What difficulty are you playing on?

[PantsToucher]

I started on vh/h, but got beat by the rebels in the starting cities everytime as the Getai, I guess I must suck or something. Even the Illyrian peltats killed by best heavy infantry guys, so now after loosing several campains really quick I went to vh/m. So, any on have any luck on anything better than medium battles? Or maybe I just suck, the only campains I played in the last month were with the Romans on RTR, which are notoriusly overpowered, so maybe that is why hard battle difficulty wasn't that bad for me. I can win, but with so many losses to my unretrainable heavy infantry at the start that I can't survive until I can train more, and the rebel spawns killed me because I just could build light troops. It is kind of fun loosing sometimes though.

Also, a minor aside, are the mines getting nerfed a bit in the next patch? Because I took one city with a mine, and now I'm getting a nice surplus just from that one city. The mine is giving me along something like 3000 minai a turn, which seems a bit much. Maybe lower that a bit, or give some poplulation or happiness penatly (people might not like getting forced to work in a mine or something).

[pezhetairoi]

M/M. You shouldn't play battle difficulty above hard cos then it's not realistic.

[NightStar]

I play Vh/m but I am a glutton for punishment

[QwertyMIDX]

Also, a minor aside, are the mines getting nerfed a bit in the next patch?

Yeah, they'll be nerfed significantly, but don't underestimate just how important mining was a source of income for ancient states. The (mid-sized) Laurion Mines in Attic produced 1000 Talents of silver a year.

[Trithemius]

VH/M, as I thought that was the EB team-recommended settings. :)

[QwertyMIDX]

They are. Well they're the settings I recommend at least, I don't like hard/very hard battle difficultly unbalancing my stats, especially because I get flak for it. ~;)

[Baldrick]

I play H/H, seems enjoyable enough and some battles can get a little nip and tuck. Nice close one today where I was up against 9 Eranshar Ashabara, close until I thinned them just enough to risk charging my general at their left flank and they ran away like girls

[Spendios]

I play VH/H it makes the battles last a long time.

[PantsToucher]

So far my campain has been going a lot better with VH/M difficulty. The rebel spawns took one of my cities, since I only could afford one field army and two cities were undersige by rebels at once; good to see them doing something for a change. I don't know how I would even be able to afford an army without the 3000 mine income I'm getting, and my armies aren't even that expensive as the getia.

Another question: What unit size do you guys use? I like huge, as it makes me worry about my population actually, and I think it helps keep the ai from making stack after stack of the same crappy units that i need to beat over and over. Although the greek cities population might need rasing, I think they are all down under 600 people by about 260bc some how.

[Trithemius]

Another question: What unit size do you guys use? I like huge, as it makes me worry about my population actually, and I think it helps keep the ai from making stack after stack of the same crappy units that i need to beat over and over. Although the greek cities population might need rasing, I think they are all down under 600 people by about 260bc some how.

Currently I think I am using Normal (40/41/42 men for hastati/principes/triarii) but I sort of wish I'd used the next one up (Large? 80/81/82) since its more visually impressive and it might make enemy units a bit more dense so my cavalry cannot breeze through with their current insouciance. :)

[Dooz]

Currently I think I am using Normal (40/41/42 men for hastati/principes/triarii) but I sort of wish I'd used the next one up (Large? 80/81/82) since its more visually impressive and it might make enemy units a bit more dense so my cavalry cannot breeze through with their current insouciance. :)

I was playing on Normal in my previous Casse campaign, and while it was fun while it lasted, my current Getai campaign on Large is a hell of a lot better. The points you mentioned are indeed the way it is. Go for it in your next campaign.

[mattholomew]

for the "civilized" factions i play vh/m but i just can't get far as "barbarians" at that level. except for the gauls perhaps, but i gave up my averni campain with the new patch

[Jarardo]

VH/m. I tried battles on vh, then hard. The open field battles were okay, but the looonnnngggg, drawn out fights against the slave faction everytime I took a city from them got a little tedious.

So VH/M now.

[nikolai1962]

H/M.

I dislike the stat thing with battles above M and so try to make the battles harder by limiting my tactics to be more realistic e.g min camera height etc.

If you want the rebels to attack your cities you have to have H or VH campaign unfortunatley. Personally i think making the ai more aggressive doesn't always make the game better as the ai wastes it's time attacking places it can't take. Ideally the game should be set up so that the ai has advantages built in that balance out the areas where it has flaws, e.g retraining units, depopulating its cities, naval stuff etc. EB has done some cool things with scripting to do this and there are probably a lot more things that could be added to this. I think that is a better approach than the ai just having more money and being more generally aggressive. But the rebels not attacking cities is hard-coded it seems to H or VH setting.

