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
10% Power
Medium
No Effect
Hard
20% Damage
20% Damage
10% Power
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 Players 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 "Easy" difficulty get the following hard-coded penalties:
25% reduction in oil production (on Warzone 3.2 and above)
AI's set to "Insane" difficulty gain additional benefits that are hard-coded in to Warzone:
Their oil production is doubled (on Warzone 3.2 and above)
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.