anybody play hard battles?

[Olaf Blackeyes]

That is true.
However the AI get like OMFGWTFPWNING map powers on VH/VH, and that just seems unrealistic to me. It pretty much like this...

[Dogukan]

I decided to play H/H...battles are fun now. But I'm thinking if I should have done the campaign map VH

[A Very Super Market]

Doesn't VH cause every faction anywhere close to you to go berserk and send every man, woman, child and dolphin in an attempt to destroy you? I can't imagine that on hard battles...

[Subotan]

Doesn't VH cause every faction anywhere close to you to go berserk and send every man, woman, child and dolphin in an attempt to destroy you

Yes. And those Dolphin Gaesatae are even crazier than normal ones.

[Molinaargh]

Doesn't VH cause every faction anywhere close to you to go berserk and send every man, woman, child and dolphin in an attempt to destroy you? I can't imagine that on hard battles...

Not really, try it yourself. On my VH/VH campaign as Epirus, Makedonia still hasn't attacked me (after 20 years of peace or so) even though they have 2 full stacks doing nothing in the peninsula.

As for VH battles I have to rely on Phalanxes against Rome because anything else gets crushed. I've lost 3 battles that I was "supposed" to win (had full stack of phalanx, good general [Pyrrhus!]) and while I get mad at first () I later realize that it makes the game a lot more interesting than always winning.

Losing 3 battles may not sound like much but in the game they meant the destruction of full stacks and death of 2 generals, which are big problems in VH, unlike in lower difficulties where you can slowly rebuild your army.

I don't think I'll switch to H when I lose this campaign!

[Ardri]

Well after reading through this thread you all have convinced me to restart my Romani campaign on VH/H rather than VH/M as I am currently playing. And with note on the diplomacy, if you can for "coalitions" of nations the computer almost won't break the alliance from what I have seen. As Romani I had a campaign where I stayed allied with Carthage, Epeiros, and Audei for nearly 50 years (200 turns) without any of them breaking the alliance because everyone was allied with everyone else.

[rootje]

I considered doing the same but the way my roman campaign on Alex.exe has suddenly turned aroudn with lusotanians,carthage and hellenic greeks allying with the arveni and adeai and them all turning on me, made vh/m enough of a challenge by far!

They've bashed me out of everything I conquered from the Getai and beat me out of france too. Took alot of rebuilding and bottleneck fights to keep all the fronts controlled again, had to send 3 legions to control the alps and only the legion of Lucius Cotta survived, who is now a 9 star general and using most of his [greatly diminished] silver chevroned troops to fight stacks of greeks containing several spartans. On alex.exe this is the kind of challenge I dig!


I'm afraid vh/h on alex.exe would require constant bashing of endless triari legions and exploits like that, due to the fact that I like to roleplay and use proper tactics on the battlefield I'm currently having the perfect campaign

[Ardri]

Hmmm, I'm playing RWT.exe so I haven't had the opportunity to play on Alex.exe and I haven't gotten too far into my Romani campaign I have on VH/M because I restarted after installing the Mini-mod pack for 1.2, however, I have changed to money script (thanks to the help from a completely inoffensive name) in order to keep the computer factions at around 300,000 denarii. I'm already seeing stacks of Aedui with 5-6 naked fanatics in them on medium and many stacks of troops in Greece. VH/H may be a bit too much with so many computer armies running around, but I suppose I can always revert to my VH/M if that is the case.

I'm playing with the houserules of 8 units of Roman frontline troops, 2 units of Elite troops, 5 units of support/light infantry, and then the other 5 as either skirmishers (at the beginning of a campaign for a city, they are my travelling garrison) who will be replaced by 5 mercenary/expansion region troops once I take the city I am targetting. Should be an interesting game on VH/H.

[rootje]

I did happen to find a big difference between RWT and alex exe, mainly in the aggressiveness of the ai on the campaign map and their spamming of stacks. Also their battle ai is alot better but they still strugle in sieges =( (but so do i, ctds kill my siege efforts :P).

I'm currently not using a moneyscript myself, is it easy to enable/tweak during a campaign? Most of the factions are on 500.000 mnai or around that I think but some start to quickly lose funds due to my legoins endlessly raping their stacks and my assaults on critical mining cities..

O and, I wish you goodluck on the harsh task of bringing the Romans glory on VH/H! The first time an enemy actually totally slaughters your hastati line and gets your principes real scared is the moment you realise your difficulty settings and houserules are starting to get in shape ;)

[Ardri]

It is very easy to tweak during the campaign, literally takes about 5 minutes after I had the process explained to me. Just see the post by a completely inoffensive name in this thread https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=111983 to see how it is done. Basically the nonplayer factions stay around 300,000 permanently.

[Cute Wolf]

I can't thrown realistic army in any campaign with Hard battle difficulty.... Pantodapoi and hoplitai haploi became useless to pin enemy's elite units, while in the very hard, the AI are capable to screw my cohortes reformata with mere, fresh recruits of tribal levies...... and those naked guys become insane and unbeatable....

Anybody had a good trick to beat gaesatae on veryhard battle without causing 3 of your men die for every gaesatae?

[NeoSpartan]

Anybody had a good trick to beat gaesatae on veryhard battle without causing 3 of your men die for every gaesatae?

recruit/hire some pezetaroi(sp) to hold them..... recruit really HIGH charging (charge value 30+) cavarly unitS.

[Sûlherokhh]

Sooner or later it will become too easy, no matter the setting. So self imposed limitations are the real challenge. I always use the 'General Camera'. Any units placed outside my surroundings are placed on 'AI-control' until i can see and direct them again. Now try to fight the Sweboz in the dense germanic woods! :)

[Rilder]

Im a slower kind of guy that's all.
Really i dont see the point in OMFGWTFPWNING the map in like 10 turns. How can anyone get the enjoyment of the game by doing that.

Confirming this.

Play m/m myself, Medium Campaign because I heard that all increasing it is increase the amount of armies get thrown at you. Medium battle difficulty because I like balance and I only ever put like 2 elites in an army anyways.

[SirRethcir]

VH/VH since Shogun. ;)
Never felt treated unfair in battles. Though I'm playing a Sweboz campaign and only had battles with celts and rebel germanics. Perhaps the armies of East and South prove worthier foes!?
I'm surprised that everyone suggest to play battles on medium. If I were to dump down the difficult level, I would lower the campaing difficulty level to play a slower and more peaceful game.

[Slaists]

I played VH/H campaign with Rome and it was awesome.....but then I found out that it was awesome because the enemy units get a +3 bonus. That saddened me, I thought the fights were really difficult. So is there a way to make that +3 only +1?
Besides is it fun to play normal battles? Isn't it easy? I mean when playing on hard, one had to simply make great tactical moves and deployment to defeat enemy. Even tiring the enemy units was a very crucial thing, it made me calculate everything.

I remember from the 'old days' that somebody from CA came out stating that on HARD battlefield difficulty, the AI gets +3 to its attack (no bonus to defense) whereas on VERY HARD it gets +7 to its attack (no bonus to defense).

So, given the RTW experience mechanics +3 attack bonus is 50% less than +3 experience points (+3 attack, +3 defence) and +7 attack points is 50% less than +7 experience points (+7 attack, +7 defence). In my humble opinion, the RTW AI battlefield bonus is not that big of a deal.

Nonetheless, it does unbalance things tremendously. A spear unit, for example, would not be able to withstand an AI cavalry attack... The disbalance is less noticeable in EB though. In EB defense values are way higher than in vanilla RTW across all units. So, +3/+7 attack has less value 'relative' to the higher default defense values.