Wrath of Sparta! impressions and discussion

[Myth]

Got it last night. I was thinking $15 was too pricey, but then again, i spent that exact amount on lunch with a female colleague just that day. So why not?

My overall impression is good. The map is smaller but somehow I found it more immersive than Rome 2 standard. Perhaps it was the long break I took from the game, but somehow the sounds of everyday life we hear from here and there, the changing of seasons (1 turn = 1 month), the flavour text, they all fit. Ancient Greece comes alive before your eyes and it just feels so good. Upon clickng on a settlement for the first time we get historical information about it from the advisor. Now that's something that makes it even better for me.

I don't even need to lead battles to enjoy it, the strategic and diplomatic aspects of the game are what I enjoy most anyway. I didn't have much time to play, but I do have a gripe with it. Athenai has been set up as this garand "villain" of sorts. Having direct ownership over some key settlements, it is pretty much stated that we need to make leagues and allies and coallitions and whatnot to try and contest their hegemony, particualrly their incredible navy.

I was like "OK, so here's the plan. Make a fleet, make a land army of elite units, sail for Athens, capture outlying settlements, go for the Coup-de-Grace and capture Athens."

I went for a tier 3 barracks which was completely unecessary, since I can recruit Spartan Hoplites and Helot Archers from a tier 2 one. I did make a big fleet. FYI fleets offer a lot more value in this campaign as I'd say 70% of the settlements are coastal. The low movement speed and horrid combat stats of transports also play a key role in incrasing the value of warships.

Anyway, by the time I was ready to go and fight my arch nemessis for the dominance of Hellas, the Ionian Leage had gutted them. Lol. I found a starving Ionian army in Athens. I conqured some settlements with my fleet and then got oblitherated by two stacks of ships from an enemy coallition I had paid no heed to at all. My land army was stuck somewhere around Athens due to losing a lot of movement points embarking and while at sea (which is a good thing IMO, I still remember how stupid it felt at Rome 2 release when my legions could basically walk from Rome to Carthage at no extra movement cost)

Anyway, it is then when I had to stop because it was already 3 AM, and I will start a new game and have plenty of time to play during the holidays.

But please CA, when you set up this grand conflict between major players in the region, make sure they are actually powerful. This reeks of 1 province African minors destroying Egypt and Carthage in the main campaign.

And why was the Ionian league starving? It had 6 or so settlements!

As a side note, this campaign will make for a killer sucession game.

[hoom]

Honga.net has the unit stats up.


Basically only a few unique units for Sparta, unique Persia roster, Thrace very Thracian.
The other Greek factions have exactly same roster except for only 1 unit in the other 3 playable factions.

All the Greek factions get:
Picked Hoplites (Royal Spartans for Sparta) for General

Archer
Javelin
Slinger
(Helot variants for Sparta)

Heavy cav
Light cav
(+Theban cav for Boiotians)

Picked Hoplites (Royal Spartans)
Hoplites (Spartan Hoplites)
Light Hoplites (Periokoi Hoplites?)
Militia Hoplites (Skiritai & Spartan Youths?)

Armored Marine Trireme for Admiral (Spartan Marines for Sparta)
Archer Triremes
Javelin Triremes
Light Marine Triremes
Armored Marine Triremes
(Sparta only gets Spartan Marines Trireme & Archer Diere)


Same group of Mercanaries available everywhere
Agranian Axes
Rhodian Slingers
Cretan Archers
Thracian Peltasts
Ionian Cav


So not much in the way of variety in unit types.
Which is pretty much correct historically by my understanding.

But kinda boring as hell which is why I've always been pretty luke warm on the idea of Peloponnesian War as a Total War setting.

I had really expected them to manage a bit more unit variety than this.
Might be good/new skin variety & I haven't actually compared stats so it could be that there is variance in quality between factions?


Map looks to be more complex than the previews seemed to indicate, most of the islands are separate regions.
Persia has quite a lot of land on Asia Minor, as does Ionian League.
Could be interesting how they play out, whether passive or aggressively involved & how much scripting of Diplomatic status between the Greek factions goes on.

[Myth]

The map is strategically challenging due to the way movement points work. The Ionians are the hidden power of the region, similar to RTW launch Adriaei.

