What difficulty should I play on?

[[RR]MarcusBanterelius]

Which difficulty presents a fair challenge but isnt ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
Note: For the Battle difficulty I will be playing on Normal because extra morale for the ai seems like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and unrealistic.

[Konkayz]

It's really up to you. If your new to the game, play on normal until you understand the building system, provincial management and specialisation and the family trees. Once your pretty good with that keep upping the setting until your happy. I usually play on hard because it feels balanced and makes the AI more agressive without going too over the top.

[elkoso38]

Top below you can see differences between campaign level difficulty.

in battle : AI get a morale bonus of 4 on Hard battle and 7 on VHard battle.

You can choose the campaign difficulty at the beginning af the game when choosing faction.Then you can up or down battle difficulty level in game option (by default set to same the level of campaign level chosen before)

Important : the campaign challenge level depend on the faction, rome easy , sparta hard etc.

Beginner : Normal / Normal
Average/good player : Hard / Hard
Veteran total war : VHard / VHard or legendary

Difficulty level depends on vanilla game or AI modded game.

VANILLA : you can play VH/VH or legendary for good challenge. It doesn't matter campaign challenge level. Of course play rome will be easier than Carthage..

AI MODDED GAME :
if you play a faction as rome (easy/normal campaign challenge) play on VH/VH

if you play Carthage for example (hard or + campaign challenge) play on H/H or H/VH

The CAI (campaign AI) on VH have 1slot recruit bonus. So when you are at war with 2/3/4 factions, unless being a true total war master, you become quickly overhelmed and loose campaign or run away...

On legendary campaign CAI have 2 slots recruitements bonus. I only talking about recruitements..

To conclude :
if you play vanilla, the game is easier. With good AI mods, keep advices above.

AI CAMPAIGN BONUSES :
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jXLXgDXRSds/maxresdefault.jpg

[elkoso38]

Regarding battle AI, you can play "Hard" add low bonus for AI as you know, but you're smarter than AI. battle are less boring.

Very Hard battle is quite liked because morale buff make the battle less realistic, in front battle you can loose against low/mid tier troops with heavy troops.
To win ,you must flank use massive strategy orders etc. and the slightest error pay cash.