Game Difficulty? and feature request

[Bruce70]

I've only played the demo and only single player RT.

For my first attempt I played on beginner level (or whatever it's called) and I got a marginal victory, because I was still learning the controls (and I did stuff that I quickly found doesn't work in the modern era).

I repeated the battle at elite and got a total victory with 1 man wounded. OK, so maybe I got lucky. I then replayed as red and got another total victory - and that was with hardly using the reinforcements since I didn't realise they had arrived (that's RT for ya).

Now I had the same problem in CMx1 too, so the next thing I tried to do was to give the AI a bonus (+100 or even +200 was sometimes necessary in CMx1), but I couldn't see any way to do that.

I assume that this is the case for all battles and that it has something to do with the Strat AI Scripts and/or C&C?

If that is the case, can someone tell me if there are any scenarios and/or campaigns that are much harder vs the AI than the demo?

Also can I make a feature request for scenario design that allows the designer to create easy, medium, and hard games that the player can choose at play time. e.g. The easy AI opponent might be an understength company; medium, a full strength company; and hard, a full company with attachments. Obviously this would require another set of plans for each case, which would be a big load on the designer - but it would be nice to have that option.

[Bruce70]

bump

[PSY]

I've only played campaign scenarios, but I can definitely tell you I've had a lot more than 1 man wounded. Just to give you an idea of where I'm coming from, I've played a considerable amount of strategy games (Turn-based stuff, not RTS) over the past 20 years and am probably a minor-level grognard (I play and enjoy Matrix Games, for example, and own several ASL modules).

I am not having an easy time. I won the first scenario with a Total US Victory, but took a lot of casualties doing it. I think I'm about to lose the second scenario -- lots of casualties, and not going to be able to take all my objectives.

(*** could be considered minor spoilers ***)

In the first campaign scenario, I was doing pretty well moping up forces outside of the main fortress complex with almost no casualties, but as soon as I entered the fortress area I had several squads completely wiped out -- IIRC final reckoning ~30 US casualties. It was a US Victory, but certainly not a cakewalk.

Second campaign scenario is in progress. So far I've lost two Strykers from RPGs including one with a Platoon HQ and two MG Teams mounted. I had a squad completely wiped out while trying to assault a building, and another squad almost completely wiped out going from one building to another. Most of the rest of the squads in my company have taken casualties.

I lost the Strykers because I wasn't cautious enough. But in the case of the squad loses, I had other squads supporting their movements with fire on nearby buildings and was trying to play cautiously. Partly I think I just need more practice, but also I think MOUT is just tough, and casualties will be taken.

The worst part is I think I'm well on my way to losing the scenario. I've only taken one of three objectives and I'm probably down to only 1/3rd of the original time left.

[cow_cookie]

Are these quick battles or campaign?

I've only played the campaign at Veteran. Getting used to the exceptionally lethal nature of modern combat has made the game quite a challenge for me, albeit a challenge I'm enjoying.

Maybe the campaign just has more challenging scripting or maybe I just suck.

[Bruce70]

OK, that sounds promising, thanks for the replys.

I still think it would be nice if scenario designers could create AI plans for various difficulty levels. But now that I think about it this can be done already - just create separate scenarios. So please ignore the feature request, there are bigger fish to fry.