maybe....i've played several rts games before but mostly simcity... i don't have much combat skill, this is the only rts that draw my attention... so if there are people like me, the developer should consider to make it easier
practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, and more practice, I sucked probably more than you did when I started, after a while you start to get the hang of it, don't be discouraged, you will get it eventually.
I too have noticed that the AI has gotten... Smarter at exploiting my weaknesses. I can't Turtle like I used to. Or rush asterous because of its incessant spamming of Avengers! Oh well. Adapt to the AI as it adapts to you.
to the OP: the ultimate goal of this AI development is to make it advanced enough to give even the hardiest players a run for their money. right now, however, we have no way to "scale back" the AI's difficulty, but it is being worked on. so what you're running into is the AI at it's full current potential. and it will only become more evil as it is developed. And for the record, a game like SimCity will in no way prepare you for the level of malevolence some of the players here will throw at you. All that said, it's no reason to not want to delve into an RTS like this. I, for one, WELCOME you into this forum, and the game in general. I would say that your best bet is, in all sincerity, to gather around fellow noobs (if you will excuse the term), and learn the game that way. sometimes the best way to learn is to just get in there and duke it out with someone just as new as you.
Honestly, I find the normal AI to be easy. PA is a unique RTS. I'd recommend watching some gameplay or check out some tutorials. Here's some quick tips. Never stop expanding. If you think you have enough, build more. Never stop attacking. Constant agression beats a turtle.
the Ai economy used to be a setting. New lobby lost it temporarily, it will return. meanwhile, play on single lava planet 60 water height and try to look for spawns that unfairly suffocate the Ai. Best you can do to cheat. really, quickly building outward like others say, is the way of the game. You should build structures scattered about a whole quarter of planet.
personally, i've never been a fan of building THAT spread out. at least, not immediately. but that's just my playstyle i guess. dig in a bit, and expand at a pace my defensive strategy can handle unless i've just landed on a virgin planet. then i go nuts.
I tried to record a game of me beating the Hard AI so you can get of where you might be going wrong, but I don't seem to have mastered the streaming feature yet. If I do I'll post it here.
It's better to be making too little metal than to be making too much. An 80% metal eco will just waste time, not metal. A 120% eco will do the opposite. If your eco is over 100%, build more factories. If the opposite is happening, expand more. Always be building energy. If your energy eco goes under, your radar stops working and your commander will be unable to uber cannon. Bots are for destroying enemy fabbers early game and staffing around defenses into the enemy base mid game. Tanks are for destroying attacking bots early game and assaulting bases later in the game.
the current ai is not too good. you should have seen it in the beta. expansion, throwing units at you, harassment galore. its only downfall, was that it never made consolidated armies to really take you down making it possible to get a radar sat and a laser sat to take it down.
Finally managed to get the Twitch stuff working, so here's a recording of me beating the Hard AI. Hopefully it will give you some ideas. I'm not exactly a pro player myself, coming in 21st of 47 players in the recent community 1v1 tournament. http://www.twitch.tv/quitch/c/3816447 Or YouTube if you prefer - Also graphs - http://www.nanodesu.info/pastats/chart?gameId=41880 It's a POV recording, but at the end I run through the game again at high speed with one camera on my base and the other on the AI's so you can see what we were both doing. Generally you need to expand you economy, put that economy into continually growing your production, and never stop harassing your opponent. You'll see the AI putting up a lot of defences where it felt under pressure, which kept it contained while I continued to take over the planet. Apologies in advance for using some minor variation on the official strategic icons. I didn't really think about how that wouldn't be helpful until after I recorded
Right now I find the AI to be a bit too stupid in Easy. The AI uses the commander as a tank. I can see the benefit of that when pushing back an early charge by bots, but it's simple suicide in mid-game to expose the commander as they can get sniped with bombers. The commander can quite easily be drawn out by a bot-charge into the base and then the commander comes lumbering out into the open to get ambushed. Sometimes it seems like a glitch - It sometimes parks within striking distance of battleships without retreating and just getting smashed. Anyone else experiencing that? I'm too crappy to play at Normal and on Easy I have to use 2-3 AI's as enemies and let them build up a bit or I will crush them early game.
I believe it's due to Sorian over-compensating for a behaviour which turned out to be due to an unrelated bug. Expect to see Commander aggressiveness scaled back.
Yesterday my 8 year old daughter beat the AI on easy (planet half water half land), I only helped her get the Eco going then she did the rest IE factory's and attacking.
My 7 year old son, yesterday defeated an easy AI. His strategy was simple: He built about 20 mex and 30 ene, then build bots and ships and sent to the enemy . that is all. http://pastats.com/pastats/chart?gameId=42227 Almost without air, without radar, a few pd. I promised him that if he beats the medium AI, he will get a reward .
I'm not sure whether this is good parenting or bad parenting. Im leaning towards good, unless the reward is "water".
