For a game first released in 2002, Age of Mythology has proven to be a timeless classic. One key factor in its lasting appeal is its artificial intelligence (AI), which has consistently provided players with challenging opponents. The good news is that the game's remastered edition, Age of Mythology: Retold, enhances this already capable AI, delivering a more intense and engaging experience against computer-controlled enemies. It offers a PvE experience that keeps pace with modern standards in the genre.
Every Big Age of Mythology: Retold Change Explained
Age of Mythology: Retold is a remake of the 2002 real-time strategy classic, and it's packed with big improvements and worthwhile tweaks.
However, you might be wondering what the difficulty levels in Age of Mythology: Retold really mean. That’s a fair question, especially since the remaster introduces new AI difficulties that aren’t fully explained in the tutorials. To help you navigate the new game, here’s a breakdown of everything you need to know about the difficulty levels in Age of Mythology: Retold.
Age of Mythology: Retold Difficulties
The remaster of Age of Mythology adds two new difficulty settings, Extreme and Legendary, bringing the total number of difficulty levels to six: Standard, Moderate, Hard, Titan, Extreme, and Legendary.
Every Difficulty Level Explained
- Standard: The easiest AI, with no cheats or unfair advantages.
- Moderate: A slightly smarter AI, still with no unfair advantages over the player.
- Hard: This AI is more aggressive and quicker to attack the player.
- Titan: A challenging AI that makes smart decisions and can't be easily outwitted. It may periodically switch up its strategies and even destroy the player’s walls.
- Extreme: Equally smart as Titan, but with a 25% resource advantage, allowing it to gather additional resources per harvest or excavation.
- Legendary: The toughest AI in Age of Mythology: Retold, as smart as Titan but with a 50% resource advantage, enabling faster progression and construction.
In the original game, Titan was the hardest AI level, and it had a 100% resource advantage.
Game Difficulty vs. AI Difficulty
Age of Mythology: Retold allows you to change the AI and game’s difficulty separately. AI difficulty adjusts the intelligence and resource advantages of a single CPU player in a match. However, the game difficulty setting changes all AI players’ intelligence and resource advantages in the match.
You can use AI difficulty in the Skirmish mode to balance the match with a combination of easy, moderate, hard, and legendary enemies.
AI Play Styles in Age of Mythology: Retold
Before starting Skirmish matches, you can choose from three AI playstyles: Standard, Attacker, and Defender. The Standard playstyle balances offensive and defensive strategies, while the Attacker and Defender playstyles focus on a single aspect of real-time strategy—warfare and resistance, respectively.
If you’re facing an AI-related bug, check out Age of Mythology: Retold’s Known Issues & Fixes page.
Age of Mythology: Retold’s AI vs. The Original Game
Age of Mythology: Retold features a smarter AI that’s harder to exploit. The enemy is more responsive and adaptive even on lower difficulty levels like Moderate. However, the most noticeable improvement is in Titan mode, where the AI is less susceptible to wall-based strategies.
That said, it’s important to note that Retold’s AI isn’t as complex or unpredictable as that of modern RTS games. The improvements are significant compared to earlier versions, but veteran AoM players will likely still find ways to cheese the AI despite these enhancements.
Age of Mythology: Retold
- Released
- September 4, 2024
- Platform(s)
- PC, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
