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Let's talk about (campaign) difficulty.


Admiral666

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In another thread, I saw a couple testers mention that they were playing on easy and normal, and it led me to wonder if that was their preferred difficulty, rather than Hard/Legendary.

I've played a couple of campaigns on Hard...But they just aren't fun. The unending hordes of elite and lavishly equipped enemy armies become tedious rather than challenging. One of the decisions one can make in this game is to withdraw rather than press a pointless attack. On hard, the objectively correct decision is almost always to withdraw.

I want to stress: I've managed to win every battle on hard through Chancellorsville. It's certainly possible. However, it is not fun. Battles are rarely won through clever manuevering or bold strategy, but instead by gaming the system to survive the aforementioned AI armies of doom. There's little choice when the alternative is to fight "properly" and lose half or more of your army in every battle.

Personally, I find normal to be a good, fun challenge. Easy is great when you just want to build the order of battle of your dreams and maintain it throughout. Anything past normal, as stated, becomes tedious, rather than challenging.

What do you think, @Koro, @Mr. Mercanto, others? Do you enjoy the higher difficulties, or are they more of a tedious experience? Or something else?

 

To be perfectly clear, this is directed at everyone, not just testers. :)

Edited by Admiral666
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Hey @Koro! We're getting a joint interview! :P 

For me, I find campaign to be oppressively difficult on anything higher then Colonel, I jsut can't seem to get a sufficient number of experienced soldiers together at times, and the high level of late game enemy troops is staggering. 

For Historical Battles, I can win handily on Brigadier. 

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Well, despite not being a tester, I'm popping anyway. :)

Hard and Legendary are just masochistic to play.  It requires a huge amount of effort, brainpower, and sheer persistence to win - something that I at least tried.  Beat the Union campaign on Hard until the campaign capped out at Chancellorsville, vowed never again to go to Hard again, let alone Legendary.  I'm a fairly decent player, yet Chancellorsville took me 3 hours and I was a melted puddle after that. :P Gaming the system and exploiting things are a staple of Hard and especially Legendary, like using the combine brigades exploit and gaming the weapon scaling.  I prefer fighting "properly" instead of exploiting the AI's weaknesses. -_-

Oh, and do note that testers might have to replay a campaign quickly without having to think too much about strategy, so Colonel difficult is usually the way to go.

Edited by The Soldier
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13 minutes ago, Admiral666 said:

In another thread, I saw a couple testers mention that they were playing on easy and normal, and it led me to wonder if that was their preferred difficulty, rather than Hard/Legendary.

I've played a couple of campaigns on Hard...But they just aren't fun. The unending hordes of elite and lavishly equipped enemy armies become tedious rather than challenging. One of the decisions one can make in this game is to withdraw rather than press a pointless attack. On hard, the objectively correct decision is almost always to withdraw.

I want to stress: I've managed to win every battle on hard through Chancellorsville. It's certainly possible. However, it is not fun. Battles are rarely won through clever manuevering or bold strategy, but instead by gaming the system to survive the aforementioned AI armies of doom. There's little choice when the alternative is to fight "properly" and lose half or more of your army in every battle.

Personally, I find normal to be a good, fun challenge. Easy is great when you just want to build the order of battle of your dreams and maintain it throughout. Anything past normal, as stated, becomes tedious, rather than challenging.

What do you think, @Koro, @Mr. Mercanto, others? Do you enjoy the higher difficulties, or are they more of a tedious experience? Or something else?

No. Different play testers are asked to play at different game levels to check the game experience from different perspectives. 

Having said that, I have no desire to play Legendary. I don't want to have to work that hard, but there was a a time I would have been all over the challenge. I have  played everything from testing the Colonel with Fixed Forces to Normal to Hard; restarting the campaign from each new patch to check and see what the impact on incoming, new, players might be. 

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It's exactly that reliance on exploits and devolution into stressful tedium that I find concerning. Having greater difficulty need not equate to the loss of enjoyment, nor necessitate an exploitative playstyle. 

