Rome TW: Difficulty

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Fundamentalist
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Rome TW: Difficulty

Post by Fundamentalist »

What is the best difficulty level for Rome:TW? I'm a fairly competent player of such games and am having trouble deciding which way to go.

I started a campaign as the Julii with both settings at Normal. It was quite fun, but I found it possibly a bit too easy. Then again, Romans against Gauls should be fairly easy, shouldn't it?

I started over, this time with both settings at Difficult and am finding it MUCH more difficult. The Gauls bring stack after stack of soldiers and it's all I can do to hold them back. After playing several hours I have only 4 or 5 cities and must be falling way behind with my building and conquering. I'd be surprised if I can make any real headway against the Gauls simply because they have almost unlimited troops (it seems).

So what level do you play at and what is the challenge like? Is Normal too easy?
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Octavious
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Post by Octavious »

I definatly think Normal is too easy. I'm playing on difficult and found it to just hard enough to not drive me nuts. If you crank it up another difficulty they starting giving bonuses and crap to the computer player. Bleh
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Kadoth Nodens
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Post by Kadoth Nodens »

I just played through once as the Bruti on the default difficulty settings. It was a bit too easy. Having 2 other factions (more, if you count the senate) backing me up in the early game made the middle and end games a breeze. By the time I was popular enough to take Rome, I was easily the most powerful faction on the map. I forced ceasefires and alliances with all the non-roman factions then rolled over the Julii, Skippies and the Senate.

I look forward to playing through again with a non Roman faction on a more difficult setting.
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Charlatan
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Post by Charlatan »

I've read that normal/normal (aren't there 2 settings?) is a bit easy for Roman factions, but not too easy (for many) with non-Roman factions.

If you're good at it I'd try a level harder if you're playing as one of the initial Roman guys, but would leave it at normal for the Greeks, Macedonians, etc.
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Fundamentalist
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Post by Fundamentalist »

Is there a document somewhere that outlines what changes there are depending on difficulty levels? I hate to play levels where the AI essentially cheats...
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Incendiary Lemon
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Post by Incendiary Lemon »

It never gets hugely difficult although a few of the civs have gimped starting positions.
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bluefugue
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Post by bluefugue »

That's my experience so far. I played two full campaigns on Med/Med and both were pretty easy. First Julii, second Gaul. Gaul started out pretty darn hard and I had some nail-biting battles. Once I got situated and started to roll, it became pretty easy. Julii actually got a bit tougher in the endgame, and I made rather obnoxious use of the bribe feature to help me out. :oops:

Now playing as Brutii on hard/hard and it's still been pretty much a cakewalk. Thing about Brutii is that you are conquering Greece in the early part of the game, which gives you several wonders and oodles of cash. I'd frequently be making 20k per turn of profit, and that's while fielding a massive military fighting wars on 3 different fronts. Just getting into the endgame now but I don't anticipate any huge problems from my rival roman factions. (The Julii have performed pathetically in this campaign... never even managed to conquer Gaul.)

Generally the opening tends to be the tougher part because you are forced to fight some critical early battles without strong numerical superiority and without the ability to quickly restock any depleted armies.

I love RTW but so far haven't found it to be too hard. There is still one difficulty notch I haven't tried, however.

edit: btw, I am playing with the setting that allows you to micromanage all cities, governor or no. This was the default setting so I left it there. But switching it might make the game a fair amount tougher because then you have to deal with the AI's goofy city management decisions.
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raydude
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Post by raydude »

I'm going to try a Med difficulty w/ camera and control limited to the General. I want to see if the difficulty in maintaining control of ancient armies is why Hannibal type victories were rare.
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CSL
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Post by CSL »

Very Hard difficulty is the only way to go in battle and Hard for the strat. map
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Daveman
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Post by Daveman »

My experiences thus far...

Julii short campaign on Medium/Medium - Really easy. The Gauls were easy prey and they alone made up most of the 15 provinces I needed.

Julii long campaign on Hard/Hard - The early stages started out much like my above game... I steamrolled over the Gauls. I had a few epic, challenging battles with large Briton forces to the north (mass Chariots I hadn't seen yet and didn't know how to counter... especially those "shoot and scoot" archer chariots) but after that it wasn't so bad. Taking on Rome wasn't much of a challenge with the huge army I had built, and I had enough provinces to not have to worry about the other Romans. Not that the Scipii were anything to worry about (they floundered against Carthage the whole game) but the Brutii were a pretty tough force from the look of it.

Greeks long campaign on Hard/Hard - The initial battles against Macedon were challenging but winnable. Getting used to the Greek units was no doubt a part of the initial challenge. After that... it was a breeze. Money was no object at all, early on I was bringing on 10-15,000 Dinari per turn, towards the end it was almost 30,000 a turn. I got bored and stopped playing after I crushed the Romans and had 30 or so provinces.

Germania long campaign on VHard/VHard and with some of the modifications to the AI script as given here:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/index.ph ... opic=11196

(note... I'm only using the relatively simple script edits, none of the other stuff noted in his 10/18 update that require the RTR mod, naval modifications, etc.)

Ouch... Germania is simply dirt poor early on. I went to war with the Gauls, and the Britons decided to invade at the same time. I spent 30 some years fighting both of them off, gradually taking land from the Gauls and driving the Britons back to their island. It wasn't until I finally had a cohesive 2nd army (not to mention finally affording to build a port to build ships to invade Britain) that I could knock Britannia out and concentrate on the Gauls. As I closed on the Gauls final territories... they made an alliance with the Julii (WTF?) so now I'm at war with all of Rome too... barely hanging on to my Gaul lands around the Alps. Still playing this game, and it's been a blast. But starting out, thankful for even 500 Dinari at the start of a turn, to buy one lowly Spear Warband unit... at times hitting -3000 Dinari was painful. Especially after playing as Greece.

I'm anxious to try out the other modifications, as I see the AI building a crap load of boats all over the place.
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Asharak
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Post by Asharak »

I've played a couple Long but unfinished campaigns as the Julii and Scipii on Medium/Medium and definitely found it a shade too easy - the battles significantly so.

Even before reading it here, I had thought I would need to up the difficulty as the Romans but not as the other factions - the Romans are supposed to win, after all, so it makes sense that playing as the other factions would be an inherently tougher proposition.

My next game will be at least Hard/Hard, and I may go with CSL's recommendation of Very Hard for the battles: the battle AI is just wimpy on Medium.

- Ash
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bluefugue
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Post by bluefugue »

Some of the folks at totalwar.org seem to prefer leaving the difficulty on the battles at "hard" or even "medium" because the enemy gets some rather goofy bonuses to armor and attack on very hard -- i.e. the battles are tougher but at the expense of realism.

Mods, I gather, make a big difference in toughening up the game too. Haven't tried any myself.
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