whats the benefits and negatives to playing on different levels of difficulty

[woksape]

I have been playing extended realism for about a month now, and I'm having troubles establishing what level of difficulty I should play on in campaign. There are only two differences I have noticed: one being on normal that AI doesn't do anything and on VH it goes out of its way to attack me, the player. The other is that on VH there are stacks upon stacks of enemy armies every turn.

[despot_of_rhodes]

On campaign difficulty VH the AI seems to have only one goal: Kill the human player. Normaly, AI should become about 10k denari each turn on VH camp.diff. Also the results of autoresolved battles depend on camp.diff, not on battle diffic., there are then quite screwed and unrealistic. The AI tends to be too passive on middle diffic., maybe also because it doesn´t gain extra money ( normaly AI attacks you with lots of mercenaries, since it can afford hiring them with 10k additional denari per turn on vh. )

IIRC, ExRM isn´t specifically adjusted to any difficulty level, but VH, either on campaign or battle map, just makes the battles results quite unrealistic. And playing on VH you would suffer huge causalities + heavy losses fighting naval battles ( only playing on huge unit size your ship causalities would be at least low enough, that you can retrain your boats, otherwise, you would need to do so after every battle, or you lose most of your experienced ships ).

And btw: like most players know, using some "house rules" often makes your campaign much more difficult and challenging, then simply playing on VH, since the AI won´t be smarter at all )

[woksape]

Ive done the house rules alot and it does help game play, but the AI doesn't command itself the same way on M or H as it does on VH. Which really detracts from the gamplay

[Warmaker]

Me, I play the campaign usually around Medium, maybe the next one up also if I feel like it.

The main concern for me however is the battle ai itself. I set that to Medium, all the time. Why? The battles are more balanced that way.
+ Bonuses only from the actual circumstances and leaders.
+ No artificial, cheesey bonuses for either side.
+ No instance of throwaway units holding their ground and not breaking while being overwhelmed by superior opposition.

[Quinn Inuit]

The current setup isn't adjusted to any difficulty, but 4.0 will probably be zeroed on H/M. That's my personal recommendation.

If the stack spam is bugging you, here's my recommendation:
Play a faction that's not too hard
Double or triple all upkeeps

Do that and stack spam will take care of itself and you might survive the experience.

[Sorceri]

The current setup isn't adjusted to any difficulty, but 4.0 will probably be zeroed on H/M. That's my personal recommendation.

If the stack spam is bugging you, here's my recommendation:
Play a faction that's not too hard
Double or triple all upkeeps

Do that and stack spam will take care of itself and you might survive the experience.

Could you possibly put some detailed instructions on the download post for 4.0 on how to change the upkeeps? I know that I won't be playing on anything other than M/M, and I am NOT comfortable with how to change code. I wouldn't even know how to begin. Thanks.

[pannonian]

Could you possibly put some detailed instructions on the download post for 4.0 on how to change the upkeeps? I know that I won't be playing on anything other than M/M, and I am NOT comfortable with how to change code. I wouldn't even know how to begin. Thanks.

There is no easy way of changing upkeep without changing code. Fortunately, the code is easy to change, so that's not a problem. Just make sure you back up your original files before you make any changes. Data\export_descr_units.txt (EDU) is the file we're looking at.

At the beginning of the EDU, there is some commentary explaining how the file works.

; stat_charge_distance Distance from the enemy that the unit will begin charging
; stat_fire_delay   Ectra delay over that imposed by animation, hetween volleys
;
; stat_food         No longer used
; stat_cost         Number of turns to build,
;                   Cost of unit to construct
;                   Cost of upkeep
;                   Cost of upgrading weapons
;                   Cost of upgrading armour
;                   Cost for custom battles
; stat_ownership    List of factions and cultures that may have this unit

The part in red is what we're looking for. Now let's look at a typical unit, and see how that works. I'll use the briton peasants from vanilla, as that's the only install I have on my desktop at the moment.

type             barb peasant briton
dictionary       barb_peasant_briton      ; Barbarian Peasants
category         infantry
class            light
voice_type       Light_1
soldier          barb_peasant, 60, 0, 0.7
attributes       sea_faring, hide_improved_forest
formation        1.2, 1.8, 2.4, 2.4, 6, horde
stat_health      1, 0
stat_pri         1, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, knife, 25 ,1
stat_pri_attr    no
stat_sec         0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 ,1
stat_sec_attr    no
stat_pri_armour  3, 1, 0, leather
stat_sec_armour  0, 0, flesh
stat_heat        2
stat_ground      2, -2, 3, 2
stat_mental      0, low, untrained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay  0
stat_food        60, 300
stat_cost        1, 150, 100, 20, 30, 150
ownership        britons

As you can see, there are six entries under stat cost, corresponding to the description at the beginning. The unit takes 1 turn to build, costs 150 denarii to build, 100 denarii per turn upkeep, 20 denarii to upgrade weapons, 30 to upgrade armour, and 150 denarii in custom battles. If we want to change the upkeep to 120 denarii per turn, we'd therefore change the third entry on that line, so it would read thus.

stat_cost 1, 150, 120, 20, 30, 150

Now just save that file, and you've successfully done your first bit of coding.