Re: difficulty levels - the nice thing about Sins is that you can set the AI level for each player. I would suggest not being masochistic and when you're ready to increase your challenge, just put 1-2 players at Unfair (or whatever). 

Is anybody else mini dumping nearly every game? I'm playing medium maps with 5 AI and every game I mini dump after a half hour or so. Been lowering settings each play which seems to only prolong the inevitable.

I havent got any mini dumps, I installed the new beta the other day, have everything set to highest, 6 players no issues.

I think it was a bad file as a steam validation came back with bad files. So far so good.

You seem to be getting the idea that unfair is somehow too difficult for us, and that simply isn't the case...I am relaying a complaint that I have heard from players new to ICO who are trying to get better at this game -- they want to practice in SP before going into skilled MP, but there just is no good AI difficulty for that...hard is too easy while unfair is too unrealistic, and simply saying "well then just stack 2 AI's against you" only provides another unrealistic alternative...

This issue has also cropped up in unskilled ICO games where AI's are used as fillers...there simply is no good solution -- either use hards and make the game too easy, or use unfairs and the game just becomes "Sins of Starbase Spamming"...mixing up the difficulties (some hards and some unfairs) sounds like a nice idea, but in practice I have found it does not work well for FFAs or multi-team games which are common for casual MP/SP players...

If you nerf hard, you will be destroying the best difficulty level there currently is....this is the level that your casual players thrive on, the level that they eventually get up to and enjoy once they know how to play the game...it seems like you are nerfing it because it will make some number scheme look better, but your SP crowd will be deprived of a good difficulty level and will be left with picking the lesser of two evils -- either be "masochistic" and play on unfair, or stack multiple hards against you and forget about playing FFA...I really don't think that's the direction this game needs to go....

Well said good sir

Agree with Sel, Hard was awesome before, whatever it may have been bonus wise.

Is there any plan to fix the Vasari Loyalist Capital Victory bug?  It's somewhat annoying to kill both the capital planet and the titan, but still have to hunt down stragglers until the player/AI formally surrenders.

I think you might have to kill more than just the titan. It might be any capitalship, but its been a while since I've read the tech description.

A lot of people said the same about normal. I would have probably preferred all the higher difficulties to be slightly nerfed as well, but unless you've actually tried the beta a bit I think its a bit much to criticize it without trying the new hard.

"Your rulers relocate to your Titan, preventing you from being defeated so long as your Titan or Capital planet remain intact."

Many a long game has been extended interminably by the fact that Vasari players simply will not give up having lost everything including all potential colonizers.  The fact that I have, on occasion, been that player does not change my position--namely, that fair play and good policy both dictate that the Vasari should follow the rules as described.

I did opt in and do appear to have the beta (1.82.4976 listed on main screen), but if I look at the multipliers in a replay, a hard appears to be 1.75x, and unfair 3.5x. That's not what I expected from this discussion?  I was expecting 1.5x and 2.25x?

Personally, I really don't think Hard should be brought down any more. I agree with Seleuceia, that Hard as it stands now is a good difficulty for a casual singleplayer, like myself, to be playing against. Once you go above this, the game does seem to change completely, and increasing the gap here would likely make the situation worse.

I like hard as is.

In fact I want a slider that gives neutrals turrets and air defenses. 

The weird thing on Hard is atm, the money of the npc is going to nowere. I have a replay (but do not know how to upload it to here), were because of the DLC the npc got hit and all of his population of his main planet was killed, he had a income from 0,7 credits (he had two not upgraded planets).

After i took over one of his planets and the pirates an other (i swear, i did not know that he was in a mess like this  ) the population was growing back, but the money he earned disappeared somehow (as he had no buildings left, on no planet it was for sure not for invention or buildings).

So the npc was moving arround with his last battleship and did not tried to rebuild a mine are other things).

So they should ban this impact effect at least for 30 minutes or so. And they should monitor, where the money for the npc is going to, when he can't build ships and invent anything.

I find Hard Economist does a pretty good job, at least for the first 30 minutes before I can really get rolling. Until then I generally have to fight superior numbers, which isn't a big deal against the AI.