Difficulty
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Difficulty levels in OpenFront change the intensity of the game for private and singleplayer lobbies.
When creating a new lobby, several options (such as changing maps and game settings) can be selected by the host. Beneath the map choice is the choice of difficulty. There are four difficulty levels:
- Easy
- Medium
- Hard
- Impossible
The difficulty setting has a significant impact on nations' resources and behavior.
Attack Strategies
Nations have a "toolbox" of attack strategies to choose from:
- AFK: Attack the weakest AFK enemy
- Assist: Respond to someone requesting their assistance
- Betray: Decide if they want to betray someone, and attack them if so
- Bots: Attack one or more bots
- Donate: Donate troops to an ally
- Hated: Attack their most hated enemy whose troops don't overwhelmingly overpower their own
- Island: Find the nearest enemy island if they have no bordering enemies
- Nuked: Attack someone who was recently nuked
- Retaliate: Attack back if being attacked
- Traitor: Attack a bordering traitor
- Very Weak: Attack someone whose troops are significantly depleted and somewhat fewer than their own
- Victim: Attack someone who isn't significantly stronger than them and under a strong attack from others
- Weakest: Find the weakest neighbor who has fewer troops than them
The difficulty levels dictate which of these strategies a nation can use, and their order of priority. The highest priority strategy which provides a valid attack recommendation is used. The priorities for each difficulty level, from highest to lowest, are:
- Easy: Nuked, Bots, Retaliate, Assist, Betray, Hated, Weakest
- Medium: Bots, Nuked, Retaliate, Assist, Betray, Hated, AFK, Traitor, Weakest, Island, Donate
- Hard: Bots, Retaliate, Assist, Betray, Nuked, Traitor, AFK, Hated, Very Weak, Victim, Weakest, Island, Donate
- Impossible: Retaliate, Bots, Very Weak, Assist, Traitor, AFK, Betray, Victim, Nuked, Hated, Weakest, Island, Donate
Other Effects on Troops
| Easy | Medium | Hard | Impossible | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting troops | 12,500 | 18,750 | 25,000 | 31,250 |
| Max troops compared to humans | 50% | 75% | 100% | 125% |
| Troop replenishment rate compared to humans | 90% | 95% | 100% | 105% |
| Odds of changing their mind after deciding to attack | 50% | 25% | 0% | 0% |
| Odds of choosing to donate troops when that strategy comes up | 0% | 25% | 50% | 100% |
| Delay between attacks (ticks) | 65-80 | 55-70 | 45-60 | 30-50 |
| Max bots willing to attack simultaneously | 1 | 1-2 | 3 | 100 |
On Easy difficulty, nations always full send when attacking.
Ballistic Weapons
On difficulties higher than Easy, nations in team games avoid nuking a spot that allies are already nuking. On Hard or Impossible, they'll try to avoid trajectories that will get intercepted by SAMs. On Impossible, they'll check three times as many locations to find a spot to nuke to outrange a SAM launcher, and if they can't find any suitable nuke locations, they'll attempt to overwhelm enemy SAMs by targeting a SAM installation and sending level + 1 nukes.
Difficulty level significantly affects a nation's MIRV behavior. Each increased difficulty level:
- Causes them to MIRV earlier against a player getting closer to the victory threshold, or increasing the gap in the number of cities between the one with the most cities and the next highest
- Halves the likelihood that a nation will hesitate before sending a MIRV
Building
| Easy | Medium | Hard | Impossible | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Target SAM/city ratio | 0.15 | 0.2 | 0.25 | 0.3 |
| Odds of upgrading a random building instead of one with SAM protection | 70% | 40% | 25% | 10% |
| Odds of checking for maximal connectivity when placing factories/cities | 0% | 60% | 75% | 100% |
| Odds of building a warship in retaliation for trade/transport ship destruction | 0% | 15% | 50% | 80% |
On Hard or Impossible:
- If a player is attempting to build lots of warships, the wealthiest nations will build warships of their own to counter.
- Nations consider structure level and existing SAM coverage when determining where to place SAM launchers.
Relations
Increased difficulty makes nations more strategic about alliances:
- Less likely to get "confused" and accept or reject randomly
- Better intelligence about gauging the offering player's threat level
- Consideration of how many allies they already have
- Less likely to accept an early alliance offer
- Less likely to accept in a team game
On Easy difficulty:
- You can improve the relationship with a nation simply by sending 🕊️, 🏳️, ❤️, 🥰, or 👏.
- Nations will send alliance requests to bots.
- On Hard or Impossible, nations reject alliance requests from players that have too many alliances already.
| Easy | Medium | Hard | Impossible | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Relationship point loss when a nation is attacked | 60 | 70 | 80 | 100 |
| Percent of nation's max troops you must donate to earn relationship upgrade | 7.7% | 9.1% | 11.1% | 14.3% |
| Relation level required to cancel an embargo | Neutral | Neutral | Friendly | (never cancels) |
| Multiplier for gold donation required to improve relations | 1x | 2x | 5x | 10x |
Conditions under which a nation is willing to betray an ally:
- Easy/Medium: If outnumbering opposing troops by more than 1000%
- Medium/Hard/Impossible: If outnumbering opposing troops by more than 20% and the other player is a traitor
- Medium/Hard/Impossible: If outnumbering opposing troops by 300% and they're the only bordering player
- Hard/Impossible: If outnumbering opposing troops, and the other player is at less than 20% of their max troops (including those that are attacking)
Trivia
- While there is a defined "Difficulty Modifier" function with large gaps between difficulty values (1, 3, 9, 18), this value is actually not used anywhere within the source code.
