So let me start by saying i adore this game and while i remember when it was released i actually didnt start playing it until 6yrs later but it has been one of my favorites for 15yrs now.

I want to create some handicaps to increase the difficulty a little, give the AI a bit more freedom, and generally make the mid/late game as fun and tense as those first 200 days. What are some ways you can think of? And no, im strictly speaking singleplayer here.

My typical playstyle, or typical game is as the Empire. I leverage high leadership characters to kick off offending rebel governments via Incite Uprisings. Im a fan of Capturing enemy characters and sabotaging enemy refineries. What ends up happening in the mid-300s or so is the rebels become more and more paralyzed as their economy crumbles, their military shrinks, and they cannot take much further action with fewer and fewer characters.

The obvious answer could be No Targeting Characters or Resources, but i was curious to see what other members of the community had in mind.

Ill also welcome Rebel handicaps, as i somwtimes play with them but typically get bored after the first 300 days when you have a glut of resources from liberating whole sectors at a time :/

if you want more challenge as Empire simply don't build any Lancer-class frigates
this makes the game much more cannon with Rebel fighters dominating space battles

There are a few Old Expanded Universe canonical options you could try to give the Rebel AI more of a fighting chance.

Victory Class Star Destroyers outnumbered Imperial Class Star Destroyers by a large margin. Only build 1 Imp-Star for every 4 Vic-Stars you build.

A lot of the Empire's search for Rebel Bases in the Outer Rim was conducted by Dreadnaughts. Build and use Dreadnaughts to hunt for the Rebels in the Outer Rim instead of Probe Droids or other faster vessels.

If you use the above options, you will need to rely on Escort Carriers to provide fighter support, which will slow down building your navy and put you at a greater disadvantage against Rebel fighters.

Although TIE Interceptors were 100% superior to TIE Fighters, the Empire continued building TIE Fighters in large numbers. The Empire's TIE Ratio aboard an Imp-Star was, 3 TIE Fighters, 2 TIE Bombers, 1 TIE Interceptor.
If you maintain this ratio in your game, you give the Rebel fighters an advantage because their fighters are superior to TIE Fighters.

Canonically, Lancer Frigates cost the same as an Imp-Star due to the large amount of experimental technology onboard. Maintain a 1 to 1 build of Imp-Stars to Lancer Frigates.

Despite the value of the Interdictor Cruisers, they were expensive to build, so only a small number were ever built. Do the same, and only build 1 for your main fleet, 1 for Coruscant, and 1 extra to cover damage and loses as the AI likes to focus fire Interdictors even when they have superior naval force.

The Empire relied heavily on Carrack Cruisers and Strike Cruisers to fill the gaps in their fleets, both of which greatly outnumbered both Vic-Stars and Imp-Stars. Build 2-4 of those ships, for every Vic-Star and Imp-Star you build.
Grand Admiral Thrawn's fleet had 5 Imp-Stars, 12 Strike Cruisers, 24 Carrack Cruisers, 1 Escort Carrier, and all ships only carried TIE Fighters.

Defend every planet you control. The Empire always had to appear to be defending every planet. If you spend time putting troops and fleets on every planet, you will have far less to throw at the Rebels while giving them more time to prepare.

Despite popular belief, Stormtroopers only made up a very small percentage of the Army, only 1% of the troops (not counting crew) onboard the Death Star were Stormtroopers. Build Army and Navy Regiments instead of Stormtroopers most of the time.

Don't build Darktroopers. By the time you research Darktroopers, canonically Kyle Katarn destroyed the Arc Hammer where Darktroopers were designed and built.

Canonically, the Empire spent more time using Diplomacy to subvert planets it didn't invade. Rely on Diplomacy instead of Incite Uprising.

Instead of using your high Leadership Characters to Incite Uprisings, do what the Empire did and put them in charge of Fleets, Armies, and Fighter Squadrons, Admirals, Generals, Commanders respectively. When you commit your leaders to actually leading instead of subverting control, the Rebels have more time to prepare a fight.

Blockade planets instead of Inciting Uprisings. This not only reduces your available ships, but is also the canonical way the Empire denied resources to the Rebels.

Best thing to do is do not attack your opponent's economy, makes the game too easy if you attack it. Leave Mines, Refineries, and Production buildings intact. This will give them more to throw at you. I always had a much harder time when I left the AI's economy and production intact.


As for Rebel Handicaps; canonical.

