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

I'd be interested to hear anything people have been told or observe about the effect of the various difficulty levels in the game.

In RTW, campaign difficulty seemed to largely affect the income of your enemies - on VH, the AI could often muster repeated full stacks of troops. It was also said that on VH the AI was more hostile to the player - less willing to make alliances or make peace. I am assuming this is still the same in M2TW?

In RTW, battle difficulty worked mainly by upping the stats of the AI units relative to the player's. However, Palamedes has said in a blog that this is not true in M2TW and that instead VH (a) improves the smartness of the AI; (b) increases the impact of morale and fatigue. I am curious about whether (a) is noticeable on below VH - is the AI too dumb on medium? And I am curious about whether (b) the morale and fatigue effects are across the board or skews the effects or the AI relative to the player.

What are players' observations? Do battles on VH feel "unfair" the way they do in RTW (AI peasants trouncing your peasants)? Or do they feel more tactical and more realistic? Do campaigns on VH see multiple AI full stacks bearing down on you? Is M/M too easy or comfortable? Is VH/VH hellishly hard or just the veteran's comfortable choice like expert STW or MTW used to be?

For what it is worth, I liked the historically balanced playing field of Medium battles in RTW but found the AI far too easy to beat. I liked the challenging full AI stacks of VH campaign difficulty. I know others preferred the challenge of VH battles but hated the repetitive battles of VH campaigns.

I realise people's mileage will differ, but we may be able to get some insights from people's impressions. I confess I have an ulterior motive - I want to know what difficulty level to play my first campaign on!

I've only played 1 battle on vh so far in which i got throuoghly beaten so im getting used to combat on medium atm before going back. Medium is still tough, tougher than RTWs medium, you lose more troops in battle than you woul in RTW.

On VH the ai gets no bonuses, if you do a 1v1 battle of the same unit on vh, equal chances you win and lose(someone else tested this). The ai is just very smart on vh, and completely overwhelmed me when i played it because it did an early well co-ordinated attack which i was not expceting at all, as i am so used to Rtw's ai.

With camapigns, im playing on medium(i think, maybe hard) for my first one and it is still very tough, i think its a good balance. Haven't tried vh yet in campaigns as im still getting used to them.

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On VH the ai gets no bonuses, if you do a 1v1 battle of the same unit on vh, equal chances you win and lose(someone else tested this). The ai is just very smart on vh,...

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At the risk of posting spam, I must say that just sounds so good Lusted. I'm going out to get my copy this afternoon. :jumping:

I know, and it is good, i was smiling with glee after being beaten by the ai because it was such a change form RTw. Just be aware that there is the passive ai bug, hopefully the 0 day patch will be out soon to fix it.

Maybe they meant 0 day patch, counting from the US release, or even Australian release.

That would be a laugh.

We have a fairly good idea of what we get for different difficulty levels on the battle field but what about the campaign map?

In RTW on VH the got so much extra cash and such big bonus in naval battles I could never be bothered with it... It was all battle as you could not compete economically let alone try to fight that way...

So what about M2TW, any opinions yet of what hard and very hard get us on the campaign map??

Hello everyone,

as an old MTW veteran who doesn't have the game yet, I'm wondering about the difficulty levels for my first campaign. Now I know that battle difficulty will equally affect morale/fatigue and possibly AI "smartyness" - what are your experiences here? Will a hard / very hard Battle AI clobber you silly? Will a medium Battle AI be a pushover? Or does it matter at all, seeing that both the human and the AI are affected equally by the heigthened morale/fatigue effects?

Same with campaign difficuly - what differences were you able to spot (starting money, diplomacy, stable alliances, etc)?

In RTW I used to go for Campaign hard / Battle medium as I didn't like the artificial bonuses in battles. What setup do you find enjoyable in M2TW?

Thanks for the input!

Atm im playing on h/h or vh/vh, depending on how much effort im putting into a campaign. Those are the 2 most enjoyable settings i find, as the ai gets no bonuses in battles as is a nice challenge.

After fiddling with difficulties for a while I've settled on campaign medium/battle very hard. Why? At the higher levels of campaign difficulty diplomacy seems to go out of the window and the AI is overly aggresive, medium difficulty just seems more relaistic to me. For the battles, I love the challenge the AI now presents, so VH it is.

Ah, so a medium campaign difficulty sounds about right... I quite enjoy being at peace for a while so hopefully that'll ward off overt AI agression.

In medium vs. very hard battles - do troops tire noticeably faster? Are troops on medium a bunch of never-tiring Lance Armstrongs or do units on very hard collapse before the reach the enemy? How pronounced is that difference?

