prepping for beginning expansion

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
Wel actually I usually word it the other way. That higher indept settings benefit a human player more than the AI. A human usually does better at avoiding the hard ones and prepping for the others.

I've found that the AI benefits as much, if not more, than the benefits the human reaps for high indies: High independent settings force the AIs to build up more before making attempts, so when they encounter you, they'll be better armed. However, higher indies also tend to slaughter the AI's entire army at times.....as a result, some of the AIs won't survive this phase and will be culled from the herd: The herd, as a whole, however, is stronger for it, as the AIs are then less crowded in and do not cripple themselves on fruitless internecine warfare.

On the flipside, the human benefits from a reduced risk of an early-game AI dogpile. If the human player is wielding an super-SC pretender, the AI's dogpile will be stomped into the ground anyway, but a higher independent setting gives more viability to noncombatant pretenders: It also tends to make it more likely that the human player survives....and faces a smaller number of tougher AI nations.

So, overall, a higher independent setting benefits an individual human more than an individual AI players, but higher independent settings, collectively, benefit the AI players more.