What difficulty level do you play at?

[Garvanko]

which it does on vh anyway, since all AI factions receive an additional 10,000 denarii per turn if you set campaign difficulty to that level. I don't know what's the thing on 'hard', though....probably a more aggressive AI and more bribes by them.

Hard is very balanced. Challenging, but not ridiculously so - I hate seeing the ten to twenty full AI stacks queuing up on my borders in VH - just doesn't seem realistic, especially when you're economy is clearly stronger and can't mass produce to obscene levels like that.

I used to play VH/H, but now I play H/H. Its balanced, the battles are a challenge, and the campaign is fun.

[Monarch]

For me, I would like to see a challenge on the back half of a game. I know they tried to surge new life into campaigns with the civil war, but only three factions get that, what about the others. It's in the back end of a campaign where I tend to get a little bored, I'm a big bad superpower and my biggest challenge is how fast I can move my armies around. As you dont have to conquer the whole map, the whole idea that say if I'm seleucids and become a superpower, then one day you'll have to take on the other superpower like Gaul from the otherside of the map is weak imo. That's on RTW. I have BI, and the hordes seem to keep me interested "will they attack me?" etc.

But yeah in M2TW, I want a Mongol horde to come out of nowhere and seriously harm my superpower status. Or something that emerges to keep the challenge up.

Because to be honest, as soon as a gain a stable foothold, there's no stopping a capable human.

[x-dANGEr]

What always has been boring about R:TW/BI is that whenever you reach 15 cities with stable status and strong economy, it's a matter of time more of a challenge.