Difficulty levels - what do they do? what do you recommend?

I play VH/VH. I can confirm that the AI is much stricter about what it chooses to accept. Often youll have to give it an offer verging on generous for it to actually accept. Also be aware that unless you are considerably more powerful than an AI faction, it wont want anything to do with you so it can be very difficult to gain alliances until youre one of the top factions and even then the other top factions wont even consider it.

Also on VH/VH the AI is very quick to attack. You get almost no peace which is very frustrating if you want to try and focus on other aspects of your empire (like constructing those really expensive buildings youve always wanted but never had the extra cash for or trying to gain more than one or two crosses out of ten with the pope). The really annoying part though is that it leaves no room for unusual campaign strategies (like sending an army or two across the map to start up mini-empires where they land) because you have to always be ready for war on your borders which will generally come to you within ten turns regardless of how large your border armies are or how weak the aggressor is. Really the vast majority of my expansion has been retaliatory against factions that attacked me first. Only once or twice have i actually declared war on a faction of my own initiative.

The pope is also very harsh. I find it very difficult to have any real standing with the pope because everyone else just keeps attacking me and i keep losing standing because of it. Ive tried dumping my income into churches and priests (when i get a breather from constant war) but i find that i may only gain two or three crosses max out of it at which point another faction attacks me and i lose it all again.

As for battles, i find them very enjoyable. I can confirm that the AI doesnt get any obviously noticeable advantages. EVerything seems completely fair. I can also say that i take alot more casualties than i did in RTW. Gone are the days when i could get heroic victories time after time. I think ive only gotten one heroic victory so far. I was defending a settlement and at the end of the battle i was left with less than 10 men. In fact it seems that i take so many casualties that i now generally try to avoid battles that can be avoided where i dont have a considerable advantage because i dont want to spend the time and money on rebuilding my heavily depleted army. Especially when im seiging a settlement if the AI has more than a half stack of decent troops ill generally just wait it out because trying to replace all the casualties i take in the battle while continuing the offensive would be a logistical nightmare. Not to mention i really dont have the cash to rapidly replace casualties on a constant basis.

Thats the other major difference im finding. I dont have the droves of money that i had in Rome. In RTW once my empire was became medium sized i would be getting more money than i would know what to do with. Not so anymore. In fact i find myself desperate for more cash consistently every turn. I try every turn to begin construction of a building in every settlement that has an empty queue. In Rome i met this goal very easily but now i dont have nearly enough cash for that. Instead im trying to make the decision of blowing my entire income on a single really expensive building or spread it out a bit more on two or three other settlements (2 or 3 other settlements out of the 7 or 8 that have an empty build queue). Every turn i keep thinking that if i can take a few more settlements then the extra income will break me through my cash constraints and reach that position like in Rome where i didnt have to worry about money anymore but every time i expand i find my armies and other expenses expanding just as much and keep me in my relative poverty. I have to say that i really hate it but for however much i hate not having enough cash i wouldnt want the game to be any other way.

Shifty

When you reported "on VH/VH the AI is very quick to attack" I find that applies in terms of the AI initiating hostilities or starting wars. However in the behavior of individual AI armies once they start a war the individual armies still seem passive in ignoring my seiges on vh/vh.

Thanks for the write up Shifty.

I guess that is why they have so many settings for campaign and battle AI.

I'd suggest that at the moment medium or hard is the best setting for engaging in Diplomacy.

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Originally Posted by Reapz

Shifty

When you reported "on VH/VH the AI is very quick to attack" I find that applies in terms of the AI initiating hostilities or starting wars. However in the behavior of individual AI armies once they start a war the individual armies still seem passive in ignoring my seiges on vh/vh.

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Yeah. I was talking about the campaign map.

I usually play the campaign on M and the battles on VH. That way I have a chance to enjoy the boardgame portion with less frustration on trying to hang onto my florins and I can still enjoy the strategy of the AI in the VH battles....:beam:

That was I did for my first campaign with HRE too for the same reasons. For almost 5 centuries was I in permanent war with Denmark, Venice, Poland, Hungary and Milan, no matter how strong I was in some periods of this time they would not talk about peace at all. Their "priorities where always "Uknown" and always rejected my cease fire offers.

Now my second with Byzantium is on h/vh. I thought that the battle AI is pretty good and if it was supported with a good campaign AI (better army composition) it would make a very hard challenge for me. Playing at hard not only the AI chose itsa army more wisely than in medioum, but it acted wiser and in diplomatic fields. In fact it acted and that matters as in medioum it seems that the AI does not act diplomaticly at all.

Example: I have trade rights with Venetians. I know that they and the Turks ar are my greatest threats so I keep a diplomat near Venice and a Spy in the borders with Ragusa. After 20-30 peace turns my spy reports a stack coming down from Dalmatia to northen Greece. I send my diplomat to check their intentions. "War" was their priorities and they where not accepting any of my small gifts which would upgrade our relations. They attacked and won 2 small battles, and I 1 but then our big stacks clashed together in one great battle which would determine the balance of powers in the Balkans. I won. Until then their priorities was war or uknown. After that it became "peace". So they accepted a cease fir that lasted until they made a huge army.

Turks on the other hand I have managed to never attack. I constantly offer them small gifts to keep our relations from droping below "poor" and they stand in place even if I have sometimes small garissons in my frontier settlements.

Now I thing that the medioum campaign must include a "dummy" opponent AI while harder a "wiser", althouth I heard that on VH there are no negotiations like in M.

