Monte Maggiore difficulty bug

[Kerait]

Is there a bug with Monte Maggiore?

Difficulty setting seems to have no bearing on the size of the Italo-Norman army in single-player mode. It is always the same (smaller) size when human-controlled and the same (larger) size when AI-controlled.

Is this intended to account for the natural superiority of the human over the AI? Or has something gone wrong with the deployment phase?

From personal experience, I found Monte Maggiore as the Italo-Normans on Baron level pretty challenging. The knights get decimated by arrows frighteningly quickly and you rely heavily on the dice gods to make their charges count and tip a Norman victory before constant casualties inevitably obliterate your thin-stretched mounted elites. Meanwhile, though I haven't tested it, the enormous line of knights that a Byzantine player has to face seem rather intimidating for less-skilled players like myself. That is what makes me suspect a bug.

[Paul59]

Is there a bug with Monte Maggiore?

Difficulty setting seems to have no bearing on the size of the Italo-Norman army in single-player mode. It is always the same (smaller) size when human-controlled and the same (larger) size when AI-controlled.

Is this intended to account for the natural superiority of the human over the AI? Or has something gone wrong with the deployment phase?

From personal experience, I found Monte Maggiore as the Italo-Normans on Baron level pretty challenging. The knights get decimated by arrows frighteningly quickly and you rely heavily on the dice gods to make their charges count and tip a Norman victory before constant casualties inevitably obliterate your thin-stretched mounted elites. Meanwhile, though I haven't tested it, the enormous line of knights that a Byzantine player has to face seem rather intimidating for less-skilled players like myself. That is what makes me suspect a bug.

Hi Kerait,

Most Epic battles are adjusted for difficulty by giving players below Prince level a few points to purchase more units. The lower the difficulty level, the more points you get. The Monte Maggiore Byzantine player version uses this method.

Some scenarios, however, do not suit this method. Normally, it is when one army was much smaller historically than the other. The Norman player version of Monte Maggiore fits into this category. So for this scenario, the Norman army stays the same size, and it is the Byzantine army that gets smaller at lower levels of difficulty. The player has no choice in which Byzantine units are deducted, it is done automatically by the game.

So no, there is no bug in these scenarios.

There are some scenarios in future dlcs where even this alternative method of adjusting difficulty is not appropriate. In these cases the two armies are always the same size, but I have made other changes, such as varying the unit quality, to adjust the difficulty.

Cheers

Paul

[Kerait]

[...]
Cheers

Paul

Thank you for that comprehensive explanation, Paul, much appreciated.

Interesting to get an insight into the scenario design approaches.

I suppose what confused me is that the Norman army is larger if controlled by AI and smaller if controlled by a human regardless of difficulty level, but this makes sense for challenge purposes.

Thank you for your great scenarios and I look forward to playing your upcoming ones.

Thanks

Kerait

[Paul59]

[...]
Cheers

Paul

Thank you for that comprehensive explanation, Paul, much appreciated.

Interesting to get an insight into the scenario design approaches.

I suppose what confused me is that the Norman army is larger if controlled by AI and smaller if controlled by a human regardless of difficulty level, but this makes sense for challenge purposes.

Thank you for your great scenarios and I look forward to playing your upcoming ones.

Thanks

Kerait

Yes, the different size Norman armies are purely to give a good challenge. I have given the Normans the historically reported number of 700 knights in the Norman player scenario, but that was nowhere near enough to give a challenging scenario for the Byzantine player, without making the Byzantine army ridiculously small. So I increased the number of Norman knights for the Byzantine player scenario.