[A16] Poll: What difficulty do you play on?

[dragonalumni]

Well, your right about that, I don't think the poll could be accurate unless it excluded mod users.

Also, your ignoring something that should be polled probably and that is the choice between the 3 starting scenarios. In my opinion the tribal start is twice as hard as rich explorer and crash landed is the middle for difficulty.

Further, playing on "rough" on an ice sheet must be equal? to the highest difficulty of a temperate forest, as as  guess I've never played ice sheet. 

edit: Rolling style also has to be taken into account, some people use a mod, so jumping into an extreme game is quick and painless, others might painstakingly roll out 5 tribals for the best possible start. (Again, using a mod to quick start into extreme makes the game a lot easier than rolling out 5 harmonious pawns each new game)

Well, I guess what I'm saying is, I think it's really hard to get a feel for what difficulty people really play at. I think some people enjoy the rogue like play until you die extreme challenge while others are interested in building up a sweet looking base, they are essentially playing different games with different goals and outcomes.

[Greep]

I think the addition of more options would make things confusing, and traditionally <10% of people use mods at all so it would be a statistical blip.

[EnricoDandolo]

Does noone else play Phoebe Extreme?
Im pretty sure shes one of those people that is like
"It takes longer for me to hit you, but when I hit you, I hit you HARD."

[Shurp]

Exactly the problem, I don't want to be hit hard.  I want lots of little hits instead.  That way if I screw something up my base isn't obliterated.

In girlfriend terms, Randy slaps you in the face every day, Cassandra hits you upside the head with a frying pan now and then, and Phoebe stabs you in the back with a bread knife.

[Shinzy]

Rough Randy lets me to play without having to build cheyenne mountain military complex or killboxes

Reading the comments it looks like I could bump up the difficulty without worries

[AngleWyrm]

Iron Dan lets me play with up to a hundred colonists, and on rough the raids are challenging but not hopeless.

[BlueWinds]

I usually play Rough because while I do like a difficulty increase I'm not really okay with any of the negatives of the difficulty increases other than more frequent/powerful raids. It sucks to have my colonists be miserable just because of the difficulty setting.

I'm the opposite - I like everything about higher difficulty except the raid size increase. If I could get Extreme crop yields / moods / prices but with Rough raid sizes? Perfect.

Does noone else play Phoebe Extreme?
Im pretty sure shes one of those people that is like
"It takes longer for me to hit you, but when I hit you, I hit you HARD."

<3 Phoebe Extreme

[That_Axe]

I don't play Cassandra because her raids are incessant and brutal.  Randy, simply put, is easier.  He scatters random events all over instead of days of boredom punctuated by a blizzard of disasters.

This is very interesting. I always assumed that Randy hands you the same threat levels as Cassandra, except with random intervals.

[Skaer]

Vanilla Cassandra extreme, late game raids are still too easy though I wish they were smarter.

[XeoNovaDan]

I'm the opposite - I like everything about higher difficulty except the raid size increase. If I could get Extreme crop yields / moods / prices but with Rough raid sizes? Perfect.

This... would be an interesting difficulty. Perhaps another difficulty with penalties slightly above extreme's too, but intense raid sizes... it'd be interesting to play that. Early-game mood is a challenge as it stands for Extreme, but having it a notch above that would probably mean that drugs will be a priority.

[Travinsky]

Randy extreme. Been playing like that since like A12. Randy just feels more balanced to me, maybe it just becuase I haven't play Cass in ages but Randy seems more enjoyable.

Also extreme because losing is fun. Also always random location and random colonists, I hit random location and look away and I don't look at my colonists until they touch planetside.

[XeoNovaDan]

I hit random location and look away and I don't look at my colonists until they touch planetside.

^^ This

I've been starting this recently too, and it is certainly much more fun and interesting than cherry-picking the best colonists. It's also the lore-friendly way of playing

[Wanderer_joins]

Cassandra extreme and the scenario editor if i want to spice things up

[TheMeInTeam]

I started cas/intense, but after learning about joy scheduling and mood manipulation I moved up to extreme.  I occasionally do Randy, but he has that tendency to do nothing for long stretches or scale early game strangely (by design due to random nature).  I find only the most wonky Randy combo smacks give a harder challenge than Cas progression.

[Rah]

I started cas/intense, but after learning about joy scheduling and mood manipulation I moved up to extreme.  I occasionally do Randy, but he has that tendency to do nothing for long stretches or scale early game strangely (by design due to random nature).  I find only the most wonky Randy combo smacks give a harder challenge than Cas progression.

That's my experience with Randy Extreme as well. I never feel like the game is unfair when I play with him. He usually let's you breathe a little and build up after major events. Cassandra Extreme on the other hand just throws everything at you, almost right from the start and never let's up. I've lost many colonies to her, but there are things you can do to hold on during the early game. Defense is critical; I always turtle up in a small compound with traps and turrets, with stone walls. Mood management and a restrictive intake of colonists are other important factors.

Btw, is this the Meinteam from youtube, with the civ videos?