[Hooahguy]

Myth, how is the unit variety to your liking? I know there are a lot of complaints about this and I imagine that its a quick fix using mods, but what are your opinions on it?

[Sp4]

Poke poke poke poke.. row, row, poke poke... You'd think someone back then figured out something that works better against masses of spear armed people than... n+1 people armed with spears.

[Slaists]

Poke poke poke poke.. row, row, poke poke... You'd think someone back then figured out something that works better against masses of spear armed people than... n+1 people armed with spears.

n + 2 people armed with spears ;)

[hoom]

And some unmanly missile/cav here & there.

Specifically the value of the Peltast against unsupported Hoplites was one of the key military lessons of the war.

[Myth]

Myth, how is the unit variety to your liking? I know there are a lot of complaints about this and I imagine that its a quick fix using mods, but what are your opinions on it?

I haven't built all buildings yet. Got a visitor so I won't be able to play until Saturday/Sunday. I would say it is lower than R2TW standard overall, but Sparta has decent cavalry now so the fation itself has been made more diverse. I want to see if Royal Spartans have a limit on max unit numbers. Also I haven't seen if Heroes of Sparta are in the game.

[Veho Nex]

What this campaign really needed was more factions on release. I think with the zoomed in campaign map you could have some intense head to head campaigns with friends/foes. With only four factions, and ones that are all neighbors, to choose from it gets kinda boring fast. The campaign had some serious potential. I think they could have added unit variety by including "hero" or just named units for the factions as well having the ability to turn units into heroes for their actions on the field. I think that kind of setup would have worked perfectly for this campaign.

[Hooahguy]

What this campaign really needed was more factions on release. I think with the zoomed in campaign map you could have some intense head to head campaigns with friends/foes. With only four factions, and ones that are all neighbors, to choose from it gets kinda boring fast. The campaign had some serious potential. I think they could have added unit variety by including "hero" or just named units for the factions as well having the ability to turn units into heroes for their actions on the field. I think that kind of setup would have worked perfectly for this campaign.
Agreed. Thankfully it seems like most of that can be rectified by modders, considering they made all factions playable in the GC and added named units as well.

[Myth]

To be fair, they are close by but separated by choke points and other factions. The unplayable factions are no pushovers either.

[Veho Nex]

Athens gets slayed in about 10 turns in every game Ive played with them. Then there is Sparta, Korinthos, and Boiolation League start the game practically in a military alliance with everyone around them. You are then rapidly stuck with two options. Diplomatic penalties for slaying your fellow greeks or spend the entire game with your empire fractured.

[KLAssurbanipal]

Picked Hoplites

http://wiki.totalwar.com/images/thumb/7/7d/Picked_hoplites.png/300px-Picked_hoplites.png


"“A warrior carries his shield for the sake of the entire line.” - Plutarch"

The Greek answer to the increasing scale and organisation of warfare throughout the 1st millenium BC was the Hoplite. Citizen warriors, they were trained at the expense of the state, though like the Republican Romans, hoplites provided and cared for their own weapons and armour. Good armour and weapons were expensive, so the majority of hoplites were drawn from the middle classes of Greek society.

While styles changed over time and richer citizens had access to more decorative and protective brass armour pieces, the typical hoplite was clad in in linothorax and helmet, and carried a spear in his right hand and a hoplon shield in his left. This offered him and the man to his left protection, creating a defensive wall in the closed ranks of the phalanx. Hoplites also carried a short sword, which might be adopted in the crush of extended melee.

The finest veteran hoplites were chosen from the ranks and formed units of their own, to be deployed where they might swing the tide of battle. To be a Picked Hoplite was a great honour that came with a great responsibility: to succeed in battle where others would fail.

[Sp4]

And some unmanly missile/cav here & there.

Specifically the value of the Peltast against unsupported Hoplites was one of the key military lessons of the war.

Funny how in the actual game, throwing missiles at hoplites is exactly the kind of thing you want missile units to do to waste their ammo.

[hoom]

Also the only proper Peltasts are Thracian/Thracian Mercs.

