Of all the games I've played, Civ 4 (with Kmod) and Old World are the only ones where I've felt the AI was a legitimate danger that could actually defeat me. Coincidentally, they're both made by the same lead dev.
What's the last single player strategy game you played that felt like a challenge?
Prob Xenonauts, nuXCOM and old, Battle Brothers. They all have an element of chance which makes most things not certain.
>They all have an element of chance which makes most things not certain
People die if they are killed
Guh? What's wrong with what I said? There's alot of solved deterministic strategy games, random chance adds some spice.
>Guh?
What the frick. Go back please.
>Paradox Black person
Holy shit you spergs are obsessed.
>Holy shit you spergs are obsessed.
nah it's you gays who are shitting up the catalog with your glorified virtual novels
I'd say the hardest and most satisfying were management/sim games where there isn't even an actual opponent, sometimes even no combat at all, and the challenge is in overcoming semi-random challenges using semi-randomly acquired resources. Among them, Slipways was the least forgiving, other similar games include: Solar Settlers, Mini Metro, Egypt: Old Kingdom, Kingdom Two Crowns, Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space, and Against the Storm. These games involve careful exploration, management of very scarce resources, rushing to meet certain deadlines, making sure to not have a nice day in the foot with a bad decision, sometimes taking a blind risk, some include asymmetric combat and there's no savescumming. It's also pretty easy to adjust the level of challenge to your liking.
Now for games with challenging equally matched actual opponents, hmm... Skirmish AI in AoE3:DE is sort of dumb but quick and relentless, in Massive Assault it's fairly methodical, and the one in Beyond all Reason was obviously trained in efficient rushing. However, I wouldn't count on facing a true challenge in a fair fight against a non-cheating AI, they'll always need some handicap.
The AI in 4 wasn't better, you were just younger and dumber.
>(with Kmod)
woops looks like you're dumb!
mods don't make the AI smarter, moron.
so you admit you've never played it lol, honestly should have just stopped after proving you don't have reading comprehension
K-mod absolutely does, it pushes up the difficulty by two levels at least without giving the AI any artifical stat buffs, just improving its logic.
>mods don't make the AI smarter
What a bizarre statement. Do you think AI is hardcoded or something? What do you think AI improvement mods are doing?
He's just a Paradox Black person who assumes every other strategy games AI is also hardcoded like the Swedish gays interactive
I'm sure that anon is very intelligent and understands a thing or two about development so to clear any misconceptions
may have I can point him to the source code at https://github.com/karadoc/Civ4-K-Mod/blob/e9d401c6e6cf8a4f21375b82e8275aff66195bf9/CvGameCoreDLL/CvPlayerAI.cpp and suggest he search for "K-Mod" to see some of the changes
Even PDX games allow to tailor the AI for better performance within the gameplay frame. The trick is that they deliberately don't do this and modders stopped giving frick since about 2015
>felt like a challenge
Why would I play games for a challenge? Life is challenging enough, I need games to escape from that shit. You'll learn when you grow up, underage homosexual.
Because I play video games to have fun. Fulfilling your power fantasies can be entertaining for a while, but it gets old fast. Feeling like you're playing against an opponent that's actually trying to win makes it compelling for a much longer period of time. Civ 4 being challenging is the reason I still come back to it more than a decade later.
>single player strategy game you played that felt like a challenge?
no such thing exists, unless you count hardcoded citybuilders
>Why would I play games for a challenge?
because no challenge is not fun at all. It may surprise you, but turtling for 2 hours against braindead AI and then deathballing over the entire map is not the most complicated thing. I like to think. I like to adapt. I like to see that my opponent knows what he's doing. I want my game to feel like an actual duel.
I think the differences between anons stem from using two different meanings of 'game'. Some see it as a recreational activity to pass the time, others as a competitive event, like a sportsball match, that proves who can play and who sucks shit.
challenge cannot be recreational?
i could just paint a jpeg for hours, but i just don't get any excitement from that.
i get excitement from active fights with real people, though.
it relaxes me, too.
>challenge cannot be recreational?
Recreation is understood as restful. You don't rest while firing on all cylinders.
>i could just paint a jpeg for hours, but i just don't get any excitement from that.
You're not a painter, apparently.
>excitement relaxes me
Sounds like another semantic mishmash but it makes sense, I guess. Some people unwind in the ring, beating someone's face into a bloody pulp, others carefully glue toothpicks together to make an accurate model of a basilica.
>Recreation is understood as restful. You don't rest while firing on all cylinders.
What the hell? No it isn't, recreation is just a "fun activity", a "recreation center" is a facility for mostly sports which are active and competitive. This is such an autistic and pointless little exchange, started by a Ganker-tier shitpost which should have been ignored, I don't know why I'm responding, but
>Old World
Is that the standalone game Old World? The K-Mod dev helmed that?
no the lead dev from civ 4 vanilla also made old world, soren johnson
more like sore ass
Imperialism 2 on random seeds. With Europe being, well, Europe, you at least know your opening moves, which ease things significantly.
>inb4 old game
Part of what makes it so fun is that despite its age, it's still a challenge and still can kick my ass
I just get bored if the game doesn't have any pushback. Simple as. That's why I always find myself transitioning to multiplayer if it exists.
It's tragic because I hate MP and MP culture, but inevitably singleplayer AI just cannot give the same adaptability and unpredictability as a human. Even with solid enough AI over time you will start to pick up on its behavior and how to manipulate it.
homm2, but I play on impossible and without saves.
Free homm2 as well, which has better AI.