Comment 6 for bug 1516785

well, i brought my point to the forum thread, I should post it here too.

I don't like it because it depends too much on the size of the map and the lenght of the game. on a large map, those limitations mean using a tenth of one's potential, or less. on a small map, they hardly matter. right now, in many small maps the ai is unable to fit a full economy, and cannot produce new soldiers; giving limits to some buildings may even help it, for it won't waste space for useless buildings. similarly, that limitation means that the ai will be just as strong in early game, but it will reach a cap and become useless later.

I see only two ways to make difficulty levels that are equally valid for large and small maps, for early and late game. One is changing the delay times of buildings; if an imperial farm normally produce a wheat in 80 secconds, at easy it may take 100, at hard 60. similarly to all buildings. A second way would be to change the evasion levels of all ai soldiers; currently, barbarian soldiers evade 25/40/55. It may become 32/46/60 (10% less chance to be hit at all levels, rounded) for hard, and 18/34/50 for easy.

Yes, I realize setting hard limits to ai number of buildings is MUCH easier than rewriting a lot of code to make the working time of buildings be difficulty-dependent. although I think evade levels may be easy enough. however, they are the only ways to make difficulty levels that will feel balanced all the way throughout the game. I don't like how some games (civilization the main example) try to balance the ai by giving it starting bonuses, making a computer that is an unstoppable machine in early game, while still being a pushover later.

However, if no one is willing to make all the code changes, then having difficulty levels defined that way would be better than nothing.

P.S. another problem of the limit-oriented difficulty settings is that you'd only be able to define easy difficulty levels. which are fine for beginners, but you can't give good players a better challenge, because as it is ai already has no limits on the buildings it makes.