Recommended difficulty?

[Langer Kerl]

I am currently playing a Spartan campaign on hard and expanding my empire has been pretty easy so far. Im just swallowing my rich but tiny and isolated neighbors one-by-one, and those that I do not annex get forced to become my client state. From other Total War games I remember that at least the starting phase was always a struggle - even on Normal difficulty, you had to fight to get to a point where you can expand savely. In Rome II, everybody seems to crumble under the might of my Spartan Hoplite stack right from the get go, despite the fact that the description says Spartas starting position was "hard".


So, maybe it is the difficulty? Is hard not hard enough?

What Id like to see: AI to its best potential, guarding in peace, active in war, that makes me actually consinder attacking a faction or not while still being reasonable (not filled with player hate "just cause").

What I really want to avoid: AI that recieves overwhelming buffs. On the campaign map, I do not want every piss poor nation to field multiple armies. I want to actually be able to cripple somebodys economy without witnessing that he still can afford everything because of a vast artificial money cheat. In battles, I want my elite soldiers to be "elite" and not witness Spartan Hoplites having trouble with some peasant rabble because of insane AI unit overbuffing.
Those are the reasons I stayed away from the higher difficulties in earlier games. Yet all of those games were still challenging, at least in the early campaigns - and everything that followed felt rightously gained. Rome II does not really give me this feeling yet as I seem to overcome my enemies too easily.



Frankly, I rather have a less challenging, but believable and immersive game than a challenging one that constantly breaks said immersion by means like those stated above. So which difficulty would you recommend?

[Caelifer_1991]

Rome II seems to be remarkably easy compared with it's predecessors, as such only Very Hard and Legendary really seem worth looking at.

[YassirX]

Legendary does not make the game harder... AI gets some bonuses but it is still acting brain dead. I've quit my Legendary Campaign around turn 50 because I've not felt any challenge.
The AI is not even having a dedicated garrison in their major cities and is unable to realize that the capture point it taken. Yesterday I had a siege battle as defender in where the attacking infantry units crushed into each other and could no longer move.
The RTW2 AI is actually by far the worst AI that I've yet encountered in a TW game, its so worse that I actually sink that they will not be able to fix it properly.

[SandraDevilGirl]

Legendary is just steamrolling through the map so.....

[YassirX]

Legendary is just steamrolling through the map so.....

Exactly... I will not play the singleplayer anymore until CA fixes this mess, I have to say it as it is.
This has nothing to do with strategy anymore, auto replenishing units... recruitment into the army... armies cannot move without a general, no proper reserve units etc.
Its just: move from point a to point b, kill everything, auto replenish/upgrade the units -> repeat.

...after completing Shogun 2 on Legendary it felt like an achievement. RTW2 Legendary mode is not even close.

[zowrath]

Turn 50 on VH/Legendary doesn't really show how that setting is. I was happy at turn 50, finding it hard but found that diplomacy was seriously lacking on that level. By turn 128 I was at war with everyone. As soon as they met me they declared war without fail, for no other reason than meeting me. And at that time diplomacy just never worked. At turn 152 I abandoned that game and now waiting for mod-tools or patch to fix some things. I'm fine with having all odds against me but a whole feature unusable, no. I played Rome for that game. Having to deal with ten stacks of enemies every other turn became very tedious and I can only imagine how long it would take to win it if ever. Without any trade partners your economy is seriously hurt and you can't field enough armies to go on the offensive. I did get a couple of trade partners by throwing insane amounts of money at them early on, but they backstabbed me at the earliest opportunity.

[Langer Kerl]

Well, that sounds really disappointing. So you say you even mop up the AI on legendary? Is there really no sweet spot for a somewhat enjoyable campaign?

[AstroCat]

I'm playing on H/H Roman campaign but I need to get further into it to make sure how things are going to pan out. So far, I don't think I would play anything less, and I'm also one for "immersion" over hard for hard's sake.

[Bongfu]

I honestly think a lot of people here just don't realize the beauty of Rome II and it's unit design. Each faction plays differently. Thus, each unit design philosophy is different. Try a barbarian faction on Legendary... its an epic struggle when you come up against any of the "civilized" powers.

Are the Polybian Legions and later legionnaires powerful? Hell yes! Because A) They were really good at squashing barbarians at the time and not-to-shabby in a stand up fight against people like Carthage. B) Rome is CA's poster child for this game. So playing them as a faction is not any good way to judge the balance of the game.

Look at it from the point of view of a company like Games Workshop. They make other armies besides Space Marines for Warhammer 40k, but they make Space Marines amazing because its their selling point.

Point is: actually play the game more than a few hours before you go off ranting that CA made you waste your money. I have been waiting almost a decade for this game and I am loving it.

[Naked Emperor]

I'm playing VH and it's cakewalk, next game will be on legendary