Re: Adding Some Difficulty
 

Another way to adjust difficulty (in non-scenario battles) is to re-spin the map and/or victory hexes to make it more advantageous for the AI.

If the map looks too easy for your defence, or gives you advantages in a meeter - then spin it till it looks like it'll be harder.

If just the V-hex placement looks too favourable to you, then respin only them, or manually replace these to favour your opponent.

(For those who don't know how to do that - its via the view map button on the battle purchase screen. There are controls that also let you alter the map there, change visibility or time limit etc.)

Andy

Re: Adding Some Difficulty
 

Yeah this is a good idea, I do this sometimes as well. Sometimes in meeting engagements it's fun to change from the standard 3 neutral clusters in the middle of the map to one neutral, one your placed in your reserves and one in the enemy's.

For the real lunatics out there, you can make a game 70-80 turns and put the victory hexes along the extreme left and right rows of the map. Just playing long battles in general is difficult by itself. Not fun to realize on turn 6 of 79 that all your spotter planes are dead, and all your artillery is out of shells by round 14, etc.

Re: Adding Some Difficulty
 

This would work to your advantage not the AIs. The converse is true less width benefits the AI as a rule. It remains more cohesive by point of contact as its not had time for fast units to run ahead.
Even defending the AI generally benefits from the map being smaller rather than larger for the force in question.
Big map for the force size gives you more avenues of approach & normally spreads the AI thin allowing you to easily have area superiority & pick off a few units at a time.

Re: Adding Some Difficulty
 

Well,most of the battles against the AI they have pretty much shot thier wad by turn 15- 20,so increasing the game length does nothing except adding to the boredom factor.
Modifying VH's location and values ie.bridges,hills,villages ect. works best for me, as suggested before many times.

Re: Adding Some Difficulty
 

It wouldn't work with campaigns, but sticking with advance or assault scenarios usually does the trick.

Re: Adding Some Difficulty
 

For long campaigns:

Like Andy said, Italy can be pretty challenging. Start against the French (have fun with CV-35s against Char B1s/B1bis) and then switch to North Africa. Stick to historically available tanks for added challenge (CV-35 for 1940 with just a couple of M-11/39). In 1941 it will get a little easier, but in 1942 very interesting again. Don't buy heavy artillery for anything else than assault missions (which is also historically accurate for almost any country).

Nationalist China is a good choice as well. Stick to almost pure infantry force. On the other hand Japan can get fairly challenging in 1943-1945, especially with historical OOB; mostly light tanks and tankettes with the Shinhoto Chi-Ha as the best tank available (the newer tanks never left the home islands).