AI Difficulty Settings?

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Hi , I have been playing Empire in multyplayer since its release and have recently ventured into the campaign mode.Im playing as Britain on VH VH settings and was wondering how difficult this actually is.

I have not lost many online but am finding the AI in single player very difficult.Ive had 2 naval battles against pirates in the Carribean and 1 land battle (outnumbered) against the Indians.

Lost them all on land because my army routed after the enemy, straight from kick off charged there cav at my Art.

Has anyone had experience of these settings.

Should I build huge army's even against the Indians?

[jackson]

On vh the ai gets morale boni, while you suffer morale penalties.

So it's no surprise your army routs so easily. I play on vh/n, because i hate stat advantages for the ai. But that's my personal taste .


Just think from your soldiers' point of view: Those Indians can be very scary. Especially when they engage in melee.

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Thanks for the reply.I have also noticed it you press escape and bring up the options menu when on the campaign map there is a difficulty settings slidebar?

After starting my campaign game on VH VH, this was set to the middle of the bar.Does anybody know what this is for?

[Spraetter]

That slider adjusts the battle difficulty, so you can change the battle difficulty while the campaign is under way. You cannot change the campaign difficulty though. I prefer to play on VH/H as the bonuses for the AI troops makes it completely unrealistic on VH battle difficulty, like Jackson said.

[Kazang]

Yeah i play on VH/H

It seems the most balanced. As unfortunately the AI doesnt get smarter or use more balanced armies on the harder settings, it just cheats and has units with ridiculous stat increases. Especially for morale and defence.
VH battles can get a bit stupid when firelock militia are fighting to the last man and still wont rout!
Naval battles on VH are not funny either, the AI ships can take as much as twice the damage your ships can take before they even think about sinking. Ive seen galleons demasted and with no hull left at all on the health bar but still dont seem to sink and wont surrender.
Whereas my owns ships seem to sink or rout before they even take half damage.

Aside from that the natives are an extremely tough enemy, you do need full stacks to take them on. They often use multiple full stacks against you as their units are cheap. They will overwhelm with numbers if your not carefull.
The units are very powerfull compared to yours at the start of the game on top of that, their lancer cav has the best charge damage of all cavalry, the bowmen out range and out damage muskets with a much higher rate of fire and they tend to rush you with strong attacking melee troops. Which you wont be able to cut down before they reach your lines.

The natives are actully the hardest group in the game to fight, imo anyway. You need bayonets and fire by rank before you take them on or you will be taking huge casulties in battles

[Gornard]

Even on n/n the native americans shouldn't be underestimated at the start. They aren't as tough as european armies but you want to have comparable numbers untill you get firing drills.

[Mahatma Gandhi]

What I've noticed as well is w/the different tribes is the Iroquoi use a large amount of bowmen, Cherokee melee/lancer cavs and Huron predomantly melee fighters. So attempt to match each tribe w/a mirror army, and throw in cannons to tip the balance. You can spam armies and eventually overtake them through basic economic abilities in the old world if you wish. But, this last go around I tried something new and so far I've had a lot easier time of it by using mirrors.

W/the Iroquoi I used a 2-3 line INF, 2 cannon, 2-4 cavs, and generally around 8 bowmen, and I really worked their armies over much easier then my first campaign. What really helps is having grape-canister teched by then, because their bowmen are in PERFECT distance to engage. You really have to be aware of the few cavs they have, because at some point very early on, AI will make a MAD rush at your cannon. So set up specifically for that and the rest is cake.

By the time you take on the Cherokee you should have better bayonetting skills and generally access to lancers-light cav and just try and mirror those guys as well. However, I've found Cherokee use much more cav so tinker around w/numbers. I did find that East Indian lancers really kicked major ass in the Americas.

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Thanks for the answers, this explains it all.