Increasing Campaign Difficulty

[WeApOn]

What exactly does the Campaign difficulty increase? I'm trying to find the best difficulty, because I can almost withstand every attack from other factions and I only lost a few battles, but I won way too many ridiculous battles that I shouldn't have. Currently I am on Hard Campaign and Normal Battle Campaign.

What should I change to have a better experience?

[danfda]

I do hard/hard. Course, it blasphemous to say so, but I almost always auto resolve. That makes things more difficult, since I often find myself cursing at the screen when my superior army loses to pathetic rabble...

Try vh/vh, if you want a challenge. I'd assume that's the toughest.

[WeApOn]

I want to try that, but I don't want it to be too hard. But what exactly does Campaign Difficulty increase?

[Rhedd]

I can't answer the question in its entirety, but diplomatic relations vary widely depending on the difficulty setting. On easy, your relations with other countries slowly moves toward perfect, on very hard it moves toward abysmal, and on medium your relations are constantly creeping towards neutral.

The harder the difficulty, the harder it is to make friends, and the more aggressive everyone is.

Frankly, I think anything higher than medium is just silly, so I play on M/VH.

You should definitely try battles on VH. The increased morale and fatigue effects (for both you and the enemy) are interesting to work with.

Want a real challenge? Believe it or not, I've taken to playing all of my battles with the General Camera view. Seems insane at first, but God it's fun! Talk about immersion!

[WhiskeyGhost]

Hard difficulty isn't that bad. In fact despite it being centralised towards abysmal like VH, it doesn't seem to move as fast, and if you have some Trade Rights/Alliance/ Same religion (i think) then it will increase towards perfect, albeit slow. On VH it would be stagnant, but on H its nice and even i guess.

I'm not totally sure, but i think the size/amount of armies the AI deploys also increases with campaign difficulty, since my first game on easy had them fielding half stacks all over and the one i play on hard has nearly full ones every time.

[WeApOn]

Yeah. Something like more enemies in a stack or better enemies would be what I'm looking for. I see alot of full stack enemies and I get excited I might have a tough battle, but then I notice its full of mercenaries. :(

[tex_-]

if you want challenge vh/vh is only option

[darth_napo]

You should definitely try battles on VH. The increased morale and fatigue effects (for both you and the enemy) are interesting to work with.

wait, you got morale and fatigue bonus on higher battle difficulty?

[Rhedd]

wait, you got morale and fatigue bonus on higher battle difficulty?

No, I said "increased effects", not "bonuses". ^_^

On higher difficulties, for both you and your enemy, men tire out faster and get scared easier.

It makes things more realistic, since heavily armored men can't run seven-hundred yards without getting tired, and a lone unit assaulting a castle wall has a 100% chance of turning tail and running back to its buddies.

[HoreTore]

VH/VH isn't very hard at all really. You'll have to mod in some bonuses to the AI to get more of a challenge...

[magnum]

Haven't noticed better armies or smarter empire building between Medium - Hard - Very Hard. Only thing I've noticed is a more aggressive AI. Aggressive in terms of more likely for the relationship to deteriate, for them to attack you, and less likely that they will make peace.

While I generally play on VH/VH because it does make it fairly difficult, I personally find H/H to be the most 'realistic'.

[WeApOn]

Great. I think I'll use H/H then. That sounds best.

Also, are there any mods I should look into that will improve the AI? Such as assaulting castles? And in general, are there any must-have mods that I should get?

Thanks!

[Phog]

As far as Mods to play with....

For sure get the Vices and Virtues fix for 1.02
It will just make traits for Generals make sence.

That is the only one that I use at the moment. There are other great ones out ther tho like, Lands to Conquer, ,The Big Map Mod and Stainless Steel.

Check out the Modding fourm for more details!

[Fußball]

I suggest if you want the AI at its best during battle, though this is really not it's best, set battle difficulty to VH. Also as stated above, the harder the battle difficulty the more fatigued your men are and morale is more fragile. I play campaign on M so it is possible to actually work diplomatic engagements in the vanilla game. Unfortunately playing on M campaign difficulty somewhat neuters the AI's outright aggression against you.

Tschüß!
Erich

[Zenicetus]

I play at M/H. Diplomacy works better in the latest patch, and using the M setting (normalize towards neutral) lets me play the diplomatic game with what feels like more realism. Alliances are easy to get and hold, and I see the AI factions forming more stable power blocks. That's balanced against the fact that they're not as aggressive, true... you lose that feel that everyone's out to get you. But I think the AI builds up a little more, so you're fighting better armies when war does break out.

