Does battle difficulty affect AI thinking?

[Grand Duke Vytautas]

Salute you!

Currently I'm playing as Julii on m/m, soon I'll finish my campaign, in which battles were easy (mostly I loose like 10 times less men than the enemy, although before battle victory chance is mostly 1:1) . Going to swiitch on h or vh battle difficulty in my next campaign, want more challenge.

So the thing I don't understand is, does battle difficulty affect AI thinking in battle map (like more agressiveness, flanking, ambushes, attacking the rear, etc.)? Is AI moving its' troops the same on all difficulty levels, is it just the case of losing more men due to moral+defence bonuses to AI or is the AI really smarter on h, vh? If so what are the differences?

I'm really confused on this issue, so please someone give a thorough answer! Thanks

[Silver Rusher]

I think that the difficulty merely makes the AI units stronger.

[Taurus]

I am sure that the battle map difficulty setting affects morale. (e.g your troops will rout faster on the vh difficulty.)
Also, the enemy units are made stronger and always have an advantage with the strength of their units.

Hope this helps,

[Al Khalifah]

I don't think the AI gets any smarter. It's a sad fact of R:TW that the AI is so poor that it cannot do relative differences of AI strength.

It would have been cooler if enemy generals with more stars were also smarter rather than just giving bonuses to their units, to provide the user with more of a challenge rather than just going for the Tetris difficulty model.

[Productivity]

I am sure that the battle map difficulty setting affects morale. (e.g your troops will rout faster on the vh difficulty.)
Also, the enemy units are made stronger and always have an advantage with the strength of their units.

Hope this helps,

Um, no they don't. You're right about the moral, but the enemy getting stronger is bugged. Yes they get stronger, but your units get stronger as well resulting in no extra advantage except that from moral.

[Taurus]

Ah right, I wasn't aware of the bug about the player also getting stronger.
I havn't played a lot of singleplayer recently since I have made the move to multiplayer.

[BobTheTerrible]

Well Darth Vader mentioned removing a bug that caused the AI to be overly aggressive on the harder levels of difficulty in his DarthMod:

3)Eradicated a bugged AI CA command that made the AI overly aggressive
(especially in higher level of difficulties) and be suicidal. He will now pose a so
difficult defence or attack you so strategically, almost as a good human player.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=28904

When he say's "especially in higher levels of difficulties" this is implying that the AI is indeed different (if slightly) on the higher levels. Although, I wouldn't doubt that the difference is just being more aggressive.

Certainly, Grand Duke, the AI is definately not much changed on the higher levels. Apart from maybe higher aggression, it's the same old AI.

[Deus ret.]

As far as I can tell your units don't get a morale penalty, the enemy gets a morale bonus.... ok, peanuts....

anyway, battles actually become more difficult apart from that because all units get the same attack improvement, resulting in MUCH quicker battles and (if you don't time your units right) in equally quicker routes. Pretty annoying, this. All you have to do is to be faster, even larger-scale battles are over in no time.