Questions.

[Africanvs]

Hmmm, this is not too promising. I like my Galatian Wild Men. And my Balearic Slingers. And the Cretan Archers, along with Thrakian Peltasts, as well Mercenary Phalangites. I do not want to let go of them

You will still have no problem hiring all of these mercs in the lands you control, but the enemy's lands will usually be pretty low on mercs.

Is there anyone here who does not experience this swarm of mercenaries? Do the AI factions expand faster in VH? Are they stronger in general? That is why I want to switch to VH, but if there is not a significant difference in that, then I will not, since I like my mercenaries, even if I do not hire them :P I just like the way they look, and the fact they are so readily available.

Every game is different. Sometimes a faction will expand rapidly, sometimes it will build a ton of troops and sit in one region. Most of the time, factions expand well enough. In my current game, the Pahlava are taking over the eastern Seleukid empire; Bactria has conquered most of India; the Saka and the Sauromatae have cut a swath across northern europe; Germania has carved out an enourmous chunk and share borders with the Sauromatae, the Aedui, and Rome; Rome is involved in a bitter war with the Aedui and Arverni for Southern Gaul, and has been for years; the Luso have conquered half of Spain; Carthage has conquered Numidia, the other half of Spain, and is fighting with Rome for Sicily, the punic wars have begun; Ptolies have conquered Syria and palestine; I as Mak have conquered Asia minor, KH, and Epeirus, but things seem to be going well. With Very Hard, if you share a border with another faction, they will almost always attack you. I say almost because I think it depends on the faction. I have shared a border with the Hay for years, and they have not attacked me, even though they have a full stack sitting there. As soon as I shared a border with the Ptolies, they attacked me with a full stack and have two more on the way.

I do not face what I would call a swarm of Mercenaries. I think the AI only buys hem if they think they need to bolster their troop numbers. For example, I have fought half stacks with quarter stacks, and the half stacks contained no mercs. But when I have more men, the AI almost always hires mercs if they can. Sometimes they will send a lone family member at me, and he will buy mercs all the way to his destination and finally attack with a full merc army. There is really no one way that everything happens.

If you go to VH, the campaign will get harder, but you'll still be able to hire mercenaries, don't worry.

[jhhowell]

I don't think VH has a huge effect on the mercenary issue, just that the AIs have even more money to hire them with. I don't know the difficulty of my current campaign (I started from the save game thread in order to skip doing the Camillan era yet again) but from AI behavior I believe it's M or H. Sometimes an AI faction will keep the peace along our border, or even offer peace of their own accord once I've smacked them enough! Personally I see little difference in AI strength or expansion between M and VH, but I could be biased by my fondness for periods of peace between wars...

If there are particular mercs you especially like (Balearics are a good example), you could leave them alone and just disable or reduce the max number of the ones you don't like. There's a considerable range of options between default EB and my attempt at eliminating all mercs (which I'm not sure I've successfully implemented).