What tribe will claim Hegemony in the Barbarian World?

Hi everyone, I want to ask you something before I start a great EB campaign.

Historically, after the decline of the Celts, the most successful Barbarians in the Barbarian Europe were the Germanic tribes (Goths, Saxons, Franks). I want to give that chance to others in an alternate history...

I want to begin a campaign in EB with a barbarian tribe who will create a barbarian confederation and assert hegemony. And then I can involve with more power on the Mediterranean “Civilized” world. The winner of the Punic Wars and the new Unifier of the Hellenistic World will have a terrible barbarian adversary.

I have although a problem in choosing between the Aeduii and the Getai.

Aeduan tribe - because they can reverse the decline of the Celts, a campaign with them will be awesome: civil war in Gaul, resistance against Rome and Suebii, counter-alliances with Epirus and Carthage, landing in Britain and later “pacification” of Iberians and Thracians. Also they have a nice political system, with many magistracies and they can give a voice to all the tribes of their future confederation.

Getic tribe – because they can bring a new religion for the barbarian tribes and their fighting style and tactics are awesome in terms of firepower (a lot javelins and arrows) and assault (the rhomphaia and the falx). Also they are more despotic and they can create a “Barbarian Theocracy”, with units of mounted Ktistas supervising the allied troops of the other tribes.

With any of these two, will be a very interesting campaign and an interesting alternate history. That’s why I haven’t decided yet with whom I will start.
If you can help me, perhaps give another arguments for or against those two tribes.
(please don't bother with others, Arverni believe that their king is a god LOOOL, Suebii are germanics and I've said I want others, and Lusitani have a terrible geo-strategical position)

What is your opinion? ….Aeduii or Getai?

The true barbarians who claimed egemony over the world are the romans... But between your two choice, you i'd go for Aeduii. Civil war, counter alliances very interesdting game play. plus, you can recreate the invasion of greece by Brennus. even make some people migrations like they unsed to do in their golden age... Getai offers a great gameplay as well... but eh1 I prefer gauls!

I always have the feeling that getai could have claimed hegemony if they would have tried harder as they probably have the more sophisticated roster and are quite sophisticated overall. almost the same goes for the gauls but with them there was more interference romans, tribal wars and those nagging germanics. which imo would be more accurate as something historical gauls could not cope with but you could. plus gauls have a far better AoR which makes lategame more comfortable.
as Aedui you'd unite all the celtic people.

so in a nutshell:
Aedui because of more plausible alternate history and better AoR/better local support.

getai would become opressors pretty fast and would rather be an alternative rome or persia with several vassal states. if you play them be sure to modd in some civilisation boni (roads Temples sanitation etc) and maybe some "colonial" troops(getic supervisors) to for low level factional mics.

Definitely the Getai.

Stopping the Hellenistic powers (Macedon, Seleukia, Ptolemies) is a lot harder than stopping Rome. In EB, Rome (when controlled by the AI) is a pathetic weakling, easily conquered even by the other AI factions - Lusotanns and Carthaginians conquer Rome all the time. But the Getai have a much tougher time against the Hellenistic phalanxes.

Historically the Getai became a huge power too, they even offered support to Pompeius Magnus during the Civil War...

The Getai were certainly the rising stars of the barbarian (i.e. non Mediterranean or eastern) world at the time of Caesar.
But the EB period is 200 years before this.


The Celtic peoples never had a truly unifying power. But were feared by both Roman and Greek at the start of the game. Later on Vercingetorix unified some Gallic resistance, but what if there really had been some 'king over all the Gauls' like the Mediterranean historians suggested?

Vercingetorix never reached such status, Keltoi didn't have in their culture the idea of nation, but they were getting there in a way...
If the OT is all about 272 BC, I'd say the best chance was Keltoi's...
But I'd go for the Auernoi :P

Romani on the west, getai in the middle, parni in the east.
what is funny about them is that from west to east the campaign is getting harder.
for me in fact it is vice versa.

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Originally Posted by Titus Marcellus Scato

But the Getai have a much tougher time against the Hellenistic phalanxes.

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The Getai have access to many skirmishers and AP troops who are way better in breaking phalanxes then swordsmen, at least for me. The Celts only have the 'Eastern' Celtic Axemen.

You forgot one playable Tribe, the Casse. I chose them to conquer the world and already created a great confederation, though I modded the game to allow for migrations - including buildable celtic structures and troops in far away regions (I drove the Greeks out of greece and settled there, a lot of fun =) ).

definitely Getai, - Burebista nearly made it!

