Hello, and difficulty compared to vanilla

Hello all :)

After many years of playing vanilla RTW, I've finally decided to give some mods a go. After some reading around on these forums I settled on playing just the RTR(PE), for now at least. It seems the most stable and not overly complicated option (also I don't have BI so I'm somewhat limited in my choices). And so far, I'm liking it very very much. I'm not yet at the point of "I can never go back to vanilla", but still, I enjoy it; my (much belated) congratulations to all who were involved in this project!

Now, "so far" in my case is only a couple turns; in fact I've only taken one settlement, about to take a second. And here's my question then: how should I judge the difficulty levels compared to vanilla? First off, not counting my very first vanilla game, I've always played that one on VH/H or VH/VH because otherwise there's no challenge whatsoever, as I'm sure is the case for everyone. I know in RTR the AI bonuses in both campaign and battle are identical to vanilla, but since I'm knew to this mod and I read that the units are supposed to balance out on "medium" battle difficulty, I started my (Roman) campaign on M/M thinking it would be quite the challenge. Now, after my first battle (perhaps too early to judge), I'm sort of thinking I shall have to start over on "hard" for the battles since it was quite easy and I hardly suffered any losses...

In short, would you recommend playing RTR on the same difficulty levels as I'm used to on vanilla, or would you say RTR is inherently more challenging and e.g. vanilla H/H compares to RTR M/M? Thanks in advance for any input!

I Recommend M/M so you can get the feel of the mod and to see if you need higher difficulties.

Now warn you RTR and vanillia IS TOTALLY DIFFERENT ( I am not yelling just) lol.

After you have completed a campaign than I think you would know higher difficulties is for me.

Because some mods design the game for H/H or etc. As far as RTR PE Im not sure what difficulty, try one of the links above to mini mods and you can find RTR PE forum. Mabe they can anwser your difficulty on that mod.

Here you go http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=197. Link for RTR PE MOD

One of the main issues with most mods as compared to Vanilla is that they start the player off in a more fully-formed situation, where it's possible to start losing and lose big. The AI is at your doorstep, has large armies, and on Strategic H/VH, will throw everything it can at you. So the first 10 years or so are often holding on by your fingernails. After that, however, the difficulty is roughly analogous to Vanilla, with the primary distinction being the game balance.

Thanks for the replies so far! I have duplicated my question in the "RTR 6 Gold & Platinum" subforum; I hope to get some more advice.

Hope you find your anwser Loko

Personaly I play on VH/VH and its quite a challenge.
The other factions throw everything they have at you and some more.
Kinda getting dificult while being engaged at Gaul, Iberia , Macedonia and Carthage all at the same time