Difficulty vs AI Stats Modifier

[mpc]

Is there any difference between adjusting difficulty vs adjusting the AI stats modifier?

I ask as observe that when you increase difficulty to hard/very hard the AI stats modifier adjusts accordingly. My hope is that adjusting the difficulty improves the AI only as typically not a fan of harder settings just resulting in harder to kill/harder hitting units. I find this just distorts your appreciation of actually how effective a unit should be vs another unit with no modifications applied to the units stats.

My preference would be increasing the difficulty to hard/very hard providing a smarter AI opponent that is better at using their army against yours and then leave the AI stats modifier neutral so no positive or negative effects applied to unit stats. If I then reach a point where even at very hard I find the smarter AI insufficient challenge, I can then always increase their army size comparative to mine to further increase difficulty.

Apologises if there has been discussed previously, attempted to search but unable to find any prior discussions on, and thanks in advance for any steer regarding.

[Elitewrecker PT]

The tooltip in the difficulty says what increasing the battle difficulty does.
Yes, the difficulty and stats modifier are different things.

[Tr4cker0]

Yea battle difficulty change Ai behaviour when stats modifiers modify stats of Ais' units

[Isaac]

Well, officialy the battle difficulty and stad modifiers are differen. The AIis supposed to play better on higher battle difficulty. Thing is, it barely changes. AI is more likely to dodge artillery and magic spells, and thats it. The AI is bad on easy and on very hard.

[Alan]

Originally posted by Isaac:

Well, officialy the battle difficulty and stad modifiers are differen. The AIis supposed to play better on higher battle difficulty. Thing is, it barely changes. AI is more likely to dodge artillery and magic spells, and thats it. The AI is bad on easy and on very hard.

Dodging artillery and magic is game changing, at least for certain factions/army comps.

For other factions/comps...barely noticeable.

[CrUsHeR]

The generic battle difficulty is more relevant in auto-resolve. You should get a 3x multiplier on the results with the Easy setting. The 10% stats don't make a difference.

[huey30]

Changing the battle difficulty will result in a very small change to AI battle behavior but it has a large affect on auto resolve results.

[AurumHawke]

AI Reaction Time is the main difference.
On lower difficulties, the AI will have a significant time delay between when a ranged unit is being threatened to when it turns around and starts firing again.
On VH difficulty, that time delay will instead be the moment your unit gets ordered away or decides to drop its order.

AI dodges Vortex and Bombardment spells/abilities regardless of difficulty setting (subject to reaction time), and never dodges Wind or Missile spells. It never dodges if it's in melee or about to charge.

AI does not dodge artillery, but it does switch to aggressive when it sees it's in your artillery units' range. It may attempt to flank further around, but this just gives your artillery more time to fire.

AI does hold fire and prioritize ranged targets, but it will still waste ammo on priority targets it can never hit. Due to increased reaction time and fine entity control, it can fire every missile from a unit in a burst, while turning.

[JustSmile]

The REAL difference is in auto-resolve. You get such a massive modifier to your strength in auto-resolve on easy basic garrisons can defeat full stacks.

[mpc]

thanks all, appreciate your inputs and thorough explanations on impacts adjusting has :)