Difficulty differences

[Pietrak]

I'm just curious, what's the difference between certain difficulties in SS at all?

My biggest concern is that I don't want to play against a cheating AI that spawns stacks of elite troops on a whim.

[bɑne]

There are no cheating AI spawns stacks with elite troops. There is no cow level.
I recommend Garrisons in 6.3 and the campaign AI comparison topic.

[RabidSheepLegion]

cow level, lol diablo.... Anyways, I believe it increases morale of the AI, fund bonuses to them and penalties to you... VH I think starts giving the AI troops extra stats, altho I am not sure.

This is from the yuku forums thx to olmstead

"Question #10 - What do the difficulty ratings" do?

Answer #10 - Welcome to the forums!

We don't know a great deal exactly about difficulty levels in M2TW, but we can extrapolate from STW, MTW and RTW.

Traditionally, on VH Battle Difficulty, AI units get +7 attack and +7 morale. On H Battle Difficulty, the AI gets +4 attack and +4 morale. Some people say that one of the devs said that in M2TW the AI only gets a morale bonus on VH or H. Be that as it may...

The AI is not supposed to be any smarter or more aggressive on VH or H than on Medium. But, the AI does behave differently... Why? Because the AI has higher morale - so it knows it can use weaker units to attack units it could not normally attack. The AI is also less likely to rout because of fear caused by elephants, fire or any of the other morale-lowering factors.

On Campaign Difficulty - on VH the AI traditionally got 10000 gold per turn as a bonus. I think it was 5000/turn on Hard. This makes it very hard to bankrupt the AI, even if you blockade all the ports and etc. Some people say that this is no longer the case in M2TW, but I have not been able to verify this.

The AI also traditionally got bonuses to settlement order - so AI cities are less likely to revolt, even with 10 super spies in them.

The AI also gets advantages in auto-resolve - very substantial ones - as can often be seen in naval battles.

The AI traditionally is not supposed to be any smarter on VH or H, but once again it acts differently... Why? Because the AI has more money, it can be more flexible and more aggressive. It can afford huge armies, it can afford spies, assassins and mercenaries - so it uses them. It also tends to leave its cities with tiny garrisons, because they are not needed to maintain order. The AI also tends to attack you more often on VH, because the Auto-Calc odds look to be in its favor more. But, since a good human player can almost always win on the Battlefield (even on VH Battle Difficulty), this can get the AI into a lot of trouble. Once again, some people say that one of the devs says the AI is "smarter" on VH, but I have not been able to verify this.

On the lower difficulty settings, the human player gets the advantages the AI would get on Hard or VH.

I think VH/H or VH/M is the best way to play the game.

Edit - Peacemaker EAF92 says:

"Some say the AI gets a higher moral and fatigue bonus. Perhaps this is true, but I do not see any of this. In previous titles this painfully obvious and this was why I never went onto Very Hard, but MTWII is different.

All it really does is RESTRICT Moral and Fatigue to very realistic levels for BOTH sides. So it`s much more stringent. So you can`t over push your men or they`ll tire quickly and rout sooner. That`s it.

The Dev Blog also mentions this ground-breaking change from RTW.

I have found Peasants are easy to rout, while tougher soldiers take longer, but nothing to tell me that the AI has any extra bonus, just longer battles of rout and counter rout.

This is not confirmed, but from viewing the forums and my own experience the AI seems to do things better on this level. Siege attacks, field attacks, etc though the `do-nothing` bug still blows it at times. "