Multiple Difficulty Levels bug - Multiplayer problem.

[Sankis]

I apologize if this is the wrong forum, but recently a large PBEM I am involved in encountered this problem. It seems that some factions are on transcend and some are on librarian. We're on 40+ turns in the game after about 2 weeks, and since we've had to restart before it would be a shame if we had to do so again.

So i'm wondering: Is there any way to fix this problem without restarting the game? Is there anything someone could do in the scenario editor to fix this?

[Commy]

I don't know for sure, but what is probably the problem is that the alpha.ini has a different default difficulty level for each player, so the difficulty level for them playing is probably offset. I don't know if this is right, and I don't know how to fix your problem, but I can tell you it is a good idea to make sure everything is okay before actually playing the game, so have all the players make sure they are running just fine their first turn.

[Enigma_Nova]

Scenario: Fix current difficulty
Set it to that under scenario rules.

[Flubber]

There is an ongoing problem with difficulty levels in scenarios. .. If I understand googlie correctly, it is not as simple as simply setting it once. I know he has to check it again before finishign a scenario as it does not always stay as it was originaly set.

I don't know if there is a fix for this for a game in progress but I am suprised that no one noticed before you were 40 years in. Both drone control issues on growing to size 2 and the cost of SE changes are very visible reminders of the level you are on . . .

[Sankis]

So since we cannot fix it, we will most likely doing another game. Was it because we were running a scenario with custom rules, or just bad luck?

[Commy]

There might not actually be any problem at all. Certain SE choices don't allow police units to be used. Normally under Transcend, every citizen after the first is a drone, and on Librarian, the same thing after the second. So if one player is doing, say, free market, then it will be after the first citizen you'll run into drones, but another player not doing free market may look like he's on Librarian, because the police unit makes every citizen a drone after the second, not the first. Of course, that's assuming that this is your only problem. Probably the hardest thing in scenarios is seting things up like difficulty levels and rainfall and rockiness and stuff, because the game changes the defaults and gets all screwed up...

[Googlie]

It manifests itself in the costs to change SE choices. if the flag isn't checked, then only the first player in the PBEM rotation plays at that level - everyone else defaults to the Librarian level

And if the flag has been checked, then a faction gets eliminated by the CMN (Scenario PBEM creator) the flag gets anulled, so the CMN needs to go back to that menu item and recheck the flag.

here's the screen I'm talking about:

[Commy]

Although, if you ever play against your friends, make sure not to tell them this so that you might get an edge over them in MP...

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Commy
Normally under Transcend, every citizen after the first is a drone, and on Librarian, the same thing after the second. So if one player is doing, say, free market, then it will be after the first citizen you'll run into drones, but another player not doing free market may look like he's on Librarian, because the police unit makes every citizen a drone after the second, not the first.

Its still easy to check-- Simply have your policing unit step one tile outside the base to see the situation. Any size 2 at transcend will show the second citizen as a drone ( unless you are the Free Drones) regardless of SE settings. After you check, remeber to move your police back into the base to avoid the riot