What difficulty should I really be playing.

[Oktarnash]

So I'm assuming i'm playing too high a difficulty, because i'm kind of starting to get irritated.
VH/VH as Baktria, and i'm noticing that fighting against nomads is illustrating how much I hate fighting a siege against them.
Same thing has happened to me in Third age Divide and conquer vs the variags, but to a lesser degree, but i'm noticing that entire units are getting decimated at the walls by the archer cavalry, lost like 100 hoplitai in like 5 minutes, with 2 other archer units and that 3 units of Pandotapoi Phalangitai with 2 units of veted Regalin can't really hold up against 8 cavalry units charging through the main gate, because of the massive blob charging that happens, even though the majority of the cavalry are sarmaritian skirmishers and daha archers, with no heavy cav. Kind of weird that a horse army to be the most effective way to storm a city.

Thing is though, I was not finding anything wrong with this difficulty so far, as I've been successfully holding off the Pahlavan, by keeping an army of mercenary cavalry to ambush sieging armies in Bukharak, I've defeated like 4 stacks and killed their Faction leaders two or three times.

Against the Taksashila, I've taken two of their cities in the north, including their former capital and basically had no issues fighting against them, although I did get lucky once, with the AI timing out during battle and loosing a City garrison.

And I defeated two armies of the saka to the north, and they haven't bothered me since.

So, Is the Arrows of death something out of me playing VH, or is it just a fluke and I should just avoid them next time I play.

[QuintusSertorius]

Sieges have broken pathfinding, we can't fix that.

But the recommended difficulty is still H/M. On higher battle difficulties, the AI has boosts to stamina and morale which means they'll win straight fights. Which happen more often in sieges where you can't flank units.

[Oktarnash]

Thanks, i'll change the difficulty then.

I never though of it as broken pathfinding, since even I make all my cavalry charge though the gate, if I think it is the only way to do something.

[Dooz]

On higher battle difficulties, the AI has boosts to stamina and morale which means they'll win straight fights.

Ah, but on Medium, the player gets some boosts don't they? I didn't actually know that until I read one of your posts relatively recently about that... always thought it was even statted on Medium. Another reason to play H/H in my opinion! Always has given me the best experiences, personally.

[Sar1n]

I use H/H as well. The moral bonus for AI is virtually neglible, and stamina bonus just about helps them to recover what they lose due to AI's frequent shuffle and innecessary running.

[Kaskad]

What about VH CAI, what does this difficulty level change mainly compared with H ?

[Dooz]

I use H/H as well. The moral bonus for AI is virtually neglible, and stamina bonus just about helps them to recover what they lose due to AI's frequent shuffle and innecessary running.

That's my thinking on it as well!

What about VH CAI, what does this difficulty level change mainly compared with H ?

Make enemy faction AI's more aggressive and prone to attack you and possibly each other, perhaps more likely to break alliances. I'm pretty sure AI gets more cash bonuses the harder the difficulty. Player gets less cash, more unrest making it harder to keep order, maybe affecting population growth. Player relations with factions drop at a quicker rate, leading to things like diplomacy being more challenging, making it harder to make deals and having to pay more to get them to agree. Also I believe it's CAI that determines battle autoresolve chances, so the harder the difficulty the more forces you have to have in your army to be able to win autoresolve battles, which could matter even if you never autoresolve land battles because sea battles. There's probably more, and maybe some things I said are wrong, so hopefully someone with more definitive knowledge lets us know!

[Lucio Domicio Aureliano]

Afaik, our specialist, Z3N, said the AI has no noticeable bonus on VH battle difficult, they are only smarter. From my experience, VH are winnable and it is always better to play against a more intelligent foe.

[Kravixon01]

We should test it. Play VH battles in custom battle mode with 1 vs 1 identical units and record the result. I'm out, otherwise I'd try it now

[QuintusSertorius]

1v1 is a bad test in Custom Battles, the presence of the general in the unit distorts their behaviour and performance.

[Kravixon01]

1v1 is a bad test in Custom Battles, the presence of the general in the unit distorts their behaviour and performance.

Would 3 vs 3 be better, or is custom battles a bad way of figuring it out?