Edited by Admiral666
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4 minutes ago, The Soldier said:

Well, despite not being a tester, I'm popping anyway. :)

Hard and Legendary are just masochistic to play.  It requires a huge amount of effort, brainpower, and sheer persistence to win - something that I at least tried.  Beat the Union campaign on Hard until the campaign capped out at Chancellorsville, vowed never again to go to Hard again, let alone Legendary.  I'm a fairly decent player, yet Chancellorsville took me 3 hours and I was a melted puddle after that. :P Gaming the system and exploiting things are a staple of Hard and especially Legendary, like using the combine brigades exploit and gaming the weapon scaling.  I prefer fighting "properly" instead of exploiting the AI's weaknesses. -_-

Oh, and do note that testers might have to replay a campaign quickly without having to think too much about strategy, so Colonel difficult is usually the way to go.

The Soldier is not a 'Tester'. 

However, most of the testers listen to what he has to say because he is excellent at finding ratholes a player might exploit to ruin the game experience. The 'Combine Division' shortcut might have been his best discovery, but by far not the only one he has made. 

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6 minutes ago, Andre Bolkonsky said:

No. Different play testers are asked to play at different game levels to check the game experience from different perspectives. 

Yes, I assumed as much. Preference is telling, however.

To be clear, I didn't intend to direct this discussion to testers alone. I'm very curious to hear what the general consensus is.

I feel the game experience in Hard/Legendary is somewhat ruined currently. I would argue that the need to find exploits to succeed is damning evidence of that on its own.

Edited by Admiral666
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7 minutes ago, Admiral666 said:

It's exactly that reliance on exploits and devolution into stressful tedium that I find concerning. Having greater difficulty need not equate to the loss of enjoyment, nor the necessitate an exploitative playstyle. 

Thing is, people asked for a harder difficulty, so the devs deviated from their normal path and then added in Legendary mode.  They didn't know what they were getting into - the game was already pretty difficult at Major General, and it got a whole lot bigger at Legendary.  Then everyone did a complete 180 and wanted an easier difficulty - so Fixed Size was added.  A bit funny, this lot.

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23 minutes ago, The Soldier said:

 

Oh, and do note that testers might have to replay a campaign quickly without having to think too much about strategy, so Colonel difficult is usually the way to go.

Yeah...that's it... >.> That's why I play Colonel... 

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1 minute ago, Admiral666 said:

Gamers. Very vocal about what they think they want. :)

I would welcome greater difficulty in the form of a more aggressive and unpredictable AI opoonent. That would be much more engaging and organic than the current approach, I think.

The AI is constantly being improved and, as far as I am concerned, is leaps and bounds over UG:G who had a bad habit of standing around at inopportune times. Still, until @Nick Thomadis actually invents Skynet, there will always be limits. 



Nick, when you do invent Skynet, remember all the times I made you laugh on the forums (unless I didn't).

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9 minutes ago, The Soldier said:

Thing is, people asked for a harder difficulty, so the devs deviated from their normal path and then added in Legendary mode.  They didn't know what they were getting into - the game was already pretty difficult at Major General, and it got a whole lot bigger at Legendary.  Then everyone did a complete 180 and wanted an easier difficulty - so Fixed Size was added.  A bit funny, this lot.

Kind of a positive, actually. 

This game appeals to a lot of different gamers. One of its biggest niches will be gamers over thirty who want to chill out and play a campaign over a beer; the modern day grognard of Avalon Hill's days of yore. But, Legendary is there when Koro wants to film himself doing cartwheels over the battlefield for the amusement of others. 

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I'm actually quite happy with the AI currently. It has its downfalls on occasion, but otherwise it's a worthy opponent. I just feel that tuning it to increase difficulty would be a much better solution than just giving it an overwhelming force of veterans equipped with M1 Garands and Flak 88s. 

Warning: Ask your doctor before mistaking hyperbole for serious discourse. Severe side effects may occur. 

Edited by Admiral666
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2 minutes ago, Admiral666 said:

I'm actually quite happy with the AI currently. It has its downfalls on occasion, but otherwise it's a worthy opponent. I just feel that tuning it to increase difficulty would be a much better solution than just giving it an overwhelming force of veterans equipped with M1 Garands and Flak 88s. 

The good news is that is exactly what's happening. Every patch, the AI is tweaked a bit more and a bit more. The accuracy of movements now as oppossed to several months ago is pretty dramatic. It is only getting better over time. 

