Difficulty Levels

What effects do the various difficultly levels have?

Campaign games

The Campaign difficulty is set on the Game Options Menu (updating the "difficulty" setting in config) and has following effects:

Difficulty level	Enemies	Player (You)
Easy	20% Damage	20% Damage
Medium	No Effect
Hard	20% Damage	20% Damage

These effects only apply to Campaign mode.

Skirmish / Multiplayer games

In Skirmish and Multiplayer games, the difficulty for each AI (computer player) can be set independently via the Player Setup Panel.

Different AIs respond differently to the difficulty setting, for example:

Nexus AI will cheat more on higher difficulty levels, giving itself more power boosts and random research gains. On "Easy", however, it will not cheat.
Semperfi AI compltely ignores difficulty setting.
NullBot AI follows a non-specialised research path on "Easy" setting, compared to adaptive research path on harder levels.

AI's set to "Insane" difficulty gain additional benefits that are coded in to Warzone:

Their oil production is doubled
They lose fewer map-defined buildings in relation to the baseType (see Player Initialisation for full details).

Challenge games

In Challenge Games, the difficulty levels work the same as in Skirmish / Multiplayer games. The .ini file associated with the challenge defines the difficulty level of each AI player in the game.

Fast Play games

Not yet investigated – if you know, please leave a comment on this page.

Tutorial mode

Difficulty levels are not applicable in the tutorial.

Thanks to NoQ for providing this info in the forums!

difficulty – determine difficulty level applied to your script
playerData – determine difficulty level applied to other players
Difficulty level constants:
- EASY – Easy difficulty
- MEDIUM – Medium difficulty
- HARD – Hard difficulty
- INSANE – Insane difficulty (not applicable to Campaign mode)
Player Initialisation – applies base type setting differently for Insane AI players.
powerType – doubled for Insane AI players
Game Options Menu – allows Campaign difficulty to be set
- config – stores Campaign difficulty setting
Player Setup Panel – allows AI difficulty to be set in non-Campaign game modes