Maxing out the A.I Skirmish Difficulty in Halo Wars 

I was playing against automatic 200 ai in reinforcements and they had a veteran 1 scarab in 6 minutes

I remember my first battle with the max difficulty IA. Literally took me like 5 hours to win and stop their wraith production on a 3vs3 battle

I never knew it did this, I thought it was a simple automatic system that cycles between the 4 difficulties and gives you a personal ranking.

Bruh in the last game you basically replicated the great shism. Regret cracks up some human skulls, gets sabotaged by truth and then a combined front of humans plus elites defeat the covenant.

On Xbox, instead of resigning against the AI just go to the dash board and close out the game and restart it. Then it won't count as a loss and you won't go down in difficulty rating.

For anyone wondering auto 200 units take 40% damage and deal 230% that is 2.5X less damage taken and 2.3X damage dealt. This means that any unit of theirs will be and even match against 3 of yours. I believe the math comes out to your last units beating theirs with about 12% hp left(assuming they dont get a star in which case it will always win the 3v1, also if abilities like grenades are used then the ai will also win the 3v1)

This would actually make for a great stream/vid, holy turnip and viewers vs absolutely absurd AI

I remember my first skirmish match. I had no idea about ai difficulty or changing heroes and played 3v3 on exile. My AI allies were obliterated (auto 40) and all 3 Covenent were alive. It turned into basically a stalemate where I had a random collection of units, including a vulture or too, and the enemy would constantly send scarab attacks.

The ultimate strat i used to EASILY get to auto 200 is play on the map memorial basin. Play on deathmatch gamemode (i know it sounds dumb but hear me out) Play as professor anders, and play against prophet of regret 1v1 Immediately on the start, build a 2nd hog and use both to gather all the free bases on the map. Theres 7 bases you can get, and each one gives you extra troops you can make. Every unit you make after needs to be hawks. Since deathmatch has all troops auto max tier, hawks are the best choice. The main reason it's easier is because the prophet will ALWAYS make wraiths and honor gaurds, and they can only make 15 units total thanks to the gamemode. These obviously can be destroyed by hawks, so you can destroy all their buildings and make tons of supplies. It only took me a few games to hit 200

Hi All. I never really got involved with Halo Wars community when it was more popular. Mostly just played v. AI for crazy hours. I probably have over 6 months of actual playtime. I only used regular battle mode (not DM's, etc). I never used cheats. My way to 200 was simple. I just outbuilt the AI. I'd often lose 20+ bases, but I would always build more than he could kill. Anders with 20 Hawks was the easiest, though any combination of leaders was fine. I'd fly the edge of the map keeping me out of trouble from the OP baddies. I'd get behind and hit their bases till a Scarab showed up and then left to hit another base without scarab interference. Speed and rebuilding works every time. Playing 1v1 on a 3v3 map vs. 200 AI is cake. I don't think I've ever lost v 200 AI head to head on a big map. I don't remember losing on a 2v2 map either, but maybe. Occasionally I'd lose one on a 3v3 map when my allies were taken out early, but that was like 1 in 30ish games. The smaller maps were increasingly difficult to beat the 200 AI. Not as many bases to keep rebuilding on small maps. My patience and diligence are my strong suit. It is interesting to hear how others got to 200. I never knew about the effect of the supplies till this video. I'm not much for rushing, and I almost never play covenant. Halo Wars is my favorite xBox game. I'm definitely an RTS guy. AOE Rise of Rome was my game back in the day (#1 in the world for while), but not much to choose from in RTS on xBox. Anyway, fun video and interesting comments. Ha. I see y'all wrote stuff a year ago... I'm probably talking to no one, but still nice to have fun talking about the game. have a great day!

So I got to 200...heres how: I set up a skirmish on glacial ravine, and chose prophet with the other two covey on my team, against the 3 UNSC leaders. I would immediately take the center gates so that no ground units could get through, than began making a scarab and leveling up and getting my prophet flying. Eventually, the rest of my pop was all engineers. Than you just come over the mountains and keep your scarab back with healies and use your prophet's fully leveled up beam at the same time as the Scarabs to take the bases down. The AI just isnt bright enough to take down the guys in the gates for the most part, and also has no answer for a scarab with 20+ engies on it.

