bugged difficulty levels?

[warelephant]

I've been playing this game for a couple of months and I find the battles to be a little too easy. Now, I've read on these forums that the difficulty level is bugged. So is hard actually easier? I am having a tough time finding documentation about this. If this is true, does this explain why the ai seems horrible even on high difficulty levels? Also, I can't believe that something as fundamental as difficulty level is bugged. this game has so many bugs i'm losing track. are they going to fix all of this in the expansion??

[Mongoose]

No, hard/very hard is faster but not harder (not the same as medium)

EDIT: Welcome to the .org!

[InsaneApache]

Welcome...I have no idea....never heard of that bug meself. iirc once you get past medium level then all that happens is that the AI stats just get higher....

wish I could be more help

[tibilicus]

To be honst its all easy. Even on very hard the A.I will still charge cavalry head on into pikes. It is just faster as mongoose mentioned. About 2/3 months ago i was still playing on easy or medium, i thought the switch to har and very hard would present a chalenge. But no, Same old dum A.I. To conter this in custom battles i will tend to give myself less troops. Still the A.I wont win but hey, Some times i get a close victory ! lol

[Red Harvest]

InsaneIpache,

Not sure where you've been, but the difficulty bug was identified very early on with 1.2. It didn't exist before then. Eventually different folks worked out the particulars of how the difficulty levels seem to work in combat:

1. AI gets attack bonuses at higher difficulties...but so does the human...so combat is really, really fast. Easy combat is probably the closest to a "normal" speed.
2. Morale might be increased on the AI side only. On the highest difficulty average troops tend to waver for the human before the AI. However, with high morale troops such as triarii I've never lost a 1vs1 custom vs. other triarii on VH. So in battle human forces are more prone to routing easily on VH.

A big problem with the way CA did difficulty levels was that using only attack bonuses made it a combat speed slider, even before 1.2. However in 1.2 the kill rate increased for the AI, but not the human. Many of us were disatisfied with the +7 attack given on VH to the AI in 1.0/1.1. But CA seems to have created even more trouble in the way they addressed the problem. The #1 complaint back all the wat to the demo was the combat speed...and CA has never tried to address it.

[professorspatula]

I remember playing the demo, finding the battles so easy and fast, and thinking it must have been deliberately stuck on easy mode to appeal to non-strategy gamers and those rubbish at games in general. Little did I know (and most of us probably) that was actually how the entire game was going to be. Madness.

[warelephant]

This is one of the most ridiculous bugs i've ever seen in a game (and the worst part is that its because i downloaded the patch). So to make the game more challenging, what difficulty should i play on? easy? or is it all the same? also is it more challenging without the patch then (if i play on hard) because i can just reinstall without the patch. I have never played without the patch 'cause the first thing i did when I got the game was to download the patch. I assumed that a somewhat old game with a patch meant that most if not all the obvious bugs would be fixed but it created new bugs. please someone who knows tell me that they are at least going to try to fix these bugs and improve the AI in the expansion because I really love the concept of the game and the graphics but the ai is just horrendous. (and i havent even mentioned the save bug yet)

[Mongoose]

Medium is the best. Go with that.

[soibean]

I think vh much have some problems in it. I did a custom battle for kicks, my force of fully upgraded War hounds against 2 forces of non upgraded peasants. Thats something like 27 attack vs 1 defense. I just wanted to see all the dogs swarm over them as they fled.
Instead half of my forces are routed before the enemy even begins to run, and it turns out that even my dog handlers are being massacred by the basic peasants.... yea

[Mongoose]

the vanilla game is pretty nutty, i would suggest that you install SPQR:total war

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=23634

Enjoy!

[CMcMahon]

The only difference I've noticed on H/VH is that the AI actually flanks you, and will setup sieges so that they'll attack from multiple directions (although they actually tow their battering ram/ladder/siege tower around the building instead of setting it up right in front of the location).

[Mount Suribachi]

Does RTR do anything about the combat speeds on the higher difficulty levels?

[warelephant]

what does spqr do exactly? are there other good mods..i'm so confused by the number of mods. i'm new to mods and stuff so does modding not adversely affect the way the game runs or the computer's files does it? ( i mean it seems like it shouldnt but i might as well make sure). and most importantly, does spqr make the game battles more challenging?

[Princeps]

I set up 1 Legionare Cohort vs. 1 Legionare Cohort custom battle (1.2) on hard and I more often lost than won. If the player get the same bonuses than AI, then why I didnt won about half of the battles?

[Uriel]

The problem with hard and very hard battle modes is the attack bonuses apply to you as well as the AI in 1.2. This results in faster routing all round.

I've heard that battles on easy actually last much longer, due to the lack of routing but I'm not sure if there are other disadvantages.

[warelephant]

what does the spqr mod do? are there any other good mods out there?