The game is just TOO easy!!!!

[Sir Moody]

Actually i think a lot of jags OP is because of his faction choice - Prussia

My first campaign was Great Britain and its an economical nightmare starting with colonies as you have far more work to set yourself up and you need to maintain a strong navy presence

Prussia is so easy its amazing - It took me 20 turns to get GB ready for war in the Americas and Europe - in 20 Turns Prussia had absorbed Sweeden and Poland and had a good chunk of Austria - not to mention most of the Small German states

Prussia is a small but heavily military nation (its line infantry is second only to GB's) with its total focus on Europe and its only major oponents are Sweeden and Austria (poland is too weak) - Sweeden is easy to crush if you ally with the danes and then move in fast - austria is usually busy with the ottomans and cant defend itself when the inevitable push comes (ive left them alive as a barrier between me and the ottomans for now)

My Navy consists of a single brig I built to move some troops to finland and all my opponents either have no Navy to worry about (Poland, Austria) or have no time to use their Navy effectivly (Sweeden)

Prussia is by far the best starting location with the second best troops - incredible easy (and fun )

[Bob the Insane]

Speaking for my first N/N GB campaign, the Native American factions certainly have no trouble with agressively and continously attacking both your resources and cities. Even if you garrison a border city they will sneak past to attack the interior.

I have lost settlements this way.

I do wonder if the AI strategic strength caluations are overrating the civilain militia automatically generated in large cities, discouraging the attacks...

[Eusebius86]

Has anyone tried sitting still for 10 years to give the AI a chance to do something? Sure, I could have taken over Poland as Prussia in 5 turns early on, but not anymore. Its 1718 and Poland is big that they are about to annhilate Austria. Russia is pushing back Sweden. I really think that your bordering neighbors need a chance to tech up, build up, and get alliances. Right now, its GB, UP, and Austria, verse Russia and Poland. I decided to seize the moment, and made a land grab against both Austria and Poland, so everyone's at war with me right now. Needless to say, I'm having severe economic difficulties right now...

[JAG]

Prussia was my second campaign, unfortunately I did a Great Britain campaign first which was, to be honest, even easier. The fact NO reinforcements come from the European nations to the other parts of the world, and you can leave Britain, literally, completely defenceless - I had NO military units in any place for my WHOLE game, except for when building armies to ship out. I took over the whole of the American continent, helpfully aided by the easy mission which gives you all the thirteen colonies territories... and I had all of India bar 3 territories, by 1730 ish.. Sigh. The fact I am now 4 turns into a Spain game and am about to take Amsterdam, having already taken Morocco and crushed the Cherokee.. Its just.. sad :(

If you find it hard, you are not being aggressive enough, at the start you can take territories easy, just because your stacks are not amazingly huge, it doesnt mean you can't use them.

I think some people here have got it spot on, Gal Civ 2 is probably the hardest Strat game I have ever played - if you haven't tried it, GO NOW! It has an amazing range of gameplay and AI, and the AI is super, duper smart - I don't know how they do it, but CA need to get a leaf out of their book. We need more of a range of difficulties or more options or something, so those who find hard too hard can and have the chance to get a level between medium and hard and those who find VH too easy can crank it up to get a real, significant challenge. Surely it wouldn't be too hard to do.

My first campaign was Great Britain and its an economical nightmare starting with colonies as you have far more work to set yourself up and you need to maintain a strong navy presence

By the way to get round that is to only build an army in America - it doesn't even need to be big, transporting your troops from Britain over is the best bet, it is what I did - and only build quality, big ships. Due to the good admirals the British have, and the crap ships the rest buy - except Spain - you can quite effectively control the seas with a roving single big stack, then building up another when you can.... Something I have seen which makes the game prety laughable is that when your trade ships are actually trading from the coast of Brazil or wherever, the AI will loot your routes rather than destroy the ship and take the trading post... Meaning that just get your ships there, asap and you will have them for the whole game.... I had pretty much all the foreign ports my whole game - if you need to go to war, destroy them all, then get peace do it - the revenue speaks for itself. Anyway enough of me giving my secrets away, back to the point - the game is too damn easy.

[Meneldil]

The game is just TOO easy!!!!

To be honest, set some house rules, and the game stop to be easy. Early game blitz are not a good way to enjoy a TW game.
Blitzing in MTW made the game easy, blitzing in RTW made the game easy, blitzing in M2TW made the game easy. I'm not surprised ETW is easy if you blitz the game.
Even mods such as EB are easy if you blitz early on. Heck, even Europa Universalis II/III turns easy if you blitz with some factions.

So yeah, as I've said, set some house rules, try to play in a historical way, and the game will be much more enjoyable. I'm not asking you to pretend to suck or what not, but things like not going at war with everybody without casus belli for example, does improve the game.
I'm still a bit baffled CA did not even try to make conquering huge chunks of lands harder. The era saw little territorial changes in Europe, yet you can conquer western europe in 5 turns in game.

I don't say the AI isn't bad. I haven't played enough to give a real opinion on it, and to be honest, I doubt it's vastly better than RTW or M2TW AI's. But still, playing agressively has always made the TW games retardingly easy. No news here.

[Sir Beane]

To be honest, set some house rules, and the game stop to be easy. Early game blitz are not a good way to enjoy a TW game.
Blitzing in MTW made the game easy, blitzing in RTW made the game easy, blitzing in M2TW made the game easy. I'm not surprised ETW is easy if you blitz the game.
Even mods such as EB are easy if you blitz early on. Heck, even Europa Universalis II/III turns easy if you blitz with some factions.

