How to make the game more challenging?

[Grand Duke Vytautas]

Hi! I play only on medium/medium setting CAUSE I CAN'T STAND SOMEONE CHEATING ON ME EVEN AI! (But even on m/m I noticed Julii fielding 3 full stacks ! WDF! Where the hell do they get money from owning 4 settlements? When I played as Julii I was always struggling for money) Can anyone suggest me the way to play a really chalenging game? (I played as Julii, Brutii, Scythia, Brittania and Macedon thus far) Do playing e.g. as Gauls, Dacia make it more of a challenge, cause I get bored always winning battles (95%) with few my army loses to 1000 enemys' (it's absolutely unrealistic IMO) Please anyone Thank you for your ideas

[Es Arkajae]

So let me get this straight. You want a more challenging game, but you're complaining about your enemies fielding multiple large stack armies?....

*slaps Vytautus for being daft*

If you want a challenging game as a beginner then play as Carthage, though its not as challenging as it used to be. Numidia is also challenging.

Other things you can do as the normal unchallenging factions is do unusual things with them. For instance as the Julii, ignore the Gauls (and the Senate) and try to conquer eastwards where the Brutii usually go.

Build an assasin and try to assasinate the faction leader of Rome and thus start the civil war early before the other Roman factions have conquered too much. That way you personally get to take on the Greeks, barbarians and Carthaginians yourself.

Stuff like that mate.:)

[Malachus]

If you really want some challenge, make most of the infantry units have a 0 turn build time and and edit out all walls so they can't be built.... the AI will field large armies, and as soon as you're beseiged, you have to defend the town. There's no hope for reinforcements coming or the AI abandoning the seige... therefore, you are forced to keep good units in your cities. Also, in response to ES Arkajae, yes. When playing as a roman faction, use assassins and kill the other romans' diplomats, spies, assassins, or family members. After enough have died the civil war will start. I was able to start a civil war in roughly 5 turns or so... imagine that. Couple a really early civil war with the no walls and 0 turn build time, you'll be in for a fun and challenging fight.

[Grand Duke Vytautas]

So let me get this straight. You want a more challenging game, but you're complaining about your enemies fielding multiple large stack armies?...

I didn't mean that, I win 95% of my battles even heavily outnumbered, I just want AI to be fair (just like once in Age of Empires 2) for Gods sake! Now when I play as Brutii on m/m it's a cakewalk actually, but one thing I don't understand how the Julii get 3 full army stocks (they have only 4 settlements), where the hell do they pay from for the maintainance of their armies ? That is just brutal cheating (hate hate hate) . I can't even think about h/h and vh/vh

[The Stranger]

don't coplain, just mod the game so better units come availeble earlier, or make most units 0 turns to build while finding a way to make AI handle that

[Chelifer]

You can try the minimal casualties approach in a campaign. Even a couple of hundreds of your men lost in a single battle should be considered a tragedy.
I know it's completely unhistorical (there were no real mass media 2K years ago), but it definitely makes things more challenging

[Arrowhead]

But I love the game being easy sometimes.

[Wishazu]

try the rome total realism mod

[Someone Stupid]

Your asking for way too much from a game. Even rudimentary AI will be prohibitively expensive to code for. Most AI in games isn't very reactive. Look at where the AI excels at currently in games - it is in task that it has time for and we don't. It isn't hard to make a single bot for an FPS be somewhat difficult to kill and still maintain some sense of being an opponent. It is dead on easy to make it impossible to kill. 0% chance of missing w/out adding little lines of code that tells it to wait a tad before executing any orders. You'd die via headshot before you knew what hit you. Also RTS is fairly friendly to it as well. Speed kills. TBS doesn't have that- that is what RTW is on the campaign map. There are too many variables to units for the AI to use them effectively against a human component in the RTS part of it.

When we look at a scene we are more or less able to group things easily for their relevance to our demands and then we start the serial process of deciding what is the best way to go about something. The computer AI doesn't do either for the most part. It might group some things - but on a set scale or one with little true variance. Remember that Deep Blue (among other supercomputers) was highly successful with a simple value system and then going through and processing millions of moves to find the move which is best suited for itself. Latter iterations focused a bit more on strategy in the effect that it better utilized lookup tables of previous matches and opponents. It still relied heavily on a huge IPC to "predict" what was going to happen and how it should react. If a mainframe or cluster has problems with chess (which lends itself to the computers strong points - simple value systems work fairly well with plotting out all available moves for each variable down the line), imagine what a game that has less resources along with not siding with the computer's strong points. R:TW doesn't lend itself to a simple value system and there are more than just a few grid points. Add that to a ton less processing power and your looking at something which a human should have no trouble beating overall.

As for AoE 2 not cheating - it does, you just don't realize it IIRC - though I could be wrong there. It's been awhile since I've played it (a LONG while). Even if it doesn't, the fact that it doesn't have to move a mouse you could still interpret as cheating if it doesn't have delays build into it's actions. Also remember RTS games are easier for the AI to beat you at since predetermined and optimized build orders are more important than actual strategy. Look at your online players - the good ones are good because they can execute their orders a few seconds faster than players. Grat ones understand the strategy and can execute as well. Each few seconds they shave off the countless beginning orders (of a mapped out plan of attack in build strategy) generally will add up to enough for an early attack to wipe the other side out. Rarely did I play a game that made it past the 15 or 20 minute mark IIRC. I wasn't a great player, I was a decent one with understanding of basic strategy IMO. I recall playing against many good players and if I could outlast their fierce initial attack without too much in losses I could beat them with tactics and strategy on a unit basis. I was an evil opponent in the late game, in the early game when it came down to mastering the build order along with optimizing your mouseclicks, I wasn't. I didn't put the time or research into it. I knew exactly what they were doing - we were at the same website(s) and saw the same "strategies" (command orders). They just sat down and decided to master it. Most RTS isn't strategy - it is mastering a build and command order and executing it as fast as possible. Even most TBS strategy is the same way except if your slower with the mouse, it isn't a disadvantage. R:TW doesn't lend itself to rushes - so now the computer has no crutch to lean on. No crutches means other things have to be given to it. Hence added units. Trying to expect an apples for apples competition with you and the AI is unrealistic - it needs those oranges and needs those oranges badly.

[The Storyteller]

When you say you are outnumbered, do you mean just outnumbered in terms of number of units? Do you take into consideration quality? If not, then I suggest you confine yourself only to archer auxilia, onagers, Roman cavalry and legionary cohorts. When the civil war breaks out, you'll have a very tough time contending with Praetorian cohorts, Urban cohorts, first cohorts etc.

[Romeus Petrus]

You can try taking it easy for a while and building up your existing provinces without invading any new ones, thus giving other factions a chance to tech up. When they eventually go against you, they'll be rich and high tech. That usually makes it a little more chalenging and more interesting.

I tried that with my current macedonian campaign. I only got rid of the romans as fast as I could, coz I was sick an tired of fighting romans all the time. And now Carthage controls all of North Africa; The Pontus-Egypt alliance has the Seleucids (my allies) surrounded. And I am no where near 50 provinces. It is going to be a heck of a fight when I finally cross over to Asia Minor.