Surprised by low difficulty

[philthepile]

I downloaded and installed the mod (version 6.2) today and, after reading some of the posts about the difficulty I decided to play as the HRE on h/m expecting a challenge (I usually play vh/h in vanilla). However about 25 turns into the campaign I haven't encountered any particular problems.

Most of the neighbouring contries allied with me almost immediately and the only faction to attack me so far (near the end of the 25 turns I have played until now) was Venice which I had no trouble defending against and then attacking. My cash flow is much better than it ever was in vanilla MTW and I have no unrest in any province despite having high and very high tax rate in every settlement.

Does the game get harder later on or is the HRE a very easy faction to play in this mod or did I somehow ham up the installation?

This isn't meant to be a whining thread. I'm really enjoying the mod and I love the new units and textures. I'm just surprised I'm having such an easy time after all the posts warning about the massively increased difficulty

[KittySN]

Hard is relative. You're just that awesome.

[philthepile]

Yea i know. I just wanted to hear someone else say it.

[Caesar Clivus]

If it's too easy, then try playing on VH/VH

[princeps.omnis]

In my experience, the AI in SS doesn't really get going until after turn 25 or so. Up until then, there will be practically no wars, but once you hit turn 25, BAM everyone declares war.

[Quercia]

In my experience, the AI in SS doesn't really get going until after turn 25 or so. Up until then, there will be practically no wars, but once you hit turn 25, BAM everyone declares war.

I got a war as the Templar Knights at turn 13 or so...

Then again, the Fatimids do really hate me.

[Loose Cannon]

In the Late era the wars start on turn 12. The Early era wars start later because there are more rebel provinces for the AI to go after. It concentrates on them until they're gone, then it will attack you.

RR/Rc slows down the amount of quality troops the AI can recruit and actually makes the game easier.

To the OP: Play Late Era HRE on vh or h, then come back and tell us how easy it is. There is only one strategy that will enable you to survive, let alone win.

[gracul]

Go late era HRE on vh/vh, or teutonics, or khwarezmians.

[KittySN]

Go late era HRE on vh/vh, or teutonics, or khwarezmians.

I just realized that Uppsala and Nykoeping are rebel to start. Ok. Teutonic Order's easy now. If you just keep going after capturing Visby and Turku with your garrisons before Lithuania get's rolling, you can have 6 (yes 6) regions starting turn 4. Sick! I wasted my extra money (6000) on buying an alliance with Denmark. New campaign! $$$ Time to steamroll! Guess I'll try HRE next.

[Akolythos]

Don't accept alliances from those pansy peacemongers imo

[TheBromgrev]

Using RR/RC, the only "problem" I've run into is that I typically have more cash than things to spend it on This includes having multiple armies made out of nothing but mercenaries, recruiting every feudal and professional unit available, building buildings every turn, and bribing the Pope for reconciliation. After about turn 40, my treasury typically grows to 60k, which causes the "extravagant" series of traits to kick in. By around turn 120, all of my family members are fat, extravagant, incompetent alcoholics . I personally think reducing farming income would fix this, or make the different between excellent harvests and poor harvest wider.

[Halbard]

im playing VH/VH as portugal, and pwning all the way. conquered nearly all of italy, the iberian peninsula, nearly all of france, all of north africa until egypt. got 2 armies advancing through the rest of france and italy. planning an invasion on HRE soon. (i am also providing support for Venice and England, since they would be destroyed if it wasnt for me. Got 6 marriage alliances with england also.

[airborne guy]

im playing VH/VH as portugal, and pwning all the way. conquered nearly all of italy, the iberian peninsula, nearly all of france, all of north africa until egypt. got 2 armies advancing through the rest of france and italy. planning an invasion on HRE soon. (i am also providing support for Venice and England, since they would be destroyed if it wasnt for me. Got 6 marriage alliances with england also.

Yoe have six marriage alliances? How do you do that? I always send my princess somewhere and before she gets to the destination she marries some noob?

