Hello,
Quick question - which difficulty level is the best for campaing (battle - normal ofc)
Hello,
Quick question - which difficulty level is the best for campaing (battle - normal ofc)
I find it depends on the faction, and the desired level of difficulty. With most factions, particularly small factions, normal will be fine. With larger factions like Rome, consider going for hard, and with easier factions like Ptolemy and Carthage I find very hard is needed or it's no real challenge.
In my experience, the additional bonuses at H and VH make the mod a bit uplayable as even 1-province factions can field a large number of the armies very fast. And the AI is really good at concentrating it's armies.
In my experience the AI needs those armies, particularly as they tend to be like the one you have highlighted - a lot of levy spears, swords and archers with hardly any strong units or cavalry.
It's perfectly possible to grind down four stacks like that, particularly if the three stacks you have are actually powerful and balanced. If the AI doesn't have that numerical advantage, eventually it becomes trivial to beat their stacks down with better units and tactics. It's a crude balance, but a balance that TW games always seem to need as long as the AI is so mediocre.
Hi mate! Advice from the mod devs that I've read is normal-normal is how the game is balanced. If you want, you can go normal battle and hard campaign and see how that sits with you. Shifting battle difficulty to hard completely borks the balance and you're going to have a very hard time fighting as enemy low tier units thrash your high tier ones.
If you want to go more difficult, consider checking out the submod section of the forum for official sub mods or just shifting the campaign difficulty to hard. I tend to have the campaign difficulty on hard. Personally I've had trouble finding a sweet spot for difficulty as I've found most of the mods that bump difficulty also bump diplomacy aggressiveness which can become tiresome (one dramatic war after another with no recovery time).
I am playing with H-H as Rome in IA campaign and everything seems balanced for me, in battles it was a bit harder to rout enemy units but usually I was able to defeat enemy stacks with superior number in tense battles so it's pretty enjoyable for me.
Hard for powerhouse factions such as Rome, Carthage, Selecuids etc, and normal for the rest of the factions.
Very hard is only for veteran DEI players who seek challange. It's unplayable on very hard. Every faction regardless of the reliationship degree will declare war on you.
The most fun I ever had in a strategy game in my life was the DEI on very hard as rome with the family who has moderate diplomatic penalty with all the factions.
If you are like me and finding normal easy but hard annyoing, then you should install hardcore submod but play on normal.
Big factions: H-H, lesser factions H-N
I've played through Rome DEI campaigns multiple times on different difficulties (and with / without the hardcore submod). My observations:
Normal / Normal:
The standard DEI experience, with new game mechanics. You will really only have a challenge in the beginning up until you land your armies in Africa to attack Carthage. Diplomacy is still viable.
Hard / Normal:
IMO, the ideal DEI experience. Definitely a challenge from early to mid-game, but as you approach mid-end game, you will still likely "steam-roll". The AI will field more armies, often better quality ones too. Diplomacy is less-viable or otherwise requires money-investments to get factions friendly with you enough for trade deals, non-aggression pacts, etc.
Very Hard / Normal:
The beginning is an extreme challenge to survive. The mid-game is very challenging and near-impossible if you did not play the beginning right. The end game... well, I haven't been able to get there yet. The AI spawns and routinely concentrates 2-4 armies death stacks at very fast rates... faster than you can recruit / replenish your armies. I found that I was often forced to cheese battles in order to survive (river battles, fort battles, city battles, map corner fighting, etc) in order to minimize casualties so that I could keep momentum. You cannot auto-resolve battles, as you will suffer needless casualties - that you need to keep alive. Relish the simple 1-on-1 army battles... as you will not likely see it too often. Night Commander is your friend... as is laying siege to a city (to prevent it's army / garrison from reinforcing the battle occurring outside of the city). In the beginning game, you will have a couple of battles that, if you lose, you will likely never be able to recover... and will lose the campaign.
Diplomacy is also almost impossible without extreme money-gifting and investing in the diplomacy-related skills. You will almost never have alliances, non-aggression pacts, trade-deals, etc. The AI will often declare war on you, and multiple factions will likely be at war with you frequently. The AI will seldom sue for peace or accept peace terms.
Hardcore Submod: It slows the game down a little more, (more building times, higher costs, more research times, less bonuses, less diplomacy, etc).
- Normal / Normal + HCSM: Was a great experience that was decently challenging in the beginning, while still having a moderate challenge in mid-late games. If you don't mind the slow-down the submod brings, I find that this is almost "just right" for the experience I want with DEI... if the AI could just field a few more armies, it would be perfect.
- Hard / Normal +HCSM: Was a challenging experience that tested my abilities to plan ahead and set up the later game. Diplomacy is hard to garner, but with the right money gifting, war declaring, and character trait-investing... you can establish trade agreements, non-aggression pacts, alliances in early mid game. Having friendly buffer client states between you and large enemy factions makes defending against invasions much easier with your 1-2 legions reinforcing your allies' 2-4 armies. The AI deploys just a "little too many armies" at an unusual pace for my liking, but this difficulty with the hardcore submod is almost the perfect DEI experience... just needs the diplomacy tuned somewhat.
- Very Hard / Normal + HCSM: Suicide. Your beginning has to be perfect. You will never have diplomacy, and you will never have peace. Every 2-3 turns, your AI opponent will have 2-4 armies on your doorstep. For every war you are in, you will be routinely fighting 2-4 armies per opponent. Multi-front wars will wreck you in the early game. Multi-front wars are an inevitability in the emerging mid-game. There will be a deciding land battle with Carthage at the foot of Italy / Sicily that, if you do not win, will result in your campaign's eventual defeat. The yellow hispanic faction will be your worst enemy in the turns 70-100. They will conquer Spain and southern Gaul, crush Massilia, and their perpetual doomstacks of elite infantry (comparable to your princepes / legionnaires) will eventually whittle you down until you cannot manage the onslaught any more. If you did not seize Massilia, upgrade it, and fortify it before their invasion... you will probably not survive fighting them and Carthage simultaneously.
I could only get ~85 turns into the game when it became almost unwinnable. I captures the entire Italian Peninsula, expelled Epirus, and took Cisaplina easily enough... but Carthage prematurely declared war on me and invaded with 4+ armies that I barely withstood in a 4 v 2 city siege battle where I cheesed the entire battle. I was able to capture Sicily. Once the yellow hispanic faction declared war on me and begun invading with their ridiculous doomstacks, I couldn't keep up with it.
The only way to stay in the game is to routinely cheese the AI at every available opportunity. This level of difficulty is NOT fun. If diplomacy could still be viable, it would be do-able.