Can't decide which difficulty start next

[booker]

I have been playing from normal yo legend. I found that every difficulty level has some pros and cons. Normal make sense to use agent to cause unrest or some other task. Use economics as another weapon for war (AI doesn't get insane bonuses) but then again. Could be a bit easy pretty soon

Legend it's a real challenge but then sometimes the bonuses are crazy and it get frustrated.

Hard seem to be the happy medium but still not sure if that is good enough than rather going to normal since on hard the AI gets money and agents start becoming useless since the AI settlement will always be happy.

What do you recommend?

[talljoe]

I personally do one of the following, depending on which faction I am:

If the faction has strong early units or an easy starting position, I'll play on Hard/Hard

If the faction has weaker starting units or a tough starting position, I'll play on Very Hard campaign difficulty, and normal battle difficulty.

[Neige]

I usually do either Normal or Hard. Everything else is too ridiculous.

[booker]

To be honest neige. I'm actually between these two. I loved the normal even ground. But on the other hand I'm worry normal won't b any challenge no more. In mostly will start with the vandals which are very hard initial challenge. But like I said. I don't want to base my difficulty by the faction I would chose.

[C.Maximus]

Vh.... this has been my standard total war diff since like shogun 1... when they invented legendary i tried it and liked it... but i hate not being able to save and ... sometimes i only have time to play a partial turn(late campaign) before work or something.. it pissed me off that i had to hit end turn real fast then quit before anything happens in able to just exit out of my game mid turn...

Also, I like to slow down time and pause and take screen shots... en Legendary sucks for that, you have that big MENU button even when you hit K and pause and you cannot slow motion. slow motion is best for epic screenshots because you can watch a group slowly battle and hit the f12 button right on the mark.

Also Legendary has no use for diplomacy... everyone hates you always... which is cool but i like to play with atleast some diplomacy and interaction between nations that isnt just WAR WAR WAR..


So my verdict is VH all the way all the time... AI is tough, real tough.... Diplomacy is hard and you have to actually be good at it to hold alliances together... (meaning watch what pisses them off and avoid doing that... and not allying with a bunch of factions who hate each other... that usually results in everyone just hating you... pick a side!) Battles will make you sweat a bit but not stupid frustrating where levy are killing your elite units, YOU CAN SAVE, TAKE SCREEN SHOTS, SLOW MOTION, PAUSE AND UTILIZE A MAP... (IMO taking away HUD functions for harder difficulty is just absurd... but whatever..) and you dont feel like a every time you hit end turn "ahh man im only playing this on normal, this campaign doens't even count"

[booker]

The thing is that to me the difficulty only difference is the pace of the game. Normal = fast expansion while legendary = slow expansion. But I'm not seeing that much of a difference overall. Once you start earning enough money it just a matter of time. So this is why I'm thinking on just play on normal without any ai bonuses and so be it. Playing on w even ground it does help with the immersion. Still undecided. My brains knows that hard is the most balance ans the best of both worlds.

[gregnaar]

I recommend very hard as WRE with normal/hard battle dif. And you could make some rules for yourself: for example, you cant expand to anywhere beyond the borders of the historical roman empire. So you basically can only capture from ERE. So you can only sack/subjugate any other settlements, no razing. Have fun.

[xjlxking]

Hard for campaign and normal for battle AI

I see no point in going further than hard. A lot of players seem to enjoy playing on legendary, but if you watch how they play, they tend to play in a way that exploit everything the AI is bad at.