AI is OP, please add easier difficulties

I'm a relatively new player to planetary annihilation, and i have to say that the AI on normal (easiest) difficulty is too hard to beat. They instantly know everything and do everything. I cannot even travel to a new planet to find sanctuary because the always own all of the planets in the solar system. It feels like I am playing on Uber difficulty at all times. I have only beat the AI once with a friend, and only because the enemy spawned on a different planet, so we nuked them. Please make the skirmishes easier because i want to have fun when playing with my friends instead of losing match after match.

I'd recommend looking at some gameplay videos, and player-made tutorials, because the AI is actually pretty easy once you get used to the game. Don't worry, everyone thinks the AI is ridiculously hard at first, you're not the only one! Once you get used to the game though the AI becomes really easy.

The thing about PA is that even though it's macro based, you need to be fast.
You need to expand, build and attack quickly, if you ever think you've expanded, built or attacked enough, you haven't. Never stop doing anything. EVER.

If you need an easier AI though, turn down economic scaling by changing the number on the AI's name in the pre-game lobby.

EDIT: also, as emraldis said, watch some tutorials and gameplay videos.
ZaphodX made a tips and tricks video recently which is pretty helpful for newer players.

I shared your frustration for the first few matches; then I understood how the game worked (and how little of its options the AI actually utilizes) and now it's only a matter of when, not if, the AI is beaten.

Both emraldis and tehrekd have already given valuable advice, especially the trick with the economic modifiers for a "weakened" oponnent. I'd like to add something elese: You've bought a competitive RTS game, inspired by some of the greatest games of the genre, and it is heavily multiplayer-focused. It's a different gameplay experience than other, calmer games. But it's very rewarding, once you get the hang of it. Don't try to find ways to make the game easier in order to steamroll the AI - head on to multiplayer and trade blows with real players. It's much more fun.

I believe that Sorian, one of Uber's developers, has said in a post elsewhere that the difficulty levels are being reworked to be more friendly to new players. As others have said, adjusting the AI economy settings from the base 1.0 value to 0.5 or lower will make playing against it much less difficult.

These two statements really crystallized the disquiet I've felt when playing PA. PA feels like an evolution of TA & SupCom balanced primarily for high-level competitive play.

I'm reserving judgment until the 1.0 release but I'm hoping that non-competitive players won't be forgotten.

I really don't see that. At all.
I'm completely non-competitive, put me up against an actual player and I'm usually the first to go down. But to me, the AI is pretty easy.

The only time the AI isn't easy is when I go air first, because the AI moves its air so goddamn well that any fabber I send out is lucky to live longer than 5 seconds.

I think the thing with the AI- it's hard to get a good AI, not so bad to make it easier once you've got a good one though... I think Sorian will tune the lower levels of the AI quite soon, the hard part is getting an AI good enough to challenge more experienced players as well (and it's really getting there now).

My concern exactly. Hopefully we don't get screwed over.

Then there's this.

Humans are UP.

difficulty, right now is competence and aggression. You won't lose to an easy ai, you will just be built atop of and its units sort of wander into your base.

economy, is ai speed. Down to .2, it becomes dirt slow. Looks like a red alert 2 base 8 minutes into the game. Up to 2x, t2 in 6 minutes and gutting its eco no longer slows it.

try turning a harder ai, on a .4 eco. More your skill grade.

like other posters say, expand more and faster though. Like, play a game vs 1x medium ai, and after you lose review after game or go to replay tab in main menu. Watch any game, slowly see what the ai does.

THE KEY IS SIMPLE, by 4 minutes, it has 4-5 spread out pockets of mex and energy, 2-3 factories, radar, scout units along the planet, and a significant standing army to react to enemy radar blip. You simply need to do the same, capture large quantity of land and use radar and scouts to track enemy action. Then, spend eco on infinite factory till your metal is low but energy is 1k and build speed 75%+. The real AI killer, is to use that 4 minute small army, to hit just enemy mexes or just energy or both. That brings their 8 minute huge army, interplanetary, t2, ect, into a 15 minute one, so long as their metal sources keep getting tore the jack up by you personally

want a mild sort of fun, on my YouTube I play absurd AI on campaign GW. It kicks ***, and I suck. I still win, how I play is portrayed and fairly relevant to a new player to start them off.