I've never been very impressed by making RTS more difficult by just having the AI just cheat harder.

I made it to 200 a while ago, I didn't even engage thier army. I just made a bunch of hawks and destroyed thier bases.

Man I tried to play against the skirmishes, got it up to 130 and even playing as Forge these guys were out-resourcing me. It's less playing against better strats and more the AI gets to play by different rulesets than players. Really hate when they'll drop Vultures on your base at 6 minutes or dealing with a Brute rush, shutting it down, and one minute later the brute chieftain shows up again with a bigger army.

Turnip the absolute goat of halo wars

Great video, I always wondered what the maximum automatic difficulty would be like!

Automatic difficulty in HW1 was like hard mode in Mario Kart; they couldn't make the ai play better so they just made it more unfair. I lost a Skirmish game against a Brute rush despite having nearly twice as many beam rifle Jackals and a couple Wraiths because the _Brutes never stopped._ While I was fighting a never ending stream of small Brute rushes and trying to get my shit together the enemy got a second base up built two Locusts and like ten more Brute squads and wiped me as soon as the Locusts destroyed my Hall. They weren't even jetpack Brutes!

I remember back in high school racing my friend to see who could get to 200 Automatic difficulty fastest. Good times.

Best I ever got it to was like 130s back in 2010. Now i lose around 100s lol

terminal morain intro funny, that was the main map I played when my auto started getting really high. Rush expansions on the side bases while sacrificing an all supply pad (maybe turrets depending on how they start) main base. They would kill the main base I would pop air units and fly around harassing their bases, running away when their forces arrive.

loved this bro keep it up!!

Best halo wars content

The halo wars credits song always hits hard

When your chilling, rushing round the map collecting supplies for those hornet upgrades and a scarab shows up.... Ahh shucks

This is so cool. Amazing video

What I did to get 200 was I loaded up deathmatch frozen valley 1v1 and overwhelmed the AI with warthogs early game to vultures.

I would like to see your advice on doing this with 3v3 matches. I've been doing that myself currently at automatic 155 with my new knowledge that supplies are the only factor. Now that I know I need tons of supplies I choose forge for myself and both allies, and arbiter for the AI enemies as I see him as the weakest by far in AI matches

It’s too bad that the AI has to literally cheat to meet the higher difficulty standard. That’s Halo 2 Legendary levels of broken. I’m still waiting for a proper adaptive AI that operates stat-identical tools/resources as the player but strategizes at a higher level. For example, it can use tried and true RTS strategies for optimizing economy and scouting in the early game. Alternate between rush/turtle builds. If the player focuses on one type of unit, the AI will build counters. To prevent exploits, there can be RNG factors that determine whether an AI commits to countering your units or ignores you in favour of a sneak attack with building killers or a mix of both. The biggest thing: the AI learns how and when to recycle buildings.

This wakes up a memory in mi mind hahaha, I’m this game called supremme commander 2 I used to play free for all with Ai and friends, at one point we just have to team up against the Ai because it looked like the enemy Ai was rejected from art school 🗿🤣

Came back to this game and decided to boot up a legendary match of 3 players and 3 AI. Me and player 2 exhausted our supplies and armies of scorpions just to knock back a base attack, but as we were just healing and regrouping, our advisor told us that they were immediately beginning another offensive. Needless to say we did not survive. Oh yeah, and player 3 kept trying to flank and attack the AI’s base with guass hogs and hornets, dude didn’t stand a chance when the prophet AI spawned a scarab as he was attacking.

I started laughing hard when I noticed the friendly AI started wreckin shit 😂

The end music is All sloppy/No joe, a fan favorite

I think we finally found something more difficult than Halo 2 Legendary

i want to see the campain in legendary with the all negative skulls

Great strategy I use is selecting forge as my hero do to his better supply out put right off the bat and as soon as you get tech level 2 just start building hornets. I would send them over in groups of 3 as they spawn and order them ti go behind the enemy bases. Also sending them by 3s means you always have units at base for defense along with turrets. You got some defense and you can finish the game pretty quick before the AI get to powerful

I had no idea this was a thing, I always do Heroic or Legendary but will be jumping into Auto from now on

The only time I ever played online, I had a keyboard connected to my Xbox One and could type to my team. The more you know.

i find 166 is the sweet spot for me, i like having proper back and forth games that last more than an hour.

