MJW, I edited that to clean up your weird quoting of the wrong post there.
Yeah, I was meaning to come back to this thread. Settler difficulty gives you -50% cost to social policies, -66% to road maintenance cost, and -60% to all anger sources. The policy discount doesn't really get you ahead (-50% cost is nowhere near +50% more policies) but just keeps pace with the rest of the faster game. I'm sure no higher difficulty will beat it for finish time. I didn't get any worker from a CS, all the tributing was just money.
Yeah, I was meaning to come back to this thread. Settler difficulty gives you -50% cost to social policies, -66% to road maintenance cost, and -60% to all anger sources. The policy discount doesn't really get you ahead (-50% cost is nowhere near +50% more policies) but just keeps pace with the rest of the faster game. I'm sure no higher difficulty will beat it for finish time. I didn't get any worker from a CS, all the tributing was just money.