Campaign / Battle difficulty settings

Maybe it's too early for this, but does anyone already know what is affected by the various difficulty settings for battles and campaigns?



Battle difficulty: Better AI, no stat bonuses (I think so, not sure...)

Campaign difficulty:


It would be nice to know what the most 'realistic' settings are, which make the AI challenging without ruining gameplay by giving it unlimited less resources and cash.

Susanna/Calapine

VH/VH.

It doesnt seem to give the AI anything extra.

I'm playing on H/H, and no one really wants to ally with me....

These are only impressions from much reading and not yet being able to play, but here goes.

Battle AI seems to get much better as you go up the scale from Easy to Very Hard. At the lower setting in siege battles in particular it will do foolish things. But on setting of M it seems competent and at the higher settings fairly astute to even cunning. Siege battles seem the ones it has most difficulty with, however field battles are generally sound tactically.

The larger the units employed the less well the AI seems to handle the though.

Many experienced players have had their hats handed to them on more than one occasion.

There has been too little discussion of naval battles to draw conclusions based on the settings.

The Campaign AI would seem to be competent at all levels. There is no sited evidence that the AI receives bonuses at higher levels. It may still be too early to tell, however.
The Campaign AI seemingly has a purpose to what it is doing and at increasing difficulty it would appear to be ever more astute.

It would seem that the AI is both strategically and tactically sound with the exception of siege battles at low setting.

As I said this is only an impression and if anyone wants to chime in with specifics and difficulty settings it would be very much appreciated.







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Doing the old Single unit test (this case, British Line Infantry vs British Line Infantry). Tried it 3 times on M and H (once one VH). Two units march toward each other till just out of musket range, sprint into possition, exchange fire till one drops below about 100 men (Huge), and then charge each other.

Results

VH: AI won 1 of 1 (the battle was so lopsided, it seemed pointless to try that one again)
H: AI won 3 of 3 (In each case, the AI jumped ahead in fire combat, generally inflicting around 60 casualties and losing about 40. In melee, by the time the human unit routed, it was outnumbered about 2-1)
M: AI won 2 of 4 (Fire combats were exceptionally close, though with the AI always a few men ahead, and outcome of the battle was decided through melee, which could go either way).

While the testing is of course limited, this, together with CA general philosophy on difficulty settings, leads me to beleive on the higher difficulty settings the AI is getting bonuses.

Just so we're clear, the Custom Battle difficulty doesn't have the usual E/M/H/VH settings: instead it runs up to "Expert." And it does seem that on Expert it has stat bonuses, not merely good AI.

I did my own single unit test: I didn't notice any flat maps, so my unit of Austrian line was higher than his unit of Austrian line, I'm not sure what effect that may have had. (IE, is there a penalty for firing downwards because of having to aim low.) I think there was a slight benefit in the elevation to me when the AI charged home to finish me off. The AI was clearly doing much better in the firing phase, and wound off killing 145/150 of my men for 85 losses of his own.

This is crucial, folks: A lot of people played MTW on Medium or Hard campaign map but VH battles because the AI was smarter (but not given any major bonuses, if any at all.) If this is -different- for ETW than the default battle difficulty might have to be Medium or Hard until we're willing to fight battles with a serious stat handicap. I'm going to restart my current M/VH games, for this reason.

That said we also haven't proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that "Expert" on custom battle is the same as "Very Hard" battles in the GC. It seems unlikely that they'd have them be different though.

Battle AI seems to get much better as you go up the scale from Easy to Very Hard. At the lower setting in siege battles in particular it will do foolish things. But on setting of M it seems competent and at the higher settings fairly astute to even cunning. Siege battles seem the ones it has most difficulty with, however field battles are generally sound tactically.

I don't agree with this. I played many custom battles last night on the hardest difficulty, and the AI was categorically terrible.

Well, i'm playing a game on VH/VH as United provinces. I haven't had any land battles yet, but i have had a naval battle that makes me suspect the AI are getting bonuses on very hard battle difficulty.

At the start of the campaign i had a single pirate ship raid my supply line in my American holding. I sent the navy there, a large twin-decked admirals ship, a smaller single deck, and two even smaller vessels to deal with them.

I sent the admirals ship and next largest to either side of the pirate ship, which was larger than anything i had, and had both of them unleash their right and left full volleys, to very little effect. The pirate ship put a single volley into the smaller of my two ships and sent it routing. My admirals ship and the pirate ship were exchanging volleys from quite a distance while i moved my two very small ships up. One of them routed without being hit or even firing a shot, the other routed after taking only around 15-25% damage.

My admiral and the pirate ship, which had taken next to no damage at this point despite several point blank range volleys, continued to exchange fire, although it was clear i was going to lose. I tried to target the sails of the pirate ship to stop the damn thing sailing around in circles, at two point blank volleys the pirate ships sails had taken no damage and it was sailing around as if nothing had happened.

That was when a volley sent my admirals ship routing after taking around 50% damage.

