Tips for Maratha campaign

[Totaltomb]

Hello! First of all, I wanna say thanks for a great mod!

I have tried to play Maratha campaign with H/H difficulty but I think it is just too difficult to me. Hardest part is that I am in constant war with several factions all the time. At the beginning of game I am already in war with Mughals so my first goal is naturally deal with them(at least so long that they accept peace offer). But usually in the firts few turns,one or two other factions declares war on me and looks like I can't make any allies. In my last campaign I succeed to get Portugal to accept alliance but they are not much help. They just keep sitting in their small colony at India. And because starting budget is 3000 I have very hard times to keep my armies in condition and same time trying to build something. I have understood that good strategy is to deal Mysore very early. Problem is that I have no time to do it very early because Mughals. I have only once succeed to destroy Mysore but that took very long time and after that Britain and France declared war and that's it. Game over. Mughals also build very big navy at early so when they block my harbors I am out of money. There is no way I can build enough ships to deal them.

So, before I lower difficulty, I want to ask how should I play with Maratha in H/H difficulty? I took my first campaign with Britain and it was quite easy after first 10-20 turns (H/H difficulty).
There is also strange glitch. Some diplomancy options just say that "Missing string". Example, I tried to negotieate peace with Britain but they just answer:"Missing string".

[Souka]

There is some serious anti player bias when playing on higher difficulties. Ai will declare war on you for the sake of it, relations doesn't really matter. On top of that ai gets insane amount of cheats, so they'll always outproduce you. Best way to clear higher difficulties is just to outplay the ai in battles. For naval battles you want fast ships so you can dismember the masts and salvage the ships for gold. Since ships have infinite ammo you only need one fast ship and you can capture at least 3-5 ships with no bigger issue if you have the wind on your back. Just don't let the ai build huge fleets since then you'll have a problem. For armies I found that cavalry perform really well. Just try to lure some infantry to chase you and then you can hammer & anvil them. For artillery you should go for the mortars with 2000 range since they can destroy armies all over the map while the ai just sit there (note that this seems to only work if you have the stronger army). Cannons are really bad and infantry are just there to hold ground while your cavalry and mortars do the killing.

And don't autoresolve.