[easytarget]

I find the agent spam is still as annoying as ever, the campaign as a whole though has been rather fun so far. It's 430BC and I'm being attacked everywhere by Sparta and their allies. My Athenian empire is sprawled out all over the map and I've lost at least 4 settlements to Sparta or one of her allies.

In short, I find this a rather fascinating campaign primarily because I'm losing it. My strategy at this point is to retrench to a core group of settlements and expand out from there (only not take the home city of the main combatants if I can remember which those are, that should be listed in the campaign objectives given what I understand to be a severe diplomatic penalty if you take them).

This is proving to be another enjoyable DLC for me, and as expected infinitely more entertaining than the GC which I consider easily the most boring thing CA has ever created.

[lars573]

Athens gets slayed in about 10 turns in every game Ive played with them. Then there is Sparta, Korinthos, and Boiolation League start the game practically in a military alliance with everyone around them. You are then rapidly stuck with two options. Diplomatic penalties for slaying your fellow greeks or spend the entire game with your empire fractured.
Which is how the Peloponnesian war went. Athens over stretched it self and got smacked down by the other major poleis led by Sparta.

[Hooahguy]

Which is how the Peloponnesian war went. Athens over stretched it self and got smacked down by the other major poleis led by Sparta.
Yeah, but in 10 turns?

[easytarget]

So, it's 429BC, I've been busy mostly losing settlements to the Sparta alliance, but I've also made some progress returning the favor, so we are at a bit of an impasse, one though I feel with time I can break open.

Take a look at this picture though and see if you can identify what the real problem is looming on the horizon:

https://i.imgur.com/41y2x3Ll.png (http://imgur.com/41y2x3L)

[easytarget]

So, am I the only one playing this then? :laugh4:

[Bramborough]

Coming back to R2 after a long hiatus, still playing around with EE GC and the Augustus campaign. Just haven't gotten around to WoS yet. Will probably do so before Attila comes out. Looks fairly interesting.

[easytarget]

I'm enjoying it, playing as Athens is rather challenging, bit like stepping into a Realm Divide situation from turn one, only with a couple allies of your own (just the closest people nearby and even right by your capital are after you from the outset).

What my picture above shows is something I suspect prove a problem soon, while the Greeks are sparring with each other diminishing themselves the Persians have shown up on scene (orange above) and are rolling over the map currently (that expansion took place over like one year). I'd heard people say they won this w/o ever seeing them, I don't see that being a problem, but actually the reverse because I suspect the units they field aren't going to prove easily dealt with by what I've got.

[Bramborough]

I assumed that was Persia over in Asia. Obviously not having played WoS, I have no idea whether that's a problem or not.

I'm certainly no expert on the period, but from what little I've read, one might expect a significant proportion of Greek mercenary infantry among the Persian order of battle. Apparently they started doing this pretty regularly not too long after the Marathon-Plataea period, at least in that part of their empire. In other words, the Persian armies might not be THAT much different from your own (assuming CA's representation is historical...which is a big assumption).

[easytarget]

That's potentially good news then, I suspect before this campaign is over I'll get the opportunity to inspect the makeup of the armies they field rather closely on the battlefield. :laugh4:

[hoom]

Persian unit roster http://www.honga.net/totalwar/rome2/faction.php?l=en&v=rome2&f=pel_persia&i=

Looks like the classic Greek vs Persia sort of thing:
Persia has pretty weak Spear/Melee infantry but should be able to afford lots of it.
Lots of Cav, lots of Missile & probably better than the Greek cav/missiles.

Greeks get tough Spear Infantry but not much else & probably will have smaller numbers.


So sit in the open & get missiled to death, same if you chase them around the map.

But if you can bring them to close combat the Greek infantry should win handily.

There are no Mercenary Hoplites.

[lars573]

Yeah, but in 10 turns?
When has TW AI ever been able to handle a tough strategic situation well?

[Veho Nex]

Persia is supposed to be Wrath of Sparta's "oh shoot they are getting too strong we should slow them down" faction. It only attacks after a certain level of imperium.

[easytarget]

Hmm, well, they certainly aren't waiting around in my campaign, I'm not that high on imperium. And Persia is busy attacking as you can see by the map turning orange, so when you say they only attack after a certain level of imperium is that against the human?

