anybody play hard battles?

[Pobs]

Yup,

playing on hard campaign/ medium battles here and just had my camillan army thrashed in the alpine passes by a hoard of locals from Luvovaetum... 2400 of us, 3000 or so of them... the trick to losing is to field an army that includes rorarii and mercenary celtic spearmen alongside your romans, oh yes and dont take any slingers or archers to wear the enemy down, that helps too !! I should stress that we were on a substantial hill, with fatigue 'on'.... and they still overwhelmed my army and slaughtered us...we lost 1800, they lost 1000.... they just came straight up the hill and straight through my light infantry frontline as if it wasn't there, accepting their losses to pilum and spear without faltering, their heavy swordsmen and spearmen routed my frontline and the celtic mercenaries on the wings followed shortly afterwards, my core of camillan hastati, principes and triarii where then outnumbered and outflanked and went down fighting, particularly the triarii who died almost to a man to slow the pursuit, even my body guard of heavy cavalry was unable to affect the outcome because I couldn't get around the flanks of the host as they kept several units back covering their flanks...

so, if you want to fight and lose, try taking some unreliable troops with you, mercenaries and levy troops are best ... (not that uncommon an event in real life either :)...


cheers,


Pobs

[Joszen1]

I'm one of those that plays on vh/vh. I currently have a Luso campaign going quite strong - although killing the romans is going to be, erm, a magnificent feat - in 210BC. I don't get what 'the mod is balanced for m difficulty' means. No AI could match my manouvering. So I reason like this: give me an army of sheep (all I can really afford) and give the AI (bleet-bleet) an army of lions, and then lets test that proverb! Also, vh/vh is cool because micromanaging armies on the campaign map is essential and easy to leave you embarrassed. But, when you pull together a bunch of Iovoman and Scortamareva and kick the pants of legionnaires you feel a profound sense of accomplishment and self-validation. What more can you ask for?

[Hax]

I personally play on H/M or M/M.

Balance is everything!

[ldb88]

VH/VH It really is very challenging, but that's part of the fun!

Still, you do get incredibly good at beating the AI. I usually get between 5:1 and 10:1 kill:death ratio on evenly matched, medium-sized battles, usually closer to 10:1 when I outnumber the enemy. (I tend to do poorly on large battles because it's more difficult to micro. I even set unit size to medium to make controlling my units easier).

I don't know how well I would do on medium battle difficulty. A balanced battle? The player has brains, so the computer must have bonuses. Or brains. But bonuses are easier to code

[DaCrAzYmOfO]

VH/VH = Kill the general, charge the rear, wipe and repeat. Gets old quickly....

Ive found that trying to emulate tactical maneuvers and actually fighting one on one and getting casualties on medium is much more rewarding...especially when you lose...oh yes...trixy trixy AI...damn them and their hiding in woods lol

And btw, fighting hordes of extraordinarii on VH is NO FUN AT ALL. even with a full army of slingers or 3 units of gesatae.. :(

[Connacht]

I really dislike the idea that harder difficulties are so only because they give bonuses to enemy units (and not because they improve AI).
However, on medium difficulty I find the game too easy, I just have to sit and make some movements, the enemy will ALWAYS die.
With H or VH instead there is the possibility that my opponents might crush my soldiers if they have strong enough armies (anyway, sadly the majority of battles still have the usual result with all the enemy soldiers routing or laying on the ground).

[rootje]

I have a question concerning this topic, I started a campaign on vh/m with Rome 3 weeks ago and eventho I roleplay and try to keep my legions relatively small[1 legion army per region,for example] I still tend to defeat stack after stack of ai controlled armys with relative ease. Is there anyway to change a campaign running to hard battle difficulty :(?

I'd hate to capture all those rebel settlements all over again and do so much work again, just because the ai has let me down in difficulty...

(simple example? I've started expanding in gaul; gave a FM a full stack made up of the troops a roman consul would have had back in the days, even afterhe got locked in the mountains by troops and had bad morale traits due to rationing still I defeated full stack after full stack, even taking on stacks with ''naked fanatics'' with releative ease, the troops of Rome seem just too good to provide a challenge without giving the AI +4 on all stats...)

I've still havn't seen a single defeat yet..while in medieval total war 2[on vh/vh,btw, but it uses different ai] I used to get my ass kicked once in a while due to stupid mistakes or an ai actually using the advantages he got[or the ones i gave him] in a nice way...