Our guide explains how to match the AI driver difficulty to your skills in F1 2020.
Photo credit: Koch Media / Codemasters.
Racing in F1 2020 is most fun when you find yourself in awesome battles from the start to the finish line. To achieve that in single player game modes, you need to adapt the game difficulty to your skills. In this tutorial, we explain how to find perfectly balanced AI settings in F1 2020.
Read about AI difficulity in F1 2021 right here:
HOW TO FIND THE BEST AI DIFFICULTY LEVEL IN F1 2021
How to change difficulty in F1 2020
F1 2020 allows players to adapt the AI difficulty before every race. You can choose a value between 0 and 110 to define the strength of your opponents. Setting the difficulty higher is not going to make the artificial intelligence smarter or improve their overtaking skills. In fact, raising the bar only has an effect on the pace of the AI drivers.
A rule of thumb is that a change of 1 value makes the AI around 0.1 seconds faster. However, upon surpassing the mark of 100 difficulty, each step is going to improve their lap times by around 0.2 seconds.
Creating a difficulty setup test
Now, let’s find out how to set up the perfect AI strength for your game. Before jumping straight into the career or My Team mode, we advise you to open a short qualifying in the Grand Prix mode. Make sure to set up dry weather and activate all assists you are also going to use in your regular races. Then set the AI to a value of your choice. Starting with 55, exactly in the middle of the difficulty bar, makes sense if you do not know how strong your pace might be.
Now, it is time to race. You jump into the car using the default setup and drive your best possible lap time. After that, you should grab a pen to make some notes. Have a look at your lap time and compare it to your teammate’s run. For example, if you took the place of Max Verstappen in the test qualifying, compare your lap time with Alexander Albon.
To create a realistic experience, you want your AI teammate to be almost as fast as yourself. After adapting your settings, it is useful to do another quick qualifying and check whether you and your teammate are on the same level now. If there is still a big difference, adapt again and repeat the process.
Adapting the AI strength in career mode
But your work is not finished after the test qualifying sessions. When you jump into the career or My Team, make sure to monitor your teammate’s performance every race and adapt the difficulty if there is a big and consistent gap between you. You can tweak the AI settings in the loading screen ahead of every race weekend when playing the career. My Team players also have the chance to do so while in their team headquarters.
And as a last factor to keep in mind, the AI tends to be weaker or stronger at certain circuits. For example, Baku and Bahrain are circuits where the AI drivers usually perform very well. If you aim to have a perfectly realistic experience, get out a pen and paper. Write down the difference in lap times between you and your teammate and closest rivals in qualifying for each track during the career. Also, take notes if you notice you had an unusually easy or difficult race without factors like engine wear, setup or weather having a big influence.
Use your notes from past seasons to adapt the AI difficulty before every Grand Prix. With all these tips, you are going to experience amazing wheel-to-wheel battles week after week in F1 2020.
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What is your secret trick to find the perfect AI setting in F1 2020? Tweet us your opinion @OverTake_gg!
