Brief question / problem regarding AI settings

from GalCiv2 Forums
I am a little bit confused, sorry:

In the manual, page 14, one can read:

"These settings will override the individual settings for each opponent’s Intelligence."
By "these settings", the manual means the difficulty setting at the bottom of the screen.

Now I wanted to play against 5 AIs. Three I set to "normal" intelligence, one to "bright", and one to "intelligent".
I noticed that when I set the first to "bright", the global AI setting below ("difficulty setting") went from "normal" to "challenging". When I then set a final AI to "intelligent", the difficulty setting went from challenging to "tough".

This confuses me, because of the clause in the manual from page 14 I quoted above. It seems because of that clause that when I set one AI to "intelligent", the difficulty goes up two notches, and this must "override individual settings for each opponent’s Intelligence."

But if that is the case, then why select individual Intelligence anyhow -- because if by doing so and deviating just once on any individual's setting, I thereby raise the grade (by "overriding") for all others?

So my question is: How does this work EXACTLY?

thank you very much
4,490 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Please, anyone?
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I've wondered the same thing. Someone replied and said that the overall difficulty overrides the individual difficulties, but your observation contradicts this. I have absolutely no idea. A blind guess - maybe setting the overall difficulty yourself overrides individual settings, but when the overall setting autoadjusts, nothing actually happens...
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thank you, Cherry.
I would really, really like to hear a word from someone who has reason to believe that s/he knows what is going on. I don't get it. "Overriding" is the key word here, I think. Thank you.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
My understanding is it goes a little something like this:

The master difficulty label (challenging, tough, crippling, etc) reflects the combined level of all your opponents. If you pick all Intelligent, you get Tough, for instance. If you pick one fool and two genius, that might also work out to be Tough; I'm not really sure, but it's the combination that determines the overall difficulty.

Now, if you toggle the master difficulty (switching challenging up to tough), it changes the level of your opponents to make that overall difficulty happen. That is, if you bump up the master difficulty two notches, the game has to bump up your opponents correspondingly. That's where the "overriding" happens.

If all you do is switch around your opponent's levels manually, one at a time, the master difficulty will change to reflect that, but in changing, it won't override any of your settings.

Did that make sense?
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
What you say makes sense.

However.... I just did a tiny bit of testing.
9 opponents, all set to "fool" AI. All I have to do is change ONE of these 9 opponents AI up one notch to boost the global diificulty setting up one notch. All 8 other AIs were left to "fool", and I was able to crank up the difficulty to "masochistic" by having simply one AI set to "incredible".
EDIT: by changing other individual AI settings I do not change the global difficulty; that is, the difficulty setting at the bottom does not change from "masochistic" if I boost the other 8 AIs from "fool" to "incredible"; changing the first one was the only factor.

What you say thus makes sense if it weren't for the explicit mentioning of the "override" on page 14 of the manual.

Boy, would I like to see this matter cleared up or explained by someone, anyone, who knows the inner workings of this game.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Does this mean that no-one cares or that no-one knows?
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I can't believe it -- anyone???
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
How.... sad.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I can see that as an exploit on metaverse play, and I'm sure it will be fixed soon.