Farce’s Normalized AI Difficulty

The purpose of these modifications are to ‘normalize’ the difficulty curve. At each level of difficulty certain under-the-hood difficulty modifiers are tweaked. In short, these seemingly arbitrary percent bonuses, hidden stats, handicaps etc are required for the AI to function and pose a threat at all.

But if you’re like me then you may feel these bonuses and handicaps go too far or are too extreme. The jump from Hard to Legendary is pretty steep occasionally, and this mod ‘normalizes’ this difficulty curve – the game still has difficulty increases at each level but they are reigned in.

Ultimately, this mod does make the game easier. If you’re uncomfortable with the changes in the more detailed summary below that’s completely fine, this mod isn’t for you.

I’ve kept these mods separate for greater choice, flexibility, and compatibility.

The ‘AI’ Difficulty Mod

This mod is targeted at the bonuses received by the AI. They, by far, are the target of most of the difficulty tweaking and this makes sense. Now of course the AI needs bonuses to function, so you’ll see in my comments where I’ve only made gentle changes to ensure the steamrolling isn’t quite so bad.
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Due to Steams worthless character limit the entirety of the changelog can be found here:
Why the hell do workshop pages have character limits anyways? I mean comments and reviews I understand but they should exempt workshop pages and guides. Especially guides.
Note that it is unformatted for right now because I’m too tired to replace all the url code I wrote for Steam. I’ll fix it soon.

Anyways, here’s a sample of some of the changes.

Attrition Bonus: You’ve probably noticed that the AI gets some immunity to attrition. This makes a lot of sense, as the AI is really, really bad at avoiding it. On the other hand it’s really frustrating watching the AI waltz through attrition areas without a care in the world, especially if you’re a faction where applying attrition is part of your thing (vampires, chaos). So there should be a middleground.

Also note that there are multiple types of attrition: Chaos, Desert, Snow, Swamp, Seas, Sea Storms, etc. All the types of attrition have the same ‘template’ for the difficulty and resistance curve, IE on Legendary the AI gets 80% resistance to all of the above types of attrition. To save space I’ll condense it accordingly.

All types of attrition are subject to the following AI resistances:

• Easy – 30% resistance to 15%.
• Normal – 50% resistance to 25%.
• Hard – 60% resistance to 30%.
• Very Hard – 70% resistance to 35%.
• Legendary – 80% resistance to 40%.

So In effect the resistance bonuses the AI receives against attrition have been halved. This stacks with any traits, research, or rites that the AI has still.
Building Cost Reduction: The AI simply receives a percent discount to their building costs.

• Easy – 40% discount, untouched.
• Normal – 50% discount, untouched.
• Hard – 60% discount to 50%.
• Very Hard – 70% discount to 60%.
• Legendary – 80% discount to 70%.

Recruitment Cost Bonus: Speaking of those other bonuses, the AI gets a discount on recruitment costs. Pretty standard fare.

• Easy – No discount.
• Normal – 30% recruitment discount to 20%.
• Hard – 50% recruitment discount to 40%.
• Very Hard – 60% recruitment discount to 50%.
• Legendary – 70% recruitment discount to 60%.

Replenishment Bonus: The AI replens losses faster. This can be pretty frustrating, seeing the AI lick their wounds so fast. It really makes having a genuine war of attrition tough.

• Easy – 3 bonus replenishment, untouched.
• Normal – 4 bonus replenishment, untouched.
• Hard – 5 bonus replenishment, untouched.
• Very Hard – 7 bonus replenishment, now 6.
• Legendary – 9 bonus replenishment, now 7.

Settlement Growth: We previously covered how bad the AI is at developing settlements, so honestly they need the bonus population growth as they wont optimize growth buildings and then demolish them like a player can. So I’ve left this relatively untouched.

• Easy – 20 extra growth, untouched.
• Normal – 40 extra growth, untouched.
• Hard – 60 extra growth, untouched.
• Very Hard – 100 extra growth now 80.
• Legendary – 125 extra growth now 105.

Public Order: This is a big one. Their PO bonuses effectively negate any chance to disrupt settlements with agrents and corruption on higher difficulties. At the same time I recognize the AI is bad at handling it, but in the interest of allowing agents and corruption more play I’ve adjusted these values.

• Easy – 2 bonus PO, untouched.
• Normal – 4 bonus PO, untouched.
• Hard – 6 bonus PO, untouched.
• Very Hard – 8 bonus PO now 7.
• Legendary – 10 bonus PO now 8.

Research ‘Cost’: The AI gets a discount on how much research ‘costs’. I’m not quite sure how this functions, because as intended on Legendary the AI gets a 100% discount on research cost, effectively making them take one turn I’d imagine. At that point the only thing stopping AI research would be buildings or other research pre-reqs. I’m unsure this one is implemented because allowing instant research on early game units is seriously strong. Adjusted to be safe.

• Easy – No research discount, untouched.
• Normal – 25% research discount, untouched.
• Hard – 50% research discount, untouched.
• Very Hard – 75% research discount now 60%.
• Legendary – 100% research discount now 75%.

Vortex Campaign Ritual Currency: If you’ve played Vortex on higher difficulties you’ve probaly noticed the AI factions grow pretty quick. Well, they get an innate ‘income’ of their ritual currency every turn.

• Easy – 3 extra, untouched.
• Normal – 4 extra, untouched.
• Hard -6 extra, now 5.
• Very Hard – 7 extra, now 6.
• Legendary – 8 extra, now 6.

Confederation Bonus: The AI receives a bonus to confederating when weaker than the player. This has been removed.

Battlefield Morale: The AI receives a modifier to thier morale/leadership dependent on difficulty. This has been removed. Both player and AI units are on an even playing field. Very Hard and Legendary use the same bonus.

• Easy – 4 less leadership, now 0.
• Normal – No leadership bonus, untouched.
• Hard – 4 extra leadership, now 0.
• Very Hard – 10 extra leadership, now 0.

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This mod alters the following tables:

_kv_morale_tables
cai_variables_tables
campaign_difficulty_handicap_effects_tables

This mod renames the tables so they should be compatible with mods that affect other entries within them so long as they don’t change the specific lines I have. A lot of your garden-variety large mods may be incompatible, but not in a sense they’ll crash your game. Rather, only one mod in the load order will take effect. Hopefully.

I don’t use SFO, so I have no idea and can’t help you there.

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Like all my mods this is really made for me, but feel free to make suggestions. I make these to learn, cut down on mod bloat, and implement what I want to see. If there are specific things you disagree with consider downloading pack file manager and changing it yourself! You’ll see it isn’t hard and soon you’ll be tweaking plenty of mods. Enjoy!