What is... the drought handicap?

[Herr Ping]

I played my first hard game and after the first 24-day-drought hits me I was searching of the exact parameters for hard play (and especially the length of droughts, and it was a surprinsingly 15-30 days each, so the weakest hard drought is much harder than the hardest normal play drought!
Then I was noticing this "handicap of drought", which is on hard game at the same value (20%) as on easy game, while in the normal play it's 38%. But, what does this mean? Are the beavers in the drought less effective? Where I can I see this?

[Alcator]

The game rolls a "dice" to decide how long the drought should be - this is from the range indicated in the "Drought duration" fields. So, for Normal, where the range is 5-9, it rolls a random value from 5 - 9 days.

It then takes the percentage you are asking about of that value, and rounds it down to the nearest whole number.
So, if you are lucky on Normal and the first drought rolls a 5, the first drought will be only 2 days; if you are unlucky and roll a 9, it will be 3 days.

If I'm not mistaken, the game automatically increases this percentage for subsequent droughts, until it reaches 100% after the specified number of cycles.

Drought is a period when water sources are not producing any water.

[Herr Ping]

Ah... so, it's indead handicap for the drought. Makes sense. Thanks!

[jonnin]

right, and its just so you don't get slammed with like a 29 day drought on cycle 2 on the hard default difficulty.

[Puppy Cat Underfoot]

Sometimes the drought length decreases if you've been playing long enough.