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4 minutes ago, Admiral666 said:

an overwhelming force of veterans equipped with M1 Garands and Flak 88s. 

More often than not, they do indeed get equipped with M1 Garands, but instead of Flak 88s, they get an air cannon.  In a lot of my games, I end up seeing the AI armed with 14pdr James Rifles and 12pdr Whitworth Cannon, two of the most useless cannon in the game.  Good selling money, though - I think I captured something like 50 Whitworths at Chancellorsville.  I don't ever use them, so sold to the Shop they go, and an extra 100k added to my wallet.

(the devs really need to give rifled cannon that don't have shell shot, like the James, an actual point)

Edited by The Soldier
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2 minutes ago, Andre Bolkonsky said:

Kind of a positive, actually. 

This game appeals to a lot of different gamers. One of its biggest niches will be gamers over thirty who want to chill out and play a campaign over a beer; the modern day grognard of Avalon Hill's days of yore. But, Legendary is there when Koro wants to film himself doing cartwheels over the battlefield for the amusement of others. 

Couldn't agree more. An easier difficulty is a godsend to those of us who enjoy a rum as they organize their armies.

 

 

3 minutes ago, Admiral666 said:

I'm actually quite happy with the AI currently. It has its downfalls on occasion, but otherwise it's a worthy opponent. I just feel that tuning it to increase difficulty would be a much better solution than just giving it an overwhelming force of veterans equipped with M1 Garands and Flak 88s. 

In the Koro Edition, they will have Huey Gunships and Metal Storm Artillery.


For added challenge...

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A few things to note.

1. Yes, playing Hard and Legendary require that you exploit game mechanics to make the battles less painful, since resources are the main constraint; how far you're willing to exploit the mechanics though, is a different matter.

2. The combine brigade gun exploit I thought was originally found by @Hitorishizuka . Not that I particularly use the exploit; I'd rather not have free guns to win, but rather 'out-of-the-box' thinking. Just want to get the record straight.

3, For those of us that do have an in-depth understanding of the maps and mechanics, Brigadier General is way too easy. Even when doing things that are self-inflicting like using maximum size armies, and upping the enemy weapon scaling as much as possible by intentionally not stacking Farmers/1842s.

4. The AI difficulty is mostly a matter of troop counts, but even troop counts don't really change the equation that much; the computer will still make the same mistakes. Just that how much you spend to counter the troop counts is a different matter, as different strategies result in higher costs than others.

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2 minutes ago, Andre Bolkonsky said:

The good news is that is exactly what's happening. Every patch, the AI is tweaked a bit more and a bit more. The accuracy of movements now as oppossed to several months ago is pretty dramatic. It is only getting better over time. 

Yeah, I've happily watched it improve since UGCW hit early access. Can't wait to see where the AI is at release!

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1 minute ago, The Soldier said:

More often than not, they do indeed get equipped with M1 Garands, but instead of Flak 88s, they get an air cannon.  In a lot of my games, I end up seeing the AI armed with 14pdr James Rifles and 12pdr Whitworth Cannon, two of the most useless cannon in the game.  Good selling money, though - I think I captured something like 50 at Chancellorsville.

(the devs really need to give rifled cannon that don't have shell shot, like the James, an actual point)

Honestly, rifled cannons really weren't that great in the war. They were accurate in theory, but blackpowder is not conducive to long range accuracy reports, and the rifling concentrated canister fire considerably, disabling it as an anti-personal weapon. This was unfortunate as canister was at this time the only real effective and reliable form of artillery. The only rifled cannons that compensated for this second issue were the Wiard guns, which are rather underpowered in this game :P Broadly speaking, Little Mac was right when he insisted that smoothbore canons were better. It wouldn't be until Cordite powder that artillery would really be able to enjoy the benefits of rifling. 

Ok, Nerdy Mercanto interlude over. 

 

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2. I have no idea. The Soldier probably at minimum popularized and published it. I may have been aware of it independently (I do not recall when I first started using it) but if I was I certainly didn't spread its knowledge anywhere near to the degree that he did.