[easytarget]

Btw, I'm starting to make some ground in my campaign finally. I decided to say the heck with the diplomacy penalty and started after some capitol cities near Athens that were causing me no end of grief, I figured what difference does it make if I take a server diplomacy hit from someone I have every intention of wiping off the face of the earth.

Got a question though, I think since the last patch maybe the corruption is out of control, it's running like 50%, and no matter what I'm researching it doesn't appear to be making much of a dent. Is corruption the new squalor that you're just stuck with or has anyone figured out a solution to this?

[Bramborough]

I've noticed the same thing about corruption with EE, both in the Augustus campaign and even more so in the GC. I've hit as high as 78% corruption in some recent games, despite going quite high in the legal tech tree. I used to get Economic Victory somewhat regularly, but not since EE came out. Must admit I haven't really tried to do so yet and I'm sure it's do-able with some dedicated effort, but a 90,000 income seems rather daunting.

Edit: also occurs to me that an Eco-Victory would be quite difficult to obtain in Augustus anyway, due to the "Number of Trading Partners" requirement. Seems like mid/late-stage Augustus campaigns devolve to fewer available factions on the map to trade with. Which makes sense, with the various Roman factions starting with so much territory (And Antony/Lepidus, unlike Octavian, seem to do a pretty consistent job of keeping themselves more or less intact as long as the player doesn't mess with them).

[easytarget]

Yeah, i think going for an eco victory would drive me batty. I'm having enough trouble with CA's efforts to take money away from me via this artificially high corruption component they've just up and decided to throw in the mix. If I ever got the impression that CA play tested anything thoroughly I'd be ok with it, but it sometimes feels rather ad hoc.

I understand you don't fully develop every settlement and you pick and choose what you dedicate them for, but this corruption thing just feels over blown to the extent that it drives me down a certain development path that in my opinion is the antithesis of what TW games are about, which is providing you historical settings to "what if it" w/in a game design framework that makes choices a trade off. That requires balance and a more unified design vision than I feel R2 has ever had, or alas, ever will.

Oh well, I'll soldier on, I still quite enjoy all the DLC campaigns even in spite of the tweaks I don't agree with. Funny how games are no longer games really, they just change over time so much they end up being like BladeRunner where Ridley Scott just wouldn't leave well enough alone and all told has like 6 or 7 versions of the damn thing at this point. Seriously: which one is the real movie? :laugh4:

[Patricius]

My dislike of WoS is the really basic city battle maps. Athens looks like a generic ancient town with a wall. The Grand Campaign had a good map. Why was that not used?

[Crandar]

I have a question, old chaps:

What about the names of the Persian generals? Do they have the same ridiculous names like the ones in Rome II, where you can meet Assyrians in the depths of Sogdiana or the Creative Assembly had decided to add historical Achaemenid names, like Pharnabazus or Tissaphernes?

[Slaists]

Myth, so how about that idea of a succession game in WoS settings?

don't the leaders live forever in WoS?

Bramborough, econ victory is still very doable, in GC at least. I have pulled off two (legendary) in the last 3 weeks (one with Baktria, one with Pergamon).

The thing you do about corruption is a bit counter-intuitive: you counter it by raising taxes (and slave population). In late campaign, I'd have close to 100% corruption negated by around 100% tax rates so I'm left with the net worth of the province as income (+ all the bonuses from builds + taxes). Even with the patch 16 corruption, I could get 21K income from Antioch alone (in late campaign).

http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/539634458075988001/F0210228B7B980CA110909769216B5432FD9C270/
http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/539634458082299436/871E109BBAEA7DFBE22CE9DF7A52F7CA3CC865E4/


But you're right, it's harder to pull an econ victory off in IA; simply due to lack of trading partners. The condition has been lowered though: now it's only 15 trade partners needed, not 20.

[easytarget]

So I can lower corruption by raising taxes and instead of killing or freeing after battles enslave them? Won't both of these raise unrest?

And I got to say, the idea of raising taxes to lower corruption is certainly not an immersive one because it so flies in the face of real world.