[Dooz]

1v1 is a bad test in Custom Battles, the presence of the general in the unit distorts their behaviour and performance.

Wouldn't it be a good way to get a neutral reading on how difficulty levels would affect outcomes with the same unit though? If without a general there's nothing extra going on, and the single units on both sides don't have generals, then if you run 10 or 100 battles on each difficulty and get some some averages of win-loss-casualties to compare between difficulty levels, might see a pattern. If it's just to see whether difficulty affects outcomes in a controlled setting where only stats would come into play (assuming human player mirrors the AI's movements during the battles, walking, running, charging as they do) and if the only thing getting boosted by higher difficulty levels is some kind of tactical thinking, there shouldn't be much of a difference in win/loss ratios between them over the course of a bunch of simulations. And you can still know that in real campaigns, generals can add or detract morale and whatever else, and that'll have its own effects.

[moisesjns]

I can Agree with Z3n I believe you guys are thinking Rome Total war AI is the same as Medieval. I have played on VH battle difficulty, And i have noticed not a HUGE change like in original EB on Rome 1. I mean the AI is a little harder to make retreat, but as i have said as Pontos i can still easily beat the rebel army at the start of the game. They are not invincible, nor super human, I do not need to jav spam the back of them to make them die or retreat, And they do still have units retreat.

I do not reccomend VH on campaign diff myself, because of the Sea battles, As well as not having AI constantly want to fight to death.

Anyone else notice some Biographies of characters are to big? What resolution is best for a 1920x1080 monitor?

BTW LOVE the mod. so much cant wait for the latest update

[Kull]

Anyone else notice some Biographies of characters are to big?

As an FYI, all of these have been fixed so they now fit on screen (maybe not with these incremental releases, but definitely with the next full release). In some cases the fit is still very tight and you will have to position the "biography" at the top of the trait list and possibly even hover the cursor at the top of the word.

[I_Damian]

Hard campaign, medium battles. Then you do other stuff to keep things interesting.

1. Vary your armies. The Seleukid Basileus wouldn't be using 14 units of elite veteran phalanxes and 5 units of cataphracts. He'd have, like, 1 unit of the elite phalanxes, 1 unit of Pezhetairoi, 1 unit of Klerouchi, 2 units of Pantodapoi phalanxes, a unit of Hypaspistai, some light crappy skirmish cavalry, a medium cavalry and some total trash to bulk out the numbers.

2. Don't use stacks of 20 units. In my games only my faction leader gets to lead a full stack. Everybody else gets 10-15.

3. Other stuff. Whatever feels like it would be realistic and give you a harder time.

[rovert]

I play medium unless playing as Rome I will play on Hard , most militia type units are just useless on H/VH .

[Raffula]

Ever played on VH/VH, ever with few elite units, and never get problems fighting battles, except when defending sieges.. think is a problem of some hardcoded thing of vanilla m2tw but is near impossible defend the gate without a hige amount of losses.. i defend my city on the central square, losing the benefits of the wall, but also losing the bug of the enemy "destroyingeverythings" pushing the gates...
i can't reccomand lower difficulties because without the AI boosts the game get too easy and boring..
The BAI and the CAI are very stupid, so if you don't use some "self-roleplaying limits" you never get a challange..


Inviato dal mio iPhone utilizzando Tapatalk

[I_Damian]

Ever played on VH/VH, ever with few elite units, and never get problems fighting battles, except when defending sieges.. think is a problem of some hardcoded thing of vanilla m2tw but is near impossible defend the gate without a hige amount of losses.. i defend my city on the central square, losing the benefits of the wall, but also losing the bug of the enemy "destroyingeverythings" pushing the gates...
i can't reccomand lower difficulties because without the AI boosts the game get too easy and boring..
The BAI and the CAI are very stupid, so if you don't use some "self-roleplaying limits" you never get a challange..


Inviato dal mio iPhone utilizzando Tapatalk

I've noticed that too in Medieval 2 (defending the gate in sieges I mean). I tried to defend that city (Ariminium, I forget the EB2 name) from one of those big rebel stacks that congregate around there at the start. I put a few units of Hastati and Principes at the gate and figured that would be enough to hold them so other units could attack the big blob from the sides.

We got crushed, barely did any damage to them.