Difficulty: Fair play?!?

[Rubin]

I would like to have fair play in my multiplayer games. An expert player and a novice player in the same multiplayer game won't find much enjoyment. Either too easy or too difficult. Is there a way to avoid this?

Editing the factions is possible, but I find this difficult --- because I don't know what aspects I should edit (trying to find a nice balance).

If I could play with different difficulty levels (Transcend, Librarian etc.) - that would be an easy way to achieve fairness. Is this possible?

I tried special "House Rules" where the expert player is limited to only 1 city, but this is NOT my idea of SMAC and SMACX. Building bases is fun! (Capturing bases can be fun too )

Any ideas?

[Lazerus]

Make the expert player play as the cult or miriam, typically somebody with low tech and a house rule that he cannot trade for techs. This means if he wants to keep up hes got to do alot of stealing which really gets the AI ticked off

[CEO Aaron]

You can specify different starting difficutly levels for each player.

[Rubin]

CEO Aaron: Sounds perfect, but how do I do it?!?

[Googlie]

Or have a CMN set it up for you - he can then seed the novice's land with some forest tiles, maybe an extra monolith or two and some other goody tiles, start with the HQ built and a couple of pops and 1/2 dozen crawlers, etc etc (maybe even an early SP or two - just depends how big a challenge you want)

Also the CMN could start the novice already pacted with a couple of the AI, with them being aggressive towards you - all sorts of things can be done to handicap you and give some advantages to the novice.

(I'd be happy to set up the game for you if you want - e-mail me at: googlie@canada.com if you want me to set something up)

Googlie

[Snowflake]

Being a god is addictive, isn't it GooglieGod?

[Googlie]

Originally posted by HongHu
Being a god is addictive, isn't it GooglieGod?

Naw - that's why I was approached for the ACDG - I've set up a few hundred of these by now, so it's second nature

GG

[Snowflake]

Dxxn server. Got double posts when you simply edited your original post.

And hope this one desn't make the third post.

[Snowflake]

Wow!

You are right. Second nature is one giant step ahead of addiction.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Googlie


Naw - that's why I was approached for the ACDG - I've set up a few hundred of these by now, so it's second nature

GG

And every one you set up is greatly appreciated-- I have benefited from Googlie taking the time to set up games on numerous occasions.

[Snowflake]

His crucial part in the ACDG is greatly appreciated by all of us as well. Sometimes you wonder how could one person do so many multitasks. Unless he is somebody who has a second nature of god.

[Googlie]

LOL

SMAC God = Googlie od'ing on smac?