Difficulty settings?

[Paul59]

Can I ask what exactly does increasing the Difficulty setting change?

I know the effect is to make the AI a more difficult opponent, but how is that achieved?

Does it increase the casualties from AI fire and melee, and decrease the casualties caused by the players units? I assume that it does not make the AI smarter.

Many thanks for a great game!

[rbodleyscott]

Can I ask what exactly does increasing the Difficulty setting change?

I know the effect is to make the AI a more difficult opponent, but how is that achieved?

Does it increase the casualties from AI fire and melee, and decrease the casualties caused by the players units? I assume that it does not make the AI smarter.

It does none of the above, it just alters the balance of forces at setup.

For example, in open battle skirmishes, the AI gets 5% more points worth of troops on Colonel level, 18% on Sergeant-Major-General and 34% at Lieutenant-General level. Captain level is the same as Colonel level but tweaks troop quality slightly in favour of the player, and Captain-General level is the same as Lieutenant-General level but tweaks troop quality slightly in favour of the AI.

Some of the historical scenarios use alternative methods of creating the right level of force disparity for each difficulty level - e.g. Lutter where the forces don't change, but the degree of demoralisation of the Danish army depends on the difficulty level.

Apart from the initial availability of forces, the AI plays to exactly the same rules as the player, and is not given any advantage whatsoever in any of the rules mechanisms.

We took the view that having made an effective AI we did not want to nobble it at the lower difficulty settings. Likewise we wanted both sides to be playing to the same rules, so that two equal units would fight equally effectively whether they belong to the player or AI.

So that left manipulating the size of the forces available. This seemed the most realistic option, as historically battles were seldom if ever fought by equal-points armies.

[Paul59]

Many thanks for the quick reply Richard, that is just the information that I required. I completely agree with your rationale. I was worried that unit effectiveness might be affected at higher levels, I am sure I have played games in the past that did that, maybe it was the old John Tiller games?