Difficulty levels in the Campaign

[Warmskin]

I started over Inferno mission 3 too many times to remember (on Normal - yah, I'm not all that good). After beating my head against the wall, I switched to Easy (just to finish this mission and then I figured I'd go back to Normal for the rest of the Inferno campaign. I know the manual says you can't do this, but it must be wrong because I started off with tons of stuff and Galiaen (sp?) stayed in his town the whole time. I beat him easily. I went to change back to Normal but when I would quit to the main menu after playing or when just loading the game for another session, it would display that I was on Easy. Everything I tried to do (even going back to re-play the final battle of mission 3 on Normal) didn't seem to work. It kept re-setting back to Easy. I loaded the game up this morning and it displayed Normal. Why??? And is there a way to tell exactly what difficulty you're playing in (like starting resources or maybe a line in an ini file somewhere)? I just want to make sure I don't go thru the rest of this on Easy ('cause it's just too easy)
Thanks.

[ChinaBlue]

And is there a way to tell exactly what difficulty you're playing in

On the load or save screen you can see on the right a list of game type, map size and difficulty.

[Warmskin]

OK, I see that info, thanks. My problem now is that it keeps reverting back to Easy. I've loaded and checked earlier saves and they in fact are 'Normal' difficulty. Ever since I changed it to Easy I can't get it to change back to Normal. Any ideas other that just going all the way back to the Normal save and keep beating my head againt a wall? Galrian is just too tough. Thanks.

[Gaidal Cain]

If you're truly playing at "Easy", you're playing with the patch. Thus, you're basically starting with one Inferno vs 2 sylvan towns (the third just produces troops for the stationary Gilraen). Try to capture the southern sylvan town at day 1 week 2. Depending on your skill, either head for the second sylvan town and get there at the beginning of week 3 (requires you to defeat some 50 Earth Elementals, which is easiest doable with Mass slow and phantom forces.). After taking second sylvan, the rest should be a cakewalk- recruit sylvan troops, head for druids as soon as you can, spend rest of map maxing out Agrael before crushing Gilraen.

[Warmskin]

Thanks, but I have neither 'mass slow' or 'phantom forces'... I guess I'll try again without them. But, I still would like to know why I can't change the difficulty back to Normal. I changed it to Easy and restarted mission 3. Now, I change it to Normal, restart mission 4, play for a while, save and quit. And when I go back it tells me I'm on Easy. What Gives?

[Gaidal Cain]

I've honestly no idea what's going on with your difficulty level. Sounds very odd.

WIth regards to the map: without those spells, I'd suggest you capture the sylvan town at day 1 week 2, and then build it up. Don't bother with the inferno town, you can't build it high enough for it to matter. As soon as you can (say, week 4 or 5) go for those Earth Elementals and take them out, and be able to proceed to stomp on the AI.

[Rapier]

Could it be that you can't play the next map on normal because you didn't play the last one on normal?

You certaintly can't change the difficulty without a restart, which means that when you switched it to normal for the last battle, and then loaded the game (it loaded an "easy" mode save).

I'm only guessing here though, since I played on the same difficulty throughout.