I always wonder...

[krisslanza]

Did some reading over 6.4, and while I say it sounds very impressive and has some fun features, I just have this nagging question.

Why do so many mods make the game HARDER? I don't particularly mind vanilla gameplay, but sometimes these mods have some fun features, but I'm not too sure I'm up to making the game more difficult when I already feel like M2TW's default timescale is too quick - yet if I lower it to 0.5, like Rome, it's just far too slow. And then I feel 1.0 might be too little still, yet I somehow always feel pressured to have to rapidly expand or I won't win the game... I think I'm rambling now.

But yeah, I'm just curious why mods add a bunch of fun new features, but always include a bunch of "make everything harder" too

[RedGuard]

actually there are 3 different AI that interact with you based on your game play style. if you want a normal campaign with minimal AI aggressiveness to get started try a Lusted AI campaign on Medium/Medium.

[Kaidonni]

People simply enjoy challenges. The people making these mods want more challenge out of the game both for themselves and those who will play their mods. Even turtling in this game doesn't ensure a challenge because of the limitations of the AI and the relatively few limitations on the Human player, which is why mods like Byg's Grim Reality add many features that deliberately limit the Human (and you have to limit the player more than the AI, as the Human has many advantages over the AI by default). If you can only recruit so many men a year (over 12 turns rather than one or two), and going over that limit damages your economy because there are less able-bodied men for farming or building, and then you lose a major battle and cannot simply replace that army, it is far more enjoyable. You could come within a hair's length of utter defeat many times, or fail in invasions of enemy lands when they counterattack.