Lower difficulty levels?

[zitro1987]

Yes: benny hill tactics should be removed in beginner/easy/normal

[GMBarak]

Can anyone explain what is a "Benny Hill tactic"?
I know the funny tv show... but I am not familiar with this term in this context...

[zitro1987]

AI (including neutrals) keep a distance in combat from melee units, running away until the turn limit is reached.

AI can use it to save units in otherwise lost battles and neutral AI defending treasure prevent you from getting such treasure (why?)

Edit:the latter can be disabled with special option ‘dumb neutrals’

[Suppanut]

Can anyone explain what is a "Benny Hill tactic"?
I know the funny tv show... but I am not familiar with this term in this context...

Just like classic Benny Hill's running/chasing scenes.

It happens when AI as defender know they would lose in melee engagement but have movement advantage and you nolonger has range attack or casting skill availiable. AI would keep running around the map to avoid your units' engagement and keep running down to turn 25 to make battle end with draw with defender win by default. If you as attacker not "win" the battle, your dead units which have regeneration would not revive and lose for real.

[GMBarak]

Can anyone explain what is a "Benny Hill tactic"?
I know the funny tv show... but I am not familiar with this term in this context...

Just like classic Benny Hill's running/chasing scenes.

It happens when AI as defender know they would lose in melee engagement but have movement advantage and you nolonger has range attack or casting skill availiable. AI would keep running around the map to avoid your units' engagement and keep running down to turn 25 to make battle end with draw with defender win by default. If you as attacker not "win" the battle, your dead units which have regeneration would not revive and lose for real.

lol, funny  although it never bothered me because, I usually use ranged or take that into account before the battle. what does bother me in this context tough, is that many time I lose fame in these cases although I did not flee.

[Cruel100]

I'm planning to work on this for the next update.

This is the general plan for the time being (haven't started working on the details)

1. Add new "beginner" difficulty as level 1. This shifts "Easy" to level 2 and "Normal" to level 3.
2. Rename Fair to Advanced (apparently the game is hard enough that fair is perceived as difficult by the average player which kinda makes sense), which goes into the level 4 slot
3. All other levels renamed to the one above them (Advanced becomes Expert, Expert becomes Master etc)
4. Either remove what currently is Phantasm or we need a new name for that one. "Nightmare"?

In general, Beginner, Easy, and Normal should get more AI nerfs, including but not limited to these ideas by a varying degree :
-Forbid the AI from building settlers before a certain turn count is reached and possibly reduce the chance afterward.
-Ignore the "mandatory building" rules which basically force the AI to unlock some decent units early in the game by building a Fighter's Guild, Stables or other building depending on their race.
-Add a larger random value to AI combat spell decisions. (this might already exist though, I have to check)
-Make the AI prefer buildings more and units less so they are easier to defeat and have rewarding cities.
-Some sort of diplomacy rule that reduces the chance of war declaration and/or limits the number of concurrent wars that can affect the human player.
-Change of default rampaging monster stack budgets in modding.ini
-Possibly lower the chance the AI casts an overland summoning spell although this will result in them casting other spell types (unit buffs for example) more.

While Fair (renamed to Advanced) and above retains the "AI plays to full potential" design.

Let me know what you think!

It's hard to say without testing it, but it looks like a good way to go.

I also feel that COM lacks a way of playing that was less aggressive and that could dedicate more to building and adopting more defensive strategies.

If possible make creating items cheaper/faster at lower levels.

[muxecoid2]

What about merging lunatic and phantasmal? I would guess their target audience is the same so maybe no need to differentiate, just a single lunatic difficulty between current lunatic and phantasmal makes sense.

[Seravy]

I'm going to start working on this today.

The current names for the difficulty levels planned are :
Beginner, Easy, Normal, Fair, Advanced, Expert, Master, Lunatic, Maximal.

I've renamed Phantasm to make it clear which is the last one.
I think renaming "Fair" might also be a good idea as it it's a highly subjective word and considering even the current "Normal" is perceived as way too difficult by many, telling players the difficulty above that is considered fair might not be the best idea. It might be "Fair" from a programming perspective since the AI gets no advantage in resources and isn't nerfed in what it's allowed to do but in reality the AI plays way better than the average human player so, no it's not really fair, it's actually difficult unless you're a veteran player. And let's not forget the default mode has fewer AIs on Myrror which also gives those AIs a large advantage indirectly.

So what if we called this one "Hard" instead? Then we get...
Beginner, Easy, Normal, Hard, Advanced, Expert, Master, Lunatic, Maximal.

[muxecoid2]

Hard sounds like something that should be harder than advanced yet easier than expert.

[zitro1987]

Would it be better as: beginner-easy-normal-experienced-advanced-expert … ?