Question about power and AI Difficulty level in custom games

[John Lenin]

I want to start a custom game on a high difficulty level with the AI extra-aggressive, but every time I go to set one up I see the AI difficulty level is apparently locked at Noble. I'm guessing that the difficulty level I choose is the one the whole game will be played at, but can anyone confirm this? Or is there some way to adjust the greyed-out AI difficulty levels that I'm missing here?

And the curse of the Civ4 Civilopedia strikes again - I can't find anywhere anything about what Power (that's the lightning-slash kind of power, not the military/cultural kind) does to my cities. I just built the Three Gorges Dam in my latest game (a game that has had me hypnotised at my keyboard most of the day), and I got power in all my cities but I have no idea what effect it has had, precisely.

These questions have probably been asked in various forms already, but the forum search function is still off, and I just had a good scout through the manual without joy.

I have so many questions and so little time. Dinner right now, then the siren call of Civ4 until the wee hours. Heh.

 

[mrjepson]

Power makes your factories work harder. I think 50% harder.

For changing difficulties the greyed out noble is the computers difficulty, you can change yours if you want but not theirs it would seem.

 

[eewallace]

I've played custom games with my civ set at three different levels (chieftan, warlord, noble) and I'm pretty sure that the AI civs were NOT all at noble level in every game. It seems more like the AI civs dumber and/or less agressive when my civ was at a lower setting. On the other hand, it could be that they were less aggressive because I was more powerful because I was developing so much faster on the easier levels...

 

[mrjepson]

Perhaps I'm not explaining myself correctly. The computer is based on your difficulty, not on an individual one of their own. You can't set one to be on cheiftian and one on diety to make a wek and a strong one on purpose. I'm not sure how this all works in a multiplayer game with computers as to what bonuses/negatives they recieve if the players are both on different settings.

 

[Sadan01]

I want to start a custom game on a high difficulty level with the AI extra-aggressive, but every time I go to set one up I see the AI difficulty level is apparently locked at Noble. I'm guessing that the difficulty level I choose is the one the whole game will be played at, but can anyone confirm this? Or is there some way to adjust the greyed-out AI difficulty levels that I'm missing here?

The A.I. will always be set at "Noble" however the difficulty you set for yourself either gives YOU bonuses or gives the AI bonuses. In fact, I think this would be more true: Even though it says that the A.I. plays at Noble difficulty, I dont think the A.I actually plays at a difficulty level per se. If it did, they would have to reprogram the A.I. for every difficulty level. Instead, much the same as Civ3, depending on the difficulty level YOU set for yourself determines what bonuses either you or the AI get. As it has been said before, Noble is the level where you and the AI are equal when it comes to starting units, build rate, research rate etc. Higher than that, the AI can do things quicker. Lower than that (i.e. Warlord, Settler etc), you get the bonuses to build quicker.

Ok, I'll stop repeating myself now and go back to Civ with a

 

[snepp]

In Civ3 there were certain things in the game where the AI was always considered to be on the "base" difficulty. Barbarians come to mind. In 3, if you set yourself to warlord you would have a larger bonus against barbs than the AI would, since the AI would always fight barbs as though on the regent difficulty. I believe the same holds true for Civ4, with noble being used as the base for certain aspects of the game.