Chairete! The EB Team is proud to release four historical battles to satisfy and whet your appetite at the same time for future releases. Included in this release are (in chronological order) The Battle of Ipsos, The Battle of Raphia, The Battle of Panion, and The Battle of Magnesia.
But wait. Weren’t these battles supposed to be released a long time ago and be a part of The Antiochos III Battle Pack?
Yes, they were. Unfortunately, reality set in. The truth is that making these battles and getting the AI to perform how you want is frustrating and probably impossible (on top of research and terraforming). Scripting, once seen as salvation and now a limitation, is not a very good solution as the script and the AI seem to be in conflict with each other. A possible solution was to create new army formations for the AI, but lamentably no one stepped forward to help.
Other problems included inherent difficulties with more than two armies on the field. In previous versions the ratio of these large battles was 25:1. After much time spent learning the nuances of historical battles, 50:1 seemed to be the better arrangement as each side could be reduced to one army each. Regardless, problems in AI behavior continued.
After a year in traction it has been decided that the battles should be released lest they never be released at all. A consequence of this is that the way they play is not ideal and the AI often rearranges itself or does things that it quite frankly should not because the army formations don’t exist for the engine to access. Therefore, as a word of warning, don’t be upset if you fire up Magnesia and you wonder to yourself just what the hell the Seleukid army is doing.
In the case of Panion, and to a lesser extent Magnesia, it should actually be considered a multiplayer battle. Even then, don’t let certain things get in the way of your enjoyment. Go ahead and give it a shot.
Finally, due to time constraints the description for Magnesia is being released incomplete. In the future it will be completed, but in order to make a summer release before the fall semester it was necessary to leave it at the current 4,000+ words. Look for the dashes signaling breaks in the narrative.
Why are all the battles about the Seleukids?
That is a good question; a question that has several parts for its answer.
First and foremost, the battles involving the Seleukids (and Antiochos III in particular) are fairly well documented. Not only do we have historians such as Livy and Polybios, but also references here and there among authors that give us information. These battles also have major effects on several regions on the EB map as a result of their aftermath so their importance cannot be questioned. Perhaps the historian John D. Grainger put it best in describing his attempts to get approval for a book on Antiochos III:
So a king who ruled all the lands from India to Greece for a third of a century is not regarded as a suitable subject, yet the half-mad emperors Nero and Caligula rate repeated study. The effect on world-history of these two men must be rated as minimal; that of Antiochos is almost as great as that of Alexander or Constantine.
To touch upon another reason, EB is about educating others on history. The Seleukids have for the past several decades slipped under the radar. To paraphrase historian Frank L. Holt, there is this chasm between Alexander the Great and Rome, which is usually leapt over and not given a second glance. The EB Team finds this to be a great disappointment because the Hellenistic age should not be viewed through Rome-colored lenses – especially with the recent publications of new examinations on the subject. So the object is to pull (if just for a moment and only gently) the player’s attention away from Italy and toward the usually ignored and vast expanses of Asia.
What about other battles? Battles such as Cannae!
A lot of battles were planned and have had at least some work done on them. As stated earlier, reality got the better of them. There were many such as The Battle of Sellasia and The Battle of Bibracte as well as a few others focusing on Antiochos III. They still may be completed, but who knows when.
Cannae, however, seems to be the one battle that keeps coming up; however, it should be mentioned that in all honesty the battle would be impossible. The amount of scripting required to achieve that historic victory is well beyond the limits of the engine to be done as a playable battle – let alone a person. Besides, everyone knows about the slaughter at Cannae, but does everyone know about the near-total destruction of the Ptolemaic army at Panion? There
is a reason that it is sometimes referred to as The Great Battle of Panion.
So what can be expected for the future?
Who knows? Given time there could be several more battles. As mentioned above, there are a few that are at least partially completed. Until then, enjoy these four and keep your fingers crossed.
To Install
Download the file
here or at the Europa Barbarorum website. The file is a self-extracting archive made by the excellent program 7zip. Simply make your "Rome - Total War" folder you target directory and extract.
EB Summer Mini-release: Historical Battles
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