Which difficulty?

[MadMarco]

Pretty experienced I would say. Have 500 hours in RTW. Should I play on Hard/Hard or even Very hard? I would like the enemies to be a bit better, but afaik the difficulties boost the enemies Stats only, and that for a fair bit. I also don't want to lose a battle because their peasants defeat my hastati or something.....
You have any recommendations?

[Palaio]

As far as I know, in the classic RTW, the difficulty settings wont adjust the stats of the solidiers save for morale. Playing on very hard results in pretty hefty routing festivals, once your first units break. It also unlocks "better AI". heh.

On the campaign map, very hard translates to "AI hates hooman", which is especially "fun" when playing a surrounded faction like the seleucids or armenia. Also, auto resolve used to be seriously broken on hard difficulty. Those pesky peasants will climb your epic stone walls and they will strangle your spartans barehanded, if you do not fight this battle yourself.

I actually almost always enjoyed Very Hard difficulty on the strategic map. Shock an Awe plus good positioning are a necessity on this setting, whereas long and contracted battles may still yield good or acceptable results on lower difficulties.

Unless you like pain or they seriously fixed that ridiculous hatred of the AI agains human players on very hard, I suggest not playing on that difficulty setting.

I like to play vH/vH with the seleucids and cheese my way through sieges by blocking gates, breaches or the plaza by using cheap levy or milita hoplites though, so take my opinion with a grain of salt ;-)

[Faithbane]

I have played the game since its launch, I have about 240 hours on the steam version which I went back to recently so I can guess around 1k-2k hours in total? My sweet spot for difficulty was hard fight/very hard campaign.

I don't suggest very hard fights, not because of the stats of enemies but how easily your guys get "scared". You can charge a group of peasants with heavy cavalry and your guys will end up running away in fear which gets you out of the mood due to sheer stupidity of it.

For the campaign, very hard seemed appropriate, the main difference is that AI basically prioritize attacking you over anything else and they get better troops faster/have better troop numbers so it doesn't feel like a push over. It doesn't seem fair but it has that "the game is rigged but its gonna feel that much sweeter when I beat it" feel.

In general I never noticed a big difference in "AI" in fights, except for minor differences like archers using fire arrows on elephants/low morale troops to rout them and slightly better attacking angles/terrain use.

[Zenon]

For experienced players, I recommend Campaign Very Hard, Battle Hard.

[Eren Jäger]

What is the difference beetwen Normal and Hard battle?

[Faithbane]

Originally posted by Eren Jäger:

What is the difference beetwen Normal and Hard battle?

They never specified exactly what is different or how much. What is suppose to change between each difficulty is:

Enemy troop stats
Enemy troop morale
Enemy AI

Out of the 3, the most significant difference I noticed is enemy morale between each difficulty

[Dayve]

I create my own artificial difficulty using house rules. I play on hard campaign, medium battles, and impose rules on myself to make sure I never get super powerful. Like, for example, I limit my armies in size and in quality.

My faction leader can lead an army of maximum size (16 units).
All other generals can lead armies of no more than 14 units.

My armies can't be 100% elite units. They have a core of elite units, the rest must be levies or mercenaries (or auxilia if I'm playing as Rome).

Using these rules, the campaign never really feels like it gets to a point where you've already won (especially in Barbarian Invasion).

[💗 TinyAnnie 💗]

Originally posted by Dayve:

I create my own artificial difficulty using house rules. I play on hard campaign, medium battles, and impose rules on myself to make sure I never get super powerful. Like, for example, I limit my armies in size and in quality.

My faction leader can lead an army of maximum size (16 units).
All other generals can lead armies of no more than 14 units.

My armies can't be 100% elite units. They have a core of elite units, the rest must be levies or mercenaries (or auxilia if I'm playing as Rome).

Using these rules, the campaign never really feels like it gets to a point where you've already won (especially in Barbarian Invasion).

Tbh that sounds dope :D Great idea

[|Sith|Galvanized Iron Raptor]

Originally posted by Faithbane:

I don't suggest very hard fights, not because of the stats of enemies but how easily your guys get "scared". You can charge a group of peasants with heavy cavalry and your guys will end up running away in fear which gets you out of the mood due to sheer stupidity of it.

This is not even true. I played VH/VH all the time back in the day and units held fine. More than fine. When I did the WRE campaign in BI on VH/VH I held back entire hordes with just two units of comitatenses on river crossings, that had hardly been doable if they routed at first sign of enemy. Now what VH battle difficulty does is giving the enemy units +11 attack and defense, so you have to quickly break enemy morale to win. Or just shower them with missiles.

[Dayve]

Originally posted by 💗 TinyAnnie 💗:

Originally posted by Dayve:

I create my own artificial difficulty using house rules. I play on hard campaign, medium battles, and impose rules on myself to make sure I never get super powerful. Like, for example, I limit my armies in size and in quality.

My faction leader can lead an army of maximum size (16 units).
All other generals can lead armies of no more than 14 units.

My armies can't be 100% elite units. They have a core of elite units, the rest must be levies or mercenaries (or auxilia if I'm playing as Rome).

Using these rules, the campaign never really feels like it gets to a point where you've already won (especially in Barbarian Invasion).

Tbh that sounds dope :D Great idea

You can get creative and make your own up as you go along. One other rule I added to my list of house rules that someone else came up with is the tax rule. Taxes must be set to normal or low at all times, except for in emergency situations where you may impose a heavy tax on your cities (high or very high) for one turn only. Like in a situation where you're in a real emergency, got attacked on 3 fronts or whatever.

[Smugass Braixen-Chan]

Normal Combat/V.Hard Campaign for Rome 1 and Hard Combat/V.Hard for Medieval 2 are my go to difficulty settings.

Reason being that I think making up for the crappy AI by giving them stronger versions of units is a bit of a cop-out, but I don't mind having to face *more* of them. (Hard Combat AI in Med 2 doesn't give them any stat bonuses, they just fight "smarter")

[Sad but Packin']

I recently started a very hard/very hard campaign as the seleucids just to see how it would go, the stats certainly change and not only the morale since putting a unit of your own against the same unit from the AI in an equal engagement will result in your unit losing men at a REALLY fast rate. It's still not too difficult to defeat armies of equal strenght by outplaying the machine, but sometimes weird stuff will happen, like, I had a fresh and full unit unit of elephants getting ready for a charge on 6 units of Eastern Spearmen and a general (I was flanking with chariots in both flanks) and suddenly the elephants routed without even engaging. I'd say hard difficulty is enough, if you still find it easy just make sure to attack without first having to prepare an equal or superior force to that of your enemies, that way you'll increase the challenge while also finishing the campaign sooner.