About the only big drawback I've noticed with M campaigns, is it's a little harder to annoy a fellow Catholic faction into declaring war on you, when you don't want to be the aggressor (i.e. to avoid angering His Hatness). But I usually don't have patience for that kind of passive/aggressive expansion anyway. I just try to bribe my way back into favor with Rome, after I've been naughty. Planning lightning strikes that are fait acompli before Rome can do anything, also works.

For the battles, I like H instead of VH setting for two reasons. First, it's annoying to deal with more frequent low-morale routing, whether it's my troops or the enemies routing. I'd rather see us slugging it out a little longer before someone breaks. Second, if I'm the defender in the battle, it's too easy on VH to choose high ground (especially on some maps, like the mountains) where I can force the AI to be dead exhausted by the time they reach me. That may be realistic, but I'm not looking for the battles to be easier. On a H setting for battle difficulty, I can still choose a realistic tactic like defending on high ground, without feeling like I'm taking unfair advantage of the AI.

YMMV, obviously. I just like the way the battles flow on the H setting. And I haven't noticed the AI being any "smarter" at VH.... it seems to be just morale and fatigue differences.

[WeApOn]

Great- thanks. I might switch back to Medium for Campaign then, and Hard for Battles. I want the battles to be a little harder for me, since I have been winning mine was too easily.

For Campaign- I just played my last one on Hard and it did kinda feel like everyone was attacking me way too much.. or just because I was on their borders. If the difference between Medium and Hard is simply that they go more towards neutral, that's good.

So- are the only differences in Difficulty for Campaign the way the relations with others go towards neutral or bad etc? I don't want the enemies to be attacking me with small stacks of crappy units-- they won't do that, will they?

Also, aside from Vices and Virtues, any MUST-HAVE mods?

Thanks again.

[Kobal2fr]

I agree that as far as the campaign goes, M is the best. The AI does not make better choices, field better armies or get any financial boost from the VH setting, they're just insane, which you can perfectly emulate in M by attacking everyone yourself

On Medium on the other hand, you can expect a modicum of respect for diplomacy and alliances, even though some weird stuff still happens (for instance, as the HRE I managed to ally with the Poles and Danes (married the Danish princess, and had the Polish heir marry mine) while I was sieging both Hamburg and Magdeburg. Both the Poles and Danes at the time had large armies waiting around for me to assault and fail or to be beaten back somehow, waiting for their turn to siege in other words. When I finally got the castles, these armies seemed "trapped" in my lands : they wouldn't move, wouldn't attack brigands, wouldn't attack me either. Just sat there, and occasionaly helped me whenever I attacked brigands in their control zone. *shrug*).

On the battlefield, the AI definitely is more of a challenge on VH, even though it still has an issue with keeping a battleline : the AI units seem to always go for the best odds for them at a given time, without much of an overarching strategy behind them all. But that doesn't make them any less lethal, and I certainly suffer much, much more costly victories as I did in Rome.

[darth_napo]

No, I said "increased effects", not "bonuses". ^_^

On higher difficulties, for both you and your enemy, men tire out faster and get scared easier.

It makes things more realistic, since heavily armored men can't run seven-hundred yards without getting tired, and a lone unit assaulting a castle wall has a 100% chance of turning tail and running back to its buddies.

are you sure? for me it sounded like the battle will be even easier on VH than medium! Because you shall smarter than the AI about battle tactic, for example recently I played the game on medium battle difficulty and I've often won heroic victories because I had tactic knowledge better than the AI, AND that the AI scared out easily after being flanked.

if that only applied to your armies then I can believe it (that's what happened to RTW, right?), even if it meant the AI will have advantages over you and thus less realistic, at least that's a logical assumption for a harder game.

hmm I'm confused.

[Ciaran]

I think what Rhedd is refering to is the effect that on VH battle difficulty you (that is your men) feel exhaustion and morale to the same extend as the AI does regardless the difficulty. On lower difficulties your own men suffer less from exhaustion and morale than the AI units do, so VH can be considered the level playing field. That makes the game overall perhaps easier for Total War oldtimers, but at least on VH the AI doesn´t get insane attack boni as it did in RTW.

