Overview
There are a number of player settings you can change on your map that modify how players spawn, appear, and interact with each other.
These settings can include aspects such as AI difficulty, player color, player teams, lobby player slots, and starting age. Many of these settings are important for building custom scenarios and campaign missions, but can also be used as unique modifiers in skirmish maps.
This guide covers the various settings you can set for players and what they do.
Accessing Player Settings
Each player has their own set of properties.
You can access these player settings by selecting the player under Players in the Scenario Tree.
Selecting a player here will open the Properties panel for that player containing a number of settings you can change.
When changing settings for multiple players, you must select each player and make changes individually.
Player Settings
The settings available in the Properties panel of a player allow you to control a number of key areas.
Refer to the descriptions below for what the various settings here do.
AI Difficulty
You can manually set the AI difficulty for each player by selecting the desired difficulty in the dropdown menu.
AI players set to Default allows players to choose the difficulty of an AI player, while any other setting locks the difficulty to that level.
Team Randomization
If the Do not Randomize option is checked, the team and starting location for that player will be prevented from being randomized.
If checked, this setting overwrites the traditional scenario random start locations.
This setting is off by default for normal skirmish and multiplayer matches, but when making a custom mission this box should always be checked.
Paint Scheme
This setting controls the color of the units, buildings, and banners of the player.
To change the color scheme of that player, press the "..." button beside this setting and select the desired color from the list.
You can choose from two sets of player colors, drawn from either the Campaign or game Defaults.
Race
This setting controls the civilization of player.
If not set to anything, the player will be able to choose their civilization in the game lobby.
If set to a specific civilization, it will lock that player into playing as that civilization. Note that you also need to check the Lock Race box to apply this change.
To change the civilization, press on the "..." button in the Race field and choose a civilization from the given list.
Starting Conditions
The Starting Conditions setting controls which Age the player or AI army starts at.
If not set to anything, the host of a multiplayer or skirmish game can set the starting age for all players in the lobby.
This is most often used for missions, where the starting age of the player plays an important mechanical, setting, gameplay, or story function.
To select a Starting Condition, press on the "..." button and select the Age you wish the player to start in.
Status
The Status setting controls the slot of the player in the lobby for either a human player or AI.
- Setting this to Open means this player can join the map/mission.
- Setting this to Close means this player cannot participate in the map/mission.
- Setting this to AI means that this player can only be set as an AI player.
Slot Flags
The Slot Flags checkboxes control a number of options for players in the game lobby.
Checking the box beside the setting will have the following effects:
- Lock AI Difficulty: Prevents the player from changing the difficulty of the AI and instead uses the difficulty you set in the AI Difficulty setting.
- Lock Paint Scheme: Prevents the player from changing their color and instead uses the color you set in the Paint Scheme setting.
- Lock Race: Players will not be able to select their Civilization before the match. This should be checked for custom missions.
- Lock Slot: This functionality is not available in this version of the Content Editor.
- Lock Status: Prevents the match host from being able to change the status of a player slot (open/closed/AI). This should be checked for custom missions.
- Lock Team: Prevents players from changing their teams. This should be checked for custom missions.