How hard is Hard level? Your thoughts?

[Alex Poff]

OK, I played fora couple of hours on "easy" level, just to get the hang of it, then played my first game, starting out as lowly Highlands on Normal level. Hammered everybody in my first game, won the election, but chose to decline to continue conquering. Now, I am an old fart and was rather surprised that, on my first game, I could be so successful.

So, I am obviously going to play my next game on the "hard" level and was wondering if anyone has played both normal and hard levels yet and if they have noticed an appreciable difference in difficulty. If so, what were some things that were particularly more difficult on the "hard" level?

I love this game, by the way!

Thanks.

Alex

[Angryminer]

In "easy" the political level used to stop until you are finished with the fight. On "hard" the time goes on while you are in battle. The AI tries to use more spies and makes more use of its allies ("Hey buddy, won't you declare war upon him? Here are 50.000 goldcoins. Is this a deal?"). It also becomes harder to establish good relationships and agreements.
However, with a good economy behind your king and a little bit of diplomatic and military understanding the "hard" difficulty setting isn't a big challange.

Angryminer

[Alex Poff]

Thanks for the input. You're absolutely right, in my opinion. The non-pause time function during battle doesn't really affect me, because I am more into the global strategic part of the game versus the RTS - control your army and fight scenario. That being said, I usually do not "lead" my battles, but simply click "fight" or "assault" and continue on with other actions throughout my empire. I then get the message informing me of the result of the battle and then carry on accordingly. If you have a strong economy up and running, with mega gold coming in, then having multiple enemies is no big deal. In my first game I intentionally vanquished the Papacy just to have more people attacking me - it didn't matter, they all fell to my Marshalls. By this time they had "experienced up" to the maximum allowable in their skills, were loaded up with the best units and siege equipment, and were practically invincible.

I am hoping that on the "hard" level, the AI will actually build the best units available to them, giving me a much greater challenge. I have heard (I hope it isn't true) that the AI currently does not do this. Would it be possible for one of the developers to comment on this subject, please. Does the AI actually build the "good" units, or is there some "bug" or restriction that is interfering with this capability?

Thanks

Alex

[Webmaster]

the difficult settings will be adapted with the upcoming patch ;)

[kabo]

I recently beat the game on the Hard difficulty. In my opinion, it wasn't very hard at all - especially when you just focus on the grand strategy aspect rather than the tactical battles. I've seen it mentioned in several places that you should take command of your Marhsal's fights instead of letting them handle it since they'll lose, but that's hardly been the case in my experience. Anyway, the enemy's strategic A.I. was still a bit dumb.

One example, when my kingdom got relatively powerful (i.e. within the Top 5 in the Most Powerful ranking), country's woud declare war on me and my immediate response would be to offer peace with the demand for them to become my vassal. They'd accept. :scratch: Why declare war in the first place? Another pretty stupid strategic move on their part was always being involved in so many wars. I'd look at their "At war" list, and it scrolls to the right! Once you get a good idea of where their resources are placed, you'll notice they have them spread so thin that you can take four or five provinces at the same time - granted you have the marshals to do it.

On that very same note, I found that the countries who had a single province, but held a lot of resources, to be the most challenging to conquer. This situation would allow them to concentrate all of their marshals in a single place and actually fight me. Sometimes it'd take up to five battles for me to reach their castle even though I'm right in front of it. They'd retreat back into the castle, recruit more people, and come back. Talk about resilience, geez! :)

Anyway, I beat the game with the Teutonic Order through massive conquering of other countries. It was a bit over half the map. I had no allies as they served to do nothing but drop my kingdom power by attempting to pull me into stupid wars. I'd say that this strategy, given the weakness of the enemy A.I. to strategically delegate their forces, is the easiest way to beat the game. They're all at war with eachother and don't even recognize the threat you impose as you conquer them all. They'll still send Marshals to say... Sicily, rather than realize that I am the bigger threat. What ever happened to "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" or uniting under the threat of a common enemy?

When I restart again, I'd like to try and beat the game with as little provinces as possible. A strategy I'm sure everyone employed in the demo, heh. It was a lot more challenging when I went that route and more fun to. But anyway, that's my experience with the "Hard" difficulty level so far.

[kabo]

Just to add one more thing. I saw Angryminer mention that the use of Spies is increased on the Hard difficulty. I haven't played easy or normal at all to properly compare, but they did use spies a good number of times on hard. Enough to keep me on my toes and employ a Spy to sniff them out. Quite possibly the most difficult situation I've ever been in was when my entire military deserted me and went Rebel. There's nothing harder than having 6 Marhsals, each about level 16 or 17, fully stocked with Feudal Knights, Teutonic Knights, and Heavy Crossbowmen marching around tearing up the place and then having to fight them with level 0 Marhsals.

[OSDSET]

hard ??? i've never tried!! i think easy is qutie hard(those annoying english)...:O

[ptol]

I think the difficulty level is too easy.
Even if you start in hard mode, with a small realm, you can really win easily.

I hope it will be fixed in the upcoming patch :)

[King Juhafin]

i suppose that you are talking about singleplayer right?

[Anduin Rastafar]

yup, and the ai doesnt build any "good" units btw, waiting for patch ;)

[Alex Poff]

Any idea when that patch will be?

[dearmad]

They say very soon... which concerns me as I want them not to rush it out too quickly and really unbalance the game any further.