I wanted to (briefly) write about my experiences with EB, because I'm curious if anyone else had similar experiences or felt similarly. These 3 campaigns were undertaken with Alex AI, Huge unit scale, no mods, and at the EB-recommended VH/M settings.
When I started playing EB, I was giddy and looking for a challenge. So I spent a lot of time playing with the Barbarian factions. After awhile I settled on sticking with the Arverni, and was surprised to find how quickly I learned to win battles with them. I eliminated the Aedui early on, and while Rome was challenging and defiant to very, very end, once they were out of the way I steam-rolled through everyone else. By 223, I won the game, and sadly, without ever really experiencing the Celtic reforms or being able to use any high-end units (like the solduros). I pretty much won this using levy spearmen, slingers, and the occasional swordsman.
Then I decided to try the Casse, as at the time, I had read some people complain about how hard it was to play them. The chariots definitely took time getting used to... But in many ways it was like playing the Arverni, but without cavalry and with FMs that die very easily. The first 10 years were by far the hardest, but as soon as I was able to hit the mainland, things got pretty tame. Towards the end I was wondering if I was going to be able to beat this in less time than it took me to forge my much larger Arverni empire. I won by 218, and again, I never achieved the late Celtic reforms or got to use any high-end units.
Being able to outmaneuver the AI with cavalry really helps, even against the tank-like Roman infantry stacks. That's what made the Sweboz campaign the hardest for me. It was a slow, brutal, bloody process - and I was forced to keep a fight going constantly on 3 different fronts. I thought that for sure this campaign was going to take more than a century to win. Without cavalry, I really felt like I was working every advantage - morale, javelin-flanking, firing flaming arrows into your own men knowing that the enemy'll break before you do. When I finally won, I was besieged in 4-6 different provinces, as it's very difficult to convince the AI that they've lost the war and should be giving up. Oddly, only Rome agreed to a peace. Anyway, it was 210, and even then, I never reached the German reform (I would've had to wait 20 more years).
I thought maybe I was just getting too used to Barbarian warfare, but after trying a battle as Macedon - which I won with ridiculous ease, using their phalanx and cavalry - I realized what the problem was. Medium battle difficulty is just too easy. I've read a lot of people complain about how unfair Very Hard battle difficulty can be, but except against Satres, I never really lost a battle using Medium. So since these 3 campaigns, I've settled on 2 new restrictions for myself - and so far, they've been working out great. 1) Play on VH/VH only, because you actually do feel heroic when you achieve a Heroic Victory. 2) Never continue a battle after you've won, which makes things particularly dangerous since the Alex AI does retrain their troops.
I've yet to finish a campaign to the very end now on VH/VH, so I can't really comment on just how different the experience is, but at least now, a campaign feels like it'd require more than a century to win. One other thing that I've noticed right away is that because of the huge stat boosts that the AI gets, there's no longer any way that I could win an Arverni campaign mainly using Lugoae and Iaosatae.
3 Campaign Victories Later...
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Originally Posted by Equilibrius
From Olaf the Great for my 
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