I don't care that the pirate ship was a monster battleship, my admirals ship was only 1 step below it in terms of quality and i had the pirate ship sandwiched between my admiral and the smaller vessel, put a full volley from each ship into it at point blank range and did barely any damage to the pirates, yet every single volley from them ripped through my ships like a demolition ball to a brick wall.

To my mind the 1 line infantry vs. 1 line infantry tests are conclusive. They're too one-sided not to involve stat bonuses, there's no "AI" involved really, except perhaps in timing the polish-the-human-off charge, by which point a clear victory is already guaranteed.

The problem is if the AI and the stat bonuses are tied to one another. A lot of us are going to want a stat-neutral, maximum AI intelligence option. Is that medium? Because it isn't likely to be stat neutral on Hard/VH. Hopefully they haven't been tied together inextricably in an attempt to disguise the stat-neutral performance of the best AI.

I'm at work and don't have the stats on me, but I ran a bunch of 1vs1 tests earlier today, I'll post the results on frogbeastegg "The AI Thread." Basically, the AI gets massive stat bonusses on VH. Rate of fire drastically increases, muskets are gps guided, bayonets are lightsabers, etc. H improves stats somewhat, but not much...

Glad this is being discussed...

Wouldn't it have been great for the developers to reveal this kind of information in the manual so we don't have to play this guessing game?!

I play Campaign VH in my campaign (United Provinces), I'm in the Year 1740 and neither Great Britain nor Spain nor France conquered a single region as far as I know.
There is simply nothing going on in America or western Europe. I think the AI should be more aggressive on VH.

VH campaign difficulty seems to work very well, but VH battle difficulty has to give AI bonuses because the computer constantly outguns my units in battles. Just compare the rate at which soldiers die on VH in your units compared to the computer and I believe it is pretty clear there is some sort of bonus being given to the computer in relation to accuracy/speed of fire.

I'm playing on Hard difficulty, and that doesn't seem to happen.

I've had shooting duels with infantry of the same specs, and it is arbitrary in who wins.

Maybe you just have poor tech?

My tech is actually more advanced than those around me as far as military is concerned so either the difficulty gives a bonus to the computer or I am an especially poor tactician!

Had a massive shooting battle on VH. I won it. Even sides. I just lined up and shot at them.

Here's the results of my testing on custom battles...

Tests were done with Medium Unit sizes, Great Britain, Line Infantry, no veterancy. All difficulties tested 3 times and averaged. In all tests my units were in 2 files, AI lined up units in 3. In all tests only the front row fired.

- Normal: I had 45 men remaining, AI had 15 men remaining. Pretty accurate if you consider the disadvantage of having 3 files instead of 2.
- Hard: I had 31 remaining, compared to the AI's 13. Once again, I won due to being in 2 files instead of 3. I should have tested at 3 files, but didn't...
- VH: I had 15 men remaining before routing, the AI had 40. VERY lopsided. AI fired very fast, and very accurately.

Interesting notes. Small difference between N and H. HUGE difference between H and VH. Also, AI behaved identically in all 3 difficulty settings. Exchanged rounds until my units dwindled down to about 45, and then charged. Very interesting.

This says nothing as to the AI's tactical abilities. Just that the AI does stat stack as far as reloading times, defense, and accuracy is considered (at a minimum). I'm sure the same applied to naval AI...

Campaign AI will take time to figure out.

I did some testing now myself as well *feels all nerdy*
As Eusebius already noted, the AI DOES receive stat bonuses, and does so heavily indeed.


Test:
1 unit Line Infantry vs. 1 unit Line Infantry, very hard, both Austrian, late era, both deployed 4 ranks deep, units shoot until first one routs.

Code: [View]

AI killed	Player killed	Result
16		134		AI WIN
27		113		AI WIN
24		108		AI WIN

Observation: So lopsided it's not even funny. AI Units reload faster, despite my unit firing the first salvo the AI always finished reloading first.

Test 2:

I messed around with experience on my unit, while leaving the AI unit at novice.
Breakeven point was roughly at 7-8 levels of experience. After being promoted 8 times my unit started to barely win against the novice AI infantry.

So at VH the AI gets roughly 8 experience levels worth of bonuses. Quite a lot.

This means that the Battle AI is causing more damage than fun. I will set it for medium and go VH on the Campaign difficulty instead.

I started my short campaign as Prussia on N/N. It was far too easy, I don't think I ever lost a battle, and the campaign was dire, even though I was at war with alot of people and every nation in Europe detested me, the only trouble I got was Bavaria revolting. Whenever Po-Lith or Austria ever attacked they just raided and were defeated easily. Playing an experimental campaign on H/H as Marathas was much better, hard makes it fun because it is a challenge, but I don't like the idea of the AI getting an unfair advantage on VH/VH. Think I will try Austria H/H next.

At the other end of the spectrum, does the human get bonuses on easy, or is the AI just worse (tactically that is-not stat wise)?

Thank you, very important information in this thread. I'm going to start an England campaign on VH/H probably (if the Battle AI does get some tactical brains).