What difficulty i should start with?

[booker]

The faction is not important, i want even grounds for every faction.

Personally i think Hard is the best since its the best balance between unit balance and needed AI bonuses. But then again after a while mid game, the game get easier.

When it ried Very hard and legendary on Rome 2 i got frustrated by the agent spamming and stuff like that.

Since you can´t change it mid game, i really need to decide what difficluty to start with after the patch get release.

[Lugotorix]

I've played two Hard campaigns. It gets troublesome with auto-resolving, which I think is loaded to the AI's advantage. The Huns are pretty ridiculous on Hard and higher, and it's difficult to raise enough funds to resettle everything that's been razed. Just my two cents. They've put the onus on the player by saying Hard is for people who've played TW, which I don't think is very accurate.

[Migi84]

I started a WRE campaign on hard. Got absolutely destroyed and restarted it on normal. I'm not even ashamed to admit it

[Aeratus]

TW Attila is harder than Rome 2. Even players who were used to playing on Legendary in Rome 2 should probably start off their first campaign as VH, H, or even Medium, depending on the difficulty of the faction.

[Turumba]

Played VH in Rome2. Started H in Attila and i needed 3 attempts do got the Saxons running. Found it a bit to easy after i got into the game and understood the mechanics, so i switched to VH again...

I guess normal or hard is a nice start. It's a nice game, take your time, you can set it higher in your next campaign, no need to get frustrated at all. In every case: Have fun!

[Frost, colonel]

Tried the Jutes on normal, quite easy, except no one will trade with me as I have one province and everyone hates me because I'm too powerful.

The Huns on normal, well I literally got chased around the map, even crossed continents, just to get trapped by 15 AI armies from 5 different factions. I wouldn't mind except most of these were the AI declaring war on me. I was destroying them four to one, but the odds!

[AnonMilwaukean]

A lot of people, myself included, have noted that in Attila the AIs will literally follow you until you are dead, even when you are no longer a threat. It's as though the complaints about passive AI in R2 caused them to think the AI in Attila needs to chase players around the world to finish them off.

I'd say Hard in Attila is basically Very Hard (or even a half-step above that) in most other TW games.

That said, bear in mind that patching/balancing is still on-going when we are this early on. So you might start a campaign on Normalright now and find it to be fairly challenging, only to start another Normal campaign after one of the next patches and find it a bit on the easy side. Who knows, but just saying that whatever we tell you now is probably going to be different after the 1st or 2nd patch.

[Medina]

I tried two Hard campaigns with the Saxons and got huge wars of attrition that I could never win. Eventually I got killed in one campaign around 408...

Now I play on Normal, it's a challence, but also fun. Good mix between skill level needed and fun.

[Lugotorix]

I'm finally becoming the kingdom I was before and more in my second H campaign. I suppose the game ends at 500 or 495? For AAR purposes I'm probably going to go with the minor victory. I agree with the point about the patch process. Hard is the difficulty I can manage on, but when Attila wouldn't die it was an incredible challenge. Lots of re-saves after I had to abandon my settlements literally the turn Attila died, to be sure.

[jtfjtfjtf]

The diplomatic penalties are pretty bad at hard. No one will be your friend and random people will attack you for existing. I'm playing with Radious which has tweaked diplomacy which helps, alliances can be sustained. Whatever you do avoid Sarmatia Europaea at 420AD. I thought it would be a good idea to march there from Germano Sarmatia as the Geats to expand my trading business and have a launching point to the east. Attila became King and showed up with 5 armies and the first thing he did was raze one of my cities.

[miTo82]

Attila is the first Total War game I play, so I am really not the experienced strategy game Player. I started two campaigns:

- A coop campaign with a friend (I am the Jutes, he is the Franks)
- A single player campaign as the Saxons

Both on normal difficult.

And I think it’s a little bit too easy at the moment. I am in year 415 AD now (I know that from 420AD it is getting harder because of the food), and I had really no problems to conquer Frisia, Germania and Britannia, build up a “solid” Kingdom with good public order, a couple of strong armies, I have several military alliances with my neighbors (most of them in the East / Southeast, so I can use them as a “shield” when Attila arrives, hehe), and a good Income of about +8000 per round.

The start was a little bit hard, because the direct neighbors of the Saxons have a very similar strength, so it took some good planning to destroy them.

I think I will play to the year ~425 AD and see how the things will develop. After that I will start a new campaign (with Radious Mod) on hard difficulty…

[August]

I recommend normal. Main reason is that normal difficulty still allows you to have some diplomacy. On hard and higher, great powers cannot have any lasting relationships with anyone due to difficulty penalties which is immersion breaking.
Attila is still fairly challenging on normal. unless you play as Sassanids.

[Arimahn]

I'm a mediocre TW player at best and started on Hard. It offers a decent challenge all-around, even after I figured out all the important management stuff and changes compared to Rome 2.

[Greasy Dave]

I think it really depends on the faction you start with. I'm playing a VH campaign with the Jutes.

It's not been easy but it's not been too extreme either. The challenge has been a lot of fun TBH. AI stacks are larger, but the battles are pretty fun - I actually lose battles, but for me that's been part of the fun.

However, I hear that other factions are alot harder....

[MasterBigAb]

I played with the Jutes on hard. Quite challenging at the beginning, tried to invade Britain and failed for like 50 turns. However once you get a secured position and larger empire, it gets easier and easier and while I really had a challenge conquering or defeating enemy factions, I merely got pushed into defensive at all.

Was my very first campaign try and now finished and won it (cultural victory - military one is bugged and won't trigger) after like 400 turns (though I have to mention I belong to the slow turtle kind of players )

[booker]

I´m going to play with the WRE. I think i will go on Hard. I don´t plan on playing many campaigns so i want to have "the" campaign and i don´t want to spoiled it by being too easy or even extremley hard to the point of unrealistic.

[arcaoon]

With all the artificial difficulty like - happiness, income, politics and auto resolve i would suggest hard on most factions and normal on WRE and ERE simply cuz you get ed plenty hard enough as it is

[booker]

I started on hard and it was not fun at all. I changed to normal and now I'm having more fun. Diplomacy makes more sense now. I will keep it

[IlluminatiRex]

Normal, unless you like the AI getting cheats.

[Humble Warrior]

Normal, unless you like the AI getting cheats.

Normal does indeed seem good, to start. I hope to go to hard later.