Snipe the commander... I always find this easy with a tank ball

You have to keep in mind that the current single player - Galactic War - was just a strech goal on the game's original Kickstarter campaign. As were a lot of other things. And if you take a look at the basics - There is no campaign in the classical sense, there are no factions with different units - then this game has multiplayer written all over it.

Don't get me wrong, I like casual RTS gameplay too. I'm pretty sure I spent most of my time on Total Annihilation on huge maps against the AI, shelling it with Big Berthas and nuking it over and over. I was very hesitant about PA and didn't back it during its Kickstarter phase, because I wasn't sure whether I would actually get a game that would allow me to do that. But now that I've played in a bit in multiplayer I'm convinced that I don't need laid-back AI stomps at all, because playing against other people is so incredibly fun.

I have about 10 or so hours gameplay against GW and AI Multiplayer.

GW I play on hard difficulty and I can out manage a hard AI on my own.
With any sub-commanders I can literally just do what I want till T2 then move to enemy commander and win.

On Multiplayer I have played 3 different games :
First game ever, even before GW, Normal Diff 1.0 for both of us. Seemed correct, why put handicaps for normal. Well 20 minutes later I was crushed harder than I've ever seen before on SupComsss harder difficulties. Hadn't played strategy games in about a year though...
Second game, I set normal to 0.3. Well, 30 minutes later I owned the first planet and the AI had moved to the second (found it was during my attack on his base he moved). Played around with orbital stuff and eventually beat him. This was a very easy game, but I did start adding more Shift-build orders.
GW Normal playing, left the game running and walked off thinking my 3 subs would win..turns out not.. GW Hard as above, but wanted to go back and use all the units so:
Third Multiplayer AI game, back to 1.0, no handicaps still normal diff. I run my standard econ start of 2M-1E-1Fac-7Fab , 6th fab starts more T1 factories (bit slow but its fine for GW hard). Fabs run around for metal and power, commander builds power. Thought I would have a good econ and a good rollout once a few more T1 factories came up. During fab metal expansion I was assaulted by bombers....so fast.... they took all my external fabs out and cut me off from metal while attacking from 3 directions... I held off with some defense and commander but I could see the end was nigh...I surrendered.

GW is easy on Hard mode, but multi AI is crazy on Normal 1.0?

Simple disagreement.

Campaign was a kickstart stretch goal, but single player AI is a very lavish thing in this game. The AI is a very flexible challenger, I would say the AI has less problems than the vast majority of the rest of PA development. They at no time have said that "dang that AI showed an unexpected problem, we will have to start from the beginning on it", like orbital or galactic war mode. The AI has just started as a spawned uncontrolled entity, and has went from there to a celebrity player more popular than some twitch streamers.

What is there to disagree with?

I'm not denying the AI's capabilities. Noone here is; after all, this is a thread about the AI being too strong against new players. But you can't deny that (like all gaming AIs) it's got its limits. If it weren't for its ability to effortlessly macromanage (expanding, producing, rallying, attacking), it'd be a complete walkover.

As for the dev's priorities, obviously I can just guess. But right now, chances are there are a lot more pressing issues to be tackled before release.

I will point out, that creating planets with like 10 metal clusters and density makes the whole metal expanding thing a lot easier to wrap you head around, and prevents a AI from getting to far ahead due to micro.

I seriously recommend it, it's a lot of fun for newer players when they can focus more on just building their armys then having to worry much about massively expanding and trying to keep their base expanding as a result.

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/the-ai-needs-a-lower-difficulty.61104/

use search this is posted once a week

Thanks for all of your help. After watching some Youtube videos, i am now able to take out a normal ai with 1.2x economy. The game doesn't need any more difficulties as long as i can lower the ai's economy levels. Thank you!

That is badass. Excellent work