I find the game too easy but don't like increasing battle difficulty - first world problems

[Aenima]

WRE campaign on hard difficulty is actually pretty difficult. The Celtic factions can be conquered within a few turns so that secures the northern frontier while the Africans can similarly be taken out after fighting. The barbarian hordes are also eventually defeated fairly easily, so that around 400AD the Suebi, Vandals, Iazyges, Ostrogoths and Vigisoths can all be wiped out - the barbarian invasions can all be repelled fairly easily, in other words.

The thing is that I play on normal battle difficulty because hard difficulty just feels ridiculous - Comitatenses get absolutely rinsed by a unit of Germanic levy on hard battle difficulty and assault ships fare badly against transports, to name just a couple things. Raising the battle difficulty doesn't make the game more fun by giving a challenge, it just over-buffs the AI troops to the point that it doesn't make sense. I did several custom test of Germanic levy vs Comitatenses and was flabbergasted at how easily said levies decimate the heavy Roman spearmen, I can't imagine how even mediocre barbarian troops would have fared in similar testing.

Anyone else know this feel? I'd love for the game to be harder and the campaign to feel like I'm enduring decades of barbarian migration but instead it just feels like the empire can be saved pretty quickly and if I try to make things harder by increasing the battle difficulty it just makes things senseless and not fun. First world problems, I know, but I can't shake this feeling every time I play. I guess mods will hopefully be the solution to this since they'll change unit stats/pace of battle and hopefully afford a harder challenge without just buffing levies to outmatch professional troops.

[♘Top Hat Zebra]

Yeah, basically that is my position. I never play any Total War game above Normal difficulty. Peasants killing armored knights isn't "Difficult", it's ridiculous.

[Aenima]

Yeah, basically that is my position. I never play any Total War game above Normal difficulty. Peasants killing armored knights isn't "Difficult", it's ridiculous.

I wouldn't mind if levies simply put up a tougher fight and elite units were slightly more dangerous, but to just throw the baby out with the bath water and make levy units > my heavy infantry is just...I dunno, I don't think I've ever experienced battles like this. I've played on H/H on TW games for as long as I can remember and yet this is the first time that it's been so extreme.

[xjlxking]

Yeah, basically that is my position. I never play any Total War game above Normal difficulty. Peasants killing armored knights isn't "Difficult", it's ridiculous.

Yup

I just hate this. I tried playing on legendary and it was like...wtf! I get you want to make the game hard, but stop putting so much artificial difficulty. It's absurd


Personally, I just dumb my self down. I make a check list to make it harder for myself. Do's and Do nots

[The Despondent Mind]

Yeah, basically that is my position. I never play any Total War game above Normal difficulty. Peasants killing armored knights isn't "Difficult", it's ridiculous.

[DestinysGT]

I just throw it on hard difficulty. But still I feel like I do a lot more strategy then the AI because I'm human after all. Like a human would realize if there's a tiny small army near forests and your playing as picts or something that revolves around fighting with ambushing then they wouldn't charge in but they do.

[booker]

To be honest i feel some people are overeacting to the difficulty settings. I never saw any of these things happened, I actually feel that Hard battle are more realistic in termos of outcomes than Normal.

Normal battles 1:1 battle,i would never loose a single battle, and that is not realistic either.
While Hard 1:1 i may loose some.

I´m not the greatest player on the world either.

just put hard setting and play the game as it if were on Normal. You will be surprise. I was able to hold 1:4 ration on legendary. (tip, kill their general).

I also loved the 1:1 normal, but these at the end of the day, it´s not realistc at all. I would advice to play on hard, iMO is the most balance levels of all (not in numbers, but in real outcome of the battles) there are AI bonuses, but they are not over the top as they are on Legendary or Very hard.

Give hard a try.

[Aenima]

To be honest i feel some people are overeacting to the difficulty settings. I never saw any of these things happened, I actually feel that Hard battle are more realistic in termos of outcomes than Normal.

Normal battles 1:1 battle,i would never loose a single battle, and that is not realistic either.
While Hard 1:1 i may loose some.

I´m not the greatest player on the world either.

just put hard setting and play the game as it if were on Normal. You will be surprise. I was able to hold 1:4 ration on legendary. (tip, kill their general).

I also loved the 1:1 normal, but these at the end of the day, it´s not realistc at all. I would advice to play on hard, iMO is the most balance levels of all (not in numbers, but in real outcome of the battles) there are AI bonuses, but they are not over the top as they are on Legendary or Very hard.

Give hard a try.

