Maybe ive played too much total war but im having too much of an easy time on everything but very hard and legendary :,) (Legendary is a click-fest which i dislike but atleast the AI seems a bit smarter haha)

I play very hard/very hard. The drag is not being able to slow the game down. You are controlling twenty units, and it just becomes a click-fest. I am not good at the "real time" games for the same reason. It doesn't mean you are good at the game itself; it just means you can move your mouse and click fast. On very hard, I have the game going very slow and I am still clicking like mad.

The AI pays no upkeep regardless of difficulty and has a small set units they can recruit from any building/settlement, most small and medium tier melee and ranged specifically. I searched through some of the saves using SaveParser (out of curiosity) and found their money almost never changes per turn and even if you change one of their settlements in the editor so they can't recruit anything they'll still get the basic and mid tier stuff.

I always knew, that "normal" difficulty - is real normal. Not Me, not AI don't have cheat bonuses (ok, AI а little). So - if you want fairplay, choose normal.

I recommed all who play Mortal Empires campaign for RP experiece to play on Hard only.

Because smh, the difficulty is affecting AI, too. On normal, AI will sally out of sieges even when autoresolve is not favorable to them and generally sometimes act retarded.
And on Very Hard and Legendary, AI seems to show unloreful and unhealthy interest towards the player (they often ignore other faction taking all their lands just to be able to harass the player). Not to mention bloody unexplainable player-only -4 to public order penalty.

So Hard it is all the way - it is in fact the "normal" difficulty of this game, just called "Hard". I guess, they protect their game from negative reviews from casuals by doing it this way (labeling normal diff as "Hard").

I rarely played the Vortex campaign, but I noticed that the surrondings differ when you chose a harder campaign difficulty. For example the last campaign I played on Mortal Empires was Karl Franz on Legendary. The first enemy army you meet has always the same units.

Now I wanted to play Kroq-Gar on Vortex and wanted to try VH campaign difficulty (former Vortex was always on Normal). The Skaven army right in front of me is huge with two storm vermin with halberds, clan rats and lots of Skaven slaves. Starting with normal campaing difficulty it's just a few slave units pretty much.

i just fought a battle with the high elves (Yvresse) as clan skryre and i killed their Lord and their moral didnt lower it would go down then regenerate, they had no hero in their army. i think the problem was the game and battle difficulty got bugged and set it to something much higher. (grouped all of my comments together so they're not taking up a space)

@Ragatokk Well I did not that AI does not receice background income. Just that background income is most noticeable for AI factions with single minor settlement (like Karak Ziflin) which have about 2 full stacks seemingly not having enough income to pay the upkeep if we do not take into account their background income.

@Schweik What makes you think AI does not get background income?

Each additional Lord recruited increases faction wide upkeep by 2% in normal, and 15% in very hard.