Eastern Roman Empire (BI faction)

[Braden]

I dived strait in on an ERE campaign when I got BI and although I’m a seasoned Rome player I’ve found even this “easier” campaign challenging. My experience does not appear to have been duplicated that often here though as my struggles have come from the fact that within the first 20 years I’ve been hit by THREE hordes – the Vandals, Huns AND Goths have all gone “horde” and struck out against me. The Samatians also went “horde” but only took a region I had just lost to the Huns (thankfully).

Thessalonica has been taken and sacked Twice so far but since this initial rush (and the Goths and Vandals settling North of Thessalonica and Constantinople) I have succeeded in gaining trade with them at least. I just couldn’t hold the hordes at the choke points purely due to sheer weight of numbers! Each horde had 6-8 full stacks where I could only muster perhaps 2-3 stacks of low level troops at the time. The Goths were the worse and included some nasty high level infantry (is it Chosen Warriors?), masses of horse archers where I had none and spear-bands etc. Although I managed to cull thousands in the battles, all I could do was give ground. Gladly though, they decided to “Settle”.

All this meant that the first attacks by the Sassinids were also a hard hit. Although they didn’t manage to take any settlements it has set my economy back by decades whilst I had to concentrate on building troops rather than money.

Now having dealt with the Sassinids finally (although experiencing a Roman rebellion continuously in the province in the far South East), I have started to focus on Money after all the really hard times before.

I only have a tenuous foot-hold on the edge of Europe with Constantinople and Thessalonica. So it’s a matter of building the economy to suit the long-term war against the now large WRE (we are nearly equal for land).

Relations with the WRE had been very frosty and broke out into sporadic fighting through the years I have managed to get back in with them and although I’m allied with some of their enemies (e.g. the Berbers).

I would like to know how to deal with Hordes though. I tried just about everything and although I managed to slow them down AND inflict casualties that would destroy any normal army I just got steam-rollered! I’ve managed to run out of arrows in battles as there are just so many targets (and this was with 8 units of archers on Large size).

It’s also all well an good defending bridges BUT if most of the horde can swim………this is what I’ve been faced with. However, and with luck, I won’t have to face a horde again as I’ll be able to crush their combat units in the field normally and the only “horde” left will be peasants.

I’m currently pursuing a campaign against the WRE as I have finally secured the East. I have had to disposes the Vandals of their single territory so I could secure my Western borders before starting completely.

What I am experiencing is poor loyalties in my Generals and now a lack of family members since I’ve suddenly lost 5-8 in quick succession. Some good news was that since a battle against rebels last night I did manage to adopt a Captain but I’m still waging a war in Europe without ANY Generals. To help keep troublesome Eastern provinces in line, what family members I have are having to say put in places like Jerusalem so I need to work on both Loyalty AND Happyness in the East.