So ...

[Puzz3D]

Yay. I love not being able to pause most of the time; it's great when the phone rings and I have to leave my battle running. And watching my army being massacred on the highest speed setting while I frantically punch ctrl+t over and over trying to get it to slow back down is great too! Serves me right for trying to speed past the opening phase where my army marches in a mostly straight line, doing not much, in a bid to actually play more of the interesting parts of the game.

Maybe it's because I'm more focused on the battles, but this isn't an issue for me. Why? Because I never speed up the battle except at the end if I have selected "continue the battle" and then decide I don't want to spend the time playing it out afterall. Why wouldn't I speed up the battle during the boring marching phase? Because it's not boring to me. I turn off banners, radar map, free camera and keep the camera as low to the ground as possible. When the battle starts I have to find the enemy unless he is the attacker and is going to come to me. I may send out scouting cavalry if I have it. For me it builds the suspense, and sometime the AI army shows up on my flank. Since I never pause the battle to issue orders, I can get caught out of position.

Nor A Happy Frog after finding that all the aggressive AI and so on appears to have been put in other people’s copies of the game. I feel like I am playing on ‘super easy’ level, not very hard.

Now, if I’d been started with much less than the crazy 15,000 denarii, and had been attacked – or reacted to even a bit while attacking! – then it would have been tougher. But I did have way too much cash, and I was totally ignored except when I forced the game to notice me.

The strategic AI is a bit passive, but overly aggressive wouldn't be good either. In my Julii campaign, I can see Germainia, with whom I am not at war, scanning one of my cities every turn. So they are planning an attack, but they don't attack because they are too weak. The problem might be that the player manages his money better than the AI which allows him to maintain bigger armies. Whenever AI factions fight each other that helps the human player as well. I remember that MTW had the problem where the AI tended to beat itself back into the stoneage. Reducing the player's money might help. You can do that in Rome Shell.

I also forgot to expand fully my rant on those confounded rebel armies. I hate them, always did and still do - pointless little messes of peasants even 2 decent units can run over easily, which do nothing more than force me to divert an army and then fight another boring battle. Half the time I just smack them to death with my general's bodyguard and nothing else. Which turns him into a super general. Making other battles easier.

Why not use auto-resolve to deal with rebels? Don't send your good general to fight them. It's beneath him and left to captains to deal with. The AI gets an advantage in auto-resolve, but, if the game is too easy, that would help make it a bit harder. I have 3 rebel armies in my provinces and they have been there quite a while, but I have been ignoring them. I don't feel that I have to smack down rebel armies as soon as they show up, and they make my income management less efficient which helps the AI compete economically.

Another thing I do which might make the game slightly harder is no retaining of units.