I usually control dificulty using a variety of methods. My personal favorate is terrain. This is a seldom used factor but can make an otherwise easy battle hard and an otherwise imposible battle merely difficult.
An example is that it is much easier to defend a base if there are cliffs on all four side with only one small entrance. But you can be a lot more subtle. For instance, I think it is the Hyperiod 'borg that can go underwater. this allows some intresting possibilies...

I think it all depends on the scenario type. In a FF, you would have to either give less units or add more ennemy units.

I think that the only common factor is the number of ennemy units, so I would say that adding/removing ennemies or making them smarter/dumber or with more/less resources is a good way to adjust the difficulty.

Quote:

Agreed. Extending that... where changing the attributes of a unit is possible in a Editor/Game Engine the numbers of units can have lessened relevance. A single DemiGod unit versus 100-200 units becomes possible.

Dastal:

Terrain effects... I absolutely love this in scenarios, Choke points, safe areas, crossfire points, Limiting/Controlling unit numbers by congestion or expanse, critical/crucial points. I think there used to be lots more of this in ROR Scenarios before everyone got intense with triggers. Of course Elevation gives some benefit to higher units in the AOK Engine so that can be used.

Anyone remember a ROR Masada Scenario?
Of Course Ingo had lots of intricate terrain ...hmmm what was the one with the Priest Hiding and healing behind the Hero by the hut, in the 3 o'clock corner I think.

Happy New Year BTW

Yes, difficulty completly depends on what kind of game you are playing. Difficulty most be handled differently for the different scenario types.

I personally believe that scripted sequences and ai's can provide the greatest challenge to a player.

I remember one particular scenario where the ai was beautifully crafted to give you a challenge. I can't remember the name of the scenario, but i do remember that it had a viking theme to it. You had a force of vikings and you were competing against another force of vikings to see who could destory the most markets. Or i beilive that is how the scenario went. Please correct me if i am wrong. Anyway the ai crafted for that scenario was amazing. I remember that i lost the first time that i played the scenario, because my enemy destroyed the markets before I did.

This ai truley made me feel as if i was playing against a real player. The computer made all the right moves, if i didn't know that i wasn't online i would have sworen that i had been playing against another person.

"Like a beacon in the night"

[This message has been edited by iNtRePiD (edited 01-14-2002 @ 11:01 PM).]

One way to control difficulty is through the clues (hints).
The more subtle and/or complex the hints, the more difficult the game becomes.

iNtRePiD: The scenario you mentioned is 'Canute' by UndiscoveredBum...an ES contest winner. I too, was blown away by the AI in that game.

EO has put forward a good point about the no. of enemy units,

But one should also consider the skill level of the user and hence the difficulty selected (or whatever) trigger comes in handy. The trigger can be used for crunch situations.....e.g In the scn by vampire Slayer (forgot name) he gave the option to the user to select the difficulty.

Also,
AI - definitely. A good AI is a good challenge. But once again not all scenarios require an AI. Most use Immobile AI and also one should remember the absence of many AI scripters. For B&D scenarios a good AI would certainly help.

But most of the scenarios are FF and RPG. In this case it certainly depends on the terrain, enemy units and of course each player has his own view of the difficutly.

Kumar Shah,
you said that one should take care on the players skill.
What do you think,
which way should one choose to control the difficulty for newbies and which way is appropriate for experts?

I would not depend too much on AI's for difficulty on this topic. I would rather trust on YOU, the creator's game playing skills to try and understand how the player would react to the difficulty levels.

1. Giving more/less units.. You could argue both ways for this one. Giving less units for Player 1 will affect his difficulty. If the 1 guy is against an army of ten..he still has a chance of defeating them by using his skills. Supposing he has 10 Imperial age Teutonic Knights against him..but he's a cavalry archer in Feudal. If i was the player, i would definetely be able to kill those 10 tk's by simple using hit and run tactics. HOWEVER, This all changes if there's not a lot of places for the CArcher to go..if he can't run, he dies. Terrains.

To continue up on what i said, Let's check out another situation. Your guy, An imperial age Goth Champion has 10 militia (dark age) against him. Guess who wins the battle? It's an obvious choice.

2.Terrain.. I completely agree with BINGFA. I just LOVE putting cliffs in places so the player can't go across it (unless if it's a trigger trick). People like to use Shallows if it's an island terrain. They make excellent choke points by allowing walls to be not built in them.

