Normal vs hard?

[Chuddly]

After struggling to learn the game with The Empire and Karl Franz instead of Tyrion (and failing many times) I finally managed a good game. I played on easy (lol) and while I never lost a battle, some were very close and I found the early game with Beastmen and Skullmasherz razing my towns annoying and difficult.

I smashed the VC and Chaos came but I got kinda bored and felt I cheesed myself out of the experience on easy. For example, I took a vamp town and the public order collapsed (I sacked it first for much needed gold) and the rebels attack the new garrison, so they came at me with a wizard hero, dire wolves, some undead infantry, and black or blood or whatever knights and while the game told me the odds were out of my favor, and my troops were at 3/4 health, I managed to just barely win by keeping the direwolves away with spearmen but felt it was really unrealistic to have won....

Anyway, that tirade over with, I'm looking for more immersion and realism, I don't want to give the AI unrealistic advantages and make diplomacy impossible, but I also don't want to have unrealistic advantages. For a balanced game (as balanced as possible against AI), is normal or hard better? Do AI get ridiculous advantages on hard? Or are their advantages minor?

[Sardorim]

I suggest Normal until you've got more of a hang on it as that's how the game is meant to be played as. That and the AI gets some BS buffs the higher you go unless you download a Mod that turns those buffs off.

[Chuddly]

Originally posted by Sardorim:

I suggest Normal until you've got more of a hang on it as that's how the game is meant to be played as. That and the AI gets some BS buffs the higher you go unless you download a Mod that turns those buffs off.

That was quick, thanks! I'll do normal. So on normal, do they get that annoying tendency to focus on all their hatred on the player and go out of their way to attack you? and can those mods be found on the workshop?

[Xaphnir]

Originally posted by Frostback:

So on normal, do they get that annoying tendency to focus on all their hatred on the player and go out of their way to attack you?

They'll do that on any difficulty, even easy.

[zefyris]

Originally posted by Sardorim:

I suggest Normal until you've got more of a hang on it as that's how the game is meant to be played as. That and the AI gets some BS buffs the higher you go unless you download a Mod that turns those buffs off.

If you downloard a mod that turns the buff off you're almost literally playing on normal difficulty even when setting VH difficulty, you know that right Oo?

[Sawboss]

I think normal campaign difficulty and hard battle difficulty is the sweet spot for me.

[Insane Scientist]

Here's my experiences with the campaign differences between Normal - Very Hard. I personally only play on normal battle difficulty regardless of campaign difficulty because I don't like unit stats being skewed and changing all the unit matchups and their performance.

What doesn't change much between difficulties is the kind of armies you'll see enemies using, I was hoping that moving up to Very Hard I might see the enemy recruit some elite infantry and monsters for the big late game battles, but AI recruitment behaviour doesn't change, I did see more elites and monsters moving up to Very Hard, but not that much, they still mostly recruit a lot of basic units, difference I noticed the most is on Very Hard I see a lot of regiments of renown used by enemies, didn't see this much on Hard or Normal.

The amount of armies and how fast they recruit them changes a lot the higher you go. On Hard factions feel more threatening than Normal, not by a huge amount though, on Very Hard you really start to notice with the AI recruiting armies impossibly fast for a player and lots of them very early, some of the powerful factions can have 5-8 good armies by turn 70. I personally don't notice much difference in the difficulty of diplomacy between difficulties but I definitely notice the AI bias towards player more on higher difficulty i.e. the tendency of the AI to ignore other threats and potential targets to target the player.

You get a lot of epic scale full army size battles much earlier and more often on Very Hard which I enjoy for it's challenge and personally find the most enjoyable difficulty for me, I still struggle with it on unfamiliar factions. If I were to give my opinion on what difficulty feels the most immersive and believable I'd say Hard. The cheats the AI get on Hard feel minor to me, even though the AI gets the least cheats(or nerfs) on Normal the intelligence of the AI really lets it down and they feel like a complete pushover to me once you have a bit of experience with the game.

[Chuddly]

Originally posted by Xaphnir:

Originally posted by Frostback:

So on normal, do they get that annoying tendency to focus on all their hatred on the player and go out of their way to attack you?

They'll do that on any difficulty, even easy.

Is there a mod to get rid of it? It's kind of annoying, even if it makes it harder.

[Chuddly]

Originally posted by Sawboss:

I think normal campaign difficulty and hard battle difficulty is the sweet spot for me.

I think you're right but I'm not gud yet so I think I'll do normal/normal so that I can git gud.

[Chuddly]

Originally posted by Insane Scientist:

Here's my experiences with the campaign differences between Normal - Very Hard. I personally only play on normal battle difficulty regardless of campaign difficulty because I don't like unit stats being skewed and changing all the unit matchups and their performance.

What doesn't change much between difficulties is the kind of armies you'll see enemies using, I was hoping that moving up to Very Hard I might see the enemy recruit some elite infantry and monsters for the big late game battles, but AI recruitment behaviour doesn't change, I did see more elites and monsters moving up to Very Hard, but not that much, they still mostly recruit a lot of basic units, difference I noticed the most is on Very Hard I see a lot of regiments of renown used by enemies, didn't see this much on Hard or Normal.

