Regarding Difficulty level...

[Valion]

How do you guys like to play you'r campaigns? i've read that the recommended difficulty level is VH/M..
Does Medium battle difficulty even out my troops to the AI's? i mean they don't get anymore bonuses?

Cheers!

[tapanojum]

Medium Battle difficulty makes your units and the AI units have the same stats, granted they are the same unit with the same upgrades..etc.

Hard and Very Hard give the AI iunbalanced stat bonuses making the actual battles much more difficult.

[Valion]

Ah so Medium battle difficulty is more realistic..... thank for that mate!

so what type of game does most people here play? i used to play Vh/Vh all the time in vanilla but it seems it's quite difficult to do so in EB.

[QuintusSertorius]

I won't play on any battle difficulty besides Medium, the game is balanced for it, and I don't want ridiculous results like elites routed by missile troops.

I won't play on Very Hard campaign difficulty because not only is diplomacy and naval warfare stupid, but all AI factions get 10,000 bonus mnai every turn, which means endless, pointless warfare. A battle or two every few turns is fine, five identikit battles every single turn is boring.

[bobbin]

generally H/M as the AI tends to be stupidly agressive on VH campaign difficulty. I always stick with M battles difficulty, not too fond of my mighty imperial army being trashed by a bunch of gaulish drug addicts.

[Valion]

Eh? ......so what is the best difficulty for campaign and battle in EB?

[mcantu]

from people's comments i'd say H/M is the most common...

[Poppis]

Yep, H/M here too, because of the reasons mentioned above.

[Dutchhoplite]

I only play at M/M

[jabarto]

I only play at M/M

Greetings, brother of the m/m playerhood!

Seriously though, it's really a matter of preference, Valion. But h/m does seem to be prevalent around here.

[Chris1959]

M/M too, plus Forced Diplomacy, but I like to "roleplay" the Romani and with 1144 turns you have to keep the number of battles down!

[Valion]

ah ok thanks guys!

I'l settle with M battle difficulty then......... is diplomacy impossible in Vh campaign difficulty? the reason why i like Vh is due to the AI's agressiveness.

[Immanuel]

Hm, I'm actually going to make a stab at defending /H Battle difficulty. I mean, I seem to have enough of an advantage over my AI opponent because of my Brilliant Human Tactics without stripping the AI of its stat advantage. On Hard settings, I will generally crush an equivalent force because of tactics, terrain, better army composition, and well known AI shortcomings. Heck, once in a while I can even pull off a pretty spectacular win (again, though, because the AI does something dumb like charge my phalangites with his general). On Medium settings I fear it would be an absolute rout. Anyone out there played games on BOTH Medium and Hard difficulties?

Disclaimer: I'm not an awesome player by any stretch, I'm playing H/H Baktria right now and actually having a real fight of it. Which I like.

[Valion]

That's exactly the point why i always played Vh/Vh since i find my tactics very effective against the AI. In vanilla i always exploit the AI's weakness thus Vh/Vh became my standard but since i started playing EB i find that enemy units at Vh are quite hard to beat and seing people mentioned that even elite troops can get pumelled by skirmishers i considered M battle difficulty.

Before i posted this thread i played at Vh/Vh romani and always managed to gain some heroic victories but that given i had to use the terrain to my advantage and letting the AI come to me. even still i noticed a number of times that my triarii's getting routed by mercenaries >.> that is even when they have terrain advantage. So rather than waste my efforts in relentless battles that make my Elite troops into paper i rather strip the AI of it's bonuses and fight on even grounds.

With that said i would love to know if diplomacy is still possible in Vh campaign difficulty.. i don't mind battle every turn that way i don't get bored Lol.

[QuintusSertorius]

The very idea of fighting stack after stack of endless-money-costs-nothing-to-replenish-them armies is just about as opposite as you could get to fun, for me.

[bobbin]

With that said i would love to know if diplomacy is still possible in Vh campaign difficulty.. i don't mind battle every turn that way i don't get bored Lol.

