Does Comp have Unlimitied Money???

[Fedor]

The harder the campaign difficulty level, the more money the AI factions get. That's why VH campaign doesn't work for me. I prefer M campaign. The AI only gets extra money if it's broke, and only a relatively small amount. M campaign is perfectly playable for most factions. I might pick E campaign if I was playing a very difficult faction, like Pontos, for example.

Hmm. I have exactly the opposite problem. I carefully run the script each time I load a fully patched-up EB 1.2 game and, as many factions (there are several exceptions!), I just can't get enough challenge on VH campaign settings without nursing the AI along.

My most recent VH/H game, as Macedonia, has so far gone something like this:
1) smash the Greek and Epirote field armies, take the Greek mainland cities. Time elapsed: roughly a year.
2) Sit in my (somewhat enlarged) corner for roughly the next 12-13 years, waiting for the AI empires to get big enough to pose a challange for Makedonian pikes and being careful not to develop my cities too much.
3) Notice Rome not kicking enough tail to satisfy my longing to fight hordes of Scipios and start giving them 10,000 minae/turn from my over-abundant treasury. Also decide to stop using Levy Pikemen (too effective for the price) and insist on Medium Pikemen (not much more effective and significantly more costly) as line troops. Decide to disband all the Scythian Horse-Archers units I recruited (way too powerful for the price for Macedonia). Put limits on combining archers and steep downhill slopes.

It's now 247 BC and a much-enlarged Pontos, the Getae, and Epiros have allied against me. I've just started to take the kid gloves off and now permit myself to actually enter their territory. I might endulge in the conquest of Epiros, or throw Pontos out of Europe, but that might increase my available spending power (after tributes) too much.

Long story short, I've learned that, if you want a challenge, you need to help the AI along. I therefore strongly support giving the AI money. I sympathize with the particular point being made by the OP - that tiny AI-controlled powers ought to be weak - but that would ruin a lot of the historical value of this mod, in which a tiny AI-controlled Parthia can actually form an empire and then send lots of Parthian Horse-Archers to fight you. Good times all around.

You give the AI what it needs, the AI gives you what you want.