What difficulty level do you play at?

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

RTW

I've played on various levels of both campaign and battlefield difficulty since RTW was released. Think I started off M / M and then after a few imperial campaigns, switched to VH / VH. There was a discussion about the various difficulty levels that went into some depth (people were actually testing the difficulty levels and reporting the results they encountered). Some stated that on VH / VH the AI and / or human player receives combat and / or morale bonuses. However, think this difficulty debate was posted at another forum, when I tried to search for that post, it and related ones had been deleted!

However, that post changed my mind about the difficulty levels in RTW. After many varied campaigns, the campaign difficulty appears to do exactly what it says on the tin But the battlefield difficulty on VH did follow a predictable pattern (as was discussed in that difficulty debate post), battles seemed shorter - either your or (more frequently) the AI's army would rout after a few moments of melee. Whereas in VH / M, the battles appeared to last longer because of the absence of these apparent morale and / or combat bonuses.

VH / M has been the difficulty level for me after original long spells on the higher difficulty levels.

On a side note, has this issue been addressed in the latest patches? I haven't played VH / VH since v1.2

BI

Haven't played that much BI tbh, although I've completed a Roxolani campaign on VH / VH (which was Very Hard, plenty of Pyrrhic victories / defeats here ). BI seems to have either removed or dealt with the apparent morale and / or combat bonuses, because the vanilla battles lasted greater periods of time than battles in RTW.

[professorspatula]

I play with VH Campaigns and Hard Battles. I have played a few VH battles, but I don't enjoy the AI having too many advantages in the battles when they already have bonuses on the campaign map, even if I do still whip it's stupid behind on a regular basis. Also regarding naval battles, as Simon as said, the advantage the AI gets in the these at VH difficulty is definitely reduced since version 1.3. I have won surprising victories against the AI on this difficulty level, even with much smaller fleets than my enemy. Providing I retrain my fleets as often as possible, it typically only requires a few fleets with 3-5 ships in them to maintain a naval superioty, whereas before you'd need about 3-4 x more ships than the AI to win just one naval battle.

[_Aetius_]

I always went VH/VH but its difficult for the wrong reasons, diplomacy becomes pointless and every war is one of attrition, your 2 stacks against 20 AI ones. Not to mention the fact the AI appears to have unlimited funds, which makes a nonsense of tribute and blockading ports.

So M/M or M/H and vice versa is probably best.

[ivoignob]

I started to play BI recently and didn't play RTW for a long while also. Even though I started first with VH/VH. But soon I realized, that playing the small barbarian factions seemed to be much too difficult for me. I lowered campaign difficulty to H for now. Lets see where it ends :-)

[SirGrotius]

I play on M/M, but am thinking of moving to H/M. I've always assumed the AI just gets unlimited monies, I didn't realize that my blocking ports might actually have had an effect on medium! Sweet.

[Dutch_guy]

v/h for the campaign map and Medium for the battles.

At least on medium the Ai doesn't get those ridiculous bonusses, which I absolutely loath.

[x-dANGEr]

What bonuses does the A.I. get on VH campaign? I mean, I never played below VH on campaign difficulty, and I already see it's stupid (In the campaign map).. Like, Germania attacks me (Scythia) while I can crush them in 3 turns and so on lol..