On overall game difficulty...

**Hobotus** · 10-31-2004, 00:02

This is adressed to those people who don't find this game enough of a challenge

First of all let me say that I love this game and I've played many many campaigns due to the absurd amounts of free time that I have

Anyways, I've found that the only real challenge that the game presented me was in the early years, when I've had to scrap tooth and nail for survival (I always play on VH/VH). Once I had an established empire going, I would start rolling over enemies with a well oiled economic and military machine. The one thing I did notice in my many campaigns however, was that around the time that I was so strong, the campaign was getting boring, large empires had appeared in areas of the map where I wasn't active. Empires that were large enough to have given me a challenge if I had faced them earlier, but which now were of no matter.

So I decided to try something new. First of all I downloaded the 2.2 Realism Mod, which has a few nice additions to the game. Namely it has mixed up the roman armies quite a bit, which led my to pick Brutii for this new campaign, and also 1 turn was added to the build time of all structures, thereby streching the game out a bit, which is good IMHO. Well, in this campaign I decided on going for an isolationist policy for the first 50 years or so, and only captured Crete and Rhodes (When the Greeks were conquered by the Macedonians on the mainland anyhow) to give myself an economic boost that would allow me to continue my isolationism. At aroud 220 BC I decided that the time was ripe to engage, as the comp factions had now established themselves, some having died, others having grown powerful. I attacked Egypt and have now been at war with them for over 20 years. This war is by far the most interesting of any conflicts I've had so far in RTW, because unlike previous games, the Egyptians were strong enough to give me a very good challenge, at one point I lost 3 major battles in a row, before doing some serious regrouping (and I've lost maybe 3-5 major battles in all of RTW previously out of hundreds). I was so happy to experience this!

Well, there's my suggestion to you all. If you want more of a challenge, sit tight for a couple of generations and build up your power at home before you enage in major wars abroad. This will give the AI time to present a real challenge to you, instead of facing a faction that is just trying to establish an area of dominance and that is still at war with a few others.

Post other ideas of making the game tougher, or your experiences on difficulty in general...

**Orvis Tertia** · 10-31-2004, 04:02

I found quite a challenge playing as the Parthians on hard/hard. without a mod. Some of the non-Roman factions appear to be very tough at times. If you make any mistakes early, or even if you simply don't catch any breaks, you can find yourself really struggling.

**dedmoroz** · 10-31-2004, 19:59

Now hear this:
best way to make the game harder and thus more interesting is by doing completely opposing thing to what you suppose to do. i will explain myself:
lets say you play as Julii - dont expand north!!!!
instead try to expand east to dacia and macedonia/greece where brutii will naturally expand.
i got very interesting results with this - gauls destroyed senate army and engaged in war with brutii, i lost all my provinces in italy but gained reach former greek and macedonian provinces.
for now 2 other roman factions struggling hard with very powerfull gauls - hehe i totally interrupted their usual expansion pattern so cleverly

the AI just dont get from where all those gauls came rolling all over them...
BTW i am playing on VH/H.

**Hobotus** · 10-31-2004, 22:38

Orvis: Yes I know a lot of factions are really really hard to start out with on VH/VH, i'm just saying that once you get going, it's too easy.

Dedmoroz: Nice name hehe (i speak russian)

Yes you're totally right, and I do that as well, in my current Brutii game I've only gone for the Egyptians who normally get way too strong. I've now conquered them fully at around 190BC, however many other factions are now huge, especially Armenia, Seleucia, Germania and Brittania (other than the romans who are also all doing decently). Also since I left the greek peninsula alone completely, something that the Brutii AI never does, the Macedonians are now the single most powerful faction (equivalent in strength to me after conquest of all Egypt), having taken out the Greeks and Thracians both. The other Romans have just declared war on them...hehehe, I don't think i'm gonna help, lol

**Heinrich VI** · 10-31-2004, 23:24

yes in my current game armenia threatens to take over all of asia minor and the britons detroyed the germans and almost the gauls - cool! i am now allied with the gauls and protecting their last small town with a huge army ^^

**Razor1952** · 11-01-2004, 00:28

Hobotus I think you may have hit on a much better way to make the game hard. In stead of giving the ai morale etc bonuses, give them time.

So Vhard would mean that you would start 20 maybe 50 years later , by then some empires will be well developed and much harder to subdue. Of course you can just nit the button 100 times but a more formal mod for this would be great.

**dedmoroz** · 11-01-2004, 19:51

Originally Posted by Hobotus

Dedmoroz: Nice name hehe (i speak russian)

Privet Bratan

Happy gaming!! more russians arround hiding?

**Hobotus** · 11-02-2004, 05:39

Yeah currently what's missing is AI decisiveness more than anything. They use their stacks terribly. You can tell that a stack is assigned a target location or target enemy, and once it goes there, it doesn't try to either move or attack again. This leads to a lot of AI stacks chasing each other for years on end, and really slows down their growth :( Hope that can be changed in a patch...

**Colovion** · 11-02-2004, 06:27

I haven't been challenged yet. It's disapointing. Yeah I've only been playing on Hard/Hard... but I thought that it would be tougher than this.

Battle - 1500 of my troops vs two of theirs - 1500 and 700.

I mopped the floor with them - they had no idea how to do anything - 300 or so casualties for my side. I killed 2000 of them. Let's hope the patch makes me enjoy this more than I enjoy shooting fish in a barrel.

**Satyr** · 11-02-2004, 20:55

With proper use of archers, cav archers and cav it is entirely possible to lose no men in battle that weren't killed by your own archers. The AI is incapable of keeping any cohesion among it's companies and they separate and follow your archers all over the map. Once they are mostly killed by that archer fire it is easy to force a rout with a cav charge and then they are all dead. With an army of 300 I have killed 350 and lost not one single man. This is just plain silly! We need an AI that is at least as capable as MTW and preferably more so.