Quote Originally Posted by lars573
I only cheat to amass enough cash to build my tech tree buildings, and get enough troops to take resources villiages. And I only do it because skirmish doesn't have an option to start with more resources, and the AI cheats hard.
I promised to get back to you and fess up about any cheating, Lars573. Well, you are right that the AI cheats, and cheats hard, but only toward the end of a Skirmish.

I play in Very Hard mode now and I must say I see no need to cheat on my part. At the start of a Skirmish you can only build a Town Center and Barracks, but with some diligent personnel and resource management it is perfectly possible to complete your tech tree before the AI begins to hit you hard.

Forward deployment and early attacks are of the essence in this game.

I send my first four or five Guardsmen or Musketeers out to the nearest unknown areas of the map as individual scouts, telling me which villages are neutral and which are in enemy hands, as well as in what area the enemy may be massing its troops. Just order individual soldiers to stand in a wood or on a deserted hilltop where the enemy rarely sets foot and they will last you as scouts for the entire game.

My first squadron is ready before I can build an Academy, so off they go to conquer the nearest neutral village without Officer, Standard Bearer or Drummer. They never fail. Enemy villages are something different.

New resources bring new buildings, including my Academy. By the time the AI attacks and I need squadrons with Officers & all, they will be available. If you have properly scouted out the enemy, you can send them where they do the most damage, and the AI has trouble keeping up with your pace. As far as I am aware it does not cheat in this phase. After I manage to beat it fair and square in some hotly contested vilage, it obviously has trouble getting back on its feet.

Only toward the end of the game, when the AI has visibly run out of resources (because I have captured most of them) it starts to cheat and keeps raising expensive troops as if money were not an issue. This makes you end game expensive in terms of coal, usually too expensive for your coal mines to keep up.

However, by that time I have 500 peasants working my fields, woods and mines and food and stone are usually at 999999. I run the finest infantry (usually Grenadiers and Light Infantry) and horsemen that food, iron and stone can buy, and coal shortages are met by means of timely market purchases. But most of all, by that time I will have built a fearsome artillery corps with Howitzers driven by Limbers (I find them useful after all, and the Limber bug rarely 'kidnaps' my guns) with which I simply blow the AI's Barracks and Stables to smithereens.