The Rebels used both Diplomacy and Incite Uprisings in equal measure, canonically. For a challenge, only rely on Incite Uprising in the Core Worlds, meaning you have to steal planets away from the Empire instead of converting neutrals.

The Rebels had very limited starship manufacturing canonically, all of it centered on Mon Calamari. They could only manage to build 2 Mon Cal Cruisers and 12 other capital vessels per year. Maintain that ratio as the Rebels.

Canonically, Y-Wings were almost as abundant as TIE Fighters in the galaxy. Build 2-3 Y-Wings for 1 of anything else.

Don't build any of the made up ships that were created for the game to balance out the Rebels, Dauntless Cruisers, Liberator Cruisers, CC-7700 Interdictors, Bulwark Battle Cruisers, CC-9600 Cruisers.
Only build Dreadnaughts, Escort Carriers, Mon Cal Cruisers, Corvettes, Gunships, Bulk Cruisers, Medium Transports, Bulk Freighters, Nebulon-B Frigates, Assault Frigates.

If you want to limit your ability to use troops to invade planets, don't build Bulk Freighters.

Invest all of your expansion effort in the Outer Rim, which is what the Rebels did canonically. Don't spend any time or resources on the Core Worlds. This will greatly slow you down as you have to build up from scratch, and give the Empire free reign of the Core Worlds.

Despite the value of B-Wings, the Rebels didn't have a lot of them. A typical Mon Cal carried 1 X-Wing, 1 Y-Wing, and 1 A-Wing into battle.

Consider relying on A-Wings instead of X-Wings. A-Wings lack the firepower to be a threat to capital ships, although they will kill TIEs faster then X-Wings.

If you want to be canonical, don't build Mon Cal Regiments if you don't control Mon Calamari, Wookiee Regiments without Kashyyk, or Sullustan Regiments without Sullust.

Again, best thing you can do is to leave the AI's economy and production intact.

excellent post, I quoted the things I liked or that I was already doing. I think the low hanging fruit is leave the economy intact and have fewer Lancers (I would usually have one fleet per sector, with 3 Lancers in each fleet but will go down to one each)

One notable thing that struck me in reading your post was your mention of Incite Uprising and it occurred to me that the game would play very differently (and perhaps a bit more canon) if the Empire did not have access to Incite Uprising, e.g. it would be a Rebel-only mission type just as Assassination is Empire-only. I dont have access to the game right now but the next time I play I will definitely be handicapping that way instead of not harming their characters.

in anycase, great suggestions. As an aside, I used to have a ton of the EU books and guides -- it was nice seeing them referenced and i think will allow for some good nostalgic Rebel-chasing

At the start of the game, decide what sectors you want the enemy to have, then use any forces you have in that sector to do things that drops support for your side until the whole sector or at least most of it has changed side.

As long as a planet is far enough from 100% on your side, you can usually do this by having a ship in orbit and keep moving troops from the surface to the ship, because while troops keep the place from going into rebellion, people there also dislike more troops arriving, but do not get happier from troops going away.

Or you can find a neutral planet that is in the middle diplomatically, invade it, withdraw troops, invade or put troops back etc..

Any ship that can bombard can also be used to bombard civillian structures, any lost causes sectorwide dislike.



If you don't mind using RebEd to edit units, you can lower the maintenance costs for all units. Even if you lower them equally for both sides, when you start a single player game, the AI always benefits FAR more from it.
You could for example halve the maintenance for everything on the side you wont play yourself, that will give the AI somewhere from 50% to 300% units extra. Beware though that if your HQ location is known, the AI may just decide to throw EVERYTHING it has against that location right away.

If you play as Empire and have massively reduced Rebel maintenance cost for ships, and play on hardest/biggest settings, Rebels might start with several hundred Corellian corvettes for example. This can easily make the game difficult far beyond winnable.

Improving work rates and reducing costs for civillian structures also tends to have the AI work better, problem is that a human tend to exploit that even more.

You can also adjust what the sides HQs start out with, sadly, the AI is often stupid enough to ruin this, but sometimes it doesn't try to "fix" things, and if you had the Rebel HQ start with 12 shipyards or something, then that can get "interesting" very quickly.


If you don't mind hexediting, reduce the strategic deliverytimes(ie how fast new buildings travel to destinations), the AI benefits immensly from this as it reduces the effects of the AIs generally very poor planning in how it builds new structures. Downside is of course that this also affects ALL types of strategic movement, but you can do it for just one side if you wish.
I think i've posted somewhere else on the forum how to do this.

Become me. I've been playing SW Supremacy over 20 years and never won.