Great show, just wondering why the Brute Chieftan has the best Convenant start?

If you want to toture yourself, play max difficulty with all Captin Cutters including your self, on deathmatch. Enjoy 😂

I've been asking myself this for a long time. The only YT video that I found was some guy at 152. PD: thx so much for the shoutout but you're the true King 😎👌

I did mine by doing deathmatch on terminal, you just do a mad scramble to get as many bases as you can while trying to limit the ai to one or 2 bases, untill you get a 99 pop air/odst army and can win a 5v1 fight

nice

I thought the AI's preset starting strategies only applied to fixed difficulties (i.e. Easy, Normal, Heroic, Legendary) but I was surprised to see (as you said in the video) some familiar starts on Automatic difficulty, like quad turrets or early infantry rushing. Is the early Tech 4 Vulture dump something that the scaling AI can try to do? It's something I've seen the AI do (or try to) on fixed difficulties and it's amusing to see the AI try to recover if you catch it early and shut it down. They don't... actually do a lot at all besides search for resources and wait to upgrade two reactors, then start mass-producing vultures.

dam grunts

and here i was thinking i was good on auto 120 while abusing captain cutter against arby on skirmish blood gulch.

nostalgia.

the way i did it as a kid was always a covenant rush, just destroy their bases before they can get out of hand. didn't always work though lol.

nice I didn't know you could get to 200. I've gotten to 199 and won multiple games in a row, but was never given the higher difficulty

Me and my cousin have mastered this game lol the amount of hours put in is crazy, we should have gotten an honorable mention in HW2 credits for how much we played this first game

If you are playing on UNSC as a preference, I came up with strat that should help you. Play on 3v3 maps in 1vs1, quickly expand your resource output through multiple bases, get reserves and reinforcement. If you are playing as Cutter or Forge, rush vultures once you have 6 of them, AI will SERIOUSLY struggle. Only scarab is going to cause some problems to you. If you are playing Anders, it's the same at the beginning focus on getting supplies, reserves and reinforcement quickly as possible but, you have the option to go either Hawks or Vultures from here on it is up to you but, few tips. As Hawks are very mobile, they are perfect for map control and getting where you need them. Do consider upgrading Mac Blast, Carpet Bomb or Cryo Bomb as they will help you a lot. I found out that the AI on 3v3 maps when it is 1v1 struggles with scouting. Heck now when I am at +145. The AI did more scouting before 140 than where I currently am + because the army that I will come to your first base's door step is just stupid to try to even repel. I opt to just keep saving supplies, have my scout run around for supply crates and check places. Majority of the time, before +145 AI attacks first time, I already have 5 bases, 3 of which are either station or fortress and 2 bases which are either firebase or station grade. Pretty much every time I fought against random Covenant leader. I have noticed few differences.

Played back in the day most of the time Deathmatch at arround 190-200 that were long rounds

love ur videos

I didn't realise 200 was the max. I recently got back into Halo Wars: DE on Steam and noticed that was what it was set to, thought I'd take a look to see what that actually meant. Was just playing a game of it yesterday with 3v3 on Fort Dean. Lost one of my AI super early on and ended up having to turtle a bit whilst fighting off a bunch of Scarabs. But eventually me and my surviving AI buddy pushed through and took advantage of the fact one of the AI enemies had claimed almost all the bases, meaning only two bases to destroy each for the other two to turn it into a very easy 2v1.

The highest mine ever got was mid 120's on the xbox 360. Can't remember what it was on the xb1 remaster.

I’d just play Cutter and take my Elephant to the enemy base and just spend all my resources on units from the elephant.

Hey I've done Halo Wars at automatic difficulty 200 vs3v3 skirmish allowing two of my allies to die and still winning the match and down it's honestly about the bases when it comes down to it and if you can get more bases in your enemy then you can just Spam troops from all directions

Made it to 199 like 8yrs ago with the Brute Cheiftain

I use to play automatic all the time on the 360, had no idea it was basically legendary, I thought 12 year old me was playing the game on normal.

