Campaign / Battle difficulty settings

[Susanna]

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

[pevergreen]

VH/VH.

It doesnt seem to give the AI anything extra.

[A Very Super Market]

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

[Fisherking]

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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[NimitsTexan]

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.

[GM1940]

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.