Difficulty levels - what do they do? what do you recommend?

[Fookison]

I usually play the campaign on M and the battles on VH. That way I have a chance to enjoy the boardgame portion with less frustration on trying to hang onto my florins and I can still enjoy the strategy of the AI in the VH battles....

[Nakraal]

That was I did for my first campaign with HRE too for the same reasons. For almost 5 centuries was I in permanent war with Denmark, Venice, Poland, Hungary and Milan, no matter how strong I was in some periods of this time they would not talk about peace at all. Their "priorities where always "Uknown" and always rejected my cease fire offers.

Now my second with Byzantium is on h/vh. I thought that the battle AI is pretty good and if it was supported with a good campaign AI (better army composition) it would make a very hard challenge for me. Playing at hard not only the AI chose itsa army more wisely than in medioum, but it acted wiser and in diplomatic fields. In fact it acted and that matters as in medioum it seems that the AI does not act diplomaticly at all.

Example: I have trade rights with Venetians. I know that they and the Turks ar are my greatest threats so I keep a diplomat near Venice and a Spy in the borders with Ragusa. After 20-30 peace turns my spy reports a stack coming down from Dalmatia to northen Greece. I send my diplomat to check their intentions. "War" was their priorities and they where not accepting any of my small gifts which would upgrade our relations. They attacked and won 2 small battles, and I 1 but then our big stacks clashed together in one great battle which would determine the balance of powers in the Balkans. I won. Until then their priorities was war or uknown. After that it became "peace". So they accepted a cease fir that lasted until they made a huge army.

Turks on the other hand I have managed to never attack. I constantly offer them small gifts to keep our relations from droping below "poor" and they stand in place even if I have sometimes small garissons in my frontier settlements.

Now I thing that the medioum campaign must include a "dummy" opponent AI while harder a "wiser", althouth I heard that on VH there are no negotiations like in M.

[Pretorian]

I'm in my first campaign so I'm playing on M/M. To know the game better and to be able to understand what the units do I recomend for the 1st campaing playing all in M.
When the campaign is over I'm going to start another with a new faction and start playing H/H but if things get to frustating I'll return to Medium, afterall this is a game and the objective is to have fun.
Veterans from RTW will probably start playing in H or VH but they are pros :D

[maestro]

I started at M/M on my first Campaign but very quickly found both the battles and the campaigns way too easy. My second campaign was H/VH but that was too easy also.

Since I now know more about the game mechanics n stuff, I've just started a game on VH/VH and it's much better - much more challenging.

The only problem is that with the passive AI bug (why, oh why hasn't that been fixed yet!?!?!?!), too many battles are unfair and you can just wipe out the opposing army until you run out of ammo and then storm in with your infantry.

I look forward to "proper" battles on VH to see just how clever the AI really is.... I haven't lost a single battle yet I came very close on one seige last night - I thought it would be my first loss. The odds were well against me - the Danes had a huge leet army and had attacked without warning into Belgium. I was completely unprepared and should have lost. I got down to 2 infantry units and 4 mailed knight units, each with between 1 and 10 men in them and the Danes still had nearly 100 town militia and 100 spear militia. The Danes then decided to be passive and sat, literally 50 metres from my town centre, looking at me. They had me ad they just sat there staring. Rubbish.

[Slaists]

Well, for one, the VH battle AI is still extremely easy due to the "passive AI bug"...

As to the strategic map difficulty: the medium seems to be the most enjoyable mode due to the fact that diplomacy does work. For example, in my current M/VH game, I have had several cases when the AI would run to me begging for piece the very next turn after their hot-headed drunk sailors blockaded a port of mine by mistake...

[katank]

I'm very much enjoying VH battles. Since it's early, all factions are fielding mostly militia troops and so on. The AI doesn't seem to get special bonuses. Peppered with missiles and charge in the back by some cav, they break easily. I'm able to get quite a few nice victories out of that. Other times, they are smart enough with exploiting my meatshield out of place relative to my missile and so on to give me hefty casualties. There's also a few battles that were hard fought and made me say wow. Certainly improved from previous games. Now if only they'd fix passive AI.

VH campaign is kinda ridiculous. Diplomacy is practically useless as I pound enemies into the ground and they wouldn't talk at all. Pope is constantly excomming me and I'm at war with 5 factions at the same time, 4 of which are AI initiated. They still pull dumb stunts like sieging a city with inadequate forces that my garrison can beat off by itself. Darn inquisitors are total haxing though. Lost 2 generals to them. Thank god for my 2 perfect assasins who managed to dispatch 3 of them so far.