I figure one could use that advantageously... if you prefer to hunker down and defend your empire, a very hard battle difficulty would work in your favour over time... what with the baddies having to come/run/climb to reach you.

Still on my first campaign with the French on M/M, went for medium as I haven't played TW for around a year and figured I'd be a bit rusty.

I guessed right. About 160 turns in and I'm struggling to just keep control of modern day France. Constantly being attacked on all sides.

As for medium battles, slowly starting to get to grip with things again, so for my next campaign I might turn that up to Hard.

The difference in the battle settings is mostly the realism of morale and fatigue. In the manual it states VH as being the most realistic level to fight on.

For your first game, if like me you haven't played for a while go m/m (it's a lot harder than RTW m/m), otherwise try H/H and see how you get on.

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Originally Posted by moonshiner57

In medium vs. very hard battles - do troops tire noticeably faster? Are troops on medium a bunch of never-tiring Lance Armstrongs or do units on very hard collapse before the reach the enemy? How pronounced is that difference?

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From what I have noticed so far, the balances between battle difficulty levels are nicely worked out. On medium settings units (yours and the enemies) do tire, but just not as quickly as on VH. On VH, the AI recieves no special treatment. Morale and fatigue are just more realistic (that is not to say medium difficulty is completely unrealistic however). But the major noticeable difference IMO, is that on VH the AI does indeed appear to be at least partly 'intelligent'.

I am currently playing on H/VH and I am enjoying it a great deal. Regarding battle difficulty, I agree with the other posters. The AI does not seem to be getting much, if any, stat or morale bonuses. I simply feel like I am fighting normal enemy troops, so any difficulty boost must be to the AI. I would urge all TW veterans to play on this difficulty.

Regarding campaign difficulty, I have found Hard to be rather fair. So far I have had major wars with Scotland and France, both of which I started. Scotland I never tried for peace with, but I made several ceasefires with France at various points after trouncing them. The AI was entirely reasonable and paid me tribute for the ceasefire in a realistic way (since I was winning). However, I have now reduced France to two territories in Iberia and they absolutely refuse a ceasefire, even if I offer to pay them 10,000 gold. This makes no sense to me, but is the only unrealistic diplomatic problem I have yet encountered.

I have had a few other unintentional wars with Venice whose origin I cannott seem to figure out. Sometimes I am just randomly informed that I am at war with them. I suspect they are failing spying/assassination attempts and it auto-declaring war on my behalf. This has happened 3 times and each time they immediately accept a ceasefire and pay me for pleasure of it (which makes sense since they are excommunicated, at war with several other nations, and I have a huge military). I have also been at peace with the Turks and Egyptians for almost the entire game, even though I took Antioch from Egypt in the first crusade and have been converting the whole area to Catholicism since then.

I have had very long-term alliances with Denmark and HRE and many shorter alliances with other nations. I have shared a border with Denmark for nearly 80 turns and they have never made an aggressive move towards me and generally have been great neighbours.

My relations with the Pope have been pretty bad, but that\'s my own fault for attacking France when there was a French Pope. I was actually excommunicated for a good 20-30 turns, but no one took advantage of the situation to attack me.

I have noticed that my Relations with all nations are pretty poor, even with my allies. I think this may have something to do with the difficulty level, though it may also be due to the fact that I tend to train my assassins on allied princesses. That said, even with low relations levels, my allies have been rather gracious.

So, all in all Hard campaign difficulty seems to be pretty decent. Other than the near-dead France being unwilling to negotiate (when the not-dead France was willing to negotiate), I haven\'t noticed anything that looked wrong.

in hard or above campaign the agents of foreign powers always have bonuses , so it means that the right one should be medium , about battles I find enjoyable only the very hard one ...

my first campaign was the Turks on VH/VH:

Byz declared war on me as soon as i got a border with them, same for Egypt about 20 turns later. They're not throwing stack after stack at me at a rediculous pace. Diplomacy just does seem impossible, my standings with all factions went to abysmal in no time for no apparent reason.

Battles aren't that hard imho, maybe because of the great archer, mounted archer troups i get and the ai's passivity, the byz and the egypts seem happy to let me shower their main body with arrows halving their numbers. The Mongols gave me quite a challenge tho, with 8-10 star generals and 6xp troops, i lost half a stack against a full stack of mongols. It does a good job of keeping my sipahis horse cav busy.
The AI doesn't seem to get any bonuses, their stats and morale seem about equal to my troops, but it had no counter to my cav and horse archers going round their back (or didn't care to do anything about it) which always leads to utter destruction of their armies. Even the Byz who have great HA's themselves to counter mine.

