Game too easy? Yeah right.

[sableblack]

back to the original poster.
i too play vh/vh (played h/h once as england to open factions). i have not yet moved from vanilla.
i have won as hre, byzantium, moors and now doing well with poland.
key to my success is.
1. contact everyone possible early and trade map, trade rights and alliance for cash. when you are not at war your alliance is worth something when you are at war with everyone your alliance costs them so they don't want it.
2. my poland game has been aised by early on occupying not sacking and releasing prisoners. my generals got great chiv for rapid city growth and easy order maintence. also my rep went to v reliable.
3. when i was attacked i countered rabidly taking several regions quickly then threatening one more. i then exchanged ceasefire for the region under attack which they were happy to give me (have received 4 regions for ceasefire from various opponents never had this in earleir wins as rep was appaling from sack/ exterminate/ execute)
4. quick wars then resell trade rights and alliance. then someone else attacks i take a couple of quick bites at their empire and then peace. thus not yet in multifront war and so peace is easy.
5. heroic victories must be the normal outcome when in outdoor battle with odds of 2:1 against. keep their losses high and yours low.
6. attack poorly defended cities first and leave the full stack city to last as too many casulties will cost you as much as them.
7. if they have a stack that can reinforce a city (ie i square from city) then attack that one. the city defenders will come on as reinforcements. kill outside stack before reinforcements arrive then eradicate the city defendors. do not allow any to flee esp the general. then execute prisoners (the only time i ever do this). then walk into unoccupied city.
8. try to border as few factions as possible.
9 if you need a faction to attack you on vh/vh then walk armies accross their land. shorten bordere don't lengthen.
10 if you must weaken you european holdings my sending your troops to thew holy land then sell your new settlement and leave. this is not shorteneing your borders. sell to a faction who doesn't normally live in that area as then they will get involved in weird wars with factions far far away.
11 rebel armies in your regions can be killed if convenient but don't let them distract you. train on them when not at war but they are harmless compared to milan who is planning on actually attcking your towns. (well they just tried but as after war with france i bordered them i accidebtly wandered all my troops to the bordrers abd took out 3 of their four regions as soon as they declared war. (3 turns). am now clearing up the stacks they sent the other way into my territory which i ignored as my border towns have 6-8 units in them. more than enough to survive an assault.)
12 most importantly learn the strong units for your faction and use them well. if your faction is weak in an area make few of this unit type.
13 learn to use priests, spys and merchants. less unrest, open gates and more money are your rewards. keep yoyr faction heir single and diplomats talking to a princess will allow marriage alliance. some people like assasins but my view is that buildings in enemy settlements will soon be mine. why would i damage my own property. i have never killed anyone with assasin (not even tried)
14 if you don't know where an attack will come from next stacks moving towrds and into your regions are a clue.
in summary diplomacy works when you learn how to use it as do merchants and cavalry charges. also killing routers is easier than fighting them. fight morale not men
hope this helps.

[RickooClan]

Just one suggestion as i always siege a settlement rather than waiting it out, especially in the beginning turns of the game.

I have read some guides which suggesting saving your troops by sitting out the siege but honestly i think that is a very bad move. The reasons are:

1. Siege battle is the best place to clear out your low-tech troops such as militia which could give room to maintain better troops.

2. Each settlement at least give you 700 forin per turn which could recruit 2~3 low tech troops. Lets say you sit for 5 turns on a sieging a settlement you actually lost 4~5k forin potential income. By comparing the cost of the troops you may lost in battle, it does not worth it. [You will only lost 40~100 militia men in early game by taking a settlement even on VH/VH, and they only cost around 700 forin.]

3. Sitting on siege is a waste of your army force, especially for France you have lots of bother to defend.

4. Time is important, the faster to take the settlement, the quicker you establish your power and develop your faction. At least this is true for France.

5. Surely, you should not waste your expensive calvary in any siege battle at all. Normally infantry, archer, siege equipment and your general unit can get the job done nicely.

[Boyar Karhunkynsi]

I started playing on M/M in the beginning, just to get a feel for the game and it's features. I finished a few games and wanted a challenge. I then started playing VH/VH and found it didn't change much; the pope hates you more and you get attacked/sieged more frequently. No big deal. It doesn't appear to change much in the way of AI being any more treacherous or much of anything for that matter. AI armies are still useless, regardless of their superior units. Thus, it is considerably harder to destroy a faction and marginally more difficult to fight a respectable war with one. No biggie.

There will be no truly difficult settings until AI is improved, which may be some years off until we see fruit of this endeavor which so many developers claim to have improved (yeah right, mate).

I love saying my two cents worth.

Regards,
Max

[edyzmedieval]

Having knights in sieges, when YOU are besieged, it's a blessing. They mop with the enemy units in those small places. They die, but they kill at least 150-200 before they are wiped out. A unit of 40 Mailed Knights will do the job very well.

[tex_-]

If you are catholic faction, try to make alliance with pope as soon as possible. This will give you some advantage vs other catholic factions. Also trade rights and using right agents at right time can make start a lot easier.

[Richard The Tiger Heart]

I had some difficulties too in the begining of the game (playing as the english to unlock other factions). The scots and french attacking me from both sides made the situation pretty nasty. I remember assaulting Iverness with just a pair of catapults as my siege equipment and they destroyed them with flaming arrows (yeah, i got the catapults quite near the walls to avoid wasting ammo). My armies in Normandy werent obviously able to stop the French also.

After 3 failed english campaigns on H/H I decided to apply a mod to correct some of the bugs. I choose Lands to Conquer. At my 2nd try, I finnally met success.

