Very rarely will the Xconq players in a game all be at the same skill level. Sometimes this is OK, since weaker players really do learn more from their losses than their wins. However, when the goal is to have fun, or when the difference in abilities is extreme, you can balance things out in several different ways.
One simple approach is just to design an imbalanced scenario, document it as such, and let players choose the stronger and weaker sides as desired. In many cases this should be sufficient; for instance, accurate historical simulations.
The next most simple solution is to set up sides or side classes and fill random properties differently. Weaker players could choose a side with more technology or whose class allows more powerful units. This isn't very adjustable, since all the sides and their property values have to be predefined.
To enable the most precise match of player abilities, you can use the
initial-advantage
property of player objects. This property is
a relative value, defaulting to 1, and indicates how strong the initial
unit setup should be relative to the other players. For instance,
if a three-player game includes advantages of 2/3/7, then the second player
will have three units for each two of the first player while the third
player (the weakest) will have seven. The implementation of relative
advantages is up to game synthesis, so for example the make-countries
will adjust all the numbers of initial units to match the requested
advantages. Note that this affects only the initial setup, and only
certain synthesis methods.
Once a game has started, all sides are always on an equal footing.