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.