It's not you, it's the weird way that difficulty conditions work.

ES assumed that designers will give the player more bonuses (extra units, extra upgrades etc.) on easier settings. The harder the level, the fewer of those bonus triggers get activated. Maybe ES did not foresee that designers might have the idea of making enemies stronger on harder difficulty levels.

The Problem: The chosen difficulty level in triggers does not only get activated if the player plays in exactly that same difficulty level. It also gets activated if the player plays in an easier mode.

I hope I'm doing this the right way round, otherwise I'll go back and edit it later:

On Hardest: Only Hardest should go off.
On Hard: Hard and Hardest get activated.
On Moderate: Moderate, Hard, Hardest get activated.
On Easy: Easy, Moderate, Hard, Hardest get activated.
On Easiest: Fireworks! Trigger chaos! Message chit-chat! (All five difficulties get discovered at once.)

I hope ES won't apply this logic to their editor in AoM...

Ingo

Hey ElfTheHunter,

I had a similar situation, and I had to make each trigger set, deactivate the others. Create a additional one to give some time for the others to deactivate. I did something like this below:

TRIGGER 0
no objective display
yes starting on
no looping

Condition 0- Difficulty Level easiest
effect 0- activate trigger 1
effect 1- deactivate trigger x (other difficulty triggers)

TRIGGER 1
no objective display
yes starting off
no looping

Condition 0- Difficulty Level easiest
Condition 1- Timer [3]
effect 0- remove these guys
effect 0- place this guy and so on

NOTE: set the second set to off for all the different levels. The timer is just a precaution to give the others time to deactivate.

I couldn't understand it either...as to why it wouldn't just work that way with the conditions set like you have.

Ingo:
That explains it...I think it works the other way though...I'll check and get back.

[This message has been edited by AnastasiaKafka (edited 03-28-2002 @ 02:37 AM).]

Ahh man... Now if only I had come here sunday I would have my scenario done Oh well...

thx Ingo and Anastasia!

Say... when I load up my custom cpx files, easy and easiest are not available as difficulty levels.

Anyone got an idea what's up with that?

Hi Gordon,

There are only three difficulty levels in the Conquerors expansion pack: Standard (= Easy), Moderate and Hard. In the original Age of Kings, there were five difficulty levels.

Ingo

Thanks, Ingo!

btw -- more feedback on Ulio soon!

Actually what Ingo said only stands for campaigns... If you are playing a scenario you can select Easiest,Standard,Moderate,Hard and Harder...

What is missing in the AoK editor is the ability to toggle between "less-than", "equal-than", "more-than", not only for difficulty levels, but also for "accumulate atribute", "objects in zone", etc.

Aren't you tired of making three or more triggers which deactivate one another just to get something as simple as "less objects in zone"? Well, I am indeed

...and having to write each trigger from scratch instead of just hitting a button that says "Duplicate Trigger"?

Which is why the Empire Earth editor is so awesome. Hopefully, the AOM editor will incorporate many of these features...

The difficulty setting can be handled very easily using AI - simply use an AI to detect the difficulty level and set a different signal depending on the difficulty. Instead of your triggers checking the difficulty settings, check the ai signals instead.

Gordon:

Great! Looking forward to it. And in case you need any playtesters in the near future...

Elfthehunter:

You're right about the difference between scenarios/random maps and campaigns - I completely forgot about that, because I've only played campaigns for ages. Thanks for putting me straight.

I just checked the difficulty conditions in my first post, and they were in the correct order. *Phew*

Btw, if you want exact conditions, there is a way: The Ai and the triggers need to work together for that. Feel free to copy and paste this stuff into your Ai if you need it. In the Ai, you can write those lines:

(defrule
(difficulty == easy) ; IF the difficulty is easy (=standard)
=>
(set-signal 1) ; THEN send signal no 1 to the triggers
(disable-self)
)

(defrule
(difficulty == moderate)
=>
(set-signal 2)
(disable-self)
)

(defrule
(difficulty == hard)
=>
(set-signal 3)
(disable-self)
)

Whenever one of the three difficulty levels gets chosen, the Ai only detects that difficulty level, and sends a respective signal to the triggers. The condition in the triggers is "Ai signal" instead of "difficulty level".

The trigger that goes off if it detects Ai signal 1 is for "standard" settings.
The trigger that goes off if it detects Ai signal 2 is for "moderate", and the third one for "hard".

Hope this helps.

Ingo

[This message has been edited by Ingo van Thiel (edited 03-28-2002 @ 02:48 PM).]

Yeah, that really makes it easier. Thanks Ingo.

Ingo:

OK...I see you checked too. I couldn't remember what I was doing when I came across that problem, but thanks again for explaining it all.

Thank you Ingo, that helps a bunch