new to EB - couple quick questions

[AstroCat]

Coming back to RTW and wanted to try out EB. I am definitely more of a "simulation/historical accuracy-first" kind of player.

1) Recommended Difficulty level= M/M? Campaign and Battle?
2) Any must have sub mods?
3) Should I use alex or bi .exe, I have both installed. Just want to know which will give me the best game experience.

I installed 1.1, 1.2 and then the 3 fixes. All on a clean RTW install folder.

Thanks for the help!!

[A_Dane]

Well, Personally I do Hard/Hard, but when i started out, it was M/M, because of a rather steep learning curve.
I don't do VH/VH, because the AI go crazy on that.

I'm personally just using plain RTW, as that's what the mod was made for :)

[Ca Putt]

welcome to EB Astrocat!

1. depending on your skill and the faction you chose something between M/M and VH/M some people e.g.: when playing rome/Carthage or the ptolomies you can really choose VH whereas for a first game with Pontos, Hayasdan or Bactria it may prove better to go with medium Campaign difficulty ;)
some people also play on hard or very hard battle difficulty but units are balanced for M and getting your Elites killed by some levy jjerks is rather annoying ;)

2. when roleplaying a lot the force diplomacy mod is very usefull. in the Submod section you can find some usefull modpacks.

3. personally I use BI.exe other people swear on Alex.exe it's mostly up to you, afaik BI.exe has less bugs/strange things that happen while many people say that Alex.exe has a better AI

[QuintusSertorius]

1) I don't like the way harder campaign difficulties break diplomacy. Nor the way greater aggressiveness doesn't translate into any better management of armies. If anything it's worse, I think on the harder difficulties you're more likely to get half-arsed armies of four units. Plus the AI gets bonus cash which again unbalances things. My personal preference is to use M/M and roleplay/houserule to increase the difficulty.

2) If you want any meaningful diplomacy, you need Force Diplomacy. I personally think the City Mod is brilliant for constraining population growth (which again makes things harder). I also recommend the Victory Conditions mini-mod, which might send the AI in the right colonising directions.

3) BI.exe is the worst of them, IMO. You get naval invasions, but more of the same useless 3-5 unit armies, and a never-ending tide of them from anyone who borders on the same sea as you. If you're going to use anything besides rtw.exe, alex.exe is the best bet. Personally, I use rtw.exe after bad experiences with bi.exe.

[The_Blacksmith]

Well... i play on M/H and i find it challenging in my ongoing Pahlava Campaign...

I use a mini submod that makes the water look like in canilla, it helps on the preformance...

Now, the AI in BI is better, ive heard people say that the Alex AI is more defensive...

[Drunk Clown]

You should try yourself what's best for you. As you can see the opinions are divided.

Just don't go for the battle difficulty at higher than medium for the first time, as said, it gives some unfair bonusses which makes levies professional.

Probably best thing to do is to play a clean version and later (if you want) install some new mods or change the difficulty.

[Ludens]

1) Recommended is M - battle, and H or VH - campaign. Higher battle difficulties will make the A.I. troops overpowered, but it won't actually make it smarter. Campaign difficulty mainly affects how quickly the A.I. will take a dislike of you. Since the A.I. is programmed to dislike the player, you may want to chose a lower difficulty. VH also gives the A.I. an additional cash bonus.

2) For more challenging battles, I would recommend the adapted version of Darth's or Sinuhet's formation mod.

3) I haven't played alex.exe, but I found no difference between RTW.exe and BI.exe other than that the BI-A.I. is more likely to carry out naval invasions. This can be good, but I've seen my share of stupid, pointless naval invasions as well. For example: in my old KH campaigns, the SPQR persisted in landing undermanned stacks next to Corinth, even though we were at peace, they had greater threats, and couldn't hope to hold the city.

[AstroCat]

I am thinking maybe getting one of these two:

New installer for Europa Barbarorum with Barbarian Invasion
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...MINI-MOD-PACK!

or

Europa Barbarorum 1.2 submod pack 3.1
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...MINI-MOD-PACK!

[QuintusSertorius]

I am thinking maybe getting one of these two:

New installer for Europa Barbarorum with Barbarian Invasion
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...MINI-MOD-PACK!

or

Europa Barbarorum 1.2 submod pack 3.1
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...MINI-MOD-PACK!

I've spoken my piece on using BI.exe. The submod pack is good, though as people allude to above, it might be a bit much for your first experience of EB to take them all on at once. Hard to unpick them as well if you find you like some of them but not others.