Crushed the scots, smashed the French and erradicated the Portuguese. Now Im moving in on Spain...just two more regions to get them out of Iberia.

Really the English are the supreme unmounted archers. 1/3 of my armies are longbowmen and I just got the Yomen ones. Pretty neat. AI armies that use low armored units are met with an empressive rain of arrows. The wooden stacks force the enemy cavalry to flank, thus making the AI moves even more predictable. The spanish and portuguese use Jinetes, which are incredibly powerful for light cavalry (yes, on melee) but they just cant resist my arrow storms.

I made alliances with the Italians and Germans, thus I only fight in one direction.

About diplomacy: I have a very untrusthworty rep and Im always being excommunicated. But I dont care, coz both the Italians and the Germans dont like the Pope as well.

[HoreTore]

IMO, a strong cavalry wing is crucial to a siege. The way I almost always assault cities, is to have 5 cavalry on the left gate, 5 on the right and 10 infantry at the front. Spy opens the gates, and everyone rush to the gates. The cavalry speed is the important thing here, they don't have to kill anything at all. They both rush to the center, fighting any stranded units if they wish. This makes the enemy pull back to fight them, and can then be killed off by the infantry as they try to run past them in the streets. The cavalry mop up the usually small center units, then charge out at isolated units. Works like a charm, and almost always gives better results than autocalc.

[steev]

I was just playing a game as England on VH/VH, with all battles on auto-resolve. It was going ok but then around turn 50, by which time I had taken Bruge, Antwerp, and most of France except Dijon, Marseilles, Toulouse, it started getting horribly nasty. I had two Danish stacks heading for Antwerp, a full French stack heading for Angers, and hordes of Milanese spewing up from Dijon towards Rheims and Paris. And the Portuguese are dominant in Iberia and sending a stack to Bordeaux. If I fought the battles on screen it wouldnt be a problem, but with auto-resolve all victories are Pyrhhic unless you have 3:1 or better odds. I gave up as I didnt fancy the headache - right now i'm trying to play a campaign that lasts more than 150 turns so i can fight the Timurids and go see the New World. But I think I'd lose even if I tried with this one. So if your game is too easy just auto-resolve a string of battles to ruin your armies.

[Gaius Terentius Varro]

As an experiment I played blitz as HRE (VH/VH):
moved all my troops south by turn 3 wiped out venetians as faction (they left their faction heir on venice bridge and faction leader in venice all alone - that's right 2 units only as they blockaded my port),
milanese were gone by turn 6.
By turn 20 i own all the italian lands (since the sicilians sent both faction heir and leader and full stack against me on a single ship manned by 8 men), the 2islands south, valencia (gave old El sid hell with 6 ballistas) and have moved my border south to innsbruck/bern/vienna I gifted all the lands north of there to pope which basically secures my northern border forever. I am swimming in cash and since my faction leader has both the farmer traits and architect retinue and 10 chivalry I managed to get bologna to 9000 pop (castle) so i can soon churn out Zweihanders/ Imperial Knights while my opposition is sending out spear militia armies. No one attacks me cos my garrison are scary.
I broke treaties, alliances, ransomed everything and demanded max payment for anything from everyone. I sent every priest i made to africa so now i own half the Cardinal college.
For me this campaign is over and has been boring like hell. I exploited all the well known AI flaws and didn't play in the "spirit of the age": so the only person to blame is myself. Playing as chivalrous decent honorable faction is VERY difficult on VH/VH and so much more fun. Yes the game can be beat easy but I can not see why it has to be since the idea is to get the maximum enjoyment out of your purchase.

[King of Kings]

I no what you mean its really hard thats why i just play on M/M

[Razor1952]

I would have to agree that a competent player will always easily win at whatever level even with iron man type rules. And I believe that is particularly because the ai doesn't concentrate enough on building its economy.

I have however started a variant thanks to Epistolary Richards advance x years find, of playing from the weakest faction from turn ~100. In the current scenario I just started at turn ~100 as Byzantium (it has only Nicaea and not that well developed locked in against Venice. Venice has 8 provinces and one of the leading factions.) Somehow I think my Waterloo might just be around the corner.

One thing I have observed that after ~100 turns most ai cities are still poorly developed and the even the most basic land improvements have not been made.
I'm frankly surprised the ai hasn't concentrated more on economy first, after all that I believe is the key human strategy.

[Bob the Insane]

It is an interesting topic...

I am playing a 1.02 (leaked) game as the HRE at the moment on H/VH and I saw this and I though, no way is it easy... Here I am fending off attacks from the Danes and the Poles, single handedly trying to stop the Mongols from wiping out the Egyptians and taking the entire middle east, fighting the Byz for control of the easter med islands and wiping out the heretically Millanese (already done that to the evil backstabbing venetians)...

Provided i bring appropriate forces to the battlefield I most win the battles and I am even capabale of pulling the occasional heroic vistory out of the bag...

Strategic level is where things are more challenging i think, ensuring cash is spent right, ensuring the right sorts of troops are in the right place at the right time...

Tactically challenges come from not having the right troops and just making do with what it there...

I have to agree with two balanced armies even on VH battles the AI barely stands a chance...

Back to my example at the top, despite all that (and possibly because) the HRE is the largest and richest empire with only the Mongol as more powerful. So I can't be having too hard a game...

I have to admit though I never rush. It is not a specific decision as such, I guess I lack the RTS warrior instinct as i manly play RPGs and (of all things ) FPS's (outside TW)... I don't play many RTS's often because of the sheer degree of agressive fastpaced play required at the start of the game to be in a tenable situation later on... Sounds too much like hard work to me...