Today I needed a break from my gigantic map MV game, so I decided to finally check out the campaign, having never even clicked the button before. I'm sure most people have at least looked at it, so I won't belabor you with long descriptions, but imnsho, it's a pretty cool feature.

With the smaller map sizes, each mission is basically a single-sitting game, even for someone who only gets to play after the kids are in bed for the night. The storyline is engaging enough and the different starting situations make it a nice alternative from the main game. Thank you yet again, SD, for making GCII playable in so many different ways.

There is one minor thing that happened with the UI between missions. It's the kind of thing that when I used to do tech support, I probably would have made a mental note that the problem was between the keyboard and the chair (Code: PBKC); it's not a bug at all, just something that is really easy to overlook.

As you start each mission, you have the opportunity to change your racial ability settings, political party, etc. At the very bottom of one of the screens, there is a selector for difficulty level.

Starting the first one, I looked at everything closely and made sure I had it set to Crippling. Starting the second mission, I didn't look so closely. I played to the end and realized that the Drengin had never created a warship with weapons, never even tried to colonize at the beginning. It was kind of eerie, I was waiting for the Dread Lords to swoop in or something.

No, like a fool, I had left the difficulty slider alone. It had reverted to Normal. If you play the campaign, watch out for that selector; and enjoy doing something different.

Edit: I never got to the request part initially - devs, if there's time for it while developing the expansion, it would be nice if the difficulty level would remain the same between missions. For unobservant folk like me, at least...