Thanks everybody. So there are two conclusions:

1) To mine surprise more people recommend Medium than Very Hard.

2) The increased monetary aid for the AI based on provinces makes VH a killer for little AI factions. I'd second that from my 1.0 Carthage observations.

So Very Hard is kinda out of the race. So Medium or Hard? I saw Chirurgeon voted for Medium and I know he is a seasoned AAR writer. Could you tell me why you voted for Medium difficulty please? Is the AI behaving more reasonable? Or does it get a teethless tiger, spamming three-unit-stacks?