[lars573]

My dislike of WoS is the really basic city battle maps. Athens looks like a generic ancient town with a wall. The Grand Campaign had a good map. Why was that not used?
The city wasn't built up enough. In one of my Carthage campaigns Carthage itself was besieged 27 times over the course of it. And it didn't get the fancy historically-accurate-as-CA-could-get map until city level 3.

[Slaists]

So I can lower corruption by raising taxes and instead of killing or freeing after battles enslave them? Won't both of these raise unrest?

And I got to say, the idea of raising taxes to lower corruption is certainly not an immersive one because it so flies in the face of real world.
easytarget

Raising taxes does not directly lower corruption but it compensates for the hit you get from it. The final value of the income you get from a province follows something of the sorts: TOTAL INCOME = [PROVINCES BASE WEALTH + ALL BONUSES] X [1 + tax rate % - corruption rate % + slave bonus %]. The slave bonus gets extra modifiers from slave markets (and potentially some faction bonuses).

With EE release, CA has raised the corruption rates significantly, but they have also raised the extra tax rates you get from going from normal to high then to very high taxes. Tax rate increases used to be much smaller in the earlier versions. So, I guess, this is how CA has envisioned battling corruption in the game.

So, if your (extra) tax rate is less than the corruption rate and you have no slaves your income will start to go down with each new region added after a certain empire size has been reached (since corruption goes up in all your provinces). However, if your tax rate + slave bonus is higher than the corruption rate your income won't go down as you continue to grow.

In late campaign, it is possible to have around 100% (even higher in specialized provinces) in extra taxes. Corruption in the later imperium levels is of comparable magnitude. So, these two cancel each other out.

p.s. Yes, very high taxes and slaves reduce PO. That's why the very high tax regime and high slave levels are achievable only in mid-to-late campaign when the philosophy tree has been researched fully (all the PO bonuses stack now; so does extra tax rates from tech and culture conversion). Corruption is not much of an issue in early campaign anyway.

I also tend to have several characters max promoted politically. Each of those gives +4 to PO globally (in all provinces). 5 Hetariros generals, for example, give you a whooping +20 to global PO. Capturing the right world wonders helps too (the one in Parthia and the one in Lybia give around +5 to PO each). Also, for slaves, I boost their level only in the econ provinces (with >15 K income/turn). That way slave PO is manageable.

You can see my tax rates, corruption, slaves and PO in Syria in the screen I provided in the previous post. Even at 45% slave income and very high tax regime, my PO is +6/turn.

[easytarget]

Thanks for the info, I'll see how some of it applies in my current campaign. Do diplomats help here? I see you mention general attributes benefiting quite a bit.

I remain troubled by the change, this narrows the options a player has in his/her campaign, from a game design standpoint that's not the choice I'd recommend taking on the strategic level. And if CA wanted to take this route they should have made it make sense to the player with a direct way of addressing that involved trade offs. This to me feels not unlike their civil war "fix" which I find nearly meaningless since it's so easy to avoid.

[Bramborough]

Lots of food for thought there. I've consistently run low/mid-tax, slave-free empires from the start in R2. It has worked fine, and still does for military victories (and I assume would serve as well for a cultural win). Certainly high-tax/high-slave would indeed be counterintuitive for my playstyle. But I can see how that would be the way to go for economic victory now...will have to give that a try.

[Slaists]

Thanks for the info, I'll see how some of it applies in my current campaign. Do diplomats help here? I see you mention general attributes benefiting quite a bit.

I remain troubled by the change, this narrows the options a player has in his/her campaign, from a game design standpoint that's not the choice I'd recommend taking on the strategic level. And if CA wanted to take this route they should have made it make sense to the player with a direct way of addressing that involved trade offs. This to me feels not unlike their civil war "fix" which I find nearly meaningless since it's so easy to avoid.



I agree on your points. Just saying, that's how it works now (for now). :)

As to dignitaries: I tend to keep them in my armies. I get much bigger "bang" for them from reducing upkeep than sitting in provinces. In the late game, if I need those extra couple K for an econ victory, I'd stick one or two dignitaries in top econ provinces to raise taxes even more.