I use large sizes out of habit as my old pc couldn't handle huge but when i remember i make it huge. Huge-size battles are way more fun (except in seiges when they are a total pain).

edit: mines. Is it possible to have a hidden resource, exceptionalmine, or something that has a mines+2 upgrade. That way the few special mines that really did make a huge difference (i think macedonian power was built on them?) while keeping the rest as just very useful but not unbalancing. Or having the mine capability section giving different cash depending on the presence or absence of certain hidden resources.

e.g

capability
{
mine_resource 8 require hidden_resource nomalmine
mine_resource 60 requires hidden_resource supermine
}

[Avicenna]

VH/M as Baktria.

Almost got wiped out by the Eleutheroi :$

Faction heir's army got destroyed. I took the province east to Baktria (forgot the name) and had it taken by 2 rebel stacks. Then Baktra itself was almost taken by a stack of rebel scum, luckily I managed to defeat them. Getting rubbish suitors, the best being a person with negative influence and management, but sharp/charismatic/vigorous. Unloyal though. Only decent general is faction leader, and he's probably going to pop off soon. I've got a good spy, diplomat and assassin though.

[Cheexsta]

VH/M as Pontos. I currently only have four provinces, the Seleucids are breathing down my neck and I only have half a stack of troops to defend myself. Not to mention a 25,000 mnai debt and a quarterly income of 700.

This is going to be a bitch to get back on my feet.

[Warlord 11]

H/M as Baktria. I have four provinces and things are looking very good for me.

[Bohemians]

VH/VH with Romani's.... growing slowly, huge battles with Huge units...

Bohemians the Insane

[orwell]

For my first full campaign I'm trying H/M, I'm not sure how tough the battles are in EB compared to RTR, but the gaestae just wiped the floor with me. I usually go with H/H, I want the AI to get a little bonus to make up for tactics, but VH just seems pointless, and every test I've run with how the game plays out in VH just ended poorly. As far as unit sizes.... where do you change that? I looked in options but I never saw it anywhere, can you correct during a game?

[[TAG]ImperialMarch]

video advanced options.

[Cheexsta]

Or in preferences.txt (change the unit size to "160"). Note that you need to start a new campaign for this to take effect, or you can use RomeSage (http://www.twcenter.net/downloads/db/?mod=448) to edit your current savegame.

[vizigothe]

I play H/H with huge unit sizes. Battles are nice and long and are very enjoyable. I have had city sieges where I lost 82% of my forces.

[Xanthippus]

Usually VH/M, but I'll be surprised if anybody has played a successful Sarmatian campaign on VH.

[MaximianusBR]

I'm playng with Romani in H/H, HUGE unit size, now i'm in year 157 and control italy, all germania, half gaul, Cartago, Spain and i'm going in campaing against greeks, I'm playng so slow 'cause i wanna go to year 14 AC to fully comtemplate the game!!:2thumbsup:

[Avicenna]

I'm playing as the KH on VH/M. It's been 12 1/2 years now, and I've taken most of Makendonian Holdings in the Greek Mainland (besieging Pella) and I'm going to leave the last Makedonian provice in favour of taking out the Epeirotes' last 2 provinces. I'll try to force a protectorate status on Makedon as well.

[orwell]

VH/H on large with Romani, I find the +4 makes up for the lack of tactics for the enemy, or at least for how skilled I am. My first campaign I just maxed out the stack and would win anything I encountered, so I'm trying with a set legion. 2 rorarii, 2 leves, 2 hastati, 2 principe, 2 triarii, 2 samnites, 1 general and 1 equites. It's pretty fun to actually play like this, I just got my ass completely handed back to me in one battle, though they had something along the lines of 6 gaesatae plus 14 other units or so.

[Avicenna]

What do you mean by maxing out a stack? Also, how many kills does it take to rout a Gaesatae unit on VH?

[Rodion Romanovich]

I play vh/vh, it makes for more challenging battles and thus also more challenging strategy mode as you're more likely to lose the battles. It can be a pain when you play with lightly armored units though, and I haven't yet tried playing Casse or Getai with vh/vh, but I assume it'll be possible too. At least Makedonia and Romani need vh to be challenging IMO.

[orwell]

maxing out, I mean 20 units, I guess I should have phrased that different. With my infantry, or just triarii since the other units don't seem to come out of a fight them alive by any acceptable degree, they'll fight down to.... 5 or so was probably the highest with just infantry. If you pin them into a triangle and then a calvary charge to the back, 10 or so, but unless you stay on them they tend to go a little ways and come back ready to fight till you charge them again with supporting infantry about to engage them.

[Avicenna]

I've never been interested by the VH battles.

orwell: you mean the whole stack triarii and cavalry?

[orwell]

Any unit will do, I've won battles with just peasants on Crete? since my army was too far out to sea to get there in time. Though, I'm beginning to think about a Triarii only army to deal with that damned Syracruse. Siege battles that aren't in a bare barbarian village I always find are a pain to fight.

