Am i ready for "hard" difficulty?

Here what I have seen hard AI do.

It builds, bigger and better fleets, early on. Mixed combat groups, not just spam fleets. I find that when fighting the AI, that it all ways reports that the AI has the bigger fleet, but many have less capital ships.

It will still not pay credits, to upgrade it capital ships, even late game, after you destroy there capital ship, and they NEED to level up.

Late game, I have found that it fights harder to win the bounty war, in order for the pirates, to attack you, while it attacks one of your other planets.

Here's a suggestion: Why don't you see if you can handle hard ai?!

cuz when im somewhere that i have the internet but cant play the game, i strategerize in order to maximize the play time i *do* have!

thank you for the information, homefleet.

is the next step up in difficulty from this normal with teams unlocked, or hard with teams locked? ie: are two normal difficulty AIs allied more difficult than one hard AI?

I would play normal with teams unlocked. You should figure out how missions, alliances, and bounty work before you step up to expect to compete at hard AI. And hard AI is *HARD* compared to normal play.

-- Retro

The Normal AI is basically a very simple version of an enemy.

Uses 1 large fleet to attack a position, does somewhat well with the economy, and sends lots of troops needlessly to their deaths for objectives against you.

Playing with a Normal AI is a much more casual setting, where it is ok to let resources buildup since you are the most powerful force in the galaxy right now. You can play the Normal game a little slouched in your chair.




The Hard AI is much different, and you'll need good micromanagement skills and a working strategy to defeat it.

It understands that unused resources is an unused opportunity, and it will use every thing it has to destroy you. It will also use multiple fleets at multiple positions, to destroy worlds in far off places, far away from a single main defenseive fleet. They use the war of attrition to defeat you first economically, and then by military, which is usually the only way to win big strategy games.

They have better micromanagement skills than many players will, and you may feel like you are constantly under stress to defend worlds, and keep each planets economy at its peak as soon as possible. Its a "real" world scenario, where you gotta play the numbers for a vicotry.

By that I mean, its better to let 3 or 4 worlds go and thousands die to a small raiding fleet, to give yourself an advantage against their main defensive fleet, while you muster a defense and save who is left.

Be sure to use several smaller fleets to hit different locations or defend different locations at a time, and you'll come out the victor, but its a much longer game.


Its not pretty being a more realistic strategist, but if you follow the numbers mantra, you'll get the job done.

took on a hard ai 1v1, no pirates, small random map...

and won!

that tip bout the comp not upgrading their cap ships paid off homefleet, as did the one about multiple smaller fleets kurotora, ty.

AI tought me a thing or two about harassing raids too... learned the value of phase jump slowing.

the AI fleets where mixed, but still seemed rather heavy on the carrier cruisers.... and didn't adapt once i went to building like 30% flak frigs.

i avoided his main fleet mid game a few times when i could have taken it on because diplomacy said his fleet was stronger... what i ended up doing was flying my flaks in to get bomber aggro and then running away before his lrm's got to my flak frigs... did this a few times till he got his phase disrupter thing up - then sent the rest of my fleet in to back up my flak frigs and ended up winning.

I have an even better idea. Why don't you sign on to Ironclad Online and being playing online multiplayer against human opponents? Sadly, only a tiny percentage of people who like the game have the cajones needed to play it online.

The other thing I've seen from the last few games at Hard is that I've been the research leader in all of them. In some they eventually teched up, but in all cases my tech curve was much better.

i'd love to CenturionJixra. these folks made a great game. i love playing games online, and im used to getting torn the hell up all over the place when i first start playing against humans... par for the course. i play CoD4, and (before i got sins, not so much any more) WoW on a regular basis. starcraft and all the others from back in the day.

but somewhere along the line, apparently, and as i understand it, the guys that made this great game made some silly decisions regarding how it would connect to the intertubes. apparently, many (MOST!?) of us have to do all sorts of network tweaking just to get the thing to work.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/174313

a full page of text *AND* a 7ish page PDF? just to play online in a nearly clean install of windows with a standard issue router connecting to standard issue internet? in 2008?

but this is the wrong forum for that... i'll see you when 1.1 comes out though, *assuming* they get it right this time

(and i think they will get it right... my impression is that the connectivity thing was a poor design decision rather than poor programmerey-dudes. if they decide to do it properly, it will be done properly.)

Have you tried connecting to ICO and tried joining a game? As I understand it, much of the problem is on the HOSTING-a-game side and not the playing-on-a-game-someone-else-is-hosting side. I have issues hosting games too, I think, but I don't seem to have any with joining games other people are hosting.