Difficulty level in drop in matches.

I'm starting a new campaign game in NTW and for the first time I'm going to allow online players to drop into my battles I know during the campaign that high difficulty settings give the AI bonuses during battles which I am happy with since the AI is useless. However I'm not so keen for live opponents to get the same stat bonuses as the AI.

Does anyone know if battle difficulty settings has any effect on these sort of drop in battles?

Thanks.

By what I have heard, the drop in enemies still have all the bonuses granted to them by the AI difficulty level.