Its as possible as diplomacy can be in a RTW based game, like i said before on VH the ai is more aggressive and will declare war on you more often (even if your allied to them), they also rarely accept peace offers so getting the Force Diplomacy mod is recommended unless you like having to completely destroy every faction you have a minor tussle with.

Ive also read somewhere that campaign difficulty affects naval battles so you get the occasional odd result but these aren't very common if i recall.

[Valion]

Forced deplomacy mod? where can i get that?

[Poppis]

Modding forum stickies.

[QuintusSertorius]

Ive also read somewhere that campaign difficulty affects naval battles so you get the occasional odd result but these aren't very common if i recall.

Campaign difficulty skews all auto-calced battles, which of course means all naval ones.

[bobbin]

forced diplomacy mod
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=80763

[Dogukan]

I also need help about this.
I started a roman campaign on vh/h and took over Spain-Italy-south of Gaul-sicialy and whole Greece to Byzantion. It was FUN!
But I was very unsuccesfull against Northern Barbarian, they always had the advantage on melee.

So I decided to start another campaign as Makedons on H/M...I kicked Greeks out in 4 turns and finised Epirus by the end of 20 or so...and got to say it wasn't fun at all. I never won battles like these in vh/h with Romans. I hope it is because of the phalanx success or I will quit that campaign.

I'm thinking of palying on either vh/m or h/h but can't decide. h/m was too easy or it was because I bliztkrieged Epirus and Hellenes.

[QuintusSertorius]

Blitzkrieg is even more successful as a tactic when you're not playing on VH, because it's much harder for the AI factions to replenish their armies.

[Valion]

Well i decided to play on Vh/M after reading through this... Vh campaign difficulty so that the AI doesnt get depleted of resources everytime i crush it's armies and M battle difficulty for even grounds in stats.

Thanks again guys now i can start a fresh game i can micro on.

EDIT:
Wow i just routed a Epeiros army of 945 with my own of 665 at M battle difficulty with only 33 casualties o.O This is a huge change from my normal experiences in Vh seing they routed easier when they get surrounded or charged at and taking huge cassualties. it makes some more sense now seing what just happened to them always happens to my men in Vh when in the same situation. Also i noticed they weren't as hard as bricks to kill Lol.

I feel like there wasn't any effort in the battle since all i had to do was use terrain advantage and kill his general with my slingers Lol.

Well maybe the barbarians in the north will dice my armies into pieces and make me actually plan my battle^_^

[seriousbusiness]

VH/M here. When I played VH/VH I had to watch helpless as inexperienced liby-phonecians and low-level arverni troops routed experienced principes in battles I fought very well, but it just wasn't enough. Obviously it was unfair and not fun, so I started again on Hard but it was still tedious winning large battles. Medium is the only fair way to play an EB campaign IMO because otherwise even if you are committing your entire forces in a battle you will take silly losses that you shouldn't have in anything near a realistic simulation. Plus, having fun is the whole point, surely? There is no point proving you are manly enough for VH/VH if you aren't enjoying it.

[Vasiliyi]

I have to say that I personally used to play M/e but I've recently changed to m/m because I haven't lost a battle to he ai for months. That said, I would like to recognize the the fact that after installing darth's formation mod I've noticed drastic changes in ai actions. I was fighting carthage as rome and they attacked me with about 4000 troops against 2500 or so. They had there forces split and they (reenforcements) actually met together, rested, then attacked. What followed was a massacre on both sides. What surprised me most was their use of elephants. They ALMOST flanked me succesfuilly. It was amazing! They managed to jumble my entire line of hastati (5 units) until they were massacred by the princepes pila. But seriously, if your looking for more realistic battle I do recommend darths formation mod. The ai will still do some stupid stuff, but its a lot less.

Sorry for hijacking this thread.

[StellarW]

Valion:

I have finished two campaigns on VH/VH but the number of battles but i must admit that the number of battle's can seem like 'work' later on especially considering how well you have to mass troops and how consistently accurately you have to handle them not to get yourself into trouble with the cheap elites the VH setting gives them. I you want a challenge without seriously unbalanced battles i suggest VH for strategic ( i have never even bothered trying something else) and Medium difficulty for battles and then some combination of the following handicaps i have used so far.

