Difficulty Levels

[Sirid]

I'm new to Aployton University, and I apologize if this has been asked already or explained somewhere else, but I was curious as to how difficulty levels are handled in the different courses. Are the 100 level courses Chieftain, the 200 level courses Warlord, and so on? Or is difficulty level up to the user?

Typically I've always played on Chieftain ever since I bought Civ 2 way back in 1996. My goal was always to roleplay somewhat and bully other civs around for my own amusement. Any forays into higher difficulty levels were just to test myself to see if I had what it takes (and by joining AU I hope to be able to handle the higher levels).

[nbarclay]

What we did with Civ 3, once we figured out how to do it, was set up AU courses as scenarios that people can play at any difficulty level they want to. We'll go the same route with Civ IV, assuming we don't run into insurmountable problems figuring out how to do it.

The course numbers have never really been intended to coincide with how hard the games are. Most of the transitions with Civ 3 were essentially arbitrary or because we were running out of course numbers. One, the change to 5xx, coincided with our starting using the Conquests expansion pack, and one, the use of 6xx numbers, was reserved specifically for multiplayer.

With Civ IV, we'll probably change as we run out of numbers or when expansion packs come out, and we probably need to set aside a block for multiplayer games. (Or at least that's my thinking on the issue; others may have other ideas.)