WRE eventually too easy - any ideas for challenging but fun house rules?

[Aenima]

As the title says, I keep finding the WRE to be fairly easy to play as. By 400AD I've almost always wiped out the Suebi/Vandals/both Gothic tribes/Rhoxolani/Iazyges/Bastarnae/Quadi, have subjugated the Celtic tribes and sometimes even subjugated the Africans. In other words, it just becomes too easy because I end up killing or neutralising 1/4 of the game's factions (14 of 56) in the early stages of the game. I'm not looking for a brutally hard or frustratingly annoying campaign (hence why I play on M battle difficulty, as I don't want levies defeating my heavy infantry) but I would like to actually feel challenged and as though I'm trying to save the WRE from a genuine threat.

At the moment the only rules I can think of are not to venture beyond the historical frontier, ie don't attack the Quadi/Celtic/African/Germanic settlements and wipe them out or subjugate them. Not the most amazing house rule but I'm not necessarily looking for something complex, just something that will afford me a nice challenge, and I feel keeping these factions in the game will do that. Any ideas?

[GussieFinkNottle]

Play on Hard. Not too unfair, just a requirement of tactical aptitude.

[Aenima]

Play on Hard. Not too unfair, just a requirement of tactical aptitude.

I play hard campaign, just not battles, and to be honest have no plan to change that. Strong-stat units will be beaten by weak units and levies on hard. I've tested it several times and just have no interest in it to be honest. Roman heavy infantry will beaten by anything more than (and sometimes just) one enemy levy unit, naval units suddenly suffer vs transport boats. There doesn't feel like there's any logic to it and the game just becomes a grind-fest of attrition in which the stats are always against you. I'd probably be willing to do it if there weren't so many siege defences in which things just become a boring grind-fest, but I can't say I enjoy battles on hard so I won't play it.

[xjlxking]

I'm like you Aenima. I dislike anything other than normal battles, it's too tedious. Losing elite units to levy units is absurd and I don't enjoy that. Anyways, I play on Normal/Hard (depends on faction). I just set rules up rules so that I don't steam roll it so for example
-I don't keep 2 legions together. I will only use 1 legion per attack.
-Declaring war and attacking on same turn is not allowed
-I try to keep armies on borders and not town/cities
-I don't use secure loyalty on any other than family members
-No assassinations
-No peace between me and Huns


something like that, something I'm okay with and don't mind.

[gregnaar]

My addition to the rules: You cant destroy churches!
But yeah i know what you are talking about, playing as WRE around 425 (more than 200 battles untill than, so it was an intense campaign), the game suddenly became boring, i won a minor victory on the same turn as i wiped out the Huns, the north-east is a desolated wasteland, the only threat is the Sassanid empire, but they are too passive. So you can build an economy to be ruined by climate change and corruption, to be able the train the best units, you cant really use against anyone. I mean by the time you can train some sweet units, you have won the game already...
This is a bit offtopic, but i can't decide what faction should i start next. I guess i will go for hard camp./normal combat with DEI combat overhaul. And maybe some retextures.
Any recommendations, and also house rules for them? (I dont want to play ERE/WRE this time)

[Telenil]

Wait, you can set the battle AI and campaign AI separately? Is it that the menu in the battle options? I was wondering what I did, I never thought you could change any difficulty mid-campaign.

[Bramborough]

I don't think you can change campaign difficulty in the midst of a campaign, but yeah, you can change battle difficulty whenever you want (as long as you're on the campaign map and not in actual battle).