Far too easy?

[katank]

I think the castle/city thing should stay. I actually tend to be of the opinion that the AI has too few cities to sustain a good economy. If they learn to specialize, that'd be great.

Same as Barry, I rarely lose to the AI and often give it a whipping. Even when I lose, it's a pyrrhic victory for them. In a memorable battle, a lone general + 2 units of Turkomens and 1 unit of Siphais gets attacked by a full stack of Byz troops (including some 4 units of Byz cav, 2 units of Vardarotai, 2 units of Skythion, 3 units of treb archers, and assorted infantry). Even though I knew I was going to lose, I managed to wipe out their entire cav wing and mauled 2 units of treb archers. This kind of thing simply should not happen. Instead of charging, they sat around while I had the high ground and shot them up, then killing several units while charging down.

[econ21]

It's surprising for me to read this thread, having played two English campaigns on VH/VH - one pre-patch and one post-patch -for a reasonable period of time. (Up to 1260 on the post patch one). I am finding the level of challenge excellent. The pre-patch game was ultimately broken because on the attack, the AI would just line up in front of my longbows (passive AI) but I have not seen that post-patch (they get shot to death on the defence, but not the offence, but that's fine, IMO).

I am not sure what I am doing "wrong" that makes my game so much more challenging than the OPs, but I suspect it is not rushing. I don't declare war on anyone unless attacked or I have a mission to do it. When at war, I try to take cities but don't try to "knock out" factions if the Pope tells me to back off (I back off).

In addition, I have avoided sacking cities unless desperate. I recently relented and that made the game massively easier - the money from sacking you get is amazing.

A third thing was crusading: I am trying to establish a crusader kingdom around Antioch and that is challenging in a fun way, given the religious unrest and the hostility of the Turks and Egyptians.

For me, no TW game since STW has been as challenging (in a fun way) as M2TW as England on VH/VH. (Well, ok, HRE in MTW was harder.)