I generally only play on normal as I'm not playing all that much these days and just doing a casual blind normal leapfrog run (edit: by which I mean I played up to a certain point on one campaign, usually a patch boundary, then swap and do the other side...but I'm so far behind now that I haven't caught up) for recording purposes to show off/test things to help out others. A little cheese here and there mostly with combine division but mostly just work the fundamentals of movement and usage of terrain, not trying to game the AI's comp that much.

Edited by Hitorishizuka
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3 minutes ago, Hitorishizuka said:

2. I have no idea. The Soldier probably at minimum popularized and published it. I may have been aware of it independently (I do not recall when I first started using it) but if I was I certainly didn't spread its knowledge anywhere near to the degree that he did.

I will say, pretty much the day I found out the exploit, I posted it on the Steam forums.

And yup, still regretting it.  At least I'm wiser now and won't spread how to get brigades over the 2500 limit or how to teleport.

Edited by The Soldier
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2 minutes ago, The Soldier said:

I will say, pretty much the day I found out the exploit, I posted it on the Steam forums.

And yup, still regretting it.  At least I'm wiser now and won't spread how to get 2500+ brigades and how to teleport.

Don't worry about it; just don't mention the gravy gun in the closet. :rolleyes:

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@Wandering1

1. & 4. That's exactly the problem. The player should be able to respond to an increase in difficulty/constraints through intended mechanics and systems, not exploits. Along the same grain, higher troop counts, as you said, don't change the equation. Ergo, they are not an effective way of increasing difficulty. Instead, they create frustrating and tedious experiences: being faced by full 3 star armies when you barely have one or two 3 star brigades, for example.

3. I agree that BG/normal becomes easier as one gains more experience with battles and the game. My purpose in starting this discussion was to find a better solution to creating a higher difficulty so that I could leave normal behind without also forfeiting my enjoyment of the game. 

Edited by Admiral666
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The AI just does so many dumb things at a strategic level that so long as you aren't completely outmatched numbers/stats wise on a local level, normal campaigns should be easy and I just want to show that off, basically. Especially if you use exploity cheese but even if you don't, because honestly artillery will make up the difference or you can just use veteran brigades instead of constantly training up new guys. The current normal campaign I'm youtubing generally doesn't have the high kill counts on artillery my previous ones did because cheese infantry kills everything so fast/hard but it well could.

---

For example, the AI is still very bad at knowing how to defend its flank when the terrain really expands and it has to keep track of a lot of things. However, it was programmed to realize that it was getting flanked and that it should withdraw its frontlines in response...but it will do this more or less regardless of the current terrain position of its frontlines, the terrain of the position that it is forcing itself to withdraw to, or the size of the terrain it is trying to withdraw to relative to the size of its remaining forces. This means that once you start a flank, you can very easily pull the enemy into a ball on bad terrain and pocket them in a way that there literally isn't room for them to fight. At that point their units will either start doing the infamous side-shuffle that all of us know and/or rout from a volley into someone else's volley on the other side repeatedly and it turns into a shooting gallery. (The main problem seems to be that the AI cannot recognize that when a situation like that is occurring it needed to leave some units to defend in good position on one side and throw everything else at the other side to force a breakthrough in order to withdraw in good order, -not- slowly trying to pull everything back and get compacted.)

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1 minute ago, Admiral666 said:

@Wandering1

1. & 4. That's exactly the problem. The player should be able to respond to an increase in difficulty/constraints through intended mechanics and systems, not exploits. Along the same grain, higher troop counts, as you said, don't change the equation. Ergo, they not an effective way of increasing difficulty. Instead, they create frustrating and tedious experiences: being faced by full 3 star armies when you barely have one or two 3 star brigades.

3. I agree that BG/normal becomes easier as one gains more experience with battles and the game. My purpose in starting this discussion was to find a better solution to creating a higher difficulty so that I could leave normal behind without also leaving my enjoyment of the game. 

I suppose along that vein, the better question to ask: what is the definition of difficulty?

Does difficult mean it requires you to think out of the box? Does it mean one is forced to think/compute faster in order to attain results? There is really no one answer to this; some definitions sit better to some people than others. Exploits will still happen regardless; just what one considers an exploit is a different matter.

 

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