I've played over 300 hours and started probably a dozen characters, and have played largely with the difficulty settings set to realistic (with normal combat AI difficulty). I want a realistic experience. I'm not looking to be some godlike hero who singlehandedly wins wars. This has led to a lot of frustration and abandoned characters.
I was going to write a post about how, in my experience, trading and horse archery seems to be the winning strategy that beats all others in the game, because it lets you avoid pretty much every dangerous encounter and make a lot of money while doing so (and often even if you get caught you can win, if you have enough arrows). But I realized that the two characters that largely depended on that strategy in the early game were two for which I turned the difficulty down one notch (taking 2/3 damage, etc.). So I'm not sure if it was the difficulty or the strategy that has made those two easier.
So I wanted to post the question to other players: what difficulty do you play on or think is most fun? Can realistic be fun, or is it just too punishing? (Or am I just doing it wrong?)
My current evaluation is that there need to be more viable alternatives to trading in order to have fun in the game. If you don't start out with decent trading skills, you are going to suffer and have a hard time competing even with basic bandits, since you won't be able to afford the troops you'll need to survive, and this problem is especially punishing on realistic. There are a number of factors that go into this that I won't get into all the details about (perhaps one of the biggest being a lack of explanation/clarity on some mechanics/features), and I know some of them will likely be changed/fixed, but I'm just looking for some idea of where people feel the difficulty settings are at and how balanced they are for the current experience.
Mostly I just want to know if I suck or if I'm being too hard on myself, lol.
I was going to write a post about how, in my experience, trading and horse archery seems to be the winning strategy that beats all others in the game, because it lets you avoid pretty much every dangerous encounter and make a lot of money while doing so (and often even if you get caught you can win, if you have enough arrows). But I realized that the two characters that largely depended on that strategy in the early game were two for which I turned the difficulty down one notch (taking 2/3 damage, etc.). So I'm not sure if it was the difficulty or the strategy that has made those two easier.
So I wanted to post the question to other players: what difficulty do you play on or think is most fun? Can realistic be fun, or is it just too punishing? (Or am I just doing it wrong?)
My current evaluation is that there need to be more viable alternatives to trading in order to have fun in the game. If you don't start out with decent trading skills, you are going to suffer and have a hard time competing even with basic bandits, since you won't be able to afford the troops you'll need to survive, and this problem is especially punishing on realistic. There are a number of factors that go into this that I won't get into all the details about (perhaps one of the biggest being a lack of explanation/clarity on some mechanics/features), and I know some of them will likely be changed/fixed, but I'm just looking for some idea of where people feel the difficulty settings are at and how balanced they are for the current experience.
Mostly I just want to know if I suck or if I'm being too hard on myself, lol.