Another counter-intuitive thing is: dignitaries tend to pick up tax boosting traits while managing armies. So, you might want to stick a fresh dignitary in an army and level him up in tax management while doing military admin. Once he has his traits picked up, send him to the econ province.

As to limited choices for the player: I slightly disagree. My example of >90K profit/turn and several million in the bank is extreme (yet needed for an econ victory). You don't need anything near that for a military victory or the cultural one.

[Bramborough]

I too have recently started using dignitaries in armies much more often, once I noticed that they increased net income much more that way than by parking them in provinces. The trade-off is that by using dignitaries, I can't use champs for training (my previous "standard practice").

So my style has evolved such that I use 2 or 3 armies as my main "battle force", fighting the major conquest battles; highest-end units my tech accesses, always led by own-faction general. These armies first get a champ, and I level the units up to around 6 or 7, then switch out the champ for a dignitary.

Then I've got somewhere between 3-5 "second-line" armies. Cheaper units, don't always have cav or siege capability, often led by opposing-family generals. Used for maintaining public order in recently-acquired provinces, dealing with rebels or raiders, providing an emergency defense if I get attacked at opposite end of my empire, etc. I just plop a dignitary with them from the beginning, as I'm not concerned that much with maximizing their stats. In fact, I want the 2nd-line opposition-led outfits to be significantly weaker than the loyal battle force. Just in case I happen to blunder myself into a civil war somehow (although, as easytarget pointed out, CW has become too easy to avoid).

With this scheme, I'm usually able to field the max number of 20-unit armies allowable at whatever imperium level I'm at, and still have a pretty decent income left over.

[easytarget]

Hmm, well thanks for the additional input both of you. Think I'll take my dignitaries on the road w/ the troops and rotate champions around so as to not neglect the opportunity to buff them.

Back in Shogun 2 and still in Rome 2 I tend to not build a bunch of armies, just maintain a few full strength ones. Ironically in a game with total war in the title I hate spending money on armies (and their associated support costs).

Question to follow back up on the slave thing, if I start to enslave defeated enemies how often can I rely on this before I start to take a serious hit in the slave rebellion dept? Do I need to worry and therefore put some effort into buildings and/or research to deal with it, or has CA tweaked this as well (I'll admit the patch history on this game is so comically long I've long since given up keeping track, I only noticed corruption because of a thread at the main TW forum where someone was complaining about 100% corruption)?

[Slaists]

Yeah, 100% corruption is quite possible at imperium VII (or VIII), especially if no philosophy tech has been researched.

As to slaves: I find that taking them in battles (rather than sacking cities) is the "safest" way as the increase tends to be small. You should still check your slave pops after battles to see what's the best course of action in the next battle. It seems, the best place to check is your capital. That's anecdotal though. For me the biggest bump in slave pop tends to happen there. Once got close to 90% slave pop in Baktria and the darned thing was declining only 0.1% per turn, LOL...

I do use sacking if I want to boost slave pop fast though. For example, when I have 5 hetairos simultaneously and all are of young age (+20 PO combined across them).

p.s. by the way, some say, the slave bonus is calculated outside the "extra tax - corruption" equation. As in: TOTAL REVENUE = [BASE WEALTH + BONUSES] X (1 + TAX RATE % - CORRUPTION %) + [BASE WEALTH + BONUSES] X SLAVE BONUS %.

Now that I look at it, it does not seem to make a difference one way or another; only if the bonuses were applied differently, lol. Anyway, some folks point this out.

[easytarget]

Well, don't know what this signifies, but I'm guessing that the Persians who have kept to themselves for the most part after taking over the eastern section of the map are no longer going to be content with staying over there. :sweatdrop:

https://i.imgur.com/vCrxeTCl.jpg

[Bramborough]

Well...that looks rather ominous....

[easytarget]

It will be interesting to see how aggressive they become as I've got this one pretty well nailed down, I think I'm like 3 short of hitting the 55 provinces and need to get either a military alliance or just go ahead and conquer the last couple of settlements needed to complete the province list unique to the Athenian victory conditions.