Wish I knew this when I was 15 I got to 200 just by the pure volume of games I played

Back in the 360 I was 180 without exploits or glitches. I did activate beneficial skulls on though but it didn't really make a big difference. I remember also turtling on that map but with the two bases instead of one.

I think I got to 160 once but it was insane

I’m on 140 and pretty much the only way I survive is if I do the mass hog strat or a I rush from the start before they get any good units

If you dashboard, that is to say pause the game click the middle button on your controller, and load up another game like death by daylight instead of resigning or getting defeated then you will not lose any difficulty on the AI automatic. Makes it easier to get to 200, and to stay there. Once you see you are going to lose just dashboard, re-open halo wars and continue playing on auto 200. BTW there is no way to turtle the AI on automatic 200 especially with the skulls on, you have to take out their bases to win.

Back when I no lifed this game during middle school when it came out no Xbox live so. Got it to 200 and always mobbed with banshees but on the definitive edition the AI seems so much harder

Now I feel stupid for trying to beat the AI head on. I am also trying to get to 200, and I've been doing well so far, got all the way to 151, managing my resources, pumping out armies, and such. But 1. I was exclusively playing as the UNSC, and 2. I had no idea this exploit existed. Need to try this out ASAP.

The best I ever got without skulls was around 130 as well. Theyd stomp me after that

Yeah the auto ai got so good i cant beat it anymore with my usual strategies lol

Oh damn. I’m at auto difficulty 191. Didn’t realize I was so close to the cap

I thought I was the only person who was able to do this. Nice man Want to try to 2v3 @ 200?

on Glacier they brain fart & all their units stay at the shield wall.

Canonical damage

I just started playing on my 360 again, how’s the servers work? Am I able to play against players on Xbox1 or steam? Would love to play a real person again one day.. Thanks for the nostalgic vids dude :)

Turnip is the goat.

does the AI still learn and copy your strategies with each leader like it did on 360? bots on 360 would copy my build order and even building placement exactly with each leader after playing them 300+ times.

Hey turnip, I know this video is old by now but I’m trying to max out the A.I myself for fun, I’ve won about 10 matches on 199 and it hasn’t moved… any advice? Is 200 only on definitive edition pc perhaps?

I remember on the 360 me and my dad fighting against 2 automatic AI that was in the hundreds and it just taking forever to finnaly beat them. We was both able to fight them because of system link.

I'm not exceptionally good at Halo wars but the strat I use against AI works great. I use a 3v3 map in a 1v1 and I base rush. I grab every single base on the map and pool supplies and bases. So far I'm up to a 170. Wish me luck on getting to 200. My last game took me a few hours. I ended up beating it by having 90 population. 4 scarab and 5 engineers and 2 arbiter.

How does HW1 still look so much better than so many modern rts games including HW2

halo wars woulda been so sick as a starcraft clone with m and kb. i did play this with friends who loved it but its so basic

all i did was make 3 spartans and put them in either 3 scorpions or 2 scorpions and 1 cobra . have them get to rank 14 and just wipe the entire map with them.

MS should hand this game off to Forgotten Empires to revamp the AI so that you get an actual challenge instead of just HP sponge units

Highest I’ve ever gotten to without exploits and any particular strategy was 141

I myself have never made it past 157

I think I got to 193 on my own while not knowing the meta, I could never beat the higher lvl ai without being covenant and rushing infantry

Just a quick thought, would units with stars match their difficulty

You mean there's something harder than a 3v3 against legendary brutes?

No idea how I even got here as a kid, can’t play strategy games for shit anymore but level 150 Ai? Some how I used to beat them in time for school in the mornings. Those fuckers are monsters now

