? Did I understand that right.....?        

In fact suicide and insane are a lot easier with low lvl units than with high level units. At least that seems to be the experience of a lot of players.

Thats obvious, your army low level = AI army low level = low AI gear score.
You can use few godlikes while AI barely has any.

Tibr wrote:

Thats obvious, your army low level = AI army low level = low AI gear score.
You can use few godlikes while AI barely has any.

No no no....Insane and Suicide difficulties have min AI level units and a min no. of units.

Claudandus wrote:

In fact suicide and insane are a lot easier with low lvl units than with high level units. At least that seems to be the experience of a lot of players.

Ok, that's not right...

  

RuneSlayer wrote:

Whaaat...?

You are winning Insane and Suicide with level 8-10 units? Did I understand that right.....?

Insane is winnable (with really good items -i.e.: close to the best possible) -- on Olympus:

• Level 7 - about 5% of the time;
  
• Level 8 - About 20% of the time;
  
• Level 9 - About 75% of the time (but too much damage taken to be worth doing, takes too long to heal, not profitable, etc.);
  
• Level 10 - About 90% of the time;
  
• Level 11 - About 95% of the time.
  

I started doing insane regularly with level 10 units. The units faced are always level 13 (so far, and I'm guessing will stay that one until one of my units hits level 12).

Team:

• Two Elarin Chariots¹;
  
• Two Royal Guard (with heros);
  
• Two Shadow Guard (one with Hero);
  
• Two Archers (both with heros);
  
• One cannon (did not use this when Barracks was level 17, only recently added with Barracks 18).
  

I don't think Insane needs adjustment, it is quite challenging & interesting ... also cannot be played on >>> mode with the team above.

---

¹Win Percentage is mostly determined by the skill of using the Elarin Chariots properly to (1) Get the cannon (2) Get as many archers as possible; and (3) *fleeing* properly & re-engaging.

Tibr wrote:

Thats obvious, your army low level = AI army low level = low AI gear score.
You can use few godlikes while AI barely has any.

that's actually wrong; on Suicide the enemy has far more GLs than I do, on Insane the enemy has about as many.

Plus, with the minimum level being 3 or 5 above me...

So many things to do....so little time...

I wanted to readjust the AI some time now...especially the Archers...so they are not that "stupid"....

God help the Community when I do.....

(...then again, I am sure that the Community will find other ways to beat the AI )

RuneSlayer wrote:

I wanted to readjust the AI some time now...especially the Archers...so they are not that "stupid"....

When tweaking them, please make sure the enemy AI Archers (and cannons) can cause friendly fire.

I'm not sure if they do or not ... unconfirmed rumors are they don't.  

---

A quick & very easy tweak that would help the AI be a bit more challenging .. make the enemy chariots leave about one second earlier from their starting spot.

Right now, its very easy to often run chariots up & get the enemy cannon or archers before the enemy chariots get active ...  they just sit there looking ... useless ... while the cannons & archers get massacred ...

Also if the enemy chariots targeted any chariots running up ... would really increase the challenge a bit.

My win rate at Insane has so far been 100% WITH:

5 HI,
5 Archer

OR

5 HI
5 LI/LIA

And that is with relatively low gear; I could easily use a full rare set and win.

It's been variable with a cav based team:

5 Cav
5 LI/LIA

I've only won 1 out of 3 matches with this team:

5 Cav
5 Archer
(My historical COOP team, put in a coop with a melee heavy team mate with skill, we win with very few losses, VERY FEW)

Suicide I will no longer bring Cav to, I *barely* won 1 match with:

5 Cav
5 LI/LIA

However, with:

5 HI
5 LI/LIA

I've had a 100% winrate as long as I'm using all my available gear, at this moment I'm actually not able to win Suicide (currently using 4 items on my 5 HI teams combined; 6 items on my 5 LI/LIA)

Pearl wrote:

When tweaking them, please make sure the enemy AI Archers (and cannons) can cause friendly fire.

I'm not sure if they do or not ... unconfirmed rumors are they don't.

I can confirm that they can, anyone can confirm this ever since the enemy AI's stats (kills, deaths, AP, MVP points) have been being shown. I've gone into battle with a strictly melee team, and wound up with the enemies deaths being 30+ more than my kills; the only possible explanation is MASSIVE FF.

Other explanation would be that they were undead and crumbled due to bad morale. I get the feeling that AI doesn't cause FF for their own units. Need to pay more attention to that though.

Also, still looking for the maximum AI score. We are up to 156.4%

As it fits in here: Made a suicide for "fun" with following units:
4x LI (2x lvl 17 & 2x lvl 16(& 3x lvl 10 & 1x lvl9 Hero)) + 6x Cav (1x lvl 17, 1x lvl 16 & 4x lvl15)
[AI brings in 11x lvl 19 & 1x lvl 11 Merc (when i remember the Merc correct)] 
 
Result:  Defeat in seconds.
 

 
Conclusion for me: Suicide only with HI/LIA Combo (8 units 50/50) atm, lvl 7-13 (!). -> 100% winrate from last 10 battles...

I guess there is friendly fire, at least for cannons:
I saw a lightie Ai cannon kill the other Ai cannon while I engaged it with my cav. The cav died shortly after, it got no kills at all (facepalm scenario it was )

RuneSlayer wrote:

Tibr wrote:

Thats obvious, your army low level = AI army low level = low AI gear score.
You can use few godlikes while AI barely has any.

No no no....Insane and Suicide difficulties have min AI level units and a min no. of units.

Claudandus wrote:

In fact suicide and insane are a lot easier with low lvl units than with high level units. At least that seems to be the experience of a lot of players.

Ok, that's not right...

  

RuneSlayer, this was also kind of my point.
ONE of my unit levels went up, and suddenly the difficulty has become MUCH harder.
I really think the AI levels needs to be based on the overall AVERAGE level of your units, and not the highest. (With some rules in place to avoid people bringing in level 1 units to throw the balance). Perhaps the average level of 75% of your AP.

I can confirm I was having a MUCH easier time of Insanes before one of my units levelled up. I'm pretty sure the game isn't meant to get harder as your army gets stronger. I understand difficulties need to scale, but the common consensus does appear to be that lower levels have it easier than higher levels, which certainly doesn't appear to make sense. Especially when one unit levels up and suddenly the AI AP jumps 400-600.

On the topic of friendly fire:
From my experiences the AI definitely don't appear to suffer friendly fire (from Archers), or if they do, it has been HEAVILY modified to do much less damage to their own troops.
If Archers are going to become more 'intelligent', then they definitely need to injure their own troops with their attacks.