Difficulty settings

[|Augustus|]

Hi, I play as romans on m/m and was wondering what is the difference between each difficulty setting:
Campaign difficulty easy, medium, hard, very hard and Battle difficulty easy, medium, hard, very hard. Obviously the ai gets harder but, what else changes?

P.S what is the most realistic difficulty settings for what it would actually be like in real life?

[Nordmann]

Hi Augustus,

Personally I'd give Hard/Hard a go, it's definitely much more challenging than the lower settings and RS tends to play better overall. The difference is obviously the AI and how they respond to the player and other AI factions in general, though this is largely based on the situation and the faction in question. Battle difficulty levels affect moral, defence, attack etc, meaning therefore that battles will be longer and perhaps less decisive than on easier settings; enemy troops will be less inclined to rout and may make quite a fight out of a defeat.

Very Hard is also an option, though I've found battles on this setting to be ridiculously long, enemy troops rarely rout and usually only when down to the last 2 or 3 men, not very realistic at all but challenging nonetheless.

So it's really up to you, but honestly Hard and Very Hard aren't as monstrous as you'd expect, you might find them enjoyable.

[century x]

For me the most realisitc settings is for Campaign on Hard and for battle Medium. I've tested many battles on hard and it gets stupid on how long the battles lasts. Medium is realistic for me in battle. But thats my opinion.

[Xavier Dragnesi]

For realism, I agree with century x, but for the biggest challenge I'd say put campaign on hard, and battles on very hard.

[zulumuppet]

i play on H-VH,and decided to invade gaul,the battles do last longer,i enjoy that,even if not realistic and Gauls becomeing a long campaighn.but thats what i enjoy about the game,your get the feel for whats best for you

[tone]

Definintely H campaign and VH battles for me...otherwise the battles are too fast.

[Brusilov]

With campaign difficulty playing on H is harder than VH. There is a known problem with RTW in that on VH the AI gets less additional money than on H.

With the battle difficulty set to VH I find that units simply don't rout and will fight to the end. I appreciate that this would happen with elite units but even they should rout in the right circumstances.

[Coldcall]

That's odd because my enemies usually still rout even on h/VH. Yes sometimes they will fight to the death but I find the key is if you kill their General then they are more likely to rout quicker.

[Caius Antonius]

I always play on H/VH, but as I seen from century x, if it's more realistic on medium then I'll try it

[MarcusTullius]

I've always played H/VH because it seems to be the most challenging....especially when fighting battles

[Wolfstorm]

Im currently playing at Hard for the battles, and Very Hard for the campaign. Im playing as Macedon and I was defeated two times by the romans, but defeated them three times while defending a bridge. I also took Salona, Tarentum and Cannae from them. The Greek Cities are giving my generals a lot of trouble in the south. Corinth was taken two or three times by them, and they razed it to the ground I think two times, killing the population in it. At one point I gave 2000 denarii to the greeks for peace, they accepted it (through forced diplomacy), and backstabbed me after two turns, declaring war again. However, I point out that Im using the Extended RS, currently at version 1.2.5, and it uses other AI personalities at descr_strat.txt. For now, Epeiros was destroyed by the bosphorans after they became my vassals and I gave one city in Thrace for them. The free peoples was also destroyed. The graphs shows the gauls as the most powerful faction, and through exchange of maps I saw that they and the germans created two empires in northern Europe. The marian reforms already happened and I already meet the Legio Augusta and the Legio Germanica (this one was when I was defending Tarentum). The romans also sent one or two stacks only of first cohorts, and they proved to be the toughest opponents in the game. Im loving this campaign.

[century x]

On medium the battles can last a long time. And they rout. The only units that will fight to the death are usually the elites. But even then if you hit them in the back or something like that they also rout. But sometimes they don't. and you got to figure out how to kill them. I have alot of fun playing on medium. I understand some people like extremly long battles and I respect that. Units fighting to the last man, thats cool and all. But when you have 3000 romans surrounding a unit and they don't rout which I have seen. It gets ridilious for me.

[Xavier Dragnesi]

Many units don't rout when they are on guard mode. Then even if you kill their unit down to one or two men, those one or two men will still be running around with their banner above them, trying to get away, yet they're still not actually routing. They just basically avoid the enemy instead of fleeing from them

[Kthullu]

any reason why VH/VH is easier than other combinations?

[Nordmann]

Yes it's odd really, but it has something to do with the AI, it doesn't appear to work very well with Very Hard.

[MarcusTullius]

any reason why VH/VH is easier than other combinations?

Its to do with the player getting higher bonuses similar to the AI instead of getting fewer bonuses- its essentially another mucked up part of vanilla that cant really be changed

Best to play is VH battles, H campaign