I think the closest I've gotten to 200 was like 152

Now do 200 ai 1v3 all skulls on fort deen 🗿

m currently crying so hard right now. This is seriously the most beautiful, well put together story ever. I can’t believe how magical it was 1:12. That part truly made me shed a tear. And especially at 6:34 that part was just so truly heart touching words can not describe the series of emotions I felt. I absolutely loved the climax it had insanely excellent detail. Oh and we can’t forget the conclusion. The conclusion was the greatest and saddest conclusion I have ever seen better than any of the books I have read. Thank you so much for creating this absolute masterpiece. This is essentially the most important masterpiece of film history. It is a tragedy that this, it can’t be called a film, but a transcendent emotional experience, will be inaccessible for most. It beautifully encapsulates the human struggle to its basics; suffering, pleasure, faith, despair. It connects with the characters within the viewers, individuals suppressed within our own subconscious. It stays vibrant, fresh, and revolutionizes the art of storytelling and filmmaking while making a damn of statement on what it means to be human. Entertaining, gripping, and simply exhilarating. This might be the most impactful piece of art I’ve come across in my life, and I’m definitely coming back to it in the near future to study it more deeply. this is an absolute masterpiece , I was brought to tears listening to this and seeing the bacon go whirly swirly in a circle countless times. it absolutely moved my soul , and I don't think I can ever be the same. this bacon has changed my entire mental state , I am now at peace with who I am and what I will be doing later in my life. i have forgiven all my enemies and now I am a man of a pacifist life. I will move on , gotta move on , as the song says. the bacon is so inspirational , it shares it vast wisdom with all of us , and we are all so lucky that it would bestow it's great words with us. we are all children on bacon. hail bacon. hail bacon. The spinning bacon, rotating in one direction with this music... This made me tear up. How could such a bacon do such a thing? I'm struck by awe by this masterpiece. Especially when the bacon spins, showing its lightly salt covered tan skin. I can hear the crunch just from here, and so as the beautiful sound of the bacon scraping the dark, smooth velvet floor. The flavor, music and everything can be heard, tasted, seen and felt from a screen. You can really hear the breaths between the music artist, empathizing her love for this rotating bacon. Truly what I call modern art. This was the most legendary performance by any piece of bacon I have ever watched. The acting was top tier and very life changing. This is one of the greatest work from a piece of bacon I have ever seen especially on 57:42.I am currently crying so hard right now. This is seriously the most beautiful, well put together story ever. I can’t believe how magical it was at 1:12. That part truly made me shed a

Automatic ai has always been on 200 for me how do i lower it

kinda funny to call it soolaso or lasosoo, (200laso, laso200)

Closing app doesn't lower the rank, I'm actually 194 playing every couple days

i only got too 195 before i gave up

I am going to try this against random leaders see if I can get to 200

It kinda sucks that the ai doesn't just get better in terms of reflexes and strategies, and instead just straight up cheats.

I don't know if anyone will see this but I've made automatic 200 twice once on the 360 and again on my Xbox one, i was wondering if anyone else made it to 200, i did it legitly, I've tried various strategies, many rushes, turtling, and even spartanks (Spartans in scorpions) and nothing worked except early warthog rush with hornet's and vultures later in the game then bring in spartanks just as bullet sponges from a second base, but they don't last very long I've only managed to beat the covenant leaders with this strategy, if you go against UNSC it's even harder because thier units are even tougher both in health and the damage they do, there is just no way to beat them, not in a fair fight anyway, not that it's fair to begin with, only way to beat them is build additional bases and then just go straight for thier bases, but it's even harder if they got turrets, I've used professor Anders to get the warthog strategy going quickly then focus on getting hornet's out as fast as possible then later upgrade to Hawks if necessary, worst case scenario your unable to destroy there base with just the warthogs but at least it's enough of a distraction to get enough hornet's to Finnish it off. Sometimes it goes into a long fight up to an hour or two because the initial rush failed as well as they destroyed my main base making hornets, setting me back a bit and put on the run, other times I actually manage to fend them off by using the upgraded cyro bomb then swarming whatever is frozen with Hawks it can destroy a automatic 200 ai's scarab just barely but if it's got veterancy already then expect to lose a few hawks, if there's two it's impossible, the prophet of regret is the only leader that can destroy hornet's/Hawks easily of the covenant leaders when a disruption bombs on the field but the leaders are almost never alone which is a pain. I've put hundreds of hours into this game and still do to this day.

I didn’t know 200 was the max level. I’ve been running that all of this time without even knowing. He’s right though, I bleed them out completely every time and build up bases for resources.😂😂 He’s also right, after a certain level the A.I get crazy ( yet predictable) and it can be almost impossible to bypass them. But you figure it out.

The AI by 150 or 160 should be impossible to beat. (Even with debuff skulls)