To the bold, I did, it's how I've been playing TW games for a decade. It's just that in Attila it seems to have become far too extreme. As Dracula and Aeratus said it's completely unbalanced in its current state, and like I said, Germanic levy spearmen will decimate Comitatenses in a 1v1. I think I was able to figure out that 30 Comitatenses died every minute (so 1 every 2 seconds) whilst, at the end of their fight the Germanic levy had barely lost more than 30 themselves. 3/4 of a professional Roman unit killed and routed by a Germanic spear-levy that only barely lost 1/4 itself. Das not it mane.

It's an interesting issue but how would it be resolved.

Does the game dumb down the battle ai for lower difficulties or is difficulty based on giving the enemy units buffs and the ai utilising abilities more often?

I'm certainly not at all knowledgeable in the area, but wouldn't there be a point beyond which improving the battle ai is difficult so to maintain difficulty this is the way to do it?

From what I can tell the AI doesn't actually play differently based on difficulty level (could be wrong and perhaps it's programmed to be more decisive on harder difficulty though) but instead just gets buffs for attack and morale, I believe. Your soldiers may get their stats nerfed or it could simply be that they're easily killed and routed because the enemy are just made that much stronger. Either way there's not a whole lot to be done by CA, I just think that the stats as they have them now need to be reworked when changing difficulty. If Germanic levies can crush Comitatenses in a 1v1 on hard I can't imagine what it must be like on VH/legendary difficult.

[Neige]

If Germanic levies can crush Comitatenses in a 1v1 on hard I can't imagine what it must be like on VH/legendary difficult.

Was that in a campaign? In campaign there are many factors that can affect that. In custom battles actually I kinda win with Comitatenses against the levy, or at the worst it's very close. If I switch sides however, the AI Comitatenses completely slaughter my levies.

[Dracula]

TW difficulty settings are ridiculous. Your units get a "-" morale at each level increasing. And since standardly it's around 5-6, you will fight with let's say 3. But having such morale makes a battle even more ridiculously short. Who made that system has to be hanged.

Also, auxiliary troops for example with the plus received become better than the regular ones. It's a totall fiasco.

[Aeratus]

Enemy archers also get ridiculous on higher difficulty (VH and legendary). One of the most annoying archers on high difficulty levels are the Sassanid mounted crossbowmen (Savaran cavalry). In the hands of a human player, these units are nothing special. But when played by the AI on VH+ difficulty, their accuracy and rate of fire is ridiculous. If left alone on the battlefield, each unit of Savarns will kill 500 men from my army. They literally machine gun down legionaries even in testudo.

[Vanders]

It's an interesting issue but how would it be resolved.

Does the game dumb down the battle ai for lower difficulties or is difficulty based on giving the enemy units buffs and the ai utilising abilities more often?

I'm certainly not at all knowledgeable in the area, but wouldn't there be a point beyond which improving the battle ai is difficult so to maintain difficulty this is the way to do it?

[Neige]

Does the game dumb down the battle ai for lower difficulties or is difficulty based on giving the enemy units buffs and the ai utilising abilities more often?

The AI gets buffs on everything above Normal. Not sure about abilities.

I'm certainly not at all knowledgeable in the area, but wouldn't there be a point beyond which improving the battle ai is difficult so to maintain difficulty this is the way to do it?

That sentence sounds weird to me, I don't understand what you mean. But developing AI is very difficult, yes. Especially when there are as many variables as in a TW game. We probably won't see an AI capable of beating a skilled human player in our lifetime.

[booker]

I'm playing on legendary. And I have played on normal. Hard as well with other factions. To be honest they AI is the same on every level. They just got stronger because the cheats. On campaign you will see more armies. And on the battle map they will last longer but I'm not seeing that difference. The same tactics apply. What I'm feeling is that on legendary you can't rush it. You have to take your time to conquered lands and then takes a lot longer to stabilize. Other than that all difficulties plays the same. It is just a different pace.

[Aenima]

Got to hold my hands up and admit that I was wrong RE Comitatenses getting rinsed vs Germanic levy, in my previous tests I'd been using Limitanei, not C's. In any case, I gave it a run through again with Comitatenses but still found that they struggled, and managed to even be beaten a few times.The first fight ended with 114 Romans vs 78 Germans, but they didn't rout, their general charged in. 2nd fight was a resounding loss of 27 Romans (when they started routing, think they broke at more like 30-40) vs 60 Germans. My guys lost, but they put up a decent fight.

Here's where it gets interesting; in the previous two fights I'd just charged the enemy, in my 3rd test I got into testudo and absorbed the charge....and got utterly destroyed! Fight ended with 47 Romans running form 84 Germans, so Comitatenses in testudo lost 3/4 of their men vs 1/2 a Germanic levy. I tried to do another testudo vs charge but my unit bugged out and got out of testudo when the enemy charged them. Would have done it again but, yunno, even I have enough of a life that test and retesting this bores me

Nonetheless, shows that Comitatenses still are liable to be overpowered by Germanic levies, and surprisingly testudo, despite what Ecthelion mentioned in the strategy/guide sub-forum, is not a good idea to have when fighting infatry, it seems. Maybe another test would have shown a difference, maybe it's good to absorb the charge and then attack to break your men out of it and fight normally (my guess is they get their asses kicked because they're extremely passive, not doing much fighting vs normally) but that's for another time.

