Between Monarch and Emperor:Adjustable Skill Levels?

[Garbarsardar.jr]

Ideas
The skill levels in the game offer a progression of bonuses/advantages to the AI e.g. tech rate and number of Units.I think that it should be expected to see in CIV4 a more detailed level of adjustments in the skill levels.
And I explain:

A.Instead of having to choose between 6 general levels the player should be able to manipulate other parameters e.g. the occurence of random events and their consequences.
or
B.The general skill levels should involve more differentiations and more components than the ones in the present game,

Implementation
A. Instead of 6 buttons the player can have sliders representing different difficulty aspect. The average of sliders would result in the level e.g=65%
B.If it is deemed that this would be too complex for an entry level player the levels could remain as such but there should be much more detailed options in the Editor.Practically one could edit all components of the skill level.(Modder's paradise)

Skill components: (out of the top of my head+the existing ones)
Random(?) disasters probability
Empire cohesion ratio
AI military skills
Minor civs probability

the list is open...
any thoughts?

 

[deo]

Good Idea Nice

 

[judgement]

I'm all for having the skill levels modable in the editor.

However, the more possibilities there are in the default game, the more of a chore playtesting will be and the more likely it will be that some of the various combinations of parameters will be quite unbalanced and won't make for a very fun game. Its not a matter of being too complex for novices... the problem is that if you set the sliders in certain weird ways, the resulting lack of balance might make the game unplayable.

If there's a single scale (easiest to hardest) its not too hard for the designers to adjust a few parameters for each level (and adjust the AI's bonuses or penalties) to ensure that a high level is harder than an easier one.

But if there's multiple scales, then you never know until you try it whether setting parameter A high and B low will make the game easier or harder than setting A low and B high. And as you increase the number of parameters further, the number of combinations of choices grows very quickly.

If there were 4 parameters (call them A/B/C/D) then its bad enough that you wouldn't know offhand whether 50%/70%/70%/50% was easier or harder than 70%/40%/60%/70%, but the poor designers would have to spend decades playtesting in order to make sure that weird choices like 10%/90%/90%/50% didn't make the game completely un-fun.

 

[Garbarsardar.jr]

However, the more possibilities there are in the default game, the more of a chore playtesting will be and the more likely it will be that some of the various combinations of parameters will be quite unbalanced and won't make for a very fun game.

thats why I was a bit reluctant with the A idea anyway...
but I sill think the modability of skill levels is extremely conservative in the present editor...