Does changing difficulty settings in multiplayer do anything?

[Gort]

I've been playing a bunch of multiplayer over LAN with my friends, and can't notice any difference when I set my difficulty to different settings. Is there one? Is there not meant to be one?

 

[Drawmeus]

I don't know the answer, but I do know how you can check.

There's a player happiness bonus based on difficulty level. Try starting a game on Settler and another on Deity, and then look at your "From Difficulty" happiness (I don't remember the exact text) for each in the Happiness tooltip. If they're the same, difficulty does nothing.

 

[Gort]

Edit:

I just looked now. I always get 9 happiness from difficulty. But the weird thing is, I still get 9 happiness from difficulty no matter my difficulty setting, even in single-player! I don't think it was ever implemented for the player in multiplayer or single.