Flexible Difficulty?

[Mesix]

Last night I started a game using the Flexible Difficulty setting (not to be mistaken for the Increasing Difficulty Challenge setting which is something different). I started the game on Prince and expected it to slowly rise to Diety (or maybe fall if I get stuck in a rut) over the course of the game. I was unpleasantly surprised to find myself at Diety at about turn 120 just as I was founding the early religions.

How does this setting work? I understand that if I am near the top in score it will increase in difficulty and if I am near the bottom it will decrease. How often does it check?

As it played out last night it seemed that as soon as I reached the required score position, it increased very fast to Diety. I am assuming that the same would happen if I fall to the bottom the difficulty would drop back to Settler rather quickly. I think this setting would work better if it would let the player spend 50 turns or more at the new difficulty before increasing/decreasing again.

 

[Warhead5654]

Flexible, is this for BTS?

 

[Demus]

i recon it changes every 20/25 turns, depending on game speed obviously. 50 turns may be a bit to much, but an increase to around 40 on normal speed sounds decent

 

[WarKirby]

It increases by 1 every game period, I think. 75 turns on quick, 100 normal, etc..

 

[Mesix]

In my game I checked at about turn 80 and it still said Noble (I hadn't reached the top yet only having 2 cities). 40 turns later it said Diety!

 

[Emptiness]

I haven't tried this option yet, but what you are describing is much different that what I expected. The mouse-over text says that it increases the difficulty by one level if you are in the top third (of the score rankings, I assume) and decreases by one level if you are in the bottom third.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

it continues to increase/decrease if you are still in the top/bottom third of the scorelist though. I definitely agree that it tends to increase way too fast.

 

[Emptiness]

Ah so. That's a shame, at least imo. It would be nice if the option was restricted to the starting difficulty, or one step higher or lower. Then, if the Increasing Difficulty option was also enabled they could combine to behave like Flexible Difficulty does now. That would provide more options for shifting difficulty settings.