I know that the Hard difficulty level should be hard...but I think the comp is cheating. Lets see...

When I quit the game these were the stats (I noticed because I had full visual on the map):

CATEGORY: ME/ COMP

ARMY: 1/9
FOOD COLLECTED: 851/896
CARBON COLL: 1084/1350
RESEARCH COUNT: 4/9 I dont know what this is
TECH LEVEL: 1/2 (12 minutes)
WORKERS: 13/20



Now we both had: food proc, animal nursery, 2 shelters, power core, troop center, carbon center...and he had a lot more the next time i looked, like: 3 more shelters, nova center, gate and some other stuff


NOW: how can you build 17 workers, advance to T2, build 8 troopers with 896 food plus 200 you start with. A total of 1096. The workers alone cost 850. The troopers another 200. And 500 to advance. Thats 1550!!! Never mind everything he built with the bit of carbon he collected.

Now, is this what HARD means? That the comp cheats? Am I looking at this wrong?

Originally posted by snaayk
Now, is this what HARD means? That the comp cheats? Am I looking at this wrong?

Yep. That's exactly it... it makes it alot harder, eh? :)

if that is what it is like in hard without the player using cheats like forcebuild. then what would it be like with cheats on

Hah, now this is a truely lame part of the game. I just recorded a game with the AI on Hardest and watched it so see what advantages the comp was getting. Right from the start the comp had 800 Carbon, 800 Food, 700 Nova, 800 Ore. I only had 200 Carbon, 200 Food, 100 Nova, 200 Ore. The comp used this to hit Tech 2 by 4:09. And then right when it got to Tech 2, all it's resources went up significantly. I didn't get the exact numbers though. Anyway, around 11:12 the comp suddenly decided to give itself 800 Food so it could start researching Tech 3. When it finally got to Tech 3 it's resources instantly went up again: Carbon by 697, Food by 551, Nova by 945, and Ore by 350. (Actually, they might have gone up by more, I didn't check to see if the comp had started building anything right before I could hit Pause) I didn't even bother watching the rest of the game. I was already disappointed enough.

the best way for u to find out is to record the game and view it from the computers side

the way ive found out in aok is that the computer does cheat
it can control loads of units at one time and i dont think its anything like their food to their workers but its like a 1 minute 2 workers, xxx food, xxx carbon and stuff like that

well if its on hard you shouldnt be seeing what the computer has compared to u but u should be seeing if u can beat it in the end
cuz it doesnt matter to u how fast the computer develops as long as you can beat it in the final battle

Yaknow... If you don't like the fact that the comp cheats you could always just use the "easy" setting. :D

thats what i do

naa just kidding
i usually play on moderate or the difficulty in the middle

Originally posted by krkode
thats what i do

naa just kidding
i usually play on moderate or the difficulty in the middle

moderate is the middle difficulty setting isn't it?

is it not

easiest
easy
moderate
hard
hardest

or some such like?

Whatever it is I turned the game to moderate for a random map 1 v 1 against the cpu and I've saved it after an hour, but I'm pretty much heading for a doing by the computer, i think I'm going to create some air transports and head somewhere else for a bit of breathing room.

Well... I just recored and observed a game with the AI set on Hard. The comp started out with the same amount of resources as I did. However, it got periodic boosts of 500 of each resource at 10, 20, and 30 minutes. I assume this continues for the rest of the game, though I didn't bother to observe it that long.

Originally posted by SirBlack
Well... I just recored and observed a game with the AI set on Hard. The comp started out with the same amount of resources as I did. However, it got periodic boosts of 500 of each resource at 10, 20, and 30 minutes. I assume this continues for the rest of the game, though I didn't bother to observe it that long.

It was shown a week or so ago, on a thread in the "General Discussions" forum, exactly where in the AI scrip the resource add is located. You're exactly right. Every 10 minutes, all resources go up by 500.

Of course it would be nice if the computer became strategically harder instead of cheating to make it harder. But basically all it's doing on as you go up in difficulty is giving you less and less time (thus forcing you to be more and more efficient) before it would otherwise win. On Easiest, you can pretty much fool around for hours and it won't ever win. On Hardest, it's probably designed such that if you don't really max out everything perfectly, you're a goner in a very short period of time.

May the Force be with you.