AnastasiaKafka.. Clues, i won't go with them a lot more. Clues are given so that the player has assistance to play. Technically speaking, only Novice Rookies of AoK would need clues to fight enemies.

Intrepid.. Sure, AI's can make it all come up very nicely. But you have to notice, most of the things UB(undiscoveredbum) used were in-game. They, if i remember correctly did not use AI's a lot more. I may be mistaken..but i think not.

AI's are good, but they can also mess up at times. If he really used AI to such an extent, then he's one of the people who can pull it off.

All in all, all of these things are interconnected. A good scenario designer makes use of every single thing he can make use of. Choke points in the middle of the game, he can position certain units in certain places. He will always place the enemy hero unit near the end as no one wants to get killed 3 minutes after they start. He will strategically place enemy units in places he knows will hurt most. He will place the easy units in the front and the hard units near the end.

To kinda answer your question storycreator..

It is best if the Scenario Designer allows the player to choose his settings IN-GAME. If not, he should make triggers that nicely correspond to the difficulty setting the user used when he started playing the game using certain conditions. For newbies, He would do a combination of things :

Give the player a lot more HP
Automatically kill hard to kill enemy units.
Or, he could do either of those.

Expert :

The complete opposite..but not quite.

The Computer has a lot more units.
But player has the same HP.

Here's why..The expert player is already hurt by having more enemy units. He doesn't want to futher cripple his state by having EVEN less HP than he's starting with. You may disagree with me. But most scenarios i've seen, have used the same strategy over and over again.

It all comes down to this. "You gotta be a better player to be a good designer."
-------------------

My *looks at post* a lot more than 2 cents.

Shiva
Woad Leader

Quote:

Agree and I have no clue what u talking about on other things , too lazy too read.

Thank you, AnastasiaKafka ( I can never remeber who has made what around here, my appologies to UndiscoverdBum.

Shiva: I am sorry but i do not understand what you are trying to say. Could you be more clear with your grammar, thank you.

AnastasiaKafka is right hints can greatly increase the difficulty of a game. I would have to disagree with Shiva that only novice rookies use hints to complete a scenario. I think that most people use the hints that are provided to them.

Quote:

I completly agree with this statement. Hints can really change the difficulty of a game. In some games i have played the author includes so many hints step by step, so that going through the game is a breeze. However in some games you can have hints that are difficult to decipher and are almost like clues.

Personally I don't think that hints should be used to give a detailed step by step run down of the sceanrio so that the player is given next to no challenge. Instead I think hints should only be put in for the most difficult parts of the scenarios or they should be more like clues, that take a bit of thought for the player to figure out and use correctly.

"Like a beacon in the night"

One very important thing to control the difficulty is using hints and combining this with PLAYTESTING by third parties. It happens to me on all my scenarios, i feel it is "too easy" and when i send it out for playtesting everyone says that it was ridiculously hard. Anastasia is my witness in this.

A designer knows all the tricks he has to use to win a scenario, and his prime concern is using these tricks because he wants to see if all triggers are working. If he has a trigger that will actiavte when he eliminates p5 from the map, he will ue all his secret knowledge to beat p5 and see if his trigger fires correctly, he is not so interested in knowing if player will beat p5 when he gets the game.

Here's an example of what causes this "secret knowledge" problem for the designer: i created a B&D scenario in which the player had quie a few units, almost, but no really, enough to kill the enemy with a fast raid. My plan for that scenario was that a trategy where the player, seeing all of those units, used these starting units to raid the enemy city, cripple his villagers and so not let him grow beyond the player. I played the scenario myself using this strategy and it was an easy battle. So i sent it to playtesting. Guess what: some turtled, some did very small raids, some amassed huge armies for one big assault. But none used he strategy i thought they should use. The enemy, left unchecked for some time, grew quickly powerful enough to provide a tooth and nail defense of his city. Many players were defeated in the scenario, others took 4 hours to beat it. I, the designer, did it in 30 minutes.

This proves also that Anstasias was right: hints do matter. If i had included the hint: "use your starting forces for a full assault on the foe, his will leave him crippled for your later attacks. If he is left uncked he will grow very powerful.", the end result would possibly be an easy scenario, then again maybe a adequately balanced one, i would not know without playtests.