So yeah, as I've said, set some house rules, try to play in a historical way, and the game will be much more enjoyable. I'm not asking you to pretend to suck or what not, but things like not going at war with everybody without casus belli for example, does improve the game.
I'm still a bit baffled CA did not even try to make conquering huge chunks of lands harder. The era saw little territorial changes in Europe, yet you can conquer western europe in 5 turns in game.

I don't say the AI isn't bad. I haven't played enough to give a real opinion on it, and to be honest, I doubt it's vastly better than RTW or M2TW AI's. But still, playing agressively has always made the TW games retardingly easy. No news here.

Some of the previous quirks of the game that made blitzing easy have been removed from Empire. Off the top of my head:

1. It is much harder to hold a region
2. The AI are more prepared to form coalitions to stop the player.
3. No access to another province without military access or declaring war.
4. No loot for sacking a town.
5. Emergent and re-emergent factions make things more difficult
6. No rebel towns to take early on.

It's still a very effective tactic though.

[Susanna]

1. It is much harder to hold a region
2. The AI are more prepared to form coalitions to stop the player.
3. No access to another province without military access or declaring war.
4. No loot for sacking a town.
5. Emergent and re-emergent factions make things more difficult
6. No rebel towns to take early on.

It's still a very effective tactic though.

7. Citizens (armed mob) rally to defend the town. Got suprised by that on my first ever town attack.

[Dogfish]

We could make the house rules based upon the current limitations of the AI:

1. No naval transport. You have to get there by land. All recruitment occurs on the landmass where the unit is intended to be stationed. This means as Britain you would have to trade for a province in continental Europe to raise armies on the mainland. After typing that out and re-reading it I think this would be pretty ridiculous, but then again so is the AI in it's current incarnation with regards to this issue. Onward to two.

2. You must have defensive armies on station in all of your faction's provinces.

3. Somebody help me out here. What's number three?

[Susanna]

I don't say the AI isn't bad. I haven't played enough to give a real opinion on it, and to be honest, I doubt it's vastly better than RTW or M2TW AI's. But still, playing agressively has always made the TW games retardingly easy. No news here.

I kind of agree.

To be honest, personally I hardly play aggressive as I am much to busy building every improvement in my towns and keeping my little serfs happy.
But as soon as I've read some game or faction guide on 'How to conquer the world in 15 turns' I find it very hard not to follow on the advice, knowing its much more effective to spam units than spend the money on city walls.
Somewhat diminishes my game enjoyment :(

I am not sure what the best solution would be. Most probably the modders will come up with something clever.

Susanna/Calapine

[Meneldil]

I kind of agree.

To be honest, personally I hardly play aggressive as I am much to busy building every improvement in my towns and keeping my little serfs happy.
But as soon as I've read some game or faction guide on 'How to conquer the world in 15 turns' I find it very hard not to follow on the advice, knowing its much more effective to spam units than spend the money on city walls.
Somewhat diminishes my game enjoyment :(

I am not sure what the best solution would be. Most probably the modders will come up with something clever.

Susanna/Calapine

Well, that's my main grief with TW games. The fact you win the game by conquering the world (and that said conquest is pretty easy when you get the gist of the game).

I much prefer Europa Universalis, in which you can't simply annihilate a faction by winning a few battles, and rule Europe after ten years. I wish CA would have made ETW more similar to that.

[satyr9]

I'm a mediocre at best TW player. However, I have played far more civ than TW in my life (although not much of either lately) and I fully admit that I can't speak to VH/VH not being a challenge to very good players, but there is absolutely no chance that multiple people in this thread crush civ on the hardest difficulty levels regularly. Go check a civ board and guys who are absolute addicts about those games will lose on deity (is impossible new? I haven't downloaded any expansions for civ IV, 'cause I haven't played in a while). The AI is still terrible at warring, but the bonuses are extreme. I don't have exact numbers but each AI will start out with an enormous tech/army lead at the beginning and be able to outproduce at least 3:1 from the get go. Your growth curve simply can never catch up and all the advanced tactics in the world can't make up the difference. You simply won't be able to win by domination or anything else before someone launches a spaceship. If you mess with the map settings and game speeds you can find ways to win on any difficulty level, but there are map settings and difficulty levels combinations that I guarantee absolutely nobody can beat without cheating in civ. I'm sure people have gotten better since I last looked in on that community and new tactics have come around, but I'll be shocked if more than a half dozen people are beating any kind of standard civ map regularly on the hardest difficulty with more than a very specialized civilization or two.

None of that is to say that civ is a better game. They emphasize very different parts of the game (titles kinda say it all) and depending on how you like your world domination one or the other will suit you, but when people complain about the difficulty on vh/vh and say they destroy civ series games as well, I have a hard time believing either claim (although admittedly the stock difficulty m/m vs. noble civ is crazy easy in comparison 'cause their AI is terrible at war).

In general though for people who like these games enough to be really really good, I'm sorry but AIs will never be able to compete with you. Yes, you can give them huge imbalances to counteract their total inability to strategize, but if you want to play against a smart aggressive opponent, your only option (for the forseeable future) will be multiplayer.

Anyway, this was probably a little long and rude to a few players for a first post in a forum, but I've lurked here on and off since RTW and just started MTW2 again before I got ETW and some of these claims made me finally sign up. lol