I started another campaign with the French after getting a good pounding from a few stacks of Mongols, and becuase i needed a change of scenery.

I chose H/VH this time, diplomacy is much better now, i'm securing trading rights and alliances regularly. And about 35 turns in the game only the Milanese declared war on me, it's more relaxed this way imho, it's not just me against the world anymore.

Edit: i haven't tried lower battle difficulties, so i can't compare, but so far the ai is no match for me and i don't consider myself a tactical genius, i lost the majorty of the mp battles i played in MTW:VI

Playing as medium on the campaigns I have on the go. Diplomacy seems to be reasonably ok although I'm in a recurring cycle of war, beating the other side up, pope getting involved, ceasefire and then the other side then has a go at me again. I tend to be fairly defensive in my games so it could be a consequence of that really.

For battles I'm tending to be a bit bad and using auto resolve a little too much. For the ones I am fighting then the ai is certainly being a lot more intelligent about things with it drawing me into traps and attempting ambushes.

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Originally Posted by PROMETHEUS

in hard or above campaign the agents of foreign powers always have bonuses , so it means that the right one should be medium , about battles I find enjoyable only the very hard one ...

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Hmm, I wondered why my agents kept on dying to the AI's on VH/VH and this explains it. The AI merchants never lose to mine and my assassins are pretty hopeless at killing anything.

Like I say though, I play on VH/VH. My campaign is with Scotland and I've destroyed France and England and I'm currently sitting with 14 provinces in NW Europe after about 130 turns. My super hard King has nearly completed his crusade to Antioch and overall I still think I can meet the 45 province requirement to win. However, it will be a tough push to achieve this in the 95 or so turns remaining.

I can't see myself ever playing on anything less than VH/VH to be honest. I used to play VH/M(or H) in Rome but I hated the higher battle difficulty levels as they skewed the unit stats too much.

So, I just picked up my preorder of M2TW (with the History Channel DVD :2thumbsup: ), and I'm about to install it and go through the tutorial, flip through the manual, etc.

I'll then start a Grand Campaign. I plan to go with VH Battle difficulty because I want a challenge from the AI, but I would like to know what those of you already playing think is the best setting for Campaign difficulty.

I'm going to do the HRE, and so I realize that I'll obviously be facing quite a bit of opposition - but nevertheless I'm not really in the mood for EVERYONE to hate me at the same time, a la RTW. I'd like to at least be able to make an alliance, get a few ceasefires, hopefully not have swarms of inquisitors, etc., which is the impression I'm getting of VH. On the other hand though, I don't want everyone to try and become my vassal on the first turn either.

Think of it as, say, like diplomacy is in Civilization 2 or something; difficult on occassion, perhaps, but realistic. I'm a TW vet, and so I consider myself a reasonably competent player, but I want M2TW to remain a game - not a slog.

Any advice?

I started my first campaign with the French on VH/VH, thinking it would be as easy as RTW's VH/VH or MTW's Expert (althought the latter depends heavily on the faction you choose).

I started by taking a few rebel cities and building up - Bordeaux, Dijon, Metz. I merried my princess to the English heir, they respected the alliance for a long time. The Milanese weren't as peaceful, tough, and decided to attack me. After a few battles (all wins) I took a province from them.

That's when I stopped winning the game.

They sent various armies in many directions, sieged Merseilles, Dijon, and the Holy Roman Empire, their allies, sieged Metz and the Switzerland province.

The English decided it was a good opportunity to fight me, as well. Turn 27: they sieged and conquered Paris. Yes, they conquered my capital.

I had to move the armies fighting against the Milanese to retake Paris, I broke the siege of Merseilles and Dijon, but the Germans took Metz and have huge armies coming at me. The Milanese are a bit more quiet right now, but will strike again soon.

When I thought things couldn't get worse, they did.

A Moorish ship appeared near Toulouse, and from the ship came a full stack, commanded by a decent general.

I'm on turn 30 right now, and, although battles are dumb and poor, as you will only lose if you are really outnumbered, the campaign AI is kicking my ass.

I recommend playing a VH/VH campaign, mine is being very challenging, I'll be very proud if I survive against all my enemies.

How about autoresolving battles on different difficulty settings?

I find that I often autoresolve battles that I surely will win by numbers (10:1 odds or the like) to save time. If I play VH/VH, I would not want to find out that the autoresolve suddenly becomes unreasonably poor and I lose too many troops to it.

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Originally Posted by Rothe

How about autoresolving battles on different difficulty settings?

I find that I often autoresolve battles that I surely will win by numbers (10:1 odds or the like) to save time. If I play VH/VH, I would not want to find out that the autoresolve suddenly becomes unreasonably poor and I lose too many troops to it.