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Originally Posted by Duguntz

The true barbarians who claimed egemony over the world are the romans...

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:brood:

~Jirisys (:laugh4:)

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Originally Posted by Rahl

The Getai have access to many skirmishers and AP troops who are way better in breaking phalanxes then swordsmen, at least for me. The Celts only have the 'Eastern' Celtic Axemen.

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I wasn't referring to unit types - I was referring to economies. The Hellenistic powers are much wealthier than Roman Italy. They can overwhelm the player with numbers.

Those damn Romans got 100k mnai in their coffers and what do they recruit? Right, support troops! Half stack filled with them.... good god :/
Romans would rather spam mass Lugoae and Gaeroas, and hoplites of any kind rather then their own cool troops. And this despite the 0 turn recruitment, and the reduced soldier numbers of Triari and Pedites. It´s rediculous, and i do not want to offend anyone, but i somehow get the feeling the Roman AI is crap, after all they are Seleucids now in game terms ( who are supposed to die in TW philosophy, ain´t they? ) and have no Senate, neither the two additional brother factions who would roam the world at will...
Sorry, it´s OT, but i´m just a bit angry about their idiocracy ;(

Rome definitely needs a mod. Maybe the price of Roman-only units (those accessible to 'seleucid' faction only in the game files) need to be cut in half so the Roman AI finds them more attractive to build than the regional locals. (Make Hastati cheaper per man than Lugoae.) Or maybe we need a mod that prevents the Romans from building anything but their own troops. Or perhaps Romans should only recruit regionals on the higher MIC levels.

Default EB with 0 turn recruitment in my arverni campaign,all they spammed was Pedites. with some leves. Didnt do much good to them though :P

Well, actually i´ve allready cut the ability of the Romans to recruit any foreign units, aside from cavalry and some elite/noble units, which they´d get very late anyway, simulating the corruptiv elites. I also made only the three main units with 0 turn recruitment ( Hastati, Princeps, Triarii ), and i halved Triari + Pedites, - now they are 40 men per unit on "large". I´ve even cut the size of Rorari unit from 60 to 50, so they get only 100 men on "large" settings. But still, the Romans love their cheap troopers, lol.
The only way i see how one could help Romans with recruitment, aside from 0 turn, would be enable a mercenary pool in Italy containing their core units; if they want to spam units, those should be their own. I´ve asked a question how to change that on support forums, but, well, no one seemed to like my idea, or didn´t know how to change the pool. I´d do it myself, but i´d definetly mess up with something, since EDU is the only files i really know about^^
I´ve also made the (light) spear attack -4, so that swordmen would be more valueable, but they´d still be effective against cavalry, and now guess, if the Romans prefer to build more Hastati then Princeps? ( you guessed right, they don´t! ). Now i´m gonna mess with "ap" attribute of infantry units, and will try to give the "kopis" armed units higher lethality ( like an axe ) instead of "ap" feature, and see if Romans still going to spam Pedites en masse... But from what i´ve observed, it´s the armour value the AI is somehow mostly obsessed of, and since Triari, Pedites and Princeps are the best bet, the Romans love it to spam those guys. I also think, the "ap" feature of the axe should suffer on lethality, and only the cavalry units should keep their stats due to the "momentum" by striking enemies from the elevated posisions aka from horse back.

Now, again, sorry for hijacking this thread, but since you´d go against the Romani any way, no matter wich "Barbarian" faction you´d choose, especially with Celts, i thought this might be at least somewhere related to the subject, aka fun fighting a real civilized threat instead of some levies.

...perhaps keeping them in Italy with the Alps as a limit will give them only choice of recruiting more Roman and Socii units.

Anyway, I want to thank you all, for your suggestions, I'm surprised that you even knew about Burebista (so a baloon for Cute Wolf and Arjos :balloon2:)...but with some of your arguments and some others I have decided to start a campaign with the Aeduii....

The decline of the Celts will be halted by the Aedui, an alternate similarity with real historical process in which the Illyrians and Thracians saved the declining Roman Empire by establishing a “military junta”. The vast majority of the Emperors in the late Empire were of Illyrian-Thracian origin. And so I think that stopping the decline of the Celts is not verry ahistorical.