On Hard you have to manage your resources well to survive the first 20 minutes or so, and then just know how to exploit the computer's stupidity to survive the rest of the time and win. But on Hardest... Max out everything perfectly? ha! You're a goner no matter what, in my opinion. The computer cheats so bad it can reach Tech 4 at 18:35 with tons of resources to spare. And then soon it comes attacking with Repeater Troopers, Heavy Artillery, Jedi Knights and Masters, an Assault Mech or two, and various other units. Now I can't see how the hell anyone would be able to defend against that.

It really disappoints me that the computer doesn't seem to be much smarter on Hardest and that the only way it kills me is by excessive cheating...

Originally posted by SirBlack
On Hard you have to manage your resources well to survive the first 20 minutes or so, and then just know how to exploit the computer's stupidity to survive the rest of the time and win. But on Hardest... Max out everything perfectly? ha! You're a goner no matter what, in my opinion. The computer cheats so bad it can reach Tech 4 at 18:35 with tons of resources to spare. And then soon it comes attacking with Repeater Troopers, Heavy Artillery, Jedi Knights and Masters, an Assault Mech or two, and various other units. Now I can't see how the hell anyone would be able to defend against that.

It really disappoints me that the computer doesn't seem to be much smarter on Hardest and that the only way it kills me is by excessive cheating...

This is why I play on Moderate... and I still only win about 3/5ths of the time :)

Seriously, though, most games are like this. Civilization, AoE 1 and 2, Baldur's Gate, and various other games, have the computer letting itself "cheat" (ie. do things you are not allowed to do) in order to make it "more challenging." What perhaps the game writers don't understand (or maybe they do, and they really can't do anything else to make it harder), is that when the computer *cheats* against us, we don't feel like it's more challenging... we feel like it's unfair. At least, I do, and most gamers I know do as well.

In fairness, even a game with relatively simple rules is very hard to program AI for... but I would agree with others on this and other threads, it'd be nice if they had programmed the game to get a bit smarter, rather than just cheat more.

After all, if I could whip it's butt one-on-one without it cheating, I don't have to set it to 'hard'... I can just play 2-on-1, 3-on-1, or even 7-on-1 if I'm really good. Most people, I think, would rather be challenged that way, than by an opponent who gets to follow a different set of rules, as it were. After all, I remember years ago getting so good at the game "NFL" that on the hardest level, I beat it by scores like 70-0. The game company would say, "Yes, see, and then you gave up, right?" That's true, but I wouldn't have liked it if the computer always had 1st down and 5, while I had to go 1st and 10. Either make it harder a different way, or just let people beat the darn thing.

May the Force be with you.

like everybody said, the computer does cheat, and the proof is in the ai script and the emperical views from the computers pov of recorded games....

however, the hard setting isnt all that hard

now, this is all going off of aok hardest setting, so dont get mad at me if it doesnt work in gb....

for random matches, the hardest setting is quite easy if its 1v1.... (or 2v2, 3v3, or 4v4 for that matter) if you only take out their center. it is very key to get to their base within about 7 minutes.....by that time, you should have quite a few villagers, and enough resources to build a center (dont worry about TL2 at this point)...what you do is once you have enough villies to afford to send 10 out to their base, destroy your center, and be building a town center 5 tiles away from their center.

you'll be attacked by trooper recruits, but keep building. keep building...before long you'll have a center. at once, you need to garrison all your villies in that area in the center and start taking out those annoying recruits...

that will take out all of their gold.....while you are diong that, keep building villies.......set an internal gather point and ungarrison villies so that you always have 10 villies in the center.

send the overflow villies (those over 10) to repair the center..

all the time while you are diong this, you should be attacking any recruits that come your way (not to mention the TL2 shnit they will be sending soon).....you also should take out any carbon collectors or any other villies that come your way....this will kill them!....

and once you take care of all the threats to your center, you should start smashing their town center in.....

you can also build some trooper buildings and send them to some forests and take out any other infidel carbon collectors.....nothing takes the heart out of AI (or any other TL2 opponent in no time.)

by that time, the computer will give up, and if it doesnt, it will soon suffer an economic shutdown.....

(you should be keeping your economy up as well.....

stealing farms, etc...)

so, there you have it.....thats how i can easily beat "hardest" every time......


this strategy isnt mine, and im not perfect at it, but it works!

That's an interesting strategy. However, if I played that, and found that it automatically worked every single time even on Hardest, I'd stop using the strategy. Not much point to playing a game where the ending is a foregone conclusion. A high probability of success is one thing. Guaranteed, automatic victory is something else.

May the Force be with you.