Dynamic or progressive difficulty - game adjusting challenge level to make it more evenly hard

7 votes

This is merge of several different suggestions which address gameplay challenge being uneven through the game course.
Generally if you want challenge (maybe just a little of it or a whole lot) game might give it on early cycles and then be fully automated later.

So idea is to have options so difficulty:
- can progress beyond handicap period
- could be responsive to how good player handles bad periods
- generally be more evenly distributed between early and late game

Under consideration Gameplay Suggestion Suggested by: Gin Fuyou (29 Mar) • Upvoted: 19 Apr • Comments: 6

Comments: 6

06 Oct, '22
TTJ Merged
While I enjoy playing on normal difficulty to have a smooth early game, I could do with some more challenge during late game. Therefore I suggest to add an option(!) to have continously increasing drought lenghts, based on how good the player manages water and other ressources.

Indicators for a good water and ressource management could for example be:
- How much water is in stock before and after a drought? / How much compared to the number of beavers?
- How much food is in stock before and after the drought / How much compared with the number of beavers?
- How many water blocks remain on the map at the end of a drought (maybe only those within district range)
- Are all water plants still hydrated at the end of a drought?
- How much power is generated per beaver?

Once per cycle, if the key indicators are good enough, the average drought duration is prolonged by one day. This adds up endless or up to an optional maximum. If indicators get worse, drought length stays as it is.
06 Oct, '22
Jcheung Merged
i personally don't like this idea, because if i start scaling up for a population expansion, get my food and water in order which can take me a cycle or three because i'm fussy, then the drought would start scaling to consume the resources i set aside for the 50 unborn beavers.
plus if playing IT, it takes several cycles for a single breeding pod to push out to equalibrium

and that's if you base it off of production/consumption.

if instead basing it off of stock like you suggest, producing anything more than exactly what a colony needs and storing nothing at all will increment drought until those numbers production/consumption numbers are negative, and then you're constantly chasing to even just maintain-because if a beaver dies from the drought, you now have a surplus of goods again until they're replaced, calculation tick comes along, sees excess resource, makes it harder, so on
06 Oct, '22
TTJ Merged
@Jcheung, I fully understand what you mean. The point is: It is not necessary to let the scaling start if you just produce 5-10% surplus. This should simply be ignored. But if you have 500-1000% more ressource income than you actually need, it should be quite obvious for the game that it could be a little bit more challenging.
The scaling could also be very litte at a time, because it sums up over time anyway.

Maybe the custom difficulty option could even allow to force a "mild" "medium" or "strong" dynamic increase. Or it could be "strong" on hard and "mild" on medium difficulty.

On the other hand, getting some ingame messages that from now on longer droughts can be expected is probably quite motivating because it is actually honored that you are doing well. Maybe even a special meteorologist building could be introducted that provides more information about drought lenghts and so on (similar to the way the stream gauge provides more information about the water flow).
29 Mar
Rishi Merged
I am at a situation where the hard mode is too hard cause I get defeated in the first cycle or two, but the normal mode becomes too easy after 5-10 cycles. If I could move from normal to hard after, say 5 cycles, it'd be great.
29 Mar
Gin Fuyou Admin
"Dynamically increasing drought length based on how well the player manages water/ressources" (suggested by <Hidden> on 2022-10-06), including upvotes (3) and comments (2), was merged into this suggestion.
29 Mar
Gin Fuyou Admin
"Option to make the game harder progressively" (suggested by <Hidden> on 2024-03-29), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.