Baktria missions and reform

[bornloser]

I apologize in advance if this is already flagged.

I'm playing as Baktria in v2.1b

When I finished the first mission from AS (take 2 forts and beat 2 armies) I got the Mission Failed event, followed by the Mission Accomplished Event, then the next mission comes up. So not sure if my success was counted or not.

I failed some of the other missions and accomplished others. So neither total failure nor total success there.

When I felt confident enough to become independent I stopped paying tribute the two years and AS declared war. Then the punitive expeditionary force army appeared and I wiped it out in a pitched battle. Over the next 20 turns I took 5 settlements from AS and beat them in a dozen battles. At some point during that war, I got the "rejoin the fold" event and declined it. Several turns later I got a different event, saying the Basileus of AS views me as a serious challenge and that I should stop the war. I declined, looking for the recognition event. The serious challenge event then repeated over and over again no matter how many further battles I won or further settlements I took.

Can't figure out how to trigger the recognition event. Any clues or is this a bug?

[QuintusSertorius]

Bugs, which should be fixed in 2.2.

[bornloser]

great, thanks.

as an aside, i must say that i've been playing eb since 2005 or 2006 and Baktria (along with everything else) has come a really long way. The attention that the team has given to regional units and government types makes it a completely different and immersive experience. It's great to have a highly heterogeneous army recruited from different regions and cultures. During my wars with AS, I had about equal proportions of native baktrians, persians, greeks, and saka. The availability and cost of these units is very well balanced in my opinion. It encourages the regional recruitment; factional development takes a long time and a lot of money which isn't available during extended conflict or fighting on two fronts.

I also played a fairly long Pergamese campaign in 2.1b which felt entirely different. The pre-existing hellenic infrastructure and hellenic culture in anatolia and pergamon's ability to build higher-order government types (than baktria) stimulated strong factional development. I didn't use anywhere near the number of regional troops.

This is all to say, great job. The factions should play differently and they do.

[QuintusSertorius]

The final piece of that Hellenistic composition - the polis - has been regionalised in 2.2 as well. So not only will governments and colonies give you different units depending on where you build them, but the polis will too.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

As an aside, but following on from the notion of different experiences for different factions: playing as Makedonia, my capital, Pella, seems to be treated as some sort of administered, colonial settlement. I've sort of role played that the colony buildings represent the rural communities coming to re-establish the urban population/aristocracy. Will there be any changes to this in 2.2 or is this intentional for Makedonia?

Also, just as feedback on AI activity; I'm 30 years into my campaign. The Aedui have taken over most of Northern Europe, the Lusitani have blitzed Hispania (though the Areuaki are holding on), Hayasdan have cut a swathe through Seleucid lands but Rome have literally done nothing. They are in exactly the same position as at the beginning of the game. I've not interfered with Italy at all, I weakened the Epirotes and Rome finished them off at Taras, but then Taras rebelled to the Eleutheroi and Rome have done nothing since to regain it.

[anubis88]

Reogranization of Roman armies has fixed this now it seems. In the testing i did Rome conquered Taras and Rhegium in the first 5-10 turns every time and started looking at sicily, so we managed to make them not attacking the north while going for historical expansion. At least at the game start.

For Makedonia i'll let others comment

[QuintusSertorius]

As an aside, but following on from the notion of different experiences for different factions: playing as Makedonia, my capital, Pella, seems to be treated as some sort of administered, colonial settlement. I've sort of role played that the colony buildings represent the rural communities coming to re-establish the urban population/aristocracy. Will there be any changes to this in 2.2 or is this intentional for Makedonia?

That is actually intentional; Antigonos had only just moved back into Pella in 272BC having reclaimed the Makedonian throne and driven out the Celtic invaders. It was very much a place under reconstruction at the start of the game.

[aljaskuszobab]

hey all, sorry about hijacking the thread but i have a question about baktria as well:

is there something i can do about my generals becoming traitors at a crazy rate?

i assume this represents baktrian politics which was all about backstabbing and i didn't mind it at first when i was fighting rebels and india. however, now i'm in a war with the seleucid empire and i just lost two full stacks in less than 5 rounds due to (relatively) loyal generals becoming traitors.

i always check the traits of the generals and make sure that i use the most reliable ones to lead my armies and i still lose way more troops to this than to battles and it is ruining my campaign.

other than this and the already mentioned bugs, i love the baktrian campaign, i can't remember the last time i had this much fun with a total war game.

[Suetonius]

Re: loyalty, I started a separate thread "Any tips on nurturing loyalty?", though it's not specific to Baktria

[aljaskuszobab]

Re: loyalty, I started a separate thread "Any tips on nurturing loyalty?", though it's not specific to Baktria

Hey, yeah, I saw your thread but I'm also playing a campaign with Epeiros and I didn't have a single traitor, not even after Pyrrhos died and I began using lower influence/loyalty leaders and generals (at this point I'm playing with my third faction leader). Therefore, I assumed my problem must be something specific to Baktria.

[bornloser]

aljaskuszobab thats pretty wild. I think I only had one army desert during my whole baktrian campaign. I fought the seleukids, pahlavas, india, sakas, everyone. Anything you could describe about your situation when they were deserting? For me I've noticed it when I had an uneducated FM with a really big stack and low loyalty.

Did they go to rebels or actually bribed by AI? cant remember seeing the latter option

[aljaskuszobab]

aljaskuszobab thats pretty wild. I think I only had one army desert during my whole baktrian campaign. I fought the seleukids, pahlavas, india, sakas, everyone. Anything you could describe about your situation when they were deserting? For me I've noticed it when I had an uneducated FM with a really big stack and low loyalty.

Did they go to rebels or actually bribed by AI? cant remember seeing the latter option

The only common things were the size of the army (it was always more or less a full stack) and that it happened in enemy territory during war. Education and loyalty varied, but loyalty was always the highest available. Three full stacks is not the end of the world at the current stage of my campaign, it just makes fighting wars very frustrating. Distances between cities are massive in that part of the map and regions are poorly developed so it takes very long to train a new army and get them to the city where my previous army deserted.

To put it in perspective, I won the long campaign with Epeiros on the same difficulty (medium) doing everything the same way and I had only one traitor full stack throughout the campaign, even though I fought on pretty much every coast of the Mediterranean Sea.

[aljaskuszobab]

To put it in perspective,

I meant "to put the number of traitors in perspective". I have three now.

[bornloser]

the only thing i can think of is that its dependent on the faction leader. maybe sometimes we get a guy with some set of bad traits or low authority/influence and it interacts with the guys leading field armies and they go rogue. im not sure how to test that, but its all i can think of.

[aljaskuszobab]

the only thing i can think of is that its dependent on the faction leader. maybe sometimes we get a guy with some set of bad traits or low authority/influence and it interacts with the guys leading field armies and they go rogue. im not sure how to test that, but its all i can think of.

I recently started a campaign with Carthage and I just had the most extreme case of generals turning traitors so far in EBII.

I beat pretty much everyone in North Africa, Spain, Italy and France and then I reached Britain. Until that point I had no problem with traitors. I decided to invade Britain so I built up 5 full stacks and shipped them over on the island. In 5 turns, I had only 1 stack because of generals turning traitors every turn. My faction leader did not die, he has been the same for a while.

The only thing that I can think of is that distance influences the probabilty of becoming traitor but it's pretty much game breaking if the effect is so extreme. Anyway, I'll move this discussion to the other thread because apparently my problem is not Baktria related.