[NeoSpartan]

In vanilla, and XGM I played VH/VH. So far I had to restart my campain with the Aedui and put the difficulty on VH/M, hopefully I'll get the hang of of EB soon.

one question thought. Where can I swich off fatigue??? The AI doesn't know how to manage this feature well and has its army running around too much.

[Avicenna]

Should be able to if you press escape from the campaign map view. Or, there hsould be a file in your EB folder called preferences.txt or something like that. Open it, change FATIGUE:TRUE to FALSE. Then save it. Back it up first though, just in case you get something wrong.

[PantsToucher]

People who can be succesfull in this mod on vh/vh get my respect, I've lost a a couple campains on vh/m, one Getai one late in the game around 220 when Rome rolled over me.

[Avicenna]

Depends on what faction really. Hearing from everyone saying that the Ptolemaic Kleruchoi Agemata is overpowered, I think that a Ptolemaic campaign shouldn't be difficult, given that, their initial size, and the riches flowing through the Nile.

[stalin]

Any faction that uses the phalanx is immune to AI's tactics thus can be played on any settings quite succesfully. Letting the Naked Ones run around and get exhausted makes them very prone to routing. I've routed them in sieges at around 30 (pinned with phallanx, charged with cav from behind and immediatelly charged with infantry after the cav breaks their formation)

[Ragabash]

For me settings are:

Campaign map: very hard, AI need all help in financial way to be able to provide troops.

Battles: medium, mostly because AI gets more money for troops, that way I might win more but AI have more money for troops

Scale: Large or medium, AI drain cities too fast if played in huge.

If I play on huge its VH/VH

[NeoSpartan]

For me settings are:

Campaign map: very hard, AI need all help in financial way to be able to provide troops.

Battles: medium, mostly because AI gets more money for troops, that way I might win more but AI have more money for troops

Scale: Large or medium, AI drain cities too fast if played in huge.

If I play on huge its VH/VH

oh now I get how the settings work a little more.

I think I will play H/H as the Aedui if the ROMANI end up rolling over me on my VH/M

[Simmons]

For me settings are:

Campaign map: very hard, AI need all help in financial way to be able to provide troops.

Battles: medium, mostly because AI gets more money for troops, that way I might win more but AI have more money for troops

Scale: Large or medium, AI drain cities too fast if played in huge.

If I play on huge its VH/VH
I was under the impression that EB "topped up" the Ai factions populations but I can't remember where this impression comes from.

[Ragabash]

I was under the impression that EB "topped up" the Ai factions populations but I can't remember where this impression comes from.

Far as I know, I havent heard or seen this happen. They might have it in next build, but I doubt there are much to do for this.

EB team could make new buildings with greater population growth bonus, but would AI build them?

Also generals could be given traits to help population growth, but again, would AI keep generals in the cities?

I dont know if its possible to help this with scripts, but again that would make turns last even longer and it would require tons of hard work.

If im all wrong, just point me out and tell me. I'm not going to eat you, I could take a bite, but no more :laugh4:

[PantsToucher]

AI populations are all high in may game, most cities are at least around 12,000, some are around 30,000 on huge settings. I do belive i say a population script in the scripting files, and cities with negative population growth gain men still, so I'm pretty sure there is some scripting help going on; maybe too much if anything.

[Ragabash]

Glad to hear EB have tried to do something for AI draining cities after few turns. Tho, they might have done scripts to help growth in cities, what I have experienced is that almost all non rebel cities are drained in huge settings to 1000-3000 population by AI once I invade them.

Also it seems AI is able to produce troops effeciently only twenty first years. After that almost all of their towns are drained too small(in huge settings) to produce troops effeciently.

Luckily we have mercenaries that AI uses but they dont offer too much of troubles tho.

[David_VI]

Playing M/M, stuck on England as the Casse!

[Moros]

I was under the impression that EB "topped up" the Ai factions populations but I can't remember where this impression comes from.
Well I believed it did, but to be certain I had a look in the script and apparently the sript adds population to AI settlements when it trains units.

[NeoSpartan]

Any faction that uses the phalanx is immune to AI's tactics thus can be played on any settings quite succesfully. Letting the Naked Ones run around and get exhausted makes them very prone to routing. I've routed them in sieges at around 30 (pinned with phallanx, charged with cav from behind and immediatelly charged with infantry after the cav breaks their formation)


It is true, the AI has a major difficulty dealing with phalanxes in the early and middle game. Usually by the late game its units won't rout so easely because thier are the best or 2nd best of that Faction/Region. And when the AI plays with phalanx armies it breaks thier formation.

I have a VH/VH campain with the Greek Cities and I just took corinth and doing OK (for now at least)

I had to RESTART my Audiu campain, this time on H/H. (Romans don't expand so quickly and Rebels don't siege your cities) Itis year 23+ and the Arverni, Romani and Sweboz are dead.