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So after fiddling around and sampling a few factions for a few turns I think I'm going to do an actual campaign with the Romans. I was wondering what people's suggestions for difficulty level are. This is my first time through EB and I plan on doing historical expansion as much as possible...what do you think? I like a challenge but don't like tugging my hair out...
I decided to go with VH/VH. You WILL lose lots of battles.
I suggest you stick with the recommended difficulty, VH (campaign)/M (battles). Maybe VH/H at most.
Rome is real easy unless you put battle difficulty above medium or play with some seriously harsh iron-man rules. There's no danger of being destroyed at first because the Epirote army in southern Italy is small and weak and although you're at war with the Averni and Aediu to the north they'll never attack you until you conquer the rebel towns inbetween and share a border. The Aediu will also never attempt to conquer those towns between Mediolanum and Arretium that seperate the two of you, so you really cannot lose, and as soon as you take Tarentum and Rhegion the money flows like water through the Nile.
However, Rome is still in my opinion the most fun faction to play as.
Adversly, you could try Carthage. They have flexible troops, a secure location, and can get rich quick. I haven't conquered anything in my new campaign except one Sicilian city (it's 262bc) and I'm already making around 10k a turn. You just have to train half stack garrisons in spain and lilibeo, while building up your economy in africa with roads ports and markets. Not to mention the mines.
I suggest VH/M too, the roman starting position is very good, the army is quite easy to use and unless you use the BI.exe your homeland won't face any invasion.
All of that "easy" talk goes away really fast if you install BI though. The carthaginians seem to be constantly invading me and there has not been more than one turn where they have parked a legion or two in Corsica. They just will not leave Corsica alone.
Either way, adding BI makes the game much more difficult. The AI has a bit more of a human feel.
On the other hand, the AI expansion seems much more toned down when the campaign difficulty is toned down to H/M. It makes for a more realistic game later in that you don't have to face a super faction after 150BC that has taken over half of the map.
Ok, thanks for the advice! I don't have BI installed and I think I'll go with VH/M.
I'm playing as Rome now but my last campaign was as the Carthaginians on H/M. They were okay until I took southern Italy and found myself at war with Rome. My units didn't stand a chance against Roman units that cost about just as much as mine did.