Was that in a campaign? In campaign there are many factors that can affect that. In custom battles actually I kinda win with Comitatenses against the levy, or at the worst it's very close. If I switch sides however, the AI Comitatenses completely slaughter my levies.

Custom battle, just a general unit and a spear unit. Generals stayed out of the fighting, no buffs/debuffs were used.

[Bramborough]

Got to hold my hands up and admit that I was wrong...[snip]

Rather interesting about the testudo. Now my interest is piqued to go test myself and see if this rather non-intuitive disparity exists against other spear/melee infantry at different difficulty levels.

[Slaists]

The thing is that I play on normal battle difficulty because hard difficulty just feels ridiculous - Comitatenses get absolutely rinsed by a unit of Germanic levy on hard battle difficulty and assault ships fare badly against transports, to name just a couple things. Raising the battle difficulty doesn't make the game more fun by giving a challenge, it just over-buffs the AI troops to the point that it doesn't make sense. I did several custom test of Germanic levy vs Comitatenses and was flabbergasted at how easily said levies decimate the heavy Roman spearmen, I can't imagine how even mediocre barbarian troops would have fared in similar testing.

Anyone else know this feel? I'd love for the game to be harder and the campaign to feel like I'm enduring decades of barbarian migration but instead it just feels like the empire can be saved pretty quickly and if I try to make things harder by increasing the battle difficulty it just makes things senseless and not fun. First world problems, I know, but I can't shake this feeling every time I play. I guess mods will hopefully be the solution to this since they'll change unit stats/pace of battle and hopefully afford a harder challenge without just buffing levies to outmatch professional troops.

I am not sure what you're on about here (regarding battle difficulty). I play on legendary difficulty and see none of this. My swords beat spears. My cav beats swords, etc.

The only thing that the AI seems to get a real buff in appears to be missiles (accuracy, reload, etc.): so, don't go dueling with units of comparable quality. The catch is: as most units have precursor javelins, the missile buff is significant. The most notable missile example is when you send 4 artillery ships against the AI's one. No matter what you do, the AI will sink 1-2 of your artillery ships. This can happen on normal difficulty too though and I suspect has more to do with how the shooting AI differs for the player's units and the AI units.

Also, check legendoftotalwar videos on youtube. He plays WRE on legendary difficulty and his smaller forces are constantly able to defeat numerically superior AI armies. You won't see barbarian levies beating Roman legions there.

p.s. as someone suggested, in the campaign, there are many factors that affect troop performance. On harder difficulties, the AI is more likely to have access to various tech related buffs (faster research): example, I was quite happy when my Hunnic Horse archers were upgraded to be able to run at 138 speed. Then, I encountered AI Sassanid very light horse who could do the same... Turned out, the AI has stacked tek, army tradition and general's skills the same way as I did.

Besides technology, other things such as damage to a settlement have a significant effect too; exhaustion can rob 35% of your unit's battle worthiness, etc.; general's traits, army traditions, agent sabotage all can mess things up.

[Zwirbaum]

Actually when you compare stat wise Germanic Levy (GL) and Comitatensis Spears (CS), there is not that much of an advantage of Spears over Levies.

[ www.honga.net - just compare on it]
First of all Levies have precursor javs, which can damage and chip some health of CS. GL have 2 less attack than CS but have 18 more defence. If the some assumptions are correct and that there is base chance of to hit is 40% and then modified by [ATT-DEF]% it seems that GL have 38% chance to hit CS while they are getting hit in only 22% of the cases. There is of course the case of armour (GL have 8, while CS have 53 - GL on average receive 28 damage on hit, while CS get only 8 AP damage).

In case of campaign barbarians get in their first skill +3(+6) Melee Attack for commanded force, which boosts even higher the chance for GL to score a hit.

[Slaists]

Precursor javelins + the buffs that the AI missile units get on higher difficulties explain a lot.

Then there is also friendly fire. If the player is not careful and leaves precursor units on fire at will, friendly casualties can be horrendous. Example: have several precursor equipped units hold line and receive an enemy charge while having fire at will on. The first unit that will receive the enemy charge will suffer terrible casualties the moment contact is made. Those casualties however will be mostly due to friendly fire from all nearby units throwing their precursor javelins at the charging enemy right at the time when it hits your unit.

[Humble Warrior]

I liked the way MTW2 did it, by simply increasing stuff like fatigue and moral effects for both sides, but for some reason it was never used again. That was the first time I ever played on Full difficulty.