The Higher Difficulty Settings Cause Some Interesting Central/Eastern Europe Blobs

[Black_Shade]

I've tried several games with the higher/highest difficulty settings and have noticed that someone always ends up taking over most of Europe after starting out in Central/Eastern Europe. In this game it was the Magyars, but 3 out of 5 games it was slavic religion Poland. I think the problem stems from some money snowball, as I guess the AI gets massive income boosts from the difficulty settings in addition to more stability. At one point this Carpathia had more than 10000 gold and had hired basically every merc company available. They just ran over everyone else around them in an endless swarm of mercenaries. And because they had hired every company available, even if the AIs they were fighting had money, there was no one left to hire to try and stem the tide. The income modifiers from difficulty probably need to be toned down a bit to prevent this mass mercenary spam from happening.

 

[strattonthebard]

I've seen this happen frequently with the Mogyers without the new difficulty settings. Also tengri nomads successfully taking Germany from the HRE for some reason

 

[Cyhort]

Well, the devs said the higher difficulties weren't balanced at all. If anything, I think this last update has shown why they were right in not wanting to add higher difficulty options like these.

 

[ChaosOnline]

New idea: set difficulty to max and play as a landless adventurer just to watch the chaos unfold.

 

[tribnia]

Well, the devs said the higher difficulties weren't balanced at all. If anything, I think this last update has shown why they were right in not wanting to add higher difficulty options like these.

Neither are low difficulties. They should restrict the inheritance of conqueror TBH, like making it only last 3 generation.

 

[Pendables]

Yeah every AI on very hard is just swimming in gold. It's ridiculous and highlights how poorly made the game is but it's still more fun than normal mode. I don't like AI Khazaria turning the entire map piss color, but other than that I'm enjoying my current playthrough more than most of the other ones I've done.

 

[Benismann]

Yeah every AI on very hard is just swimming in gold. It's ridiculous and highlights how poorly made the game is but it's still more fun than normal mode. I don't like AI Khazaria turning the entire map piss color, but other than that I'm enjoying my current playthrough more than most of the other ones I've done.

At the same times they also dont quite build things.... (and also builds them poorly) So their army is still bad, merc, dont have stationing bonuses at all, so they dont scale. I assume that by, idk, 1200s it should play out roughly the same as normal difficulty except now you crush 100k stacks and not 50k ones and you also crush vassals a bit more often

 

[Pendables]

At the same times they also dont quite build things.... (and also builds them poorly) So their army is still bad, merc, dont have stationing bonuses at all, so they dont scale. I assume that by, idk, 1200s it should play out roughly the same as normal difficulty except now you crush 100k stacks and not 50k ones and you also crush vassals a bit more often

I'm not sure how the building AI works. All of the empty holding seem to have been filled in very quickly but the building upgrades are slow for some reason.

 

[Benismann]

I'm not sure how the building AI works. All of the empty holding seem to have been filled in very quickly but the building upgrades are slow for some reason.

I suppose those require more money and since AI has different budgeting categories more expensive ones are built slower due to whatever budget category they use for it just doesnt grow that big, or has no change to do so due to wars or smth? But i really dont know, all of this is just speculation