K... I know I mentioned a couple days ago that the AI seemed to lose a lot of it's bite on normal, but now I have no choice but to remark the opposite since the new AI update. The AI on normal and hard is way too aggressive. I have a guy who I'm teaching the game to and we're playing on hard. He died and I barely survived. I played the game on normal two days ago as Advent, and I couldn't push anywhere because every enemy has a full fleet so quickly I can barely react. Especially when I'm constantly getting hit from every flank by sizable fleets. It's like the AI is just automatically being friendly with everyone else and teaming up against me. So my friend died today on hard, so we tried again on normal. He died again and I'm holding my lines but not much else. Now my friend's got a few games under his belt, but he's still just learning the game and since the last update, he just can't get anywhere. The AI is just coming up with huge fleets and hitting you so early and so hard it's unreal. Don't get me wrong, I like a challenging AI, but I'm trying to teach this guy the game and he's not even getting a chance to experiment and try new ideas because he's constantly getting hit by enemy AI he can't handle. And believe me, the only thing helping me hold my lines are my starbases. Otherwise I would be in just as much trouble. I liked the way the AI was before the beta. The first beta revision was easier... A little too easy. Now, it's way too hard. I can understand the current normal difficulty being the hard difficulty, but it's just too hard for normal. Especially for someone just learning the game. The AI needs more balance. Right now it's just way too aggressive. Normal is too hard for normal and hard is too hard for hard.
I can win against the AI at this difficulty, but I've been playing this game consistently for years. It took seeing what was happening to him and noticing it myself just how much work I was having to do to push forward for me to realize just how hard the AI was playing. Definitely too hard for people just learning the game. Crap, I'm tired and talking in circles. Sorry guys. Only just noticed. Anyway Yarlin... I recommend better balancing for the difficulty levels.
