Just now trying to learn this game, went through the tutorials and now want to set up an 'easy' level game to get a feel for it and how it all fits together. In the options screen, next to each of the AI empires are buttons for difficulty settings for each AI empire separately. The manual says: "The last button determines the difficulty of the A.I. player, ranging from Easy to Vicious". If I set an AI empire at 'easy' does that mean it is easier for the AI player and thus harder for me (the opposite of what I want), or does it make it easier for me? The manual doesn't clarify this. Thanks.
Easy is the easiest AI in terms of difficulty. It even gets a resource penalty to help you out.
Also on trinity, you can play a game with just yourself and no AI players. In this case you might want to leave the pirates on so you get a little combat experience at regular intervals (make sure you game is fully updated though, they were kind of hard in Diplomacy 1.0). If you do want to do an easy AI game, you should probably turn pirates off at first.
