Which difficulty setting??

[ryanwigginton]

'Campaign diff really means "everyone gangs up on you", without the AI getting any advantage.' - I agree with Kobals comment it seems on H campaign setting all the other nations would rather fight you than be neutral or make an alliance. It does get a bit annoying in that respect. I'll give M/VH a try I think...

[Alsn]

So far ive been largely unimpressed by VH/VH. The campaign difficutly just means that after a while everone is going to hate you with a passion(aka refuse alliances and gang up on you) while the battle difficulty just makes the AI less stupid(aka it does less obvious "we programmed this so that it would make it easier to beat" things but some things are still really stupid, like siege battles).

[Nebuchadnezzar]

On VH both campaign & battle AI get bonuses (or player penalties) and since CA hasn't commented on them I am guessing they are trying to conceal it so that players like to believe they are on equal playing field when in actual fact it is not.

Battle map: Player gets a 1-2 second penalty delay with cavalry. I can see the AI doesn't get it b/c the moment I use my mouse to issue new orders their units instantaneously change direction whereas mine are temporarily in limbo with the compulsory 2 sec delay.

Campaign map: AI gets insta-generals (captains magically turning to generals), 3x recruitment bonus (agents & maybe units), no crusade desertions, huge cash bonuses and maybe public order bonuses as well. I'm sure there are others. The player penalties include Dogs of War diplomacy, Reputation penalties, Score rank penalties, illogical AI (band together) alliances and a few more that I can't remember ATM.

Even though, VH/VH is the only way to go