Difference between campaign difficulty levels?

[poke_ravi]

What bonuses does the AI get on moderate and hard difficulty?

[Tagyhag]

Yeah I'd like to know if the AI just rushes more or if there's an actual unit difference with difficulties.

[Bob Barnsen]

same

[Filthydelphia]

There's too many variations per scenario to really be able to tell you a single comprehensive answer. In some scenarios, on harder difficulties, the AIs will train more villagers, train more military units, research technologies they wouldn't on lower difficulties, attack more often with larger groups, micro their units more effectively (especially ranged units), and so forth. Each scenario has some combination of these and/or other possibilities to make the scenario more challenging on harder difficulties. Also, the Human Player may have some disadvantages on harder difficulties compared to easier ones; for example, less starting resources or certain technologies not researched from the start. Sometimes, even objectives can be different depending on difficulty.

[CatSup]

Usually higher difficulty means upgraded units/buildings and more enemy units.

[Tagyhag]

Originally posted by Filthydelphia:

There's too many variations per scenario to really be able to tell you a single comprehensive answer. In some scenarios, on harder difficulties, the AIs will train more villagers, train more military units, research technologies they wouldn't on lower difficulties, attack more often with larger groups, micro their units more effectively (especially ranged units), and so forth. Each scenario has some combination of these and/or other possibilities to make the scenario more challenging on harder difficulties. Also, the Human Player may have some disadvantages on harder difficulties compared to easier ones; for example, less starting resources or certain technologies not researched from the start. Sometimes, even objectives can be different depending on difficulty.

Wow great answer!

There's way too many scenarios for me to ever replay them so I'll probably just go the hardest difficulty.

[Hartassen]

There is no bonus for doing hard. Just do standard. Some missions on hard are crazy frustrating. AI ranged are micro gods and all their units are fully upgraded and in some scenarios you can't upgrade at all.

Seriously just do standard. A lot of achievements are impossible on hard I think. You only need to do one sundjata mission on hard for an achievement.

[Cabeza1805]

for what I experienced so far in Last Khans campaigns, it's impossible even in standard difficulty...the layout of the scenarios (while impressive) gives you no fighting chance whatsoever... they send wave after wave of enemies, while you are BARELY able to gather some villagers to make some thrash units

I'm specifically playing the Ivalio campaign, and so far it's impossible without any kind of cheat codes, not because of inexperience... but because you are constantly raided by big armies, while all you have is a couple of pikemen, low resources and no place to actually build up any kind of economy

so in conclussion.. I don't think it's a matter of AI.. it's more like a matter of how complex the campaigns are, and since the original ones are 20 years old, they seem like a walk in the park, while the new ones are simply a massacre

[Thor II]

Risen from the Dead....

This difficulty in campaigns seems a classic problem of MP players of low lvl. Any average SP player in the campaign knows that with a good and well-positioned castle, a few walls, 20 crossbows, and half a dozen knights (to hunt trebuchets and cannons), you can handle the vast majority of missions even in Hard.