How difficult is this game?

[llamabeast]

The AI is always either at war or at peace with you. It tells you when it goes from peace to war (it sends you a message declaring war), but unhelpfully it doesn't tell you if it decides to stop attacking you.

If you attack an AI it will become at war with you without telling you. If you fight it by both moving on the same turn into an independent province though, it won't take offence.

[Fenris99]

llamabeast said:
The AI is always either at war or at peace with you. It tells you when it goes from peace to war (it sends you a message declaring war), but unhelpfully it doesn't tell you if it decides to stop attacking you.

Heh. I must have missed the message when it declared war on me, then. I'll have to pay more attention to all those between turn messages I guess.

[rdonj]

Just for the record, if you really, really want to turtle, using lots of PD (40 is probably sufficient for just about any nation) along with small armies (40-80 units large) along all your borders with the AI will make it so that even if the AI does attack you, you won't really lose any troops. Just note that 40 PD costs upwards of 700 gold and is not necessarily the most efficient use of your money... on the other hand, if the AI does keep attacking you in a province where you've invested that much PD, they'll undoubtedly waste far more than 700 gold trying to invade it. Just don't try that in mp.

[Nikolai]

Note that province defense is VERY VERY different from nation to nation. Some have excellent PD that will stop, with 11 strength a barbarian invasion and with 21 strength a barbarian horde (very common random events) Other have such crappy PD that is not worth anything at all.

It is good to get a taste of PD strength. One easy way is to start test game with turmoil and misfortune, and wait for indy attack. See how your capital defenders do.

Right now I am playing game with very crappy PD. My capital lost to 34(!) barbarians. Now I am keeping reaction force to clear barbarians from my inner provinces.

In MP you seldom buy more than 1 PD in peace, or 11 PD in war. Yes, sometimes you want to create quick and cheap cannon fodder to shield real troops, and sometimes you do make trap for enemy... but PD against a player is worthless without real troops (and mages).

[Tharsonius]

don't believe the manual about giant PD
"province defense is the game's best..." (p.115)

[VedalkenBear]

Tharsonius: Actually, the rulebook is right, in a purely mathematical sense. Almost every PD cost-per-unit is ridiculously low. Let's use Arcoscephale (EA) as an example.

At 1 PD, you get a Myrmidon Champion, a Peltast, and 2x Cardaces. Using CBM gold costs (which is lower than vanilla costs, in this case), a Peltast and two Cardaces are worth 24g. Since you get this per point of PD, this is far more efficient than simply recruiting them.

Let's say you recruit 10 Peltasts and 20 Cardaces. For PD, that's 55g. 'Normal' recruitment would cost 240g. That means, should that province get attacked, you get a greater than 4:1 return on your investment.

Note: this also ignores upkeep on those units.

Now if you get twice that, in normal recruitment that's 480g, while PD now costs 190g. Not even 3:1 in that case. But overall it's still more efficient.

Please differentiate, though, between efficient and effective. I am not at all claiming that you'd want to do this, since many/most PD troops are not nearly worth their cost (even under CBM).

[Ironhawk]

Fenris99: If you want to pursue a turtle strategy against the AI, then the most important thing to do is control the bottleneck provinces. Instead of having a wide border with the AI, try to find the key provs which control access to large parts of your empire's interior. If you control the bottle neck provinces and put a ton of PD into them, the AI will brainlessly just keep ramming itself into them with no hope of victory. In this way you can gain almost perfect protection from the AI with the least investment.

Also, you probably dont want to build a fort in those provinces, just so you dont have to constantly remember to tell your commanders to Patrol (if they are set to Defend they will sit in the fort while the enemy takes the province around you).