Quote Originally Posted by Southern Hunter
What is the difference in money (or other?) terms between Hard and Very Hard Campaign difficulty?

Does anyone know what priorities the AI has for money? Does it buy buildings first for all towns, then the rest on troops? Or troops first, then buildings if money left? Does it slow down building troops if it is broke? (i.e does it follow the same rules that the player has?).

I am also thinking like people here about how best to balance the game (well, make it harder really). I have a couple of ideas, but haven't tried them out just yet...

Cheers,

Hunter
On VH the AI tends to be more agressive, expansionist and hopelessly stubborn. It also receives certain bonuses that make it harder for you to get cities to rebel by putting spies in those cities. I think their generals also get certain command improving traits more easily. It's also a lot less likely to accept diplomatic proposals. Especially Ceasefire.

As a general rule the AI uses money to recruit troops first and build improvements second. The only exception is the Eleutheroi who seem to do the exact opposite. The AI never disbands troops so as long as it has money it will keep on recruiting. Only if it's broke will it stop recruiting new troops.

I think the vanilla EB money script is as hard as I want the game to get. The reason I started modding the whole thing was because I got tired of fighting endlessly huge Seleukid stacks coming from three directions and fighting 5-6 battles per turn just to stay alive.

In my opinion every battle should count. And big battles with full stacks lost to either side should hurt the AI as much as loosing my primary field army hurts me. That's why I'm modding the money script.

You wan't to make it harder for you. Just increase the amount of money they get from the settlement bonus from 1200/settlement to 2000/settlement. If that dosen't get you twelve full stacks of elites coming your way every turn, nothing will.

Since we can't mod the strategic or battle AI, giving them more resources to wage a war of endless attrition is propably the only way to make the game harder than it already is.