There is some debate about how the difficulty levels affect the actual battles, my own view is the AI generals get smarter and make less mistakes. Beyond that I have not seen much of a difference in the battles. On the Campaign Map it is a different story. On Easy the other countries rarely attack you or declare war. On Medium, they do declare war frequently and often look for the weakest nation to pick on. On Hard they love war. War is their favorite past time and after a few turns you're going to be begging for a few turns of peace.

Another change is that the time it takes to annex another country appears to get longer on harder difficulty levels and the Resistance Cells appear to be more effective too.

I have not noticed the AI cheating at higher levels, it just does more of the sort of things the player usually goes and to be honest, the game becomes more fun at higher difficulty levels. Though Medium difficulty will give you a challenging yet fun game.

Written by giskard