Recommended difficulty?

**Titus Vorenus** · March 04, 2012, 12:11 PM

So this mod caught my eye--cool stuff!--and thus I downloaded it with an eye to starting a Byzantine campaign. I did a search with the terms "Recommended difficulty" and found nothing, so I figured I'd ask!

I know that in vanilla, increasing battle difficulty doesn't make the AI smarter, it just gives them bonuses. Since this mod has new AI, does this still hold up, or will increasingly the battle difficulty actually affect the AI?

For campaign difficulty, I'm looking for a challenge of course, but I'm also not interested in just having all the AI factions ignore each other and throw swarms of troops my way

To me that's not much fun, and neither is it realistic. Playing, I want to feel like "just another faction", and not the target of an AI vendetta. What would be the best difficulty level for this? Hard?

**Stylix** · March 04, 2012, 02:38 PM

@Titus Vorenus

Originally Posted by Dave Scarface in Mod features

-AI more aggressive only on VH campaign difficulty. warning only the best players should attempt this difficulty!

Play at whatever difficulty level you feel comfortable with. If you are an experienced player then I suggest starting on H/H and then adjust from there based on the success/failue of that setting. If you have not played a Total War game before then maybe start with M/M. The settings can be independantly set based on your campaign v. battle abilities.

**Titus Vorenus** · March 04, 2012, 03:23 PM

Thanks for the reply. I saw that info about the VH setting which is why I'm wary about it.... I've been playing Total War games since Shogun, so no worries there

If the AI isn't affected by battle map difficulty (can I get a confirmation or denial of this?), and if it's as improved as it's supposed to be, then it would seem to me that Medium (with its lack of bonuses for player or AI) would give the most "authentic" experience, right? Or does the AI still need a handicap?

**Stylix** · March 04, 2012, 04:43 PM

Originally Posted by Titus Vorenus

If the AI isn't affected by battle map difficulty (can I get a confirmation or denial of this?), and if it's as improved as it's supposed to be, then it would seem to me that Medium (with its lack of bonuses for player or AI) would give the most "authentic" experience, right? Or does the AI still need a handicap?

The campaign difficulty is not affected by the battle map difficulty. The battle map setting will only apply during combat situations.
The CAI, while much improved over the 'vanilla' version of M2TW, is still limited by the hard coded actions put in place by the CA. Most experienced players will find that the medium CAI setting will be too easy. If the AI is not given 'cheats' such as monetary and growth increases it will usually not be a worthy opponent.
I suggest that you experiment. There are many factions to play and this mod has great replay value, so hopefully you will play many campaigns and have many opportunities to vary the difficulty settings. Have fun!