Difficulty of Playable Factions in RTW based on what I have seen (don't flame please)

This post is about approximate faction difficulty. Please note that this is only for playable factions. If you disagree, please don't use

caps or flames, but discuss nicely. Remember, this is all very likely to be wrong, as it is based in information, campaign screenshots (from

this I know map positions, size of armies, types of units, etc.)

It works like this. There are five different difficulty factors:

Campaign Difficulty (the difficulty of the faction in the campaign, including campaign battles)

Battle Difficulty (the difficulty of battles for this faction)

Beginner effectiveness (how effective this faction will probably be for beginners, based on how well rounded they are)

Inter effectiveness (ditto)

Expert effectiveness (ditto)

The House of Julii (roman faction, overall difficulty: EASY)
Campaign Difficulty: Easy
Battle Difficulty: Fairly Easy
Beginner effectiveness: Good
Inter effectiveness: So-So
Expert effect: Not good

House of Scipii (roman faction, overall difficulty: MODERATE)
Campaign difficulty: Moderate
Battle Difficulty: Fairly Easy
Beginner effectiveness: Fairly Good
Inter effectiveness: So-So
Expert effect: Fairly Good

House of Brutii (roman faction, overall difficulty: FAIRLY EASY)
Campaign Difficulty: Moderate
Battle Difficulty: Fairly easy
Beginner effectiveness: Good
Inter effectiveness: Good
Expert effect: So-So

Egypt (African faction, overall difficulty: Fairly Hard
Campaign Difficulty: Moderate
Battle Difficulty: Hard
Beginner effectiveness: Not Good
Inter effectiveness: Moderate
Expert effect: Fairly good

The Seleucid Empire (Eastern faction, overall difficulty: Easy)
Campaign Difficulty: Moderate
Battle Difficulty: Easy
Begginer effectiveness: Fairly good
Inter effectiveness: Good
Expert effectiveness: Fairly good

Carthage (African faction, overall difficulty: Fairly Hard)
Campaign Difficulty: Hard
Battle Difficulty: Fairly easy
Beginner Effectiveness: Bad
Inter Effectiveness: Not good
Expert effectiveness: Fairly good

Parthia (Eastern faction, overall difficulty: Hard)
Campaign Difficulty: Fairly Hard
Battle Difficulty: Hard
Beginner Effectiveness: Terribble
Inter Effectiveness: Moderate
Expert effectiveness: Brilliant

Gaul (Barbarian Faction, overall difficulty: Hard)
Campaign Difficulty: Very Hard
Battle Difficulty: Fairly Hard
Beginner Effectiveness: Bad
Inter Effectiveness: Not Good
Expert effectiveness: Fairly Good

Germania (Barbarian faction, overall difficulty: Moderate)
Campaign Difficulty: Moderate
Battle Difficulty: Fairly Hard
Beginner Effectiveness: Not Good
Inter Effectiveness: Moderate
Expert effectiveness: Fairly good

Britannia (Barbarian faction, overall difficulty: Moderate)
Campaign Difficulty: Fairly Easy
Battle Difficulty: Moderate
Beginner Effectiveness: So-So
Inter Effectiveness: So-So
Expert effectiveness: Not bad

The Greek Cities (Eastern faction, overall difficulty: Fairly Easy
Campaign Difficulty: Fairly Easy
Battle Difficulty: Fairly Easy
Beginner Effectiveness: Quite good
Inter Effectiveness: Moderate
Expert effectiveness: So-So

Nice post. I hope that it can survive just long enough to see how accurate the predictions are.

I was under the impression that you could change some of these settings to your desire, like Campaign difficulty (similar to the MI setting) and Battle difficulty (the tricks of the AI in battles). I thought I read something like that in one of the previews as well...

Just curios, how many screenshots did it take you to figure this out?

Quote:

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Beginner effectiveness (how effective this faction will probably be for beginners, based on how well rounded they are)

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Have you taken into account that the non-roman factions are locked until you win with a roman faction? You cant play them as a true 'beginner'.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SpencerH

Have you taken into account that the non-roman factions are locked until you win with a roman faction? You cant play them as a true 'beginner'.

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Yes, I have. But I doubt that the simple task of becoming the emperor will be so hard, and I think that it would be much, much easier to win than on Medieval total war, (even if you play as the byzantines on the early period)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by hotingzilla

Just curios, how many screenshots did it take you to figure this out?

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I think I've seen just about every screenshot of RTW, and if I haven't could you post links to some more?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Soulflame

I was under the impression that you could change some of these settings to your desire, like Campaign difficulty (similar to the MI setting) and Battle difficulty (the tricks of the AI in battles). I thought I read something like that in one of the previews as well...

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Yep, there are two different difficulty settings that you can set at the start of a campaign: campaign difficulty and battle difficulty. Which is a nice idea I think. ~:)

Ah yes, but different difficulty settings do not mean the world at all.
Playing the Polish/Late on easy wasn't nearly as easy as Hungarians/Late on moderate. See what I mean?

Absolutely, you're talking relative difference in difficulty between factions.

I was just clearing up Soulflame's query. :)

Is it true that almost half the total factions will not be playable? That makes me mad. In mtw, all the factions except the pope and khan were playable. If the game had forced you to be the english, french, and the like only, I wouldn't have really enjoyed it all that mcuh. Playing as the Aragonese, Danish, Sicilians and other "weak" powers and making them rule the world was half the fun.

Basically I was trying to point out that even these difficulty ratings (at least the battle and campaign difficulty) can be adjusted as well if you want. Which I think gives the idea that almost everything is playable and can be fun if you want it to be. Even the seemingly hard to play Gauls can be made easy enough for beginners to enjoy it.
So even though there are differences, these aren't set in stone.