This is also usually the point where the existing military alliances unravel for no reason other than they appear to be programmed to do so when the player gets close to hitting the victory conditions. I ran into the same sort of thing all the time in Shogun2, it manifested itself in kamikaze like attacks anyone left in the game along with vassals turning on you when you were one province short, then you suddenly right at the end find yourself actually further way from the goal. Sort of amusing actually because you knew it would put that last bit of pressure on you to complete the campaign.

Hopefully this little twist isn't quite as dramatic as realm divide, guess I'll find out shortly (I've only one full army over on that side of the map and it's 5 or 6 turns for anyone else to reach that area of the map).

[easytarget]

While I wouldn't call this insurmountable, it is a tad troubling nonetheless because the size of this army, and this is just the stacks I can see all in one place setting off in my general direction now, is larger than my entire current army. I don't keep large standing armies typically. So this is going to create an interesting race at the end, I need only to complete two provinces at this point, I've got the count, although that's likely to lose some ground as Persia eats up some of my allies territory or directly takes some of mine. I think I might just keep pressing to hit the victory conditions rather than directly confront this army.

https://i.imgur.com/kOKKFPal.jpg

[easytarget]

Well, as it turned out the Persians stayed over on that side of the map harassing my allies, which left me with the mop up at the end, funny thing about the victory conditions, never noticed till I had completed the province count and grabbed the right particular provinces that I also need to hit a recruitment target for ships of 60, at the point I noticed this it was the only thing I still needed so I can to go into a crash course of recruiting which still took like 5 or 6 turns while I hoped I didn't lose control of one of the key provinces.

Playing Athens was fun, as I've said before, all the DLC for me are way more than than the GC. Next I guess I will have to play the other side and take a run as Sparta!

[Bramborough]

The ones that annoy me are sometimes there's a mercenary unit requirement. And I never use mercenaries otherwise, except perhaps in extreme emergency cases where I'm trying to extract a beat-up army from a bad situation, and then I only keep 'em for a turn or two. So I just leave the mercenary thing to the end, and just hire a bunch to meet the victory condition. Even then I kinda begrudge having spend money on those bloodsucking rascals.

[Slaists]

The ones that annoy me are sometimes there's a mercenary unit requirement. And I never use mercenaries otherwise, except perhaps in extreme emergency cases where I'm trying to extract a beat-up army from a bad situation, and then I only keep 'em for a turn or two. So I just leave the mercenary thing to the end, and just hire a bunch to meet the victory condition. Even then I kinda begrudge having spend money on those bloodsucking rascals.

Mercs actually become very affordable pretty early in the campaign. Military tech gives a decent upkeep discount across all troop types + the extra upkeep discount targeted at mercs. Those stack with grand camp following army's tradition, dignitary's upkeep discount and any discount you're getting from a politically promoted general. In the end, my mercs are cheaper in terms of upkeep than regular troops (this is due to the extra upkeep discount mercs get from the tech tree) even for factions other than Carthage. Carthage can get them to zero upkeep easily:

http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/539633534973923800/021E03F9194802B98A2A42601273DA7CA6B51CF2/

"Every nobleman has his price"... yeah, right.

So, I use the good mercs (Cretan archers, Syrian archers, veteran hoplites, Syrian elephants, etc.) wherever I need them. Naturally, mercs gravitate towards my armies that have dignitaries embedded in them. Then again, some 70-80 turns in, I am making so much cash that I do not care about merc upkeep even in regular inexperienced armies.

easytarget, good job on that campaign. I'm myself grinding through a Corinthian one now. The winter was a "nice" surprise for my treasury once it struck (in October, LOL...)

[easytarget]

Yes, the first time winter hit for real I was taken aback by how badly it dinged the economy. And it went on for a few months too, not like some one turn thing. Actually pretty cool. I just wished they'd programmed the Persians to do more that simply posture with a bunch of armies and instead came out an expanded into the map a bit. It made for a potentially interesting end game threat that didn't actually amount to anything. I may have to pick up more mercs, I've been avoiding using them for cost reasons as well.

[Bramborough]

Lol, Slaists obviously is in an entirely different league than most of us as far as having this game's economy figured out. Or...more likely, simply has more discipline and attention to detail than I do to fully maximize and synergize the various unit/character/faction/etc buffs together.

