In my current game on a large galaxy, on (I THINK) normal difficulty, I'm completely getting my butt whupped. I've beaten it on normal difficulty before and I did really well in the 'colonization' phase, so I just don't get it. What I noticed was during the game setup, whenever I'd add another race it'd change the difficulty to 'Masochistic'. I'm pretty sure I switched it back to normal, but I can't figure out how to check and I don't want to lose my time-investment in the game thus far.
So, is there any way to check the current game's difficulty?
Also, is there a way to check what the current turn is? It feels like it's really early in the game, I've only researched about 12 technologies, but every other AI empire has =craploads= of tech; Harpoon missiles for instance, as well as a broad array of other technology. An insult to injury, they won't trade with me, even though I have Advanced Diplomacy and nobody else does; it's the only tech I have that nobody else has actually -- I don't see any messages about having weak diplomacy skill when I try to trade, so that's not it.
I have complained about this before but it wasn't this insane. My last game on normal difficulty, where I did eventually win, there was massive amounts of 'open door' tech sharing between all the AI races, whilst I was offered nothing but crap for my best technology. But it wasn't to this degree. Even late in the game they weren't all giving eachother Harpoon missiles; as they are now, very early in the game.
I'm starting to wonder if despite that I fixed it, it's actually playing on Masochistic difficulty anyway. I understand that the AI would cheat on that difficulty, that is to be expected. But if this is Normal difficulty, my copy of the game must be broken or something. Either that, or maybe the alien empires are all trading planets in exchange for all the other empire's technology, kind of in a circle, and thus they're getting all the techs. I =could= actually do that, I could give Russum IV (Class 17) for almost all the massively advanced techs that everybody else has. But if I'm on an impossible difficulty level then I don't want to bother with one more turn in this present game.
