Which is the most fair difficulty setting?

[sleeper]

Not in combat that is normal sorry but there rest just makes battles so long but on campaign?

[Elitewrecker PT]

What is fair? (Almost) no AI handicaps, that would be normal.

[zefyris]

depends what you mean by fair.
For example, the AI doesn't have access to lightning strike no matter the difficulty, cannot reach the -23% upkeep located near it in the character skill tree either, which are huge advantages to the player (especially the former if abused). AI cannot deeproot either with WE, which makes an absurdly large difference, player cannot be on the receiving hand of Plunge into anarchy, Skryre AI cannot build nukes, and so on.
So one could argue that if the AI doesn't get any kind of advantage in compensation for the player-only stuff, then it's not "fair".

If you want to ignore in your decision all of the player- only advantage and just don't want the AI to have anything on you no matter what, I guess normal campaign difficulty is the fairest.

Due to what I said above I would argue that Hard or even very hard are way fairer between players and AI right now though. Because if the AI doesn't get massive advantages in some field, no way all your player only advantages are fair to the AI~.

[Snidy]

prob very hard , legendary the ai arguably gets too many cheats that require min/maxing and cheese .especially if you are not an order faction.

[sleeper]

I am thinking of makings a good vs evil campaign. I will have to play high elves for that but I do need to buff the evil factions. So they are challenging enough but not so much their unstoppable.

[Wh♂♂par]

If you buff one, you buff all AIs. It's up to chance, which AI side comes out on top.

Your demand needs mods.

[the commando]

i would probably say Hard/Normal it gives the AI a fighting chance while not completly knee capping players VeryHard/Normal if you are secure in your ability to play the game and deal with the AI stack spam tactics.

[Dr. Uncredible]

Also, the difficulty of your campaign depends heavily on which faction you pick, the game is always going to be easier if you play for an example Tyrion rather than Teclis, to take a High Elven example.

[The SpoonElite]

Personally I've been enjoying 'Very Hard' campaign and 'Normal' battles. I find it's the battle setting that skews the balance for me, where base tier enemy infantry can easily 1 v 1 my elite units. You can always buff up the battle difficulty later when you have a strong army to ensure there's a level of challenge.

As Dr. Incredible says, campaign difficulty heavily depends on faction and start position. Bare in mind, that if you get the right kind of start to your campaign the rest of it should be a relative breeze.

Don't be in a huge rush to expand, don't be in too many wars at once and keep a buffer of money for emergencies.

[Jekko]

as many have said hard/normal or very hard/normal. Beyond that it gets frustrating cheese town

[The Sylvan Learning Center]

very hard

[play midnight suns]

Hard/Hard

AI can always field an army, but you still get to use melee units. ;)

[nord2hammer]

Originally posted by zefyris:

depends what you mean by fair.
For example, the AI doesn't have access to lightning strike no matter the difficulty,

Since when?

I've had the AI use 'lightning strike' against me any number of times over the years.

[Barser]

I always played the game on hard/hard. Dont know, seems pretty fair to me.

[Voss]

playing at very hard, somehow the ai can build and hold 3 whole armies with no sweat. impressive.

[Lord Holland of Wessex]

Originally posted by zefyris:

depends what you mean by fair.
For example, the AI doesn't have access to lightning strike no matter the difficulty, cannot reach the -23% upkeep located near it in the character skill tree either, which are huge advantages to the player (especially the former if abused). AI cannot deeproot either with WE, which makes an absurdly large difference, player cannot be on the receiving hand of Plunge into anarchy, Skryre AI cannot build nukes, and so on.
So one could argue that if the AI doesn't get any kind of advantage in compensation for the player-only stuff, then it's not "fair".

If you want to ignore in your decision all of the player- only advantage and just don't want the AI to have anything on you no matter what, I guess normal campaign difficulty is the fairest.

Due to what I said above I would argue that Hard or even very hard are way fairer between players and AI right now though. Because if the AI doesn't get massive advantages in some field, no way all your player only advantages are fair to the AI~.

AI does use lightning strike but does not happen that often.

Edit - Also I have had Ikit claw use nukes on me.