[easytarget]

Yep, no doubt about that. :yes:

I tend to only pay attention when it interferes significantly enough to get me to focus in on it, like corruption did. On the whole I like decisions that are meaningful w/o becoming tedious, bit of a fine line for the devs I know.

But to each his own!

[Slaists]

Lol, Slaists obviously is in an entirely different league than most of us as far as having this game's economy figured out. Or...more likely, simply has more discipline and attention to detail than I do to fully maximize and synergize the various unit/character/faction/etc buffs together.

LOL, simply too many hours with the game.

[Myth]

The rulers are immortal in CiG, but not here as far as I know. I will have to test it.

The first scucession game we had was on a very unstable version of Rome II. The game is a lot more polished now, we can give the main campaign a go too. I forsee problems with missing DLC however.

[Slaists]

The rulers are immortal in CiG, but not here as far as I know. I will have to test it.

The first scucession game we had was on a very unstable version of Rome II. The game is a lot more polished now, we can give the main campaign a go too. I forsee problems with missing DLC however.

In WoS, with 12 turns / year (or 6, forgot) you're pretty much guaranteed to have immortal generals unless they die in battle. Maybe the first generation who are older to start with will die of old age over the campaign, but probably not the next generation.

Sure, grand campaign sounds fun too. Any faction picks? I have all the DLCs btw.

[Bramborough]

Any mode with more than 1tpy seems problematic to me for a succession game; the faction leader will (usually) live too long for more than 2-3 people at most to participate. As one example, in my current Augustus (4tpy) Egypt campaign, I'm at 17AD, so just over 200 turns, very close to final victory conditions...and my original faction leader just now died of old age last turn.

Some other ideas for "reign" length demarcation:

- Set number of turns. The precise number would depend on whichever particular campaign we'd use. But I'd think that number would be somewhere between 30-50, depending on how many players wanted to participate, and how many times through that player list we'd want to rotate.
- Mission milestone accomplishment. (with some allowance for the wrinkle that it's not uncommon to basically hit two milestones at once on successive turns).
- Imperium levels perhaps?

[Slaists]

I agree, anything more than 1 TPY is problematic for a succession game.

So how about a Grand Campaign game? We have quite a few faction choices now. Let's pick a category. The way I see it, there are 2:

1. Relaxed: Rome, any Greeks, Carthage, Armenia, Parthia, Pontus
2. Less relaxed: any barbarians, raiders, etc.

[hoom]

Syracuse in HatG has Hiero II die fairly early, which is a PITA when you didn't expect it...
So I wound up conquering with Heironymous.

[hoom]

For those of us waiting for a special: WoS is US $5.09 on Steam this weekend (till 16 Feb).

[Ashkael]

MAP: Why Sicily and south Italy is not added into this DLC ? They were part of Peloponnesian War.

FACTIONS: Please, more playable factions ! I woud like to play with Thracians, Macedon, Rhodos, etc.

Diplomacy:
why not have the possibility to form a league or something like that ? By the example of “Caesar in Rome” – they are all Hellenic(greeks) after all. It was very interesting and varied from a diplomatic point of view.

Why you can not negotiate with a faction to go to war or to get out of such without you yourself to be at war with this faction? This is complete normal and the lack of it cripples diplomacy options. Especially if you are allied with one or both of them.
Victory conditions: please smaller victory conditions on terms of army and navy. Why is this artificially inflate of the numbers ? For Sparta is 120/40 and I with 90/20 conquer all

CAPITALS: If I attack and conquer a Capital I get severe diplomatic penalty. I understand that, but instead waiting only for ally to conquer it for you, you should have the possibility to attack it, but not conquer it, but to completely destroying the buildings, without taking over the city for you.

AI: Please do better AI(aggressive). Your allies should be really helpful to you. Examples are countless - you to be strong and your allies too, the enemy was left with few cities and weak forces and none of your allies is going to conquer them.

FACTION activity: increase the activity of Melos, Gortyn, Knossos and least of Kydonia. Placed just for beauty. With them nothing changes after 15000 turns.....

REMARKS: it is likely that these things are spoken by someone else. If so, apologize !
Some of the above things apply to all DLC's and generally for total war: Rome 2.