[SirDestroyer]

Either you're real good or you're lying.

[Halbard]

Either you're real good or you're lying.

no lying, no cheating, aside from a slight tweaking in the descr strat that made my generals good looking and smart.

[Haakon]

no lying, no cheating, aside from a slight tweaking in the descr strat that made my generals good looking and smart.

Yeah, that is cheating. A good general can be the difference between life and death. either way I'm not sure if the OP was a troll or just stupid.

I was reading some posts about this patch and heard that the ai got huge cities really early.

They do. Denmark has 3 huge cities pretty early on, while I'm still stuck at large towns.

[gracul]

I started pretty much like you, but since i don't trade maps and i only got an alliance with denmark then by turn 15 i was in war with pretty much everyone. Lithuania was made my vassal... had to restart the campaign. ;D

[KittySN]

Maps are a waste of time and money. I expand mine one region at a time and all I care about is if someone's lurking in my bushes. I prefer just exterminating Lithuania, but then Kievan Rus' thinks it can take a bite out of you until it gets owned like 10 times and asks for a ceasefire. I've yet to have Poland attack me in 6.2 but I think that's just because I keep a spread out stack watching my southwest borders. Yeah... go ahead... just give me a reason to take Thorn! I do the whole "Immaculate" reputation deal and a bunch of other house rules (no lost battles/settlements or disbanding anyone?)...

[Zanze]

I only need maps because I don't know where the towns are ...following roads takes effort.


And, I'm not the best player out there...but I started an HRE campaign early era, M/M with somewhat similar results. All neighboring rebel provinces are mine and thinking of killing genoa(Still only genoa and ajaccio) because im not at war with anyone and they tried to take switzerland while i was taking milan. Their failure resulted in them being about 5 steps from staufen and that is too close for me.

[cedric37]

To ally with many factions is not that great (in fact it will be much more difficult later on when all factions start to declare war on each other and you must side with one camp and loose rep.....) and not a sign of low difficulty.
The true difficulty is when you try to expand. If you just want to keep a little state with a few province, then you can just stay in peace quite a long time without AI even challenging you.
BUT if you want to play what the game is made for, i mean if you want to conquer the world or a big piece of it, then you'll see that the difficulty is much greater than vanilla.
First of all, the fact that AI ally with you means also that it will ally with other AI factions, thus creating blocks, and now those factions will REALLY care about their allies, so if you hit A and A is allied with B and C, your relations with B and C will suffer greatly. And there are big chances that B and C will start to mass troops near your border for example.
The complexity of the alliances is such that sometimes you cannot attack a single faction without putting half the world at war (which is very sensible if you compare with WW1 or WW2 or napoleonic wars).
On the other hand, Vanilla's alliances significated nothing so you could fight one faction at a time or wait until your ally will betray you which would happen rapidly... Instead of making life harder, it was a blessing, because all you want when you want to expand are pretexts for war..

If i take the example of my TO game in ss6.2 M/M (late), i was really pissed off by russians, because they allied with the pope, and after destroying lithuania, i could not fight any non-catholic factions and my neighbours were the most loved by the pope. I still tried to fight russians but my relations with the pope diminished very rapidly. He would not exco me or ask me not to fight russians, because they are orthodox but i had to stop because getting abysmal relations with the pope is not that great when you are a catholic religious order...
So i had to fight the exco only and even when fighting exco, my relation with the pope diminished sometimes, if for example they were allied with A and A was allied with faction B which was exco...
So alliances and war impacts are much more important in SS6.2 than in vanilla, thus making your life harder.
Later when i was exco for attacking genoa when the pope had warned me to stop combat, my sicilian and german allies continued to fight with me and were too exco!! At least alliances means something
On the other hand, if you make too many alliances you get rapidly your hands tighted in your back.
So now i have learned to make only some secure alliances to keep my back safe for example but otherwise i don't make as many alliances as i used to.