Difference between difficulty settings?

**Nelson** · 10-05-2004, 16:31

Originally Posted by hoof

Don't play on Hard if you want a fair fight.

I think people don't really understand how much of an edge Hard gives the AI in combat. Maybe MTW spoiled us, but I think a lot of the frustration going on is due to the artificial combat bonuses the AI troops get.

Good job, Hoof. Your numbers tell the story. Too many players want a tougher game but go on to complain about the uber cavalry and super missile troops. The medium stats from your testing reveal a balanced battle. Jack up the values for the AI and what else should people expect? Battles may indeed be harder but the tactical balance will be tossed.

**Soulflame** · 10-05-2004, 19:35

About the people who think it is not fair that the AI gets a unit stats on harder then normal settings:

Although I do agree it would be nicer if the AI was better without the bonusses its units get when on higher then normal, that in itself is also a form of 'making the game tougher'. You can't expect the AI to be as advanced as a human player, so if you want a tougher battle, you should indeed prepare for the fact that the AI gets some tipped scales to try and match your superior tactics. Coding a strategic AI is A LOT more difficult and probably even impossible at some point. And honestly, increasing AI morale isn't really making the battle tougher, it's just making it longer (and thus killing even more units probably).
The only problem this can generate is that perception of units may be off. For example, you know that you opponents Hastati are better, but how many Hastati do you now need to send in to win? How much units should flank and how fast do they rout?
On normal this may be a bit easier to figure out, since then you know that 1 on 1, they should about balance out, and thus, any extra unit or better tactic will almost instantly tip the battle in your favor. This 'point of tipping' (or inflection point) is much harder to determine on harder then normal settings.

Other then that minor point, the fact that the AI gets a unit stats increase on hard and very hard is not that farfetched and shouldn't be a point of complain I think. It is the best and easiest way to make battles tougher.

**dedmoroz** · 10-06-2004, 19:37

Originally Posted by Soulflame

the fact that the AI gets a unit stats increase on hard and very hard is not that farfetched and shouldn't be a point of complain I think. It is the best and easiest way to make battles tougher.

I must disagree on that.
IMO, aside from making better AI on higher difficulty, best way to make battles more challenging is to throw in better AI armies which is: upgrades, experience, high star commanders, more units, better units, good mix of units.

For me, let AI cheat with money on strategic map so it can field better armies, rather than simply tweak killing speed of the units which is very cheap and absolutely unbalancing the game.

Currently I am playing expert campaign with medium battles, so far crashing Gauls easily. I hope soon I will start fighting better armies with better units for greater challenge - can somebody confirm that? Is there greater challenge later on?

**ChaosLord** · 10-06-2004, 19:56

I don't think its that bad, given that generals increase a units attack. Considering most players are gonna have their armies controlled by good generals whereas the AI has alot of general-less stacks so it seems balanced to me.

Of course, this is only from a Roman perspective, I haven't played the other factions yet, just Scipii.

**Scorpion** · 10-10-2004, 00:26

Does no-one still know any hard facts about this?

If we knew what boni the AI gets, we could counter it by modding our units to make up for it (if they get more attack, you get the same amount of def, and the same amount of morale....)

This would be a good temporary solution, but of course you´d need to play with a non-roman faction, because they share units.

**Scorpion** · 10-11-2004, 21:48

Gotta try bumping this one....

**Scorpion** · 10-12-2004, 16:17

Since no info was forthcoming, I decided that I must test it myself.

I achieved parity between Julii and Brutii peasants on Very Hard by giving the Julii +2 weapons and +2 armour. (Tested on Arcade to eliminate the morale and fatigue issues)

What is strange is that giving them +2 experience (which should give the same bonuses) makes them superior to the Brutii....

In any case, I´ll try modding +2 attack and +2 defence to my troops when playing very hard to negate the AI bonuses. As for the morale bonus, I´m going to have to hazard a guess that it´s in the +4 to +8 region...going with +4 for mine.

I´ll test out a game with Greece with these settings.