It is not just rookies who read the hints. Many designers use hints for essencial game info, myself included. Others use it for subtle info. Others for full walkthroughs. Others don´t use them and miss out a great alternative.

PS: Zen, why did you edit Shiva´s post?

[This message has been edited by Zanzard Lothar (edited 01-15-2002 @ 10:34 PM).]

@ Storycreator and others...

Controling the diffuculty keeping in view the players skill is done in a very easy way:

1.) In the scenario editor there is condition which checks the difficult level selected by the user. What can be done is before the main battle/part/task, the user can be given an option to select the difficulty he desires i.e. Easy, Standard, Medium. This can easily be done with the object selected trigger.

Example : Have a militia for easy, SS for standard and Champ for hard

According to the difficulty he selects you can define the triggers for the no. of units to be placed. The no. of objectives, hints, etc. You can also define the HP of enemy units, their attacks.

e.g

Activate triggers - 1,2,3,4
1 - no. of units to be created
2 - change Hp, attack of already present units
3 - How many objective to be completed
4 - Change HP of your main char, its attack

For easy u can have less units, normal HP for them and more Hp and attack for the char

Similarly can be done for Standard and Hard.

Recommend The Shogun Demo by Vampire Slayer

anything else??

post here

Take a look at "William Warrior of the Sun" it has got a fantastic learning curve.. I think it works because you start of fighting smaller units for 50 gold killing one and as you progress you are fighting new units all the time and so have to constantly change your units. The stronger the unit becomes the more money its worth.

Ai can control difficulty see "Tamerlane Prince of Destruction" or "Gyda's Challenge" both have very competant and challenging Ai files. Ai seems daunting to most players because the huge size of the manual and the many lines needed to write.. the Ai files in aokh to help you write more often than not put me off.

As Zanzard said: When it comes to fine-tuning and seeing if a scenario is really balanced, playtesting is the key. A designer should also be his first playtester, and he should continue to test his own work until he finds it well-balanced. Then it’s necessary to have others test one’s work. Do they get stuck at seemingly easy points? Do they blaze through a part which you thought was very tough? Do they ask you how to solve a situation when you thought it was obvious? This is the best way to know if you should add a hint, or change the difficulty of some parts.

When it comes to fixed force games, many people use similar methods, including me: I sometimes reduce the number of enemy units on easier levels or give extra units to the player. Another way is to give extra hp to your own team, or take away hit points and attack from enemy groups. Terrain also plays a role - such as fighting from an uphill advantage or attacking melee soldiers with ranged units over a cliff.

When it comes to Build and Destroy parts, I like to have a computer launch 2-4 huge attacks and then go defensive. If players survive that long, they can roll up their sleeves and get ready to counter-attack. I also like a variety of attacks. If I get defeated, I prefer to be defeated by an event that stands out, e.g. that “bad surprise” army which crashes through my back gate and takes out my castle. I don’t like to lose when the comp has infinite resources and sends the same group of soldiers and siege machines over to my town for 245+ times for hours and hours, until I’m out of resources and my last villager dies.

Time and again, it can be interesting to mess with the “forbidden numbers” in the Ai. E.g. working with the “attack-group-size” is something that many Ai experts warn us not to do. I can only half agree with that. It is true that those old leftover files from the original Age of Empires are somewhat unpredictable. It’s also true that the computer is too stupid to attack walls and gates with those lines. But such unstable Ai lines can cause some interesting “terror in the fields” behaviour. That is, unpredictable enemy groups will be roaming outside of your town walls and only shoot at houses and towers - and sometimes they’ll gather into huge attack groups without a warning. They are guys who keep you inside your walls. If you have one “terror in the fields” computer enemy and another one with the usual “Attack-now” behaviour, they can become a frightening combo... because an Ai that attacks with the “attack now” signal will go straight for your defensive walls and open a passage for the other, restless and unpredictable Ai. If such an Ai combo (an organized Ai that moves in one slow bunch and a fast, unpredictable lash-out-at-everything Ai) enters your town, this can be an interesting challenge.