I will not establish, however a militaristic regime but one based on meritocracy, the most skillful in battle and administration will become FM (renamed “Magistrate”), and perhaps, one day, even the Vergobret himself will be of other ethnicity than Aeduan. I have also changed a few Celtic tribes with some Thracian, Iberian and Germanic tribes, in order to give a proper representation in my pro-Aeduan Confederation and I also have "Massaliot", because I want to use them as the first civilised people who recognise the benefits of the "Aeduan Peace".

For everyone's biotching about Roman "pedites spam," that is actually historically accurate. Historically, Allies outnumbered Romans in the Legions by a ratio of 2:1. This "pedites spam" is therefore pretty accurate. Stop the biotching.

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Originally Posted by Populus Romanus

For everyone's biotching about Roman "pedites spam," that is actually historically accurate. Historically, Allies outnumbered Romans in the Legions by a ratio of 2:1. This "pedites spam" is therefore pretty accurate.

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Hardly. Pedites represent picked troops. The Socii rank-and-file would be equiped similarly to the Romans and are represented by normal hastati, principes and trairii. For that matter: a mid-republic consular army would have consisted of two legions (Romans) and two alea (allies). The allies supplied more cavalry, but the infantry was divided about 50:50.

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Originally Posted by Ludens

Hardly. Pedites represent picked troops. The Socii rank-and-file would be equiped similarly to the Romans and are represented by normal hastati, principes and trairii. For that matter: a mid-republic consular army would have consisted of two legions (Romans) and two alea (allies). The allies supplied more cavalry, but the infantry was divided about 50:50.

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They had also engines of war. I have never encountered in EB a unit of "artillery" in a Roman Army. :embarassed:

Well If you're not swimming in the billions you can hardly build them in EB. I always thought (and still do) that it would add much fun to make them more accessible...

warfare during those days was more to establish trade rights pasture rights or demand tribute so it never made much sence to bring siege weapons along for most warchiefs or strategos since speed was of the essence to start in spring and return before winter set in (you still needed to make the harvest or collect enough straw for the animals )

planting can be done by women while men go to war and boys can do the sheparding but when the hard work of harvest arrived you needed muscle (harvest included ofc gathering vegetal plants to feed the animals)

people weren´t that interested in conquering city´s since most city´s where places where you could produce a few manufactured goods but most importantly where you would have a trade link but once you took it the trade link would most of the time be broken (except for a few highly apreciated products that couldn´t be grabbed in other places)

if you as a kelt caught massilia and took it by forçe you think the other greeks would wanna keep trading with you after you had humilliated their greek brethren :?

it started to work once the competition was beteween trading "groups" it made sence for the carthies to take alalia or the romans to conquer sicily since they already had their trading routes established so they didn´t need to establish new trade routes

and even then it was far easyer to just create a colony or a emporium establish relations with the local tribes then to conquer a city and then try to rebuilt a relantioship with the natives from a place that had been conqered and had costed the natives a trading well established and trustworthy partner and a few hassles before the city was normalised under the new administration so when you conquered by force it would increase the gap that you and the natives had to cross to reach an understanding

siege weapons in those regards started to make sence once the "armies" stoped being levied and became more and more professionalised or could be used without the hassle of transporting it around wich costs alot of time so siege weapons should be available in city´s without a massive upkeep but once out of the city the upkeed should go sky high for the need it would require in terms of horse/mule/camel power and the need to feed a massive amount of cargo animals wich moves slower then a regular army

i think this last part can be kind of covered by the free upkeepthe psf´s and city´s can provide with the new engine (altough they will still be freaking expensive the upkeep cut is nice )

if you consider the time period and what i said about the type of armies there where back then i think you msut give kuos to the team for the way they found to represent that

Aedui are much more powerful economically, which makes for a more varied campaign as you can sole more conflicts via bribery or diplomacy. Oh and you don't have to wait for other factions to build nice tech buildings, since you can build most of them yourself.

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Originally Posted by Ludens

Hardly. Pedites represent picked troops. The Socii rank-and-file would be equiped similarly to the Romans and are represented by normal hastati, principes and trairii. For that matter: a mid-republic consular army would have consisted of two legions (Romans) and two alea (allies). The allies supplied more cavalry, but the infantry was divided about 50:50.

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I guess the confusion arises from the misleading abbreviation "Pedites" for the PE unit. The defining characteristic of this unit is described by the word "extraordinarii", which clearly marks them as elite and not just some allied pedites (who in EB are represented by Samnite Hastati and the like).