Dynamic Difficulty - Ultimate Customization

Ever had the problem that early game was way to hard and either you die early, or the game becomes boring very soon afterwards? Or do you think the game is too hard/easy in general and the player would deserve some bonuses/penalties? Or do you want stronger Fallen Empires. Or you want to reduce resource overflow in late game? The crisis or Great Khan is a lackluster or ruining your game? Or, or, or...

Then this mod is for you!

Compatible Versions

Works for any Stellaris 4.x version, mostly down to 3.1 (difficulties will be shifted for 3.1 to 3.4, select one easier than you want in galaxy setup). Legacy version for 2.2 to 3.0 can be found here. Legacy version for 2.1 can be found here.

Extensions

More Modifier Extension/Standalone: If you think that some modifier is missing in the difficulty setting, try this mod and I'm pretty sure you'll find it there. It's a bit simpler and without scaling for performance reasons (it really has a lot of modifiers)

Hemothep's Dynamic Difficulty can be used on top of this mod (and the More Modifier extension). It automatically applies bonuses to the AI if the player grows too strong. These bonuses are in addition to any other difficulty buffs that are otherwise applied, whether from my mod(s) or vanilla. Hemothep isn't updating this mod anymore and by now the modifiers are pretty much outdated. He allowed me years ago to continue his mod or include it into mine and I have now done that. In my mod menu under options you can activate this.

Features

1. Choosing any of the Vanilla pre-defined difficulties in mid-game. Mod can even be installed mid-game.
2. "Scaling" difficulty can be combined with other predefined difficulties (added on top).
3. Is fully customizeable. You can change 10 different types of bonuses in 7 empire categories (AI, Player, FE+AE, Leviathans, Crisis, Marauders, Other) to a precision of 1% (10% for player) and in a huge range: -127% to + 1023% for AI, -100% to 200% for player and -75% to 1,309,440% (yeah, that's crazy) for crisis.
4. Allows locking of the customized difficulty for MP (Troll prevention) or other reasons. Unlock via sub-mod.
5. Moved "Diplomatic Influence Upkeep reduction" from a bonus every AI gets to scale with difficulty and be customizeable.
6. Can set a difficulty randomness in the options of the mod: At the start of the game (or after one day in a running game) each AI empire rolls a dice. Depending on that roll, its bonuses are decreased up to the maximum given in the options. Bonuses/Maluses can even invert if more than 100% maximum randomness is chosen. If used, I advice to increase the base difficulty a bit, since this will reduce it in total (but might create a monster than devours weaker AI neighbors).

Scaling

In contrast to vanilla, scaling is independent of the difficulty you select. If you select a difficulty, that one is always instantly applied. Scaling gives a yearly increase on top. You can fine tune it in the customization. By default, there is a 1% step every four years.

IMPORTANT

Main menu can be opened via:

• Mod Menu
• Dynamic Mod Menu 3.0
• Dynamic Mod Menu
• Infinite Stellaris ModMenu
• Country Edict

Performance

If you should have problems with lags at the start of each year, you can activate a delay mode in the options that let's the country updates of modifiers have a random delay, spreading the computations over half a Stellaris year.

Compatibility

• Can be added into a running game. You need to wait 1 day in this case before being able to open the menu.
• Can be uninstalled during a game (resetting to difficulty set when starting the game). Simply removing the mod will leave over "?" modifiers (who won't do anything), but there is an "uninstall" option in the Menu. Should you afterwards want to install the mod again in the same save-game, this will only work via console: "event custom_difficulty.20".
• Should have very few conflicts with other mods (yes, compatible with Glavius and Starnet. Also no problem with multi-crisis mods). Only overwrites vanilla difficulty settings.
• If a mod adds new country types (like a new crisis) they would fall in the "Other" category, unless one of the country flags in "Compatibility options for other Modders" is set (using the console or by the mod adding the country type)
• New races and predefined empires will always be "AI" without a problem (checking for "default" country).
• (Obviously) Not Achievement compatible.

Compatibility options for other Modders

If you added a non default empire type and want to make my mod apply the correct bonuses to your mod, please apply the according country flag from the following list:

• custom_difficulty_ai_flag
• custom_difficulty_fe_ae_flag
• custom_difficulty_leviathan_flag
• custom_difficulty_player_flag
• custom_difficulty_crisis_flag
• custom_difficulty_marauder_flag
• custom_difficulty_no_bonuses_flag

Hope the list of mostly self-explanatory. The last item means that this country never gets any bonuses from my mod and should be used if you want to balance your country yourself (done by Gigastructures for example)

Localization

• "pt","en","fr", "de","pl","ru", "es" language files given but all mostly English. Most modifier and difficulty names are links to the Vanilla localization.

Options

• Choose between simple and custom (default) mode. Simple mode only changes