How to know what difficulty to pick?

[Wingsofdomain]

Yeah well the headline tells more or less what I wonder. When I play this game earlier like in the 2.000 patch me and my brother started at maybe 5? But that was a way to easy so we started over with the diff on 7 but still wonder if it is too easy. The thing is that you don't realize if you are playing on a way to high diffculty until the AIP is high enough, and then you don't know if you should blame it on being to careless with the AIP or if the diffculty is too high. I don't play enough lol.

I wonder if the defending mode is a good way to test a difficulty.... If you play like for 30 min or maybe 1h only.

[Winter Born]

Defender mode is still very beta so probably not good as an dificulty indicator.

[Wingsofdomain]

ah.... I didn't know that. However I find defender mode entertaining. And you don't have to spend the equal amount of time with it.... thats great.

[x4000]

My thoughts on the matter are largely collected here: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Choosing_A_Difficulty_Level

[Wingsofdomain]

you know....you should read these posts......and you shouldn't do such a big wiki for us.... You should work on something that you get money from. Cause I want to play a valley without wind xD, and the third game you thought of make, or maybe it was tidalis.

[lovekawakawaii]

Yeah, I'm eager for Arcen to finish up an official release of AI war and make another hit game.. Alden Ridge much?

[Winter Born]

LOL  I appreciate your feelings, and that is one of the main reasons I work on the WIKI is in my spare time as a way to support Arcen. The main body of the WIKI has been built over several years by X4000.

[Wingflier]

Yeah, I'm eager for Arcen to finish up an official release of AI war and make another hit game.. Alden Ridge much?

Haha, on the contrary, I am thrilled to see all the work they are putting into AI War to make a wonderful game better.

Throughout my life, I have literally been cursed to enjoy games which companies abandon before they can become anything great.  Yet it seems like the terrible games without any potential receive infinite support.

Going through the list of games I grew up on which the companies all abandoned:  Total Annihilation.  Battlezone.  Homeworld.  Battlezone 2.  Homeworld 2. (Yeah, I'm an idiot for not learning after the first time, sue me ;p) Sins of a Solar Empire (this game has a memory bug which causes the game to crash frequently introduced in the last patch, and hasn't been fixed for 9 MONTHS - but the company is still making expansions lololololol).  There's probably a ton of them in there I just forgot, but suffice it to say that most of my favorite games have been short-lived to say the least. 

Arcen has really shown me that they aren't going to give up on AI War.  They might move on to different projects temporarily, but to me it seems like a continually ongoing project and I really like that.  Believe me, I'm in no rush for them to "move on", as appealing as Alden Ridge sounds.

[Red Spot]

Haha, on the contrary, I am thrilled to see all the work they are putting into AI War to make a wonderful game better.

Throughout my life, I have literally been cursed to enjoy games which companies abandon before they can become anything great.  Yet it seems like the terrible games without any potential receive infinite support.

Going through the list of games I grew up on which the companies all abandoned:  Total Annihilation.  Battlezone.  Homeworld.  Battlezone 2.  Homeworld 2. (Yeah, I'm an idiot for not learning after the first time, sue me ;p) Sins of a Solar Empire (this game has a memory bug which causes the game to crash frequently introduced in the last patch, and hasn't been fixed for 9 MONTHS - but the company is still making expansions lololololol).  There's probably a ton of them in there I just forgot, but suffice it to say that most of my favorite games have been short-lived to say the least. 

Arcen has really shown me that they aren't going to give up on AI War.  They might move on to different projects temporarily, but to me it seems like a continually ongoing project and I really like that.  Believe me, I'm in no rush for them to "move on", as appealing as Alden Ridge sounds.

May I correct you somewhat .. both of those games are being updated to DX9 and above with a whole other bunch of updates by a couple of the original developers, though 'unofficial'.

http://www.bzuniverse.com/forum/

[Wingflier]

Yes I know about those updates, but thank you for telling me anyway. However, what it has taken these two freelance developers to do in 7 years, the company could have done in 1. The playerbase has mostly moved on, and finding a game is harder than ever. Most of these games have had 3rd party support, but when the playerbase has all moved on, it doesn't matter anymore.

[Red Spot]

I sure am glad they are doing it, and some of us sure find that it does matter.
In the end games that will get updates, in whatever form, 10 years after release, are rare.

[Wingflier]

Not as rare as you would think, I can think of a ton of games off the top of my head that are near or over ten years old that still receive 3rd party support.

Diablo 2, Starcraft, Total Annihilation, Battlezone 1 and 2, Homeworld 1 and 2, Half-Life, Counter-Strike, as well as a ton of others I probably don't even know about.

I guess I shouldn't say it doesn't matter, it's just that most of the community has given up on it and moved on, where if the company had kept supporting it (like Arcen), people would have been more likely to stay with the promise of official support.

[Echo35]

Diablo 2, Starcraft, Total Annihilation, Battlezone 1 and 2, Homeworld 1 and 2, Half-Life, Counter-Strike, as well as a ton of others I probably don't even know about.

I still play CSS. I still find it one of the better PC FPS's around. In fact, at least 3/4 if not more of my video game playing are old games because they're better and/or still have a large support base. I think AI War is going to be one of those games for me, that I'll still be playing 15 years from now, just like how I still play HoMM3, CSS, MOO, etc.

[Red Spot]

I still play CSS. I still find it one of the better PC FPS's around. In fact, at least 3/4 if not more of my video game playing are old games because they're better and/or still have a large support base. I think AI War is going to be one of those games for me, that I'll still be playing 15 years from now, just like how I still play HoMM3, CSS, MOO, etc.

My top games:
HW
HW-cataclism
HW2
BZ
BZ-Red odyssey
BZ2
SoF2

After that it takes a jump to:
SC
SC-FA
SC2 (in lesser extend, mainly cause its a 'simplified' version of SC1, sort of)

Now do you think I will buy the DLCs for this game, or might already have them?

Diablo 2, Starcraft, Total Annihilation, Battlezone 1 and 2, Homeworld 1 and 2, Half-Life, Counter-Strike, as well as a ton of others I probably don't even know about.

Where do they support the HW-games? I know where people support their own mod for HW/HW2, thats about all I know.
I would be interested to see a graphics update for HW1 ...

[Suzera]

I've played hundreds of games if not over a thousand by now. There's things I like and don't like about all of them and they shift around daily too much for me to have a "favorites" list that is less than 4-5 dozen titles long. My steam games library alone is 4-5 pages of scrolling, although about a third of that is stuff like the Popcap games pack (some of those are really good or cool).

As to the OP, for starting out:

Don't bother with less than 5 unless you're entirely new to gaming or just want an easy win
If you're a weaker RTS gamer and you will do absolutely no micro, go with 5-6
If you're a weaker RTS gamer OR you will do absolutely no micro, go with 7 to start and bump it on up
If you're good at RTS games and will at least do the important easy bits of micro, do 7.6 to start

Random easier AIs
All ships enabled
Pick munitions boosters as your starting bonus
Disable LotS and Neinzul
All minor AI stuff off
Full vision/no fog
1AIP/30m

NEVER EVER EVER USE ANY WARHEADS. EVER. You'll be crippling yourself because you WILL use them wrong (even building them is a Bad Idea[tm] almost all the time). There's almost never a right time to use warheads right now with their insane AIP cost. There is no system you can't fight through with a conventional fleet to the point where using any type of warhead is ever a good idea. None.