In order of general importance:

1. No more retraining! Alternatively you move the unit in question to the given city and rotate it clockwise from above the city until you allow yourself to retrain it four season later. You can make it slower than that or just limit the amount of units you can retrain per season or do retraining only in one season per year.

2. Only train units in two seasons of your choice per year. Two provides me with a nice challenge and forces you to create many more developed military cities.

3. No construction or unit training ( or change in the ques) without a family member or general present in a given city.

4. NO HORSE ARCHERS. There are few things that destabilizes things faster so use few unless you play nation that can't build much else in terms of cavalry.

4.1 In terms of army composition no more than half of what your deploying should be missile units ( not counting skirmishers) and that half should not contain more than five slinger or archer units.

5. No mercenaries; self explanatory as it just makes it too easy to save badly defended outlying cities.

6. Forts seriously compromises the AI's ability to exploit battlefield victories so don't use them at all or not in choke/ large numbers.

7. No pausing in battle ( unless you need to go somewhere) .

8. No time limit on battles. This in my experience gives the AI a chance to fully exploit advantages more so than it does for a human player.

9. Can not initiate battle without a family member or general present.

10. Always end battles when enemy morale fails.

If you do a few of 1-4 and a few of the rest you should have a decent challenge with your now rather smaller armies. :)

Enjoy

Stellar

[Starforge]

Great post by StellarW.

I typically run on VH/H or H/H (depending on faction I'm running) using quite a few of those houserules.

I would add one to it also: No siege fights. If they attack you and you take the city fine, otherwise leave the siege in place. This will slow down your expansion, allow the AI to rebuild (over 4-10 seasons) and tie up in early game a significant amount of your resources effectively making it very difficult to exploit via blitzkrieg.

[Valion]

Thanks for all you'r opinions guys,. i already started my romani campaign and i've moved my gaming standard from VH/VH to VH/M.

Anyway is installing Darth's Fromation Mod make that much changes in Battle mode?

[penguinking]

The difficulty depends on what you want to do. I usually play VH/M; it provides a challenge and the battles are realistic. However, if I'm playing as an "easy" faction, such as my Epeiros campaign, I'll up the difficulty to VH/H to prevent it from getting boring. I would recommend playing on VH/H with the Romani if your not using house rules. Roman units are generally well armored with pretty good morale and battles can get boring on medium. However, this does have negative side effects, and battles are less realistic. I haven't used Darth's Formation Mod, but I've heard it's helpful in making the Battle AI smarter.

If you want to play a historical game with a bunch of house rules to play historically, than M/M or H/M is the best, as I did with my historical Romani campaign. The challenge in those campaigns comes from following the house rules and playing true to history.

I would advise against playing on VH battle difficulty. While the battles do become a greater challenge, on VH battles just become very unrealistic. Your units simply don't work how they should, and for me it detracts from gameplay.

[seriousbusiness]

Great post by StellarW.

I typically run on VH/H or H/H (depending on faction I'm running) using quite a few of those houserules.

I would add one to it also: No siege fights. If they attack you and you take the city fine, otherwise leave the siege in place. This will slow down your expansion, allow the AI to rebuild (over 4-10 seasons) and tie up in early game a significant amount of your resources effectively making it very difficult to exploit via blitzkrieg.

On VH campaign difficulty that is a major factor since the AI will usually be able to massively outproduce your armies even if your economy and military production cities are very good. I usually find myself needing to resort to fairly large mercenary armies to accommodate for the manpower gap if I intend to seige them out. Early in the game it is quite easy to assault towns since they are have wooden walls. Cities still require seiges, but you will drastically cut the difficulty of eliminating that faction if you can occupy most of their low-end settlements quickly since that deprives them of money and (more importantly) production.

It depends on the faction too, for instance the Qarthadastim, Casse and Rome have it easier in dealing with being outproduced because they are cut off by sea and in most cases can limit fighting to a small, easily-reinforced area.