Difficulty questions

[Roman Ocean]

hi have a few questions about difficulty.Been playing m/m but might risk vh/m

1. Does AI unit quality and army composition worsen the easier difficulty you have?

2. is vh campaign just endless stack spamming?

3. Is aggresion the same across dificulties?

Thanks in advance!

[Shadowwalker]

(1) According to my personal experience -yes and no. (Have played on all campaign difficulty levels already.)
The only real difference I witnessed in army composition is the fact that the AI hires mercenaries only on hard/very hard.
Means in return that they recruit less factional troops.
Qart-Hadast for example tends to field less phalanxes when they have access to the merc pools.

(2) Sort of. I have the feeling the AI must have some more money on very hard.

(3) No. It's nothing you can count on but the lower difficulty you play the higher the chance to have at least a few bordering factions that honour a truce or an alliance. (Currently playing SPQR again, this time on easy (!!!)/medium, just to see what happens. Aedui, Arverni, Luso and Seleucids betrayed me relatively fast but Getai, Epeiros, KH and Makedonia remained peaceful at least for a while when I payed 400/turn. Getai didn't attack me even once yet although we share a border for at least 75 years (300 turns!) now.
My last very hard Romani campaign I gave up after 50 years since every faction with a border (even if it was a "water border") focused entirely on me and noone else....

[Rahwana]

according to diplomacy:

medium : everyone that share borders with you will be inclined to hate you
hard : everyone who share borders with you will hate you
very hard : everyone hates you

[QuintusSertorius]

Higher campaign difficulties just mean even more stupid "diplomacy" and endless spamming of super-stacks turn after turn, until you wipe out the offending faction out of sheer frustration. Unless you're willing to blitz it, waste of time, IMO.

[Roman Ocean]

thanks guys i think ill actually try easy =P i like turtling

[burn_again]

I think M/M is the best balance in terms of army composition and aggressiveness. On the easier levels the AI can become very passive and weak, on the harder levels you will get spammed with mercenaries.
For a fun late game you will probably need to create some buffer states using Force Diplomacy and move_character cheats. Ask QuintusSertorius, he has pretty much mastered the art of influencing the AI that way ;-).

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

I find Hard campaign to be a good balance, since the AI armies will hire some mercenaries. Adding mercenaries to their armies can compensate somewhat for poor army composition.

Whenever you don't want the AI to hire mercenaries, or would rather they didn't hire specific kinds of mercenary, just hire the mercenaries you don't want them to have yourself. I do that a lot with Seleucids when I don't want Pahlava to have access to Greek-style mercenaries.

The AI is a bit more aggressive on Hard than on Medium, but not suicidal - they can still usually be deterred by a full stack army on their border.

[vollorix]

@TMS: agreed. On medium the AI is really weak, so you need your whole selfrestriction to play really slowly :)

[Ludens]

(2) Sort of. I have the feeling the AI must have some more money on very hard.

It does, actually. On VH the A.I. gets 10.000 mnai per turn. This is an R:TW feature, not an EB one.

As for diplomacy: in M2:TW, unless a diplomatic interaction takes place, relations with the A.I. automatically grow worse very turn. This "decay" is stronger at higher campaign difficulties. I think it works this way in R:TW as well, since the A.I. becomes more amenable if you pay a token sum (I use 200 mnai) per turn as regular tribute. This should prevent the decay from occurring. It does not entirely prevent opportunistic attacks (but I see less of those), but it does seem easier to sign peace and get trade-deals afterwards.