Lower difficulty levels?

[Seravy]

See https://steamcommunity.com/app/1146370/d...647522479/

I've also noticed I'm playing a lower difficulty than I used to in the DOS version although that might just be laziness on my part.

[Sir Whiskers]

A couple of observations:

1) There are currently 8 difficulty levels. Fair is only number 3, not even the mid-point. So yeah, those should be gradations of 'easy' play, not average. While the modifiers listed in the manual don't seem large, the overall change from Normal to Fair is rather significant. So reducing these changes slightly to reduce the curve a bit makes sense to me. Two areas to consider: Slow down AI empire expansion for the first X number of turns to give human players a chance to establish themselves before getting into one or more wars, and/or concentrate changes on making rampaging monsters less of a threat early.

2) In games of this type - MoM, MOO, Civ, etc. - like many folks, I tend to play a builder style. I like to expand at a moderate pace, build up my cities, research advanced stuff, and only go to war after preparing. In the original MoM, such a play style could be very effective (too much so, IMO). Caster of Magic very much does not favor this style of play. All the advanced strategies seem to center around "Hit them fast, hit them hard, loot all the nodes using arguably gamey tactics". Which is fine. But I suspect that means how difficult one finds the game depends a great deal on one's playstyle.

Having played Caster, I would never go back to original MoM. It would be so bland. But playing Caster, I realize that my preferred play style for all these 4X type games is not well suited in this game. Even when I can build up, the end game too often devolves into tedium, with literally thousands of units on the map. The surrender victory has been a huge help in making those games worth playing through to victory. But I still feel that the game signficantly favors certain play styles over others, which is likely part of the problem with perceptions of difficulty.

[Slingers]

A "Beginner" or "Easier Than Easy" difficulty level could do without those frustrations that Pollastrellif and others have previously pointed out. In Civilisation games from IV onwards they call it "Settler" level, I just read ... 

Maybe more aspects of the game could gradually change depending on the level?

[jhsidi]

I wonder if people will feel happy and fulfilled playing something marked "Easier than Easy" though. Knowing gamers, I feel like a lot of the complaint is just about wounded pride. Nobody feels happy after selecting something marked "Normal" then getting crushed.

As a slight modification on what the poll suggests: you could add that new extra-easy mode in as "Easy", shift up the naming of each so that Easy becomes Normal, rename Fair to Hard (it's kind of insulting to say Normal isn't "Fair" anyway), remove Phantasm and add a couple new high-challenge score modifiers to satisfy the very small handful of people who play at that level. That would make newbies feel better about playing at Normal, and more accomplished when playing at Hard and beyond.

As an extra aside on the comments about the speed of AI expansion and builder mode:

In my view, it's all about the scale of the world. Minimal, Tiny and Small worlds just feel too geographically small and limited. especially for those of us that like exploration and treasure hunting. BUT -- in those size worlds, the number of cities you can place feels about "right". For larger worlds, the AI is very good at filling out the dozens of cities needed. Human players either don't know that they need to constantly pump out settlers (or frenetically conquer other wizards' new settlements), or just flat out don't like the tedium of managing dozens of cities.

This isn't Seravy's fault in my view, it's just a natural outgrowth of him taking the original world Simtex created and making it actually function and present a challenge. But that's basically why "No Overlap" feels better to play for a number of us: less city-management tedium. Unfortunately for the idea of having less cities to really work there'd need to be a matching new game mode that made AI wizards' regular cities more challenging to conquer, similar to their fortresses. In the current game it's a nice fantasy to imagine an opponent with only 5-10 cities, but with the way humans play, such an opponent could be completely neutralized in a couple turns. I'd imagine other changes would also be needed, such as changing settlers to have pre-requirements and higher costs.

[Suppanut]

I think current difficulty could mostly be kept as it is. Original poster in Steam forum's request could be done by add one more difficulty level "Beginner" which easier than easy for those who completely new to MoM.

@jhsidi, As modder of other game, I don't like player's pride either. They keep complain about how "very hard difficulty is too hard" again and again and refuse to play on normal difficulty as I suggest to them. If possible I just want game to have only 1 difficulty like Fromsoft's game and say it is world as it is.

[Seravy]

Builder playstyle - There are score modifiers to support this. Preventing the AI from building near your cities, so you can be slow at building your settlers and still not lose much of your initial territory. Preventing the AI from declaring war until you attack them first, or a "light version" of it, preventing them from being Chaotic which is generally the main culprit for unavoidable wars. The "I am the boss" modifier to start alone on the plane can also be used for support this playstyle. Unfortunately if the player does not select the game mode that suits their strategy, I can't do much about that, it's pretty much the same thing as taking an early game rush race onto a Maximal size 13 player map, a "slow early" realm on a Minimal size one, or choosing to play Nomads on Frozen maps with 10 Death spellbooks. Or bringing no water movement magic on an "Islands" map, I think you get the idea.
The intended way of playing a builder playstyle of course is bringing Charismatic and/or Aura of Majesty and only taking the "No chaotic" modifier which does not change score, but additional options to make it easier exist.

Catering to player's pride by renaming the difficulty levels to show harder than what they are is definitely not my cup of tea and probably would be a mistake for a mod that has the reputation of being difficult and primarily made for veteran players.

Adding a new, even lower difficulty level might make sense but I'm not entirely sure how much it would help.

AI expansion can't be helped - the way the game functions, expansion is a necessity. If they don't do it, the player will and then "Normal" will be a joke difficulty since you outnumber the AI's cities 3 to 1. This is why some remakes or other 4x games added game mechanics where more cities give you massive economy penalties but that defeats the purpose of a 4x game -> explore conquer and exploit = always good, it's the goal of the game. And yes, I agree the AI is no challenge if they don't have a lot of cities without a major change in game mechanics since the game allows for pretty much setting up an unstoppable invasion, attacking each city tile with 2-3 or even more armies while the enemy can't reinforce the tile because it's not their turn.

Maybe simply tweaking diplomacy formulas and monster spawn rates for Easy and Normal would be a good enough solution?
Adding a rule that Normal and below AI can't roll "hostile" level hostility and is limited to "Annoyed", basically only attacking units, not cities, might help as well?

[zitro1987]

I think ‘phantasm’ needs to be eliminated, use the space for ‘beginner’ which enjoys a few player modifiers like faster research, extra gold or granting guardian retort for free

Phantasm is absurd, the typical competitive gamer will likely find ‘master’ challenging enough as it is. There’s always those score modifiers, it makes more sense to ask a player to modify rules they understand to make game harder rather than you asking players to choose rule modifying changes they don’t understand to make game they haven’t played easier


The biggest confusion around caster of magic is not realizing you need military strength, expansion, and battles from the very start of game or you WILL perform poorly, have wizards spot your weakness and declare war, or even lose towns to weak attacking forces. Higher difficulties like expert and beyond is for those who exploit the mechanics as best as they can (e.g me choosing guardian and luring monsters into ghoul magician or demon defended towns as undead raising farms)

[muxecoid2]

For easier difficulty you have options like "I am the boss". So I say no.

On the other hand phantasmal difficulty feels more hard than easy difficulty is easy, so maybe yes.

[Seravy]

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!

[Anskiy]

Is it possible to also stop the AI from resorting to Benny Hill tactics on those difficulties? And to make that a moddable option so we can configure it on or off on additional difficulties?