EB on M/M?

[Warmaster Horus]

Basically in VH, if you border the AI, even if you're allied, then it's War.
Worse is some of the stupid demands. I just had Makedon demand of me (Rome) to become their Protectorate, and hand over Sparta. That town is the only one I hold in Southern Greece, and I own the Illyrian Coast, after a long war with Epirus (I try to keep things slow). Anyway, the most ridiculous part of this, is that I landed two Legions (polybian) right before the AI asked.

So, moral of that:AI doesn't respect any treaties. Except, I find, when offering them a tribute of 100-400 for a time. Then, they become reasonable.

[Tiberius Nero]

If you want the AI to respect treaties, as mentioned, just give them a small tribute every turn (100 or 200 mnai should be enough).

Medium campaign difficulty would just kill the AI in EB I guess, because it does need the extra 10000 a turn (which it get on VH) if it is going both to maintain the very expensive EB units and do something else all the while. As a player you can be reasonable about it and either disband or attack rebels immediately to get out of the red, the AI cannot disband and most certainly wont be very aggressive from the begining on.

[Miles Sueborum]

That with the money donation each turn didn't work for me - the roman attack I mentioned before was done though they recieved 100 every trun from me...

[kalkwerk]

Perhaps I was not concrete enough in my first post.

Ive always played very hard, so I know

a) that the AI on this setting goes to war when you have a common border. I couldnt see from the answers wether it is doing this necessarily on medium. It would already make a big difference if it didnt.

Also I have seen that paying tribute can help very early in the game against factions, which dont have a common border with you, but still tend to go to war , like Greece (naval invasions in Italy, at least with BI-exe). But have anybody experienced this helping later in the game AND with a common border and on what difficulty settings?

[LordCurlyton]

Well I never play on VH since that has no appeal to me. The team has a money script which can be tailored to taste, and, since it appears to me at least that a lot of how an AI faction treats you is based on how wealthy/prosperous it is, I don't mind M/M at all. In fact, my Makedon campaign has had over 30 years of contiguous, peaceful relations (alliances) with the Sweboz and Arveni on my western front, both of whom share extensive borders with me. I have found, though, that keeping a minimum of 10 unit garrisons, preferably 3/4+ stack, in border cities is an effective deterrent as well, since the AI likes to target weaker towns. Without the extra 10k per turn VH gives, I found that almost all the factions cooled down reasonably well enough, with the only exception being the AS which gets mondo cash from the original money script. And even then it'll take a bit longer for it to pile drive its neighbors, and that's not a 100% guaranteed occurrence. The only "drawback" is that the Eleutheroi are dead in the water after turn 2 and they don't attack you, which is a shame. If I could only port that to M/M I'd be golden.
As for acting more logical on AI, they will, until the Hate-O-Meter builds up. When the AS originally attacked me due to Nikai rebelling (I didn't want it at the time) they fought a couple battles and then signed a peace treaty. They attacked again soon after, I beat the local armies, and this time took cities in payment. After the 3rd or 4th brushfire war the good ol' Meter filled up and its been a continuous slog for the last....45 years or so. Though I've now created a border with my allies the Pahlava filling in (incidentally, once I gave them those 3 extra territories they began pounding on Baktria badly, even taking Baktria proper). I've still got some AS holdouts on the Med coast but I'm using them as they and the Ptolies batter at each other. If the AS can actually bust into Egypt I'll be happily following right behind them.
On the plus side, now that I have no real active wars going my treasury is skyrocketing. Finally bust 1M mnai for the first ever in any campaign.

[atheotes]

I had my (Rome) allies Sweboz backstab me in the middle of 100/turn for 20 turns tribute. We had been sharing borders for quite some time and this is on VH/M. AS who were allied to both Sweboz and myself broke the alliance and they were near the end of the 100/turn for 30 tuns tribute.

[Birka Viking]

I always played on VH/M before but I gott tired of the endless AI stacks, so now adays I always play on M/M. And I think its much better with not so agressive AI so u can role play more..
Cheers

[Danest]

So VH has insanely aggressive AI if I'm to understand... while Medium has non-aggressive eleutheroi. Maybe, then, Hard is the happy medium? I haven't tried that difficulty setting yet... maybe that will be my next campaign.