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I only autoresolved 2 battles so far, both against rebels, and got very reasonable results. The odds must have been about 3:1.

The problem is that part of the rebel army survived and kept bothering me, instead of disappearing completely.

By the way, the "official strategy guide" says that AI does get combat bonuses on hard and very hard battle settings... The developer blog appears to say the opposite. In my experience, the VH battles are not "that hard" to suggest any AI combat bonuses, but then again - I have faced only rebels so far... And the passive AI bug does not seem to help them either.

VH/VH is providing the best game so far.
Especially in battles.

I tried VH/VH, but found that it totally removed the diplomatic side of the game. The AI is only interested in attacking you, repeatedly, mutli-nationally, and seemingly in concert. This is fine if that's the kind of game you want, but I've found H/VH a much better and more immersive experience, as you feel like part of the gameworld and can actually use your diplomats and princesses.

My VH/VH English campaign is providing a very nice military challenge - not too easy, but not too hard. There are no clearly unfair unit match ups, nor repetitious AI hordes as RTW VH/VH can sometimes deliver.

But as the last poster say, it has almost no diplomatic angle. All neighbours attack me without good cause and the Pope thinks hell is too good for me. I'll definitely be trying H/VH next to see if that improves the diplomacy.

All of the 10 or so games I have played so far are on H/H. On this level I have not found the AI to be too aggressive, and have scored some notable ceasefires.

Example (from my ongoing England vignette game - haven't posted a report for this yet): I had 'Outstanding' relations with France before going to war with them. Wartime relations after I took Angers and Paris were 'Terrible' but not 'Abysmal'.

In the same turn as capturing Angers and Paris, I offered a ceasefire in return for Bordeaux. Bordeaux had only maybe 2-3 units defending it as the French had just lost a large part of their army to (I think) the Milanese near Dijon, and had lost their other big stack (around 800 men in a normal-size units game) trying and failing to dislodge me from my siege of Paris.

Ceasefire for Bordeaux - Demanding. I wondered if this would work and offered 1600 florins + ceasefire for Bordeaux, and it went to Generous. They accepted gratefully and our relations improved to 'So-so'. I took Bordeaux without a fight, and they got cash and a turn or two of peace with me that they can use to try to hold off the Milanese. Everyone wins.

I'm planning to move up to VH/VH for all future vignette games, but will stabilise at H/VH if the campaign map becomes too much of a jungle.

I wonder what significant differences there are between M and H campaigns. I think I prefer medium because of the extra reliability of alliances and generally longer periods of peace if desired, not too many random AI attacks. Other than more AI aggression, does H or VH do anything else for the AI? More money? Better units? Smarter?

I've played with Medium, Hard, and Very Hard battlefield difficulties. And frankly, I've not noticed any difference between them. The Medium difficult AI is smart enough to route 4 of my town militia units with a single Bodyguard unit by repeatedly charging and withdrawing, and the Very Hard doesn't seem to do anything extra or anything more impressive. I just leave it on Very Hard now.

In terms of Campaign difficulty, I've only played with Medium and Hard. The difference seems to be that relationships deteriate faster on Hard, also the AI is more capable of sending multiple stack armies your way. I didn't notice any difference with agents, assassins gang up on my generals the same way they do in Medium difficulty. And still none of my generals can resist the Vatican deep fryer.

On VH/VH Ai seems to build alot more troops and diplomacy is harder, you realy need to send gifts to your neighbours each turn heh if you want to stay away from a war with. Ive only played VH with battles so i cant comment on that.

I have just completed a few games playing Scotland on m/m, h/h, h/vh and vh/vh.

A few observations:

It is a great game and the developers should be well pleased with themselves. I am sure I will spend hundreds of hours absorbed.

The difference between levels of difficulty is not so apparent as it was in RTW. The difference was readily apparent in Rome because the AI factions seemed to mass produce units at higher difficulty levels and this doesn't happen in M2. I am glad it doesn't. I have hated this type of "advanced AI" since battling the Hojo hordes playing Shogun.

In my games I perceived the AI factions had a lower threshold for declaring war on me on harder settings.

I was excommunicated quickly, inquisitioned and promptly had unrest in my cities several times on vh/vh for not following instructions from the Pope. The follow up for not behaving well on m/m didn't seem so aggressive - anyone notice this?

There is a general problem with the AI on all difficulty levels. It seems whole AI stack armies will sit back and let you seige and sack cities when they have a decent shot at beating my invading forces or certainly seriously weakening them. I wish the AI would attack me when I invade and threaten cities.

I would write more but I'm too busy campaigning!

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.