The amount of armies and how fast they recruit them changes a lot the higher you go. On Hard factions feel more threatening than Normal, not by a huge amount though, on Very Hard you really start to notice with the AI recruiting armies impossibly fast for a player and lots of them very early, some of the powerful factions can have 5-8 good armies by turn 70. I personally don't notice much difference in the difficulty of diplomacy between difficulties but I definitely notice the AI bias towards player more on higher difficulty i.e. the tendency of the AI to ignore other threats and potential targets to target the player.

You get a lot of epic scale full army size battles much earlier and more often on Very Hard which I enjoy for it's challenge and personally find the most enjoyable difficulty for me, I still struggle with it on unfamiliar factions. If I were to give my opinion on what difficulty feels the most immersive and believable I'd say Hard. The cheats the AI get on Hard feel minor to me, even though the AI gets the least cheats(or nerfs) on Normal the intelligence of the AI really lets it down and they feel like a complete pushover to me once you have a bit of experience with the game.

Thank you for the well structured and detailed reply. I think I'll do normal and when I get "gudder" I'll do hard like you say... It's a shame that they don't recruit elite units.

Although the vamp counts had lots of those weird vampire bat monsters and one terrorgheist. Those aren't elite units?

[Insane Scientist]

Originally posted by Frostback:

Originally posted by Xaphnir:

They'll do that on any difficulty, even easy.

Is there a mod to get rid of it? It's kind of annoying, even if it makes it harder.

It's true there's some AI bias on every difficulty, though it seems to become more pronounced the higher difficulty you go, I'm pretty sure there are multiple mods that change AI bias behaviour. It personally doesn't bother me much since I feel like the game needs it be challenging.

Originally posted by Frostback:

Although the vamp counts had lots of those weird vampire bat monsters and one terrorgheist. Those aren't elite units?

By bat monsters I'm guessing you mean vargheists, they're a tier 3 building unit so somewhere in the middle. The terrorheist is definitely an elite unit requiring a tier 5 building, you should still see elite units & monsters being recruited eventually on all difficulties. They do recruit more on higher difficulties just the difference will likely be less than you'd expect and they usually always have some cheap units in their army. Also I'm pretty sure that legendary lords get their special starting units as AI same as player.

If you want a numerical breakdown of all the main changes between the different campaign difficulties and battles difficulties this guide has them:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1876946840
Basically campaign difficulty makes AI factions more powerful with more money, more growth etc. Battle difficulty is stat buffs for the AI units so same unit vs same unit; you will always lose and have to use tactics or army buffs/technologies to get around this.

I like hard campaign/normal battle the most when I want a chill campaign and to have more fun with the roleplaying side of the game and recruiting whatever I feel like in armies.
VH/N when I want a challenge and to see epic battles. One other fundamental change I forgot to mention about Very Hard+ campaign is in Vortex(not sure about ME) it sometimes changes the campaign start to make it harder. Try starting a new Tyrion campaign on Hard vs VH you'll see an extra army that wasn't there on Hard at Glittering Tower.
I might try legendary some time but VH can already by tedious enough in campaign length and I really don't like that you only have the one autosave which is my main reason for not being compelled to play it.

[Chuddly]

Originally posted by Insane Scientist:

Originally posted by Frostback:

Is there a mod to get rid of it? It's kind of annoying, even if it makes it harder.

It's true there's some AI bias on every difficulty, though it seems to become more pronounced the higher difficulty you go, I'm pretty sure there are multiple mods that change AI bias behaviour. It personally doesn't bother me much since I feel like the game needs it be challenging.

Originally posted by Frostback:

Although the vamp counts had lots of those weird vampire bat monsters and one terrorgheist. Those aren't elite units?

By bat monsters I'm guessing you mean vargheists, they're a tier 3 building unit so somewhere in the middle. The terrorheist is definitely an elite unit requiring a tier 5 building, you should still see elite units & monsters being recruited eventually on all difficulties. They do recruit more on higher difficulties just the difference will likely be less than you'd expect and they usually always have some cheap units in their army. Also I'm pretty sure that legendary lords get their special starting units as AI same as player.

If you want a numerical breakdown of all the main changes between the different campaign difficulties and battles difficulties this guide has them:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1876946840
Basically campaign difficulty makes AI factions more powerful with more money, more growth etc. Battle difficulty is stat buffs for the AI units so same unit vs same unit; you will always lose and have to use tactics or army buffs/technologies to get around this.

I like hard campaign/normal battle the most when I want a chill campaign and to have more fun with the roleplaying side of the game and recruiting whatever I feel like in armies.
VH/N when I want a challenge and to see epic battles. One other fundamental change I forgot to mention about Very Hard+ campaign is in Vortex(not sure about ME) it sometimes changes the campaign start to make it harder. Try starting a new Tyrion campaign on Hard vs VH you'll see an extra army that wasn't there on Hard at Glittering Tower.
I might try legendary some time but VH can already by tedious enough in campaign length and I really don't like that you only have the one autosave which is my main reason for not being compelled to play it.

I'll check that out, thanks.

Also, vargheists are pretty tough, and only tier 3? I guess Empire infantry suck moreso than those things are good.

Legendary sounds like a nightmare lmao, without even the option to save scum.

Thanks for your help!