About to bump up the difficulty

[Afro Thunder]

Well, as the title says, I'm thinking about starting a campaign on H/H. I'd like to know what exactly the difficulty settings affect for both campaigns and battles. I know that on higher difficulty, the AI is less responsive to diplomacy, does this mean I'll need to install some kind of diplomacy mod to get a good game? Also, I understand that unlike in RTW, battle difficulty doesn't give the AI morale and stat bonuses, or does it?

[Hoplite7]

Harder difficulty on the campaign map means the AI has a much better income, can handle civil order very easily (you'll find towns with just a governer in it), fields bigger (not greater, just bigger) armies, and never surrenders. As far as d/l a mod, I would just wait for the patch which is supposed to improve diplomacy. On Vh/vh, the AI never agrees to a ceasefire (in my experience) and is near impossible to bribe. Trade, maps, and "alliances" seem unaffected.

Harder difficulty on the battle map means the AI has a better attack and moral boost. To my knowledge, the tactics are exactly the same as before.

[HoreTore]

They agree to a lot of ceasefires on VH. I've never played anything else, and you can certainly get them. However, you might not get them when you want to, and as you get bigger, the chance of a ceasefire drops.

[rookie7]

I also noticed that you can't withdraw in a battle when playing hard level. So, if you have reinforcements, you can't tell your archers to withdraw from battle so you can have fresh archers from reinforcement. Does this happen to anyone else?

[PutCashIn]

Im a newbie on these forums Rookie, but no retreat sounds alot like the strategic situation where your entire army is given no chance of surrender.
Its denoted by a little white scimitar and skull (I think) icon on the bottom right (I think) of the Generals/Captains picture during the Battle Info screen, the one that pops up in the campaign map mode, befor the game loads the battle mode.

Then, no one can retreat from your army, so getting chaught out with just a stack of 6 family members can be tragic, to say the least.

Examples of when this happens:

Defending in a Siege Assault.....theres no where to run!
Using the retreat option on the campaign map, and the enemy attacks a second time, and you loose, forcibly retreat, then a third attacks you (I think).
Geeting attacked on the end of a peninsular with no ship closeby to retreat inot/onto.
Having your army in the pass between Venice and Vienna, then getting hit from front and back....buy buy 6 ex-crusaders.
Any other situation, where, strategically, your in the poo with no way out.
Glub Glub.

[econ21]

Harder difficulty on the battle map means the AI has a better attack and moral boost.

I don't believe the AI has a better attack on harder difficulty - it did in earlier TW titles, but the devs said it does not in this one and my casual observation matches that.

The effects of VH battle difficulty seem rather subtle - Palamedes said as much in a blog referring to making fatigue hurt your men more and also moral effects. Early after release some people said they noticed the effect of VH battles more where the terrain was against them, e.g. storming a hill, presumably because of fatigue and that again fits my casual observation.

I play on VH battles and find them fine, whereas I disliked playing the earlier titles on harder difficulty levels as I don't like ahistorically skewed attack/defence stats (and the skewing in RTW was so great, it very much altered the way battles played out - making heavy infantry even less useful compared to missiles and cav).

[rosscoliosis]

Yeah, I find it ridiculous playing VH in Rome. It's pretty agitating having equal units go up against each other and then have yours get raped and rout right quick. Unfortunately even in Hard it's noticeable.
However, in M2TW I haven't seen this problem, so I think the devs may not have been lying in saying so! ;-)

[HoreTore]

I miss the old attack bonus of the AI....

It made things harder. I couldn't simply send a principe against a principe, they would get slaughtered if I did. So, it forced me to use better tactics...

Every little thing making the game a bit harder is welcome to me.

[Callahan9119]

do your battles on VH, i was suspicious until econ told me it wasnt like rtw, it makes it SLIGHTLY more challenging....but not much at all

they arent supermen like rome, but its still pretty darn easy

[econ21]

If your game is getting too easy, using the consol to give money to the AI should spice things up. Over in the Throne Room, we just added 100k to each AI faction in our HRE PBM and it is making things a lot more interesting (the fact that we are excommunicated is only adding to the fun).

The syntax for the consol command is:

add money hungary, 100000

etc. The descr_strat.txt gives you the appropriate faction names.

Honestly, any AI is going to struggle against a human player on a level playing field. You either rig the dice or you cheat to give the AI more money etc. I prefer the latter. Civ4 provides one of the most challenging campaign AIs around, but it does so by outrageous AI cheats rather than great strategy and tactics. EB does something similar to try to kick start the somnolescent RTW strategic AI.

As Stalin said, quantity has a quality all of its own.