Difficulty Levels

[turingmachine]

This is something I've always wondered... my difficulty level doesn't affect the AI at all right? All that happens when I increase my difficulty level is that I start to get negatives or less health and production, more upkeep, etc.

The reason I say this is because in the globaldefines you can set what level the AI play at and normally they'd always play on noble.

So theoretically, if I like playing on prince and don't want to give myself more negatives i can make the game harder by changing the default AI level to say chieftain. That way my gameplay stays the same only the AI gets the bonuses associated with being at a lower level...

right?

 

[Admiral Armada]

You have it backwards, the AI is the one that is changed around mostly. ON lower levels you do get bones to health and happiness and the AI is given higher production costs. On higher levels the AI starts with more units and techs and gets a boost to production and research.

 

[turingmachine]

You have it backwards, the AI is the one that is changed around mostly. ON lower levels you do get bones to health and happiness and the AI is given higher production costs. On higher levels the AI starts with more units and techs and gets a boost to production and research.

But the AI always plays on Noble according to the globaldefines XML file. Also if you do multiplayer games the AI is always on noble...

The AI naturally gets bonuses independent of difficulty level such as upgrade reductions. If they are always on noble then all the bonus production we think they get extra when we are higher, isn't that just us producing less production.

Or does difficulty work differently when playing fully single player and when playing multiplayer with some AI

 

[turingmachine]

double post

 

[Endure]

The AI is always set to noble if you play Multiplayer.

However, the AI gets bonuses to production, research, etc when you have it at prince or higher when your playing Single player.

So yes, it is different between MP and SP.

 

[turingmachine]

The AI is always set to noble if you play Multiplayer.

However, the AI gets bonuses to production, research, etc when you have it at prince or higher when your playing Single player.

So yes, it is different between MP and SP.

What if you're just playing Single Player Custom Game? That has the same set-up where you can see that the AI is always at Noble?

And if it's different for playing half AI / half humans in multiplayer, then would what I proposed in my first post work to increase the difficulty of the AI?

 

[Admiral Armada]

If you are doing a custom game, then on one of the screens at the start where you choose opponents you can change the difficulty. Im pretty sure you are looking at this tag in global defines
<Define>
<DefineName>STANDARD_HANDICAP</DefineName>
<DefineTextVal>HANDICAP_NOBLE</DefineTextVal>
</Define>
or maybe this one
<DefineName>AI_HANDICAP</DefineName>
<DefineTextVal>HANDICAP_NOBLE</DefineTextVal>
IM not sure what all those defalut tags do, but they do not restrict you from changing things. Look at the gamespeed one, it says default is Normal, but you can play on any speed.

For difficulty stuff look at XML\Gameinfo\CIV4HandicapInfo.xml
That one has all the different bonuses teh AI gets at the different levels. I'm not sure how this changes when doing multilayer, but my hunch is that it wouldn't change at all.

 

[turingmachine]

See the thing is, it doesn't let you change the AI difficulty on any of the screens it's always stuck at noble and the only way to change it is in the globaldefines.

However, in multiplayer different people can have different difficulty levels, so on e person can be on noble, another, prince, etc. and the AI is all on noble. How does it change the AI then?

 

[eris]

There are two sets of values. One affects the player. One affects the AI.

In single player mode, both sets of values depend upon the humans difficulty setting.

In Multiplayer mode, there are no changes to the AI set of values. It is assigned the values appropriate to Noble when playing SP. The players have different assignments to their values according to their difficulty levels, which helps handicap the humans to each other skills, and only partially handicapping themselves in relation to the AI players.

 

[UWHabs]

So if you play a single player game in multiplayer (ie. only 1 human, and the rest AI), does that mean you can play with "noble" AI players, but handicap yourself differently? Would that be a way to play a "Monarch-" game, where the AI won't start with archery, but human players get the normal monarch "bonuses" (and pitfalls)?