What difficulty are you playing on?

[PantsToucher]

I started on vh/h, but got beat by the rebels in the starting cities everytime as the Getai, I guess I must suck or something. Even the Illyrian peltats killed by best heavy infantry guys, so now after loosing several campains really quick I went to vh/m. So, any on have any luck on anything better than medium battles? Or maybe I just suck, the only campains I played in the last month were with the Romans on RTR, which are notoriusly overpowered, so maybe that is why hard battle difficulty wasn't that bad for me. I can win, but with so many losses to my unretrainable heavy infantry at the start that I can't survive until I can train more, and the rebel spawns killed me because I just could build light troops. It is kind of fun loosing sometimes though.

Also, a minor aside, are the mines getting nerfed a bit in the next patch? Because I took one city with a mine, and now I'm getting a nice surplus just from that one city. The mine is giving me along something like 3000 minai a turn, which seems a bit much. Maybe lower that a bit, or give some poplulation or happiness penatly (people might not like getting forced to work in a mine or something).

[pezhetairoi]

M/M. You shouldn't play battle difficulty above hard cos then it's not realistic.

[NightStar]

I play Vh/m but I am a glutton for punishment

[QwertyMIDX]

Also, a minor aside, are the mines getting nerfed a bit in the next patch?

Yeah, they'll be nerfed significantly, but don't underestimate just how important mining was a source of income for ancient states. The (mid-sized) Laurion Mines in Attic produced 1000 Talents of silver a year.

[Trithemius]

VH/M, as I thought that was the EB team-recommended settings. :)

[QwertyMIDX]

They are. Well they're the settings I recommend at least, I don't like hard/very hard battle difficultly unbalancing my stats, especially because I get flak for it.

[Baldrick]

I play H/H, seems enjoyable enough and some battles can get a little nip and tuck. Nice close one today where I was up against 9 Eranshar Ashabara, close until I thinned them just enough to risk charging my general at their left flank and they ran away like girls

[Spendios]

I play VH/H it makes the battles last a long time.

[PantsToucher]

So far my campain has been going a lot better with VH/M difficulty. The rebel spawns took one of my cities, since I only could afford one field army and two cities were undersige by rebels at once; good to see them doing something for a change. I don't know how I would even be able to afford an army without the 3000 mine income I'm getting, and my armies aren't even that expensive as the getia.

Another question: What unit size do you guys use? I like huge, as it makes me worry about my population actually, and I think it helps keep the ai from making stack after stack of the same crappy units that i need to beat over and over. Although the greek cities population might need rasing, I think they are all down under 600 people by about 260bc some how.

[Jarardo]

VH/m. I tried battles on vh, then hard. The open field battles were okay, but the looonnnngggg, drawn out fights against the slave faction everytime I took a city from them got a little tedious.

So VH/M now.

[nikolai1962]

H/M.

I dislike the stat thing with battles above M and so try to make the battles harder by limiting my tactics to be more realistic e.g min camera height etc.

If you want the rebels to attack your cities you have to have H or VH campaign unfortunatley. Personally i think making the ai more aggressive doesn't always make the game better as the ai wastes it's time attacking places it can't take. Ideally the game should be set up so that the ai has advantages built in that balance out the areas where it has flaws, e.g retraining units, depopulating its cities, naval stuff etc. EB has done some cool things with scripting to do this and there are probably a lot more things that could be added to this. I think that is a better approach than the ai just having more money and being more generally aggressive. But the rebels not attacking cities is hard-coded it seems to H or VH setting.

I use large sizes out of habit as my old pc couldn't handle huge but when i remember i make it huge. Huge-size battles are way more fun (except in seiges when they are a total pain).

edit: mines. Is it possible to have a hidden resource, exceptionalmine, or something that has a mines+2 upgrade. That way the few special mines that really did make a huge difference (i think macedonian power was built on them?) while keeping the rest as just very useful but not unbalancing. Or having the mine capability section giving different cash depending on the presence or absence of certain hidden resources.

e.g

capability
{
mine_resource 8 require hidden_resource nomalmine
mine_resource 60 requires hidden_resource supermine
}

[Avicenna]

VH/M as Baktria.

Almost got wiped out by the Eleutheroi :$

Faction heir's army got destroyed. I took the province east to Baktria (forgot the name) and had it taken by 2 rebel stacks. Then Baktra itself was almost taken by a stack of rebel scum, luckily I managed to defeat them. Getting rubbish suitors, the best being a person with negative influence and management, but sharp/charismatic/vigorous. Unloyal though. Only decent general is faction leader, and he's probably going to pop off soon. I've got a good spy, diplomat and assassin though.

[Cheexsta]

VH/M as Pontos. I currently only have four provinces, the Seleucids are breathing down my neck and I only have half a stack of troops to defend myself. Not to mention a 25,000 mnai debt and a quarterly income of 700.

This is going to be a bitch to get back on my feet.

[Warlord 11]

H/M as Baktria. I have four provinces and things are looking very good for me.