Triggers and Ai make a good combo in a scenario if you want to adjust the challenge. When it comes to intelligent behaviour, some Ai numbers (like the ability of enemy archers to maintain their distance, or attack group numbers) can make a lot of difference. It is true that the Ai does have its shortcomings. Sometimes it just decides to stop building units, even though there should still be enough resources to do so. When players need to take out an enemy town, I often use triggers to support the Ai. One problem I’ve run into: You besiege a town, and at first a huge crowd of enemies comes pouring out through the gates to take out your trebs... and after that you have a depleted ghost town with just a couple of towers left, and you can just go and raze some unguarded buildings. A solution for this is to give the computer towns some "last stand" behaviour with triggers even if the computer player has run out of resources: As long as a military building still stands and if the comp has less than X units, a looping trigger will create a unit every 60-80 seconds at that military building. The result should not be that players get suddenly overwhelmed by dozens of computer enemies that appear out of nowhere... But it should give players a last small challenge when they are already winning. I think that winning against some resistance is more fun than just taking out a helpless ghost town.

Ingo

[This message has been edited by Ingo van Thiel (edited 01-16-2002 @ 05:06 PM).]

What do you think, a newbie designer should use to control the difficulty?
What should only be used by an expert designer?

[This message has been edited by storycreator (edited 01-18-2002 @ 11:05 AM).]

Quote:

DO u mean as scenario designers....

or as players...

As players the designer can control the setts as I specified in my previous post...

a) Less is more. 1000+ units will only lag and make some huge slaughter without any tactics. Besides, have a variety of attacks.

b) And again, playtesting. (I know I know, I'm repeating myself). If it's too easy, give the enemy some units. If it's too hard, take some enemy units away or give players a monk/ some extra units.

I think that's about enough to get people started.

All the other stuff is nice if they get more experienced. Basic Ai knowledge is important, but making it difficulty-dynamic is not really necessary to make a good scenario. Even a simple Ai will act differently on harder difficulty levels - even if you don't write any such thing into it. For example, passive soldiers will come to each other's help in a bigger radius on harder levels. And if you give an attack-now signal, the Ai will always attack in greater numbers on harder difficulty levels... no matter if you explicitly write it into the Ai or not.

Ingo

Quote:

Thats worded badly.. if you think about it we're all newbies in the sense we are allways trying to better ourselves and learn. Everyone can learn even the people who are getting 5.0's.

I agree with Ingo van Thiel. New designers; like myself, do rely more on the "Difficulty-Dynamic" that comes out of the box when they purchased the game. These are fantastic games we are designing scenarios in. This is also the kind of difficulty Shiva mentions in his post, and so I see an agreement in principle there. So with innocence always giving way to experience, I think it does stand to reason that an experienced player use these original game resources and parameters more easily, and perhaps more effectively when designing. Bringing it back to Ingo's, and Zanzard's, insistence on playtesting. Playtesting gives the new designer and old, the experience needed to create the difficult situation...he then discovers that he can defeat the 10 Teutonic Knights with his Cavalry Archer. The real challenge for all designers is to make the aspects of game play interesting and/or entertaining (fun), and that would include the aspect of difficulty.

So Shiva, I agree with you, but I think you misunderstood my inclusion of hints into the discussion, I am not saying to use more or less clues, but to make them more interesting and fun, and I gave examples of how that might be achieved. Just as your example for controlling the difficulty would not be more entertaining to the player by simply adding more, because the aspect example that you gave would only entertain a similar player group. I doubt that you would be entertained by defeating the Teutonic Knights alone, so in your case I would be looking to foil your experience there and give you a new more fascinating way to win (if possible). I will walk you half way down the road of 'better players make better designers.' I am in total agreement with your statement;" A good scenario designer makes use of every single thing he can make use of."

An experienced designer: I don't think there is any thing that should only be used by an experienced designer, once an aspect of game play is entered into the game, the designer becomes the first to witness the effects, and he gains the "Secret Knowledge" that Zanzard Lothar has put forth. The designer regardless of his experience becomes responsible for the particular aspect of game play. He must find ways to control and balance the difficulty-dynamics throughout the scenario. My mention of using clues (hints), is just another way to control or create a difficult game aspect. The obvious is, that the lack of hints would make for a difficulty-dynamic too. I really just chose that as my example because the others had been covered.

@storycreator: I think if it were possible to create a list of things a new designer should not attempt, they would be quick to try everything on that list to make their scenario better.

[This message has been edited by AnastasiaKafka (edited 01-19-2002 @ 08:17 AM).]

