A set of simple rules to get a challenging game

[Cheetah]

For anyone looking to increase the challenge of the game, I highly recommend downloading and experimenting with various mods. LTC, Stainless Steel, and Ultimate AI all succeed in increasing the challenge significantly. Plus, you can still layer your personal house rules on top of them.

Well there are two problems with the mods.

1, First there are just too many and it is not clear what kind of advantages do they have over the 1.2 patch. It would be nice if there would be a pinned intro thread about the major mods.

2, I am not sure that the tactical AI is that much better. I just downloaded the Stanless Steel and started a hungarion campaign on H/H. The byz AI (i) kept throwing all spearmen armies against me, (ii) which were defeated just as easily as the same armies in the vanilla game. I like the other changes (more provinces, more factions, etc) but I am not sold as yet on the improved startegic/tactical AI. I played 3 major battles, won all three with ease (despite the fact that archers seem to be much weaker) and I know for sure that would have lost all three on autoresolve.

[TinCow]

I agree with you on both counts. It took me a long time to find a mod I liked, which I why I've been spouting off about Stainless Steel recently in several threads. A guide to the various mods would be very useful.

Also, I'm pretty sure that SS 4.1 doesn't change either the campaign or battle AI. I think the improved AI are only bundled in with versions 5.0 and higher (which require Kingdoms). I personally downloaded just the AI parts of the Ultimate AI mod and installed them onto my SS 4.1 mod. I have noticed a decent improvement in both the campaign and battle AI as a result. There are still major problems, but many of the blatantly ridiculous aspects have been eliminated. I find that AI siege defense in particular is now relatively decent.

[RoadKill]

Yah. I have kingdoms and downloaded the newest SS been playing it for a while now. And wow, it actually gets hard. The AI gets extremly challenging. They smash you in two fronts. Though the problem about have a whole stack of spear militia still exsists but I dont think that can be fixed. What I like to do to make it challenging, is

1) DON'T retrain troops, thats stupid. There already dead how could you bring them back to life. The experience should dissapear if half of them died.
Not retraining makes things very complicated as your armies die out very quickly after a few battles.

2) Add 40,000 florins to enemy AI every turn. Giving them a hell load of money gives you the hardest ass time ever. I gave portugal 40,000 x10 florins once as Spain, next few turns, Portugal sent 8 stacks of professional troops at me. I lost over 10 settlements and almost lost my very first campagin. I never gave the AI that much money ever again.