Hard too hard, normal way too easy

[Saibot42]

I use SavageAI, Real Recruitment and BGRIV on, and playing hard campaign/hard battle ended up with me essentially losing within 20 turns to full stacks taking my only non-wooden castle and my best town, while my main army was elsewhere, and also there were no rebel cities left nearby. Switching to normal campaign/hard battle, and the AI doesn't seem to be expanding or sieging rebels at all, I've collected 3 alliances including 2 marriages, and the most interesting happening was a crappy general rebelling in the field while transporting 4 units of peasants.

[Saibot42]

My question, does normal difficulty campaign get harder later, or should I abandon this game, go back to hard, and try pushing for an early alliance or 2 this time to limit the fronts I need to fight on?

[Leonidas II]

All depends on the faction you're playing with ...

[Byg]

Go back to hard. if at first you don't succeed....

[Saibot42]

Yeah, I'm thinking maybe I just didn't do enough diplomacy and that's why I got crushed so early.

[Saibot42]

Still feels like there's literally no way to win. Takes me 20+ turns to form a new stack of anything better than militia, less than that if I use multiple castles but then the issue becomes how to group them all together. And taking a settlement leaves me with a bunch of depleted units, even supposedly superior units like mailed foot knights go down to like 20 men after a siege. Meanwhile the AI has multiple full stacks, France and Denmark are just going to pick me apart. I've got 7 generals to cover 10 settlements, one is probably going to die holding Hamburg, my only fortress. I'm considering exiling myself to the other side of Poland/Hungary and taking over the pagan lands, let my marriage allies fight France and Denmark, but there goes my claim on the winning condition settlements, and there's still the problem of raising/replenishing armies taking way too long. Especially if I'm trying to recruit in non Catholic areas.

[tono4850]

Which faction do you play ? It´s BGR submod that makes the game harder. Playing without it even VH is too easy...

[Saibot42]

Looking at BGR V I think I'd probably enjoy that more even if it's harder, because of the manpower system rather than waiting a bunch of turns for what you want to become available, but I really don't want to play late era since I don't like the idea of gunpowder units.

[Saibot42]

I play Holy Roman Empire.

[Saibot42]

Actually looking at the map I don't need to bother with the pagans, assuming the crusade ends soon I can have my crusade army take Zagreb and Ragusa from Venice, who everyone hates anyway. Hopefully they've used their super AI growth hax to make them better than the cities I'm losing.

[Saibot42]

Wow, managed to hold off the siege on Hamburg by cheesing the AI a bit, sending a feudal knight unit to make them abandon their ladders and towers, then a good old fashioned killing field inside the gates, lost half my army but killed 90 some % of Denmark's troops, and my spies are making Arhaus riot. French dropped their siege on Frankfurt, looks like an English army chased them off for me. Crusade army is weary, really need to take a settlement soon and didn't see Hungary already sieging the Byzantine fortress I wanted, but Aragon has a huge army closing on Gaza, so should be able to bring them back soon. My other generals are raising mercenaries near Frankfurt, one is in debt and needs to hang out collecting taxes in Frankfurt, and the heir presumptive will have to be eliminated once my real heir comes of age. Princess is on the way soon, and hopefully she can marry into Aragon and break their alliance with France.

[Ruprecht]

The Peasant transportation business has seen better days. Prey your other general doesn't buy into that peasant propaganda.

[Saibot42]

Right, I was thinking in terms of what I read about BGR V where you could disband peasants to make recruitment pools go faster. I'm so torn on whether I'm even enjoying the game right now or not. So much planning to do, but I'm 12 turns away from anything decent while my enemies have multiple full armies running around. I'm scared to put any decent generals in towns to produce anything because I'd rather not lose them, but they're useless running back behind the front line grabbing mercenaries.

[Ruprecht]

I can't really relate to that. I always play on Normal/Hard or Normal/Very hard. Not that I wouldn't enjoy the challenge, but it does little for the immersion and authenticity when lower tier units are magically better armed and protected than their higher-tier counterparts. That being said, Normal combat difficulty means you reach domination by turn 65, probably not true for all factions, but it is for most.

It's either hot or cold, there's no warm water here, though I do quite enjoy the Lusted AI - it's still 2000% harder than vanilla.

[Saibot42]

Hopefully my 4 star dread general doesn't go senile waiting for that army to get there from Ragusa so he can kick the Danes out of Germany, and hopefully my first victory doesn't send me crawling back to retrain.

[Saibot42]

Well my 4 star dread general didn't go senile, but his loyalty went too low for me to trust him with my shiny professional army, so I passed his war council privileges to the emperor's son, who should be heir if the current heir presumptive who I sent into Kwareziwhatever territory would just desert. Luckily he got 4 stars from cheesing rebel pikemen with a levy archer army. Polish finally decided to join the war, all I need from them is to pull Danish troops away from Hamburg, and to lose Stettin and Prague so I can take them without alliance breaking. First field battle went well, acceptable casualties I guess though I would have preferred losing more spearmen and less sword troops. Probably should have let skirmish mode bring the archers behind the line instead of breaking their fire prematurely with a command. Also should have let my feudal knights stay in melee with the huskarls, maybe even given my fuedal foot knights the charge order right after sending my cavalry charge. The French have me nervous though, no other enemies, holding Staufen, multiple armies around Metz, and for some reason their papal standing shot up even though the Pope is from my faction.

[Saibot42]

Took Nuremburg back from Denmark, don't like how heavy the losses were, but Ragusa and Innsbruck are safe and staffed for reinforcements. France has a siege on Frankfurt, which may or may not overwhelm the heavy garrison there. Prague is Danish and lightly defended, and I've got a 2 star general in Vienna ready to take it with militia and mercenaries. My 2 biggest concerns are Poland taking Hamburg, and France busting up my entire effort with an aggressive campaign. And OMG why won't that stupid heir presumptive just desert already. Maybe he'll run into some Mongols while my leader is still alive, and hopefully the stupid game passes the heir title to the right guy, but I'd rather he desert so the family tree doesn't show him as a former heir.

[Saibot42]

Wow, another crusade, not sure if that's a good or bad thing. I know there's no way to make it to the crusade target, and there's the possibility of putting one of my generals into debt. Not sure who to send either. Emperor is past his prime and has 1 or no stars, Emperor's son is 4 star/4 chivalry, newly wedded to the princess general is 4 stars blank slate chivalry, planning to make him dread. Chivalry at home dread on crusade would make the crusade more profitable by sacking Byzantine settlements, but the war with Denmark tougher as I have to keep releasing prisoners instead of executing. On the other hand if I'm using dread at home that would mean sacking alot of my own home settlements. And even at starving and nowhere near anything of mine, heir presumptive douche just won't desert.