Why was the resource/income bonus for Hard AI decreased? The Hard AI is fairly well balanced, and after how the Normal AI has been playing pitifully since it's resource/income bonus was removed, I don't see why this is a good idea, let alone the need for such a nerf. I'd argue that the Normal AI needs to have it's old bonuses restored and that the Easy AI needs to have it's resource/income penalty reduced or removed entirely. Other than that, the DLC changes/balance tweaking looks pretty solid, and that's a sweet new event!

Well, a lot of newer players were complaining that the difficulty jump from Normal to Hard was too much since normal got revised down. Especially on the steam forums.

I personally thought that the difficulty jump between hard and unfair was pretty dramatic. From my play experience Hard was fairly a pushover whereas Unfair was incredibly difficult (especially in 1v1) but still possible. With a nerf for Hard this makes that jump particularly larger.

And what is the resource bonus now?

I noticed already last weekend the hard AI was somewhat weaker than before - did not have 2x as many ships than me in the beginning of the game, which used to be pretty much a norm and fairly challenging...and this continued further into the match, i literally swept through his planets and he had almost nothing there.

So i checked the numbers at the end of the game and its bonus from planets seemed to be 175 percent (to my base 100) - IIRC it used to be 225 percent. So this was lowered even further now?  

TBF i wanted myself the bonus to be lowered, because it was on occassion bit too much. But based off the last 2 games i played recently, things went bit extreme the other way now, it felt way too easy. Perhaps it was just a coincidence....or maybe i am finally getting good

Essentially, Normal is baseline, Hard is 50% more than Normal, Unfair is 50% more than Hard, etc. IIRC.

yarlen, does this patch get the blair map issue fixes?

harpo

The jump between hard and normal may or may not be too severe (before 1.82), honestly I have no clue...

What I do know is that the jump between hard and unfair is really bad, and by nerfing hard, that jump is going to be outrageous...if hard needs to be nerfed then so be it, but then unfair also needs to be nerfed...

While I can see that, I think the solution is buffing Normal and Easy rather than nerfing Hard. Plus, as Seleuceia mentioned, will we be back for this discussion later when people say the jump from Hard to Unfair is now too big?

As per Yarlens post above, i understand it all the difficulties were toned down. I mean, the Hard used to get 225 percent bonus, the Unfair 350 percemt. Cruel or whatever is next 475 percent, Vicious i assume 600... if i understand it correctly, now its 150 percent for Hard, 200 percent for Unfair, 250 Cruel, etc...

Correct me if i am wrong. 

Personally, i think its sort of OK this way, as long it does not affect the AIs capability to actively rebuild its fleets, research new techs, construct titans etc... From my personal experience 225 percent advantage was good enough for lategame Hard AI to literally rebuild  what felt like entire fleet-supply over and over and throw it at me in 10/15 minute long intervals. Challenging AI is indeed OK, but if it has too much advantage, killing it takes either way too long and becomes repetitive and boring, or you have to rely on its inability to counter certain things, thus basically playing "dirty".

I took Yarlen's statement as a description of the current situation...the change log only mentions nerfing hard, not all of the difficulties...

If, as you say, all the difficulties are being nerfed then this is probably one of the best changes for SP in recent memory...but I definitely did not get that impression from the change log or Yarlen's statement...hopefully he will clarify...

No, not at present.

Basically it wasn't normalized before. Now it is. Considering the number of folks who are able to routinely beat the toughest AI in under an hour, it's fine.

Is there any new estimate on when these changes will be implemented, as they were supposedly going into this update?

I wasn't aware your mainstream SP audience was routinely winning on vicious -- and with ease, so perhaps my suggestion is a little too narrow and niche...

Nevertheless, I'm not concerned with vicious, I'm concerned about the jump between hard and unfair...when you say it is "normalized", all I'm getting from that is that hard has been changed to fit some nice number scheme, but that unfair is basically the same as it used to be...since this patch will nerf hard, that will exacerbate the jump between hard and unfair, which I would think is a serious problem...that already enough people were upset about the jump from normal to hard is testament to the importance of smaller jumps between difficulty...

If too many people are beating vicious easily and on a regular basis, it seems the solution is to add an extra difficulty level and lessen the gaps between them, not to increase the gaps....

Is this a 1v1 rush issue or 7 players against 1 AI, because when I play 2 players vs 6 AIs on unfair or above the AI gives a very good fight.  Are they using cheat codes to advance quicker to victory or little itty bitty maps?