[Rhedd]

I think what Rhedd is refering to is the effect that on VH battle difficulty you (that is your men) feel exhaustion and morale to the same extend as the AI does regardless the difficulty. On lower difficulties your own men suffer less from exhaustion and morale than the AI units do, so VH can be considered the level playing field. That makes the game overall perhaps easier for Total War oldtimers, but at least on VH the AI doesn´t get insane attack boni as it did in RTW.

Well, yes and no...

Is that really the way it works?

I wasn't aware that it was only the player's morale and fatigue that was changing at higher difficulties.

I was under the impression that everyone's morale and fatigue was more fragile, and that the AI (supposedly) used more advanced tactics, at the higher levels.

Can anyone confirm that the AI's morale/fatigue works the same at all levels, and it's only the player's that changes?

[Nebuchadnezzar]

If I remember correctly CA said something like at higher difficulties you get more realistic effects of morale and fatigue as well as a more aggressive AI.

As usual with CA the explanation is a bit ambiguous but I always assumed that it applied to both AI and player. At lower setting morale and fatigue play a lesser effect in the game. So is M or H more difficult? I don't think so.

On easier settings battles should last longer but this does not mean they are overall easier. I guess though a player can take advantage of the knowledge that his troops will have lower morale when tired and avoid it as much as possible. As for the AI being more aggressive I just haven't noticed and therefore don't know. Theoretically perhaps, if you want to believe CA.

Anyway, I always play VH battles & VH campaign. Yes diplomacy becomes a problem in campaigns with VH but you can mod out the aggression offset for VH settings in one of the files (can't remember atm) easy enough and enjoy reasonable diplomacy as well as still allow the AI all the other bonuses it desperately needs to give a challenge eg insta-generals, recruitment bonuses etc. Besides playing on anything less than VH gives no economic challenge whatsoever.

[Foz]

are you sure? for me it sounded like the battle will be even easier on VH than medium! Because you shall smarter than the AI about battle tactic, for example recently I played the game on medium battle difficulty and I've often won heroic victories because I had tactic knowledge better than the AI, AND that the AI scared out easily after being flanked.

if that only applied to your armies then I can believe it (that's what happened to RTW, right?), even if it meant the AI will have advantages over you and thus less realistic, at least that's a logical assumption for a harder game.

hmm I'm confused.

Actually, the player's tactical advantage should be one of the biggest reasons the increased penalties will be effective. Even if we assume both AI and player are affected by this, it should benefit the AI far more often. The reason is that, as a player, I often find myself in situations that the game predicts I should lose on VH. The AI will lay into a half stack of mine with a full stack of its own, or assault an undermanned settlement, or maybe it has two forces taking on an inferior one of mine from different directions. Stuff like that. What the changes do, then, is make you work harder to escape those bad situations (if you can at all). Your troops suffer morale penalties when they are fighting battles they don't think they can win, and if you don't change that quickly enough, they run (much more on VH than lower settings). This hurts the player more, because often it is the player's tactics that are winning the battle as opposed to his strength of force. In those cases, the more harsh morale effects mean you must act faster and better in order to get things done before your men break. The same things will happen to the AI, but generally in situations where its morale is under stress you are kicking its ass whether it breaks or not, so the way I see it the stiffer morale effects are much more hurtful to the player since many battles he can win are jeopardized by his troops' more shaky morale, while the AI is most often simply pushed from losing to losing worse. One prime example of this is in assaulting a settlement. On higher difficulties you have to bring more men than you would otherwise need, as your assaulting units are much more likely to simply run away in terror as the assault takes its toll on them. Even if you allocate enough men for the job, it makes it possible that they don't get it done. Here even if the effects are identical, you have to assault a lot more than any given AI faction does to achieve victory conditions, so even that alone swings the feature in the AI's favor.

Things are similar with fatigue. My best troops on the field (often some all-star cav units) are generally getting far more work than anything else on the battlefield. So the sooner they will get tired, the sooner my tactical advantage in using them will disappear. The AI generally does not overwork any given unit like that, so the sweeping effect of more fatigue means its army as a whole will tire faster, and while the player's will do the same, it also means the most tactically useful units are marginalized by the stiffer fatigue effects incurred when the player overuses them. In short, you tend to use your most effective units a lot, and so they will tire before the enemy army does and before the bulk of your army does, thus taking them out of play sooner on harder difficulties since they tire faster the higher the difficulty is. Likewise in situations where the enemy attacks from multiple directions, it is much more difficult to repel the second force once you've destroyed the first, as your men are invariably beat-ass tired on VH. They would be much more combat-ready on a lower difficulty, and so the battle would be much much easier.