I'm not really a fan of what usually happens in strategy games, where a higher difficulty level means that the AI will get a shitload of bonuses and you'll get penalized in every aspect. I don't play Civilization IV, or Fall from Heaven 2, which is more difficult than Civ4, in a level higher than Prince. at least in King's Bounty the game tells you what happens in Normal or Hard (i.e. things cost more, etc)

@ameratsu


There is always zombies walking around,not just hoards. Its the two zombies that spawned behind your back that take your health away, and say if 5 zombies are running at you, 3 of them will run past you and then hit you in your back..


Cheap shit like that ruins the game

Well if stray zombies give you that much trouble, you probably shouldn't be playing realism or expert.

Only when they spawn out of thin air behind your back in a closed room,Your talking to THE biggest L4D fan on this site, Ask Yungmagic we played Realism/Expert a shit load of times and every time we did the game screwed us.

I wouldn't call Fall from Heaven 2 harder than vanilla Civ4 (unless they can actually fix the AI to work with the added game mechanics).  They made fantastic progress with Civ 4 difficulty levels, but unfortunately you can't program an AI to account for all the different human play styles that attempt to exploit AI weaknesses (AI doesn't adapt, but human continually adapts).

King's Bounty is a fantastic example of how to do difficulty modes.

I do agree with the concensus here, most difficulty settings in games don't do the intended purpose.  When I choose hard, I don't want annoying.

lol

Also, I agree with Ameratsu's sentiment.  We play expert almost exlcusively.

I had the other achievements so Expert/Realism Achievement is the only thing i did. 

The cheapest trick of difficulty in the book? Rubberbanding. We have all played MArio kart and we all know how it works.

You are in the lead, drop a banana and the number two will be behind you in seconds.
You're the number two, hit a banana and play catch-up for a whole round. It's way to damn cheap.

I would say scrap difficulty levels and simply go for intensity levels which the AI will try to maintain. Difficulty pretty much means intensity anyway, so simply having the AI respond to how efficiently you are dispatching the enemy is a good way to keep the play experience consistant without killing the player or making it a breeze to play.

Two million enemies tossing a million grenades every second at me does NOT mean Veteran.