Difficulty settings

[Denixen]

So excited to play this mod however I do have one question. Which is the most appropriate difficulty settings? I remember in EB 1 it was recommended to play on Very Hard/ Very Hard because the AI simply sucked and would behave oddly otherwise. How does this apply to EB 2? I can't remember reading anything about it and it would be great to now from the start for the best experience.

Thanks for any answers in advance!

[I_damian]

Actually I think the recommended settings for EB2 were VH/M. Personally though I always played on H/M or even M/M. I played on M/M because in VH campaign difficulty the AI would spam you all day long with full stacks. I remember one Romani campaign where I fought literally 16 full stacks of Sweboz in one turn alone, then the next turn they had another 10 or so massing on my border. This was the point where I quit playing on VH and switched to M, except I imposed strict rules on myself, such as limiting my armies to 11 units only (a general and 10 fighting units) and stuff like that.

I'd say it's the same in EB2. AI will spam the hell out of you if you play on VH campaign. Start with H/M and see how you like it. I can assure you though that even on M battle difficulty the battles are still quite difficult. The AI is much better than in Rome 1/EB1.

[V.T. Marvin]

I would certainly recommend to use "medium" battles, but for campaign it might be better to use very hard so that the AI plays more aggressively and uses merceneries etc. Don't worry about stack spam - recruitment pools are NOT inexhaustible even for the AI and it seems generally much more reasonable and less treacherous than it used to be in RTW/EB1.

[Kull]

M/M is good for a slow roleplaying game. Lots of diplomacy options and you should have time to....take your time. VH is a little more traditional approach, but especially it's good for dangerous rebels.

[Constantius III]

VH is a little more traditional approach, but especially it's good for dangerous rebels.

I've seen quite the few dangerous rebels already in an M game; only 16 turns in and Gandhara has already lost Taksashila to the Eleutheroi.

[Denixen]

I see, after having played 11 turns as Rome I have had a very easy time fighting the enemy, Epeiros barely gave a challenge and haven't seen any rebels and my treasury is never short on money despite heavy recruitment, I might try M/H with Rome just to see if there is a difference, perhaps even H/H. Anyway, I wanted to see if there were some kind of established informal rule about it, but that doesn't seem to be the case, I guess it's trial and error.

[TylerX5]

In RTW upping the battle difficulty just added morale bonuses to the AI's troops, that's it. The AI wasn't smarter, just given a stats boost unattainable by the player. Frankly I always saw this as dumb, and just a lame way to make a game 'feel' harder without much work on the Developer's part.


I'm not 100% it works the same way in M2TW though.

[Cybvep]

It's standard practice for strategy games. It isn't a good idea to create several AI types of varying difficulty levels. That would only mean more bugs and more playtesting needed. Moreover, the AI wouldn't magically become better, because the devs always make the AI as good as they can (I know that TW's AI is not really good, but it's the best the devs could come up with, given their resources, priorities etc.). In practice, the AI would actually become DUMBER on lower difficulty levels and be just as good/bad at the highest difficulty level as it currently is. The idea doesn't seem so attractive now, eh?
IMO it's a classic example of an idea that sounds good on paper, but that's basically it. If you don't want the AI to get any bonuses, play on Medium difficulty level. Simple as that.

[bovi]

Galactic Civilizations II did that. If you played on the easier levels, their diplomats would say something in the vein of "I see what you're doing, building up fleets just next to all our planets and getting ready to smash us. But we're going to stupidly ignore that because you chose an easy difficulty.". The middle level was the AI as good as it got though, and the levels above that were the usual resource bonuses for the AI factions.

[Ludens]

In RTW upping the battle difficulty just added morale bonuses to the AI's troops, that's it. The AI wasn't smarter, just given a stats boost unattainable by the player.

It's true that the R:TW A.I. didn't get smarter, but there were bonuses besides morale. At H A.I. units received +4 attack, at VH it was +7 attack.

It isn't a good idea to create several AI types of varying difficulty levels. That would only mean more bugs and more playtesting needed. Moreover, the AI wouldn't magically become better, because the devs always make the AI as good as they can (I know that TW's AI is not really good, but it's the best the devs could come up with, given their resources, priorities etc.). In practice, the AI would actually become DUMBER on lower difficulty levels and be just as good/bad at the highest difficulty level as it currently is. The idea doesn't seem so attractive now, eh?

Also, the first two TW games did just that. At higher difficulty levels, the battle A.I. of S:TW and M:TW would notice it when substantial parts of your army didn't show up on the battlemap, and respond by putting units on the flank to guard against ambushes. (Note that those games also used stat boosts to make the A.I. more competitive. That said, in my experience the stat boosts were fairly subtle: just enough to tip the balance in the A.I.'s favour if all other things were equal.)

You have point about A.I. design, though. It's one of the more arcane parts of game design, so it's best to develop just one A.I. Also, reducing the challenge level by handicapping the A.I. only works if the base A.I. is pretty good to begin with. For all I know, CA added these features to R:TW as well; but the A.I. is just too inept for it to have a noticeable effect. Finally, good A.I. requires a slower type of game. Not just because it demands more CPU cycles, but also because it needs a moment to reassess and respond. Even if we could somehow transplant the M:TW A.I. to R:TW, it just wouldn't be able to keep up with the faster pace of the battles.

[Vermin]

I understood the M2TW battle difficulty increased the "realism" of the fatigue effects on troops - although whether that just affected the player's troops I can't recall.

[Cybvep]

Galactic Civilizations II did that. If you played on the easier levels, their diplomats would say something in the vein of "I see what you're doing, building up fleets just next to all our planets and getting ready to smash us. But we're going to stupidly ignore that because you chose an easy difficulty.". The middle level was the AI as good as it got though, and the levels above that were the usual resource bonuses for the AI factions.

Yes, you could also create a custom AI and either increase its "intelligence" or give it bonuses/penalties to resources. However, GalCiv2 was designed with the AI in mind. No feature that the AI couldn't handle was implemented (that's why there are no tactical battles, for example). TW games, esp. the recent ones, are more about the flash, unfortunately.
And again, it's about making the AI dumber, not smarter, because as you said, once you reached the "default" AI level, the next ones were just AI bonuses. TW's AI is dumb enough.