anybody play hard battles?

[Dogukan]

Just wondering does anyone use hard battle difficulty? And do the ones who use normal lose an even battle?

[Marcus Ulpius]

EB team says that the mod is built for VH/M difficulty, and any harder battle difficulty unbalances the units. But there are some players who play VH/VH, although I never tried it myself. I also prefer H/M settings - that way the AI is more reasonable and won't immediately attack your faction just because it's a player faction.

[Dogukan]

I played VH/H campaign with Rome and it was awesome.....but then I found out that it was awesome becaus 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.

[ziegenpeter]

I played VH/H campaign with Rome and it was awesome.....but then I found out that it was awesome becaus 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.

Maybe you can get a difficulty level in between M&H when you turn it on H and switch the fatigue on.

[Digby Tatham Warter]

I play on hard battles for campaigns that will go on for along time, partic as I always try and keep any veterans.

By the time they get silver or gold chevs, the AI often runs away to quickly, so the hard setting helps even things out, although the early years can be tough, partic against large elite pike units that won't break easily.

[Novellus]

When I started off in EB, I didn't know that the difficulty made the units unbalanced. I actually thought the difficulty change made the AI smarter.

Yeah, I didn't find that one out until later on.

I began seeing Spartiartai Hoplitai take massive casualties in battles, and engulfing phalangites was tough as they died so slowly and never seemed to drop in morale until they were completely surrounded. But it helped with the skill of choosing battles carefully.

But I've played on VH/VH for a while. I even played as Epeiros and nearly conquered Roma until my computer crashed entirely. Careful if you play on VH/VH though. It'll make you seriously have to reconsider the way you deploy soldiers.

[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.

[cux47]

I played VH/N as Pontus and had fair fight with AS.

I use Babylonian spearman as the backbone of my army, with some heavy Persia archers and some Galatian mecenraries and light infantry to surport them. oh, two native spearmans of course, the cheapest the better.
And my enemy send an army with 3 GB(nearly 300 hetori cataphracts) and 2 medium and 2 native phalanx, with some other surport troops.

I successfully defeated those heavy cavarlys but failed to engage with the solid, unbreakable phalanx, because I had already suffered great casuaties thanks to the enemy's cataphracts. And also the equipments and fighting stlye my spearmen used were far more lost behind compared with the phalanx hoplites.

When I realize the victory is impossible, I pulled my units off the battlefeild and retreat to Antioch, which had fallen 3 turns after by the way.