I'm in my first campaign so I'm playing on M/M. To know the game better and to be able to understand what the units do I recomend for the 1st campaing playing all in M.
When the campaign is over I'm going to start another with a new faction and start playing H/H but if things get to frustating I'll return to Medium, afterall this is a game and the objective is to have fun.
Veterans from RTW will probably start playing in H or VH but they are pros :D

I started at M/M on my first Campaign but very quickly found both the battles and the campaigns way too easy. My second campaign was H/VH but that was too easy also.

Since I now know more about the game mechanics n stuff, I've just started a game on VH/VH and it's much better - much more challenging.

The only problem is that with the passive AI bug (why, oh why hasn't that been fixed yet!?!?!?!), too many battles are unfair and you can just wipe out the opposing army until you run out of ammo and then storm in with your infantry.

I look forward to "proper" battles on VH to see just how clever the AI really is.... I haven't lost a single battle yet :furious3: I came very close on one seige last night - I thought it would be my first loss. The odds were well against me - the Danes had a huge leet army and had attacked without warning into Belgium. I was completely unprepared and should have lost. I got down to 2 infantry units and 4 mailed knight units, each with between 1 and 10 men in them and the Danes still had nearly 100 town militia and 100 spear militia. The Danes then decided to be passive and sat, literally 50 metres from my town centre, looking at me. They had me ad they just sat there staring. Rubbish. :wall:

Well, for one, the VH battle AI is still extremely easy due to the "passive AI bug"...

As to the strategic map difficulty: the medium seems to be the most enjoyable mode due to the fact that diplomacy does work. For example, in my current M/VH game, I have had several cases when the AI would run to me begging for piece the very next turn after their hot-headed drunk sailors blockaded a port of mine by mistake...

I'm very much enjoying VH battles. Since it's early, all factions are fielding mostly militia troops and so on. The AI doesn't seem to get special bonuses. Peppered with missiles and charge in the back by some cav, they break easily. I'm able to get quite a few nice victories out of that. Other times, they are smart enough with exploiting my meatshield out of place relative to my missile and so on to give me hefty casualties. There's also a few battles that were hard fought and made me say wow. Certainly improved from previous games. Now if only they'd fix passive AI.

VH campaign is kinda ridiculous. Diplomacy is practically useless as I pound enemies into the ground and they wouldn't talk at all. Pope is constantly excomming me and I'm at war with 5 factions at the same time, 4 of which are AI initiated. They still pull dumb stunts like sieging a city with inadequate forces that my garrison can beat off by itself. Darn inquisitors are total haxing though. Lost 2 generals to them. Thank god for my 2 perfect assasins who managed to dispatch 3 of them so far.

By the way, has anyone noticed that the "official strategy guide" states that the AI DOES HAVE combat bonuses on H and VH settings. Could be a "strategy guide bug" though... And, in my experience, if there are any AI combat bonuses, I have not noticed them.

Do the other factions receive bonus cash every turn (like RTW) or just play more offesive in VH campaigns?

In my games, i like to destroy enemy faction economy (blockading ports, conquering/sacking/destroyng their cities and then leave....) while winning battles...

I made the experience that the ai uses big stacks to attack you. This is no problem at all, but it seems that they have the money to manage several big stacks. E.g. Playing as Hungary Byzantium is normaly attacking in the first 20 turns, as Venice will also do (and if you are unlucky HRE too). Both manage to fight a two front war with their other neighbours and build up their cities. But I guess it is not a very high cash bonus they get, as you still get the cash information, that they are sometimes bankrupt.

Destroying the enemies economie never worked for me (in the short run, meaning the next 20 turns), as the ai always tends to have enough money to create fresh troops.

If you've noticed in the finances screen, there is a category called "King's Purse". This seems to be a flat rate of cash you get every turn, regardless of farming, taxes, or trade setup. It varies from faction to faction, and may well vary with difficulty level also. I have no idea if it varies for the same faction when controlled by the player or the AI.

From my campaigns, it does seem like the AI get a static cash bonus every round on the higher difficulty levels. They do appear to me more aggressive as well. I wish CA would give us the option to turn up AI w/o just letting it cheat. I find M/M to be untastefully easy but I've hated cheating AI's since I started going to the arcade when I was 8.

The AI cheats on VH battles as well. I had a single "generals bodyguard" unit almost whip out two spear militias, two heavy horse archers, and my own general's bodyguard unit. This was while they were flanked, they get such a massive moral bonus that all they do is fight to the death (not the "I'm surrounded and will fight to the death" flashing red flag, but they have so much moral they just never route or stop fighting at their peak). I've heard that the VH battle was suppost to just be "most realistic" in terms of fatigue and moral, which might be true for your troops, but the AI get such a huge moral bonus it's not that fun to fight.

As far as a VH campaign goes, I started a turk VH/VH and was doing ok untill the 20th turn or so. The byzantines attacked 3 of my cites with 2.5 stacks and at this point I could barely afford 1 stack. so it's pretty clear that they were getting a good amount of extra cash to be able to afford all those troops. Although, they don't appear to be able to build up their cites much faster, so it could be money only for troops or an upkeep/recruitment reduction. Also if you keep an eye on the enemies agents, you'll notice they normally are at +8-10 skill while you'll still have all your agents at +1-3. I'd like a challenge, just not cheating. In RTW the AI got an extra 10,000 gold PER TURN! now think about it, how easy would even a VH/VH campaign be if you cheated as well and just "add_money" 10,000 florins per turn? sad, sad AI.

I'd recomend M/M if you want a campaign and battles where your not at a disadvantage simple because of a cheating AI. Although M/M is so easy that you might not have fun, so a H/H campaign might be the way to go since the AI only sorta cheats at that point.