I really dont understand the vertical difficulty spike between normal and hard in this game

When playing on normal, the game is pitifully easy, i produce double the resources of any AI faction, even compared to their specialties (Such as science for the Orthin or gold for the Phidi), i can probably take two or more of them in a war at once and the game feels like a foregone conclusion from the moment it starts

So i decided playing on hard and now the situation is completely flipped, the AI gets gross resource bonuses and completely steamroll me in the earlygame before i even get a chance to build anything and get my economy or military going

I thought it was either good or bad luck, but i played multiple games on both difficulties and the same thing always happens, so it isnt just a matter of a lucky or unlucky earlygame

Normal is way too easy, not a challenge at all, but hard feels deliberately unfair, it feels like there is no difficulty level that actually feels satisfying to play, you are either fighting a coughing baby or a hydrogen bomb. Am i doing something wrong or did i miss something? It feels there should be a difficulty option between normal and hard, because the difference between them is astronomical

I find tuning difficulties one of the hardest things to do as a dev -- after a given patch/rebalance pass, I know what feels "relaxed", "challenging", and "nearly impossible" for *me*, but everyone coming into the game has their own perspective.

A lot of modern games have started sortof "passing the buck" here by creating full dashboards with multiple different knobs players can fiddle to try and dial in exactly the sort of experience they're looking for. As a player, I do sometimes find that level of control useful. As the dev of SiS though, putting one in felt like a kind of laziness that I should try to avoid.

That said, if you do find yourself really missing that ability to dial in a more exact challenge level, you could do so with some relatively light modding. Most of the "cheating" that the ai does on hard and brutal can be controlled via variables in Lua state\Setup\new_galaxy.lua. If hard feels too hard, but normal feels too easy, you can try, for example, changing these lines
to
which will remove the start of game bonuses on 'hard', but keep some of the other "comeback bonus" cheats that 'hard' ai's also get.

sven wrote: Sun Apr 27, 2025 10:47 pm I find tuning difficulties one of the hardest things to do as a dev -- after a given patch/rebalance pass, I know what feels "relaxed", "challenging", and "nearly impossible" for *me*, but everyone coming into the game has their own perspective.

A lot of modern games have started sortof "passing the buck" here by creating full dashboards with multiple different knobs players can fiddle to try and dial in exactly the sort of experience they're looking for. As a player, I do sometimes find that level of control useful. As the dev of SiS though, putting one in felt like a kind of laziness that I should try to avoid.

That said, if you do find yourself really missing that ability to dial in a more exact challenge level, you could do so with some relatively light modding. Most of the "cheating" that the ai does on hard and brutal can be controlled via variables in Lua state\Setup\new_galaxy.lua. If hard feels too hard, but normal feels too easy, you can try, for example, changing these lines

Code: Select all

    elseif galaxy.difficulty == 'hard'
      -- right now, resource_bonus==1 just unlocks improvement
      -- conversion
      empire.resource_bonus = 2 
      empire.extra_science=base_bonus_science(empire)

to

Code: Select all

    elseif galaxy.difficulty == 'hard'
      -- right now, resource_bonus==1 just unlocks improvement
      -- conversion
      -- empire.resource_bonus = 2 
      -- empire.extra_science=base_bonus_science(empire)

which will remove the start of game bonuses on 'hard', but keep some of the other "comeback bonus" cheats that 'hard' ai's also get.

Thanks for the reply, didnt expect to have a dev address my problem directly

Do i need some special program to edit the game's files or can i open it with something old-fashioned like the text document? I dont want to break anything

Plus, i have re-read the code you sent 3 times and both the before and after are identical

I was considering creating some artificial difficulty by playing on Normal but giving the AI something like a 30 turn headstart, but changing the difficulty variables directly sounds even more promising

Any old text editor should work, I think. But a relatively light programming editor like visual studio code will probably be more comfortable, because it will recognize the file as a a Lua dialect, and color code stuff like comments for you.

The difference in the 2 code blocks is subtle if you're not used to programming languages. I've added "--" at the start of the lines that are giving the AIs their starting bonuses on hard. That turns the functional code into a "comment", which means that game engine ignores it. You can achieve the same effect by just deleting the 2 lines, but modders usually comment instead, because it makes it easy to go back and reintroduce some of the logic later if you decide to tweak it in some other way.

Oh, i cant believe i didnt notice the the --, i was focusing on the text and i thought that was a line break

Thanks again for the help

I really enjoyed the game mechanics (And especially the assymetrical faction designs) but the difficulty was rendering it moot since it was either boringly easy or rage-inducing, so now i look forward to 100%ing it like i originally planned to

Best of luck with the future DLCs as well, even if it takes a bit to release, i am sure it will be worth it