Increasing Campaign Difficulty

[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!

[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?

[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.