Extended realism too easy?

[Erphir]

Even when playing on very hard, the AI seems to recruit few units. Rarely do I meet a full-stack army. In my roman campaign, Macedonia controlled the whole of Greece. I invaded with just one full-stack army, didn't meet any resistance. Could just take all his cities with my invading force, he didn't have any army to speak of. When using toggle_fow to see the whole map, I can see other factions don't have many troops either.

Tried to fix this with reducing units cost, but didn't help. Anyone knows how this comes, and how to fix it?

The game is too easy now, pitty, because I love the mod, but there's no challenge.

[debux]

This might come waaaay to late, but I'll answer anyway I feel that you should put more challenges to yourself. The AI simply can't cope with a human brain, both on campaign map and battle map. I can't remember the reasons for having such high recruitment and upkeep costs (if they ever were explained), but my guess right now is that it was to reduce the amount of stacks (I remember them being way too many on 3.5) as well as making individual battles more important and decisive. However, the AI isn't that good of a city-manager (has trouble with having a good amount of units on the field/constructing buildings that improve public order) nor in preparing or fighting battles (disperse mini-stacks, as well as the idiocy of RTW battlemap AI).

Instead, you can put a few "speedbumps" to yourself. It's common to see the recommendation to give the AI some 30-50 turns to establish itself and start functioning decently. Expand at a relaxed and "realistic" pace, giving yourself time to solidify your conquest, and giving the AI time to respond to your movements. And on the battlemap, you can make battles a bit more challenging, not necesarily by upping the difficulty meter that the game offers, but to choose not to see the unit's banners, taking of the green arrow indicators from units, using the restricted camera (all these can be changed in the "preferences.txt" file). Personally, I've started a campaign in another mod where I only autobalance battles (I got tired of the AI's incompetence... I think I've memorized it's patterns!). It's fun to have battles that you don't know that you will win or not, in stark comparison to fighting battles on the battlemap, where you take minimal loss and exterminate your opponent by exploiting the AI's weaknesses. Also, I've considered using only the general's camera (the one that perches behind his shoulder), at the lowest height possible, to simulate the chaos and little information available to the commander of the battle.

[Nicov55]

Exactly, the AI cannot compete if you use a blitzkrieg strategy. in my current Ptolemaic campaign, i just took Damascus, Ephesos and Hierapytna after 40 turns and just sat there just defending for another 40 to allow the AI to build it's economy and developp it's settlements. Or you can conquer cities from the rebels and give them to some factions. Otherwise, you can mess up a bit with the descr strat and developp some of the AI's cities a bit more: add mines where it's possible, roads, larger ports...but save a copy first and respect all conditions necessary for the buildings to be there in the cities otherwise CTD.