@Anastasia:

If we would make a list of no-no's this would be the case.
But we could make a list of things he should do, Ingo started with it.

@everyone: Here is an outline of your posts, with my explanation for the new designer to easily begin to control difficulty:

A.) Technical:
1) Less is More: Be straight forward in your design; if your story calls for a powerful enemy overlord, than give him a castle and place him in an advanced age. Don't give him 300 heroes and counter it with 268 heroes of your own. Use triggers to learn them, but rely more on the original game balance.

2) Use a variety of attacks: This is easily done by creating some small fixed forces made of different kinds of units for each enemy or allied player. The easiest way to vary attacks would be to choose some different civilizations.

B.) Difficulty Dynamics:
1) Limit resources: By placing more or less gold, stone, trees, units, etc., on your map. Setting limits with resources should be done carefully, because you are trying to create a balance in difficulty. An easy way to create balance is to give players similar or the same amounts.

2) Use terrain: The easiest way to use terrain is just in the placing of the enemies and allies, an example would be that the powerful overlord is in an advanced age, but his castle and village are at a distance with an ally between. Terrain is, and can be used as a resource, and to limit fairly easily.

3) Playtest: Playtest and your experience will help you to maintain the balance with all the difficulty dynamics described. It will also help when you begin to create new ones through triggers and other options in the editor. Try to look beyond your own 'Secret Knowledge'and have others playtest it for you.

Note: I wanted to add that I have learned a lot about balance by studying (playing) the RMS designers scenarios, as I do consider RMS a scenario. It is RMS where you will often see simple 'difficulty dynamics' (outlined by everyone) perfected.

@storycreator ... was just a smile in appreciation for the topic, I understood your meaning and purpose.

[This message has been edited by AnastasiaKafka (edited 01-21-2002 @ 01:30 AM).]

I would like to see the ability to assign unit type versus unit type preferences.

I can see this affecting Unit balance by pitting all forces say against a Hero unit. Pitting the counter unit against its natural target unit is sometimes very desirable and has great affect on difficulty.

Having Items and locations which affect a unit(s) strength and weakness would be good as well. Your Quest Party could have variable Attributes according to their location. This could be for instance due to wading through a marsh area. Passing a Point of evil or gaining from being in vicinity of a Holy point. Or even having a object such as a Ring or pendant that can be picked up and affect a unit and perhaps the party as a whole perhaps making a Quest eaasier or harder depending on what the Scenario Designer Dreams. Obviously providing these abilities in a Editor would give a greater depth to issues such as balance and difficulty.

I would like to be able to place say a Altar and dictate a certain area or circumferance affect unit(s) attributes in that area.

Anastasia: secret knowledge is aproblem, not a good thing, players have to NOT use it to assure they see good balance.

Secret knowledge means the type of strategy (or way to do something) in a scenario that the designer intended to be used in the scenario, but which the player does not know he is supposed to do those things. The net result is that the designer gets a false sense thatb his scenario is balanced when it is not balanced or vice-versa.

An example of secret knowledge giving the designer a false sense of balance is when, for example, he creates a scenario in which the best thing to do would be to research the heavy cavalry archer technology. He plays his own work, researching the technology, and feels the scenario is balanced. But the players who download his scenario later don´t think about researching the heavy cavalry archer upgrade and find it too unbalanced.

Secret knowledge is a factor that makes playtesting more important than it already is.

Zanzard Lothar:

Yes, that is exactly how I understood you to mean it.

Only I found it difficult to explain.

Especialy because I tied it to experience too. I was trying to say the same thing about experience as you have about 'secret knowledge.' As that false sense of balance can happen too when you use your own play experience (better player tactics). Anyway I see I confused both issues.

The outline is better served with 'Playtest' in that space.

[This message has been edited by AnastasiaKafka (edited 01-21-2002 @ 01:41 AM).]

Thanks for the posts, the next thread will start today.

Regards,
storycreator

P.S.:
I had (again) problems with my internet connection so I couldn't open this earlier.

Ishould say on three things you can do it

- Make the A.I harder

-Terrian
The mountians are great to archers troops have first to com up the mountian before the can fight
Make evaluitions from four with clifs
Make some tunnels with evalution 1 and clifs

-Make things happin that the player din't except like come troops out of ground unload rams and more stuf

The economic work not in FF and in BD (Build and Destroy) the player got very fast a good economic