Difficulty Trigger

A Difficulty trigger fires at the beginning of a scenario if the given difficulty was chosen on the Ascendancy Wars or Campaign screen.

Arguments

• Difficulty - The given difficulty (0 for Much Easier, up to 4 for Much Harder)

Limitations

Difficulty triggers will only ever fire once, right at game start.

Difficulty triggers do not "include" lower difficulties. If you want X to happen on Normal, Easy, or Much Easier, you need to explicitly call it from each difficulty trigger.

Common Usage

• Setting the AI to different levels is an extremely quick and easy way to adjust difficulty
• Using the difficulty triggers in OtherTrigger and NotOtherTrigger arguments in other triggers can be occasionally useful

Examples

 <Trigger Name="Difficulty0" Type="Difficulty" Difficulty="0" >
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="1" Difficulty="Easy" />
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="2" Difficulty="Easy" />
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="3" Difficulty="Novice" />
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="4" Difficulty="Novice" />
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="5" Difficulty="Novice" />
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="6" Difficulty="Novice" />
   <ActivateTrigger Target="tEasierDefenses" />
   <ActivateTrigger Target="tEasyDefenses" />
 </Trigger>

 <Trigger Name="Difficulty1" Type="Difficulty" Difficulty="1" >
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="1" Difficulty="Intermediate" />
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="2" Difficulty="Intermediate" />
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="3" Difficulty="Easy" />
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="4" Difficulty="Easy" />
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="5" Difficulty="Easy" />
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="6" Difficulty="Easy" />
   <ActivateTrigger Target="tEasyDefenses" />
 </Trigger>

 <Trigger Name="Difficulty2" Type="Difficulty" Difficulty="2" >
   <ActivateTrigger Target="tEasyDefenses" />
 </Trigger>

 <Trigger Name="Difficulty3" Type="Difficulty" Difficulty="3" >
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="1" Difficulty="Challenging" />
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="2" Difficulty="Challenging" />
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="3" Difficulty="Normal" />
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="4" Difficulty="Normal" />
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="5" Difficulty="Normal" />
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="6" Difficulty="Normal" />
   <ActivateTrigger Target="tEasyDefenses" />
 </Trigger>

 <Trigger Name="Difficulty4" Type="Difficulty" Difficulty="4" >
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="1" Difficulty="Tough" />
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="2" Difficulty="Tough" />
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="3" Difficulty="Normal" />
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="4" Difficulty="Normal" />
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="5" Difficulty="Normal" />
   <ChangeAIDifficulty Player="6" Difficulty="Normal" />
   <ActivateTrigger Target="tEasyDefenses" />
 </Trigger>

These set various AI difficulties as well as firing additional triggers to spawn the player extra defenses at the start of the game on easier difficulties.

Amusingly, everything uses the "tEasyDefenses" trigger because during balancing it was near impossible to survive without them no matter what.