The hard and very hard campaigns.

[FactionHeir]

The difference is that the AI at very hard has the same boni as you do (in addition to the cheats they have at EVERY difficulty level), as at the lower levels, it actually gets penalties.

However, the AI usually still won't be much of a challenge, as the main visible effect of higher difficulty will be their units being as tough as yours on the battlefield and their relations with you deteriorating faster on the campaign map (i.e. higher likelihood of them declaring war on you).

If you want to have a tougher AI, you probably will need to play with a mod

[G^2]

As Faction Heir stated a mod is where your going to find a better AI. For me personally, M2TW didn't shine until I started playing Stainless Steel (SS). This mod uses Lusted's new AI which greatly increases AI competency. I have also heard good things about Broken Cresent if your into the middle east, and Lands to Conquer, which I understand is like a more challenging version of vanilla.

[FactionHeir]

Meh, the only true challenging version of vanilla is VanillaMod (which uses Lusted's new AI to some extent and other AI coding made by myself), the others are quite a bit different

[G^2]

Sorry Faction Heir, I suppose Lands to Conquer does change quite a few things from vanilla.

[PBI]

What does LTC change? I know it has the rebalancing of unit stats used in Kingdoms, but what else?

[Grog]

I have only played a limited amount of LTC, but here are the main changes over vanilla:

-sacking income reduced, I would say 40-60% less on average, although big cities still yield decent loot.

-build costs increased 2-300% over vanilla

-build times genrally double to quadruple time over vanilla so need to plan ahead.

-AI seems marginally more aggressive, and genrall more organised (better stacks etc). Cannot comment on diplomacy as I rarely bother other than using it for insult/extortion

[CavalryCmdr]

The difference is that the AI at very hard has the same boni as you do (in addition to the cheats they have at EVERY difficulty level), as at the lower levels, it actually gets penalties.

Campaign difficulty also affects how aggresively the AI recruits units, so you will see bigger armies on harder difficulty. The problem is on VH, the AI will recruit so many low-level units it's unable to upgrade them, so by the time of the Mongol invasion your still only fighting armies composed of armourd sergents and mailed knights with some milita and artillery thrown in. No matter how big or how many they are by that time you'll out-class them so much it dosnt matter.

As Faction Heir said, changing difficulty will likely not create enough challange for any experianced player, so your best bet is to look to mods. At the least most will have a money management script to keep the AI with enough money to upgrade while maintaining all thier armies.

[ArtistofWarfare]

The difference is that the AI at very hard has the same boni as you do (in addition to the cheats they have at EVERY difficulty level), as at the lower levels, it actually gets penalties.

However, the AI usually still won't be much of a challenge, as the main visible effect of higher difficulty will be their units being as tough as yours on the battlefield and their relations with you deteriorating faster on the campaign map (i.e. higher likelihood of them declaring war on you).

If you want to have a tougher AI, you probably will need to play with a mod

Whoa wait a sec. "the main visible effect will be their units being as tough as yours on the battlefield".

Sounds like better AI to me...at least as far as AI goes these days.

[G^2]

I know in SS the AI won't declare war on you for no reason and on the campaign map it seems to react better to the player. One time playing as the Knights Templer I had a stack sitting on a bridge near Ciaro, the AI managed to placed a full stack infront of me while attacking behind me with a few units in a pincher, thus forcing me to have to cross the bridge to take out the smaller army while a full stack was behind me. Won the battle but with heavy causalties, and won only because I had a maxed out dread general that caused a route. Never seen anything like it in Vanilla.

[Joh]

If you want a tough campaign you could check a mod called Deus Lo Vult (sp???) at:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=309
but be prepared for a lot of changes and a rough time because of code changes that benefit the AI. Some of the new features, namely cavalry animations, are controversial, so you could try to check earlier versions.