Newbie Q: computer player bonuses

[Prince Xizor]

I'm trying to make the AI more challenging in my games. So far it's been mostly a pushover. Within two game years I'll be pulling ahead in key areas, particularly research, and there's no way for the AI to catch up after that.

So first of all, does changing the AI difficulty from medium to hard actually improve its performance or just give it more starting resources? Second, what does the computer player bonus setting do? Does it give bonus starting resources or extra racial abilities or both? I'm playing with v1.49. Thanks. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Also, really looking forward to the Gold release. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

[Fyron]

The AI difficulty setting makes the AI play more intelligently. Unfortunately, no setting will make it a challenge. Hopefully Gold will make the AI harder to beat.

I am not exactly sure what all the AI bonus does, but I think it modifies the starting positions. With a high bonus, the AI starts in a better location than you do. I think it may also give small combat and resource production bonuses.

[Q]

The AI bonus gives important production benefits in all areas (resources, research, intel): IIRC it's 2x, 3x and 5x for low, medium and high.
If you use modified AI's a game with medium or high bonus can be a challange, at least it is for me. But may be I am just a lousy player.

[Fyron]

Using TDM races on hard difficulty with a high bonus can make for a challenging first year or so, but after that you should be so far ahead (or will be soon) that the AI is easy to finish off.

So that's what the bonuses do. Interesting. I didn't see the AI become much more difficult with a high bonus, so I though the bonuses were small.

[Q]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Using TDM races on hard difficulty with a high bonus can make for a challenging first year or so, but after that you should be so far ahead (or will be soon) that the AI is easy to finish off.<hr></blockquote>

The first year, that are ten turns???
In that time I usually just made the first contact but had no major inmteractions with other races. Do you play in a very small quadrant with high player number? Usually around stardate 2410.0 my position is strong enough to beat any single AI, but that's after ten years. But if I am at war with several AI races on different locations it still may be a challenge for me, especially to prevent the multiple intel operations against me.
But as I said it may be my poor player skills.
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