My First Iceni campagn - help I need and conclusions I have reached

Long time reader 2nd time poster - will try and avoid wall of text
1 - I am playing normal (I tried starting hh on S2 and got my ass handed to me @ release!)
2 - I am a fair way in - ruling the whole british isles
3 - I am assuming the below applies for any barbarian factions

Bamboozled by/ help needed

Happiness - wtf is this? I had 4 settlements and NOTHING changed, no new units/attacks/building the hapopiness across my settlements kept dropping well into negatives. I tried to counter is by researching the civ techs but no dice.

Chariots - can someone link/ advise any way to use these things, they feel like bad heavy cav, ace at rolling through skirmisers but turn like a bus and as soon as they stop they die... rolling skirmishers is easy but normally there is a proper melee unit sitting behind it

Conclusions I have reached (probably wrong!)

Characters seem a bit samey - I thought they would have hard counters like S2 but my scout/spy at level 2 had 75% chance to kill a champion... I thought they were supposed to be the hard counter? If you have a decent shieldmaiden(champ) you can single combat ANYONE easily, character or army alike

Skirmishers - 2 points
1 - I am using them a lot like M2 Algahvars (spelling?) they chuck a rock run away - loop around the side and pummel the line, the dps is properly rubbish vs archers in S2/ ME2 they are more like an atrition unit, get them in position and they can grind down numbers and morale over time. Also the LOS stuff means that they are essential for scouting

2 - The barbs feel better with a higher ratio of skirmisher to infantry than I was running in the prologue rome armies, barbs have superior numbers so its easier to tie up the enemy units and skirmishers can do the extra damage needed to actually win

Small armies are essential
The AI will siege you with 2 unit armies from nowhere and it will ruin your day (yes, yes I lost towns to this) my solution was plopping a small 5-6 stack within 2 turns of any of my cities to counter them. Also the AI attacks anyway so you can use them to farm levels for your general/army

Do not expand cities too soon - expanding a city and having no cash means the space becomes slums and you have to pay 500 gold to destroy them to build anything useful

Barbarians can take over friends - have a friendly neighbour you need to kill - dont bother, offer confederacy and they join you free of charge - BOOM

Iceni
They are little blue scallywags and I treat them as such, mass numbers and a mass charge using reserves and skirmishers to get flank ranged dmg and charges

Tech - Army first civic second, you need spears and swords so you have to do that research asap

Things I suspect
Specialisation will be important - Like S2 you may need to destroy a farm so you can build the religious tree etc

Happiness will always end up -ive and with revolts early game - I keep an army back for AI chancy attacks and these guys take the revolt down = happy populous

THE END

Next mission - get to mid game, learn not to suck with chariots

Tomorrow I will be exploring the coop campaign with a buddy for 48 hours.... and trying desparately not to roll spartans because they were in 300!

The only question you have that I have thus far figured out is that happiness is additive and province-wide. Click on a city and mouse-over the happiness rating; a tooltip will appear that gives you the breakdown. You have a series of positive and negative modifiers. If your total is anything other than zero, that sum will be added to your overall province happiness rating every turn. So, a positive rating will climb higher and a negative rating will continue dropping. Most of the modifiers I've found have been from buildings, garrisoning armies in cities, and province edicts (have to own the entire province to issue these). In my first Rome campaign, the happiness in Italia dropped like a rock (big province wide hit the turn after conquering another city in it) but climbed back up. One region got hit by an earthquake. In addition to damaging every building in the city (which cost money and time to repair) it imposed a -10 happiness modifier for two turns; I had to garrison both my armies in other cities of Italia for those two turns as a counter.

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Originally Posted by Quillan

The only question you have that I have thus far figured out is that happiness is additive and province-wide. Click on a city and mouse-over the happiness rating; a tooltip will appear that gives you the breakdown. You have a series of positive and negative modifiers. If your total is anything other than zero, that sum will be added to your overall province happiness rating every turn. So, a positive rating will climb higher and a negative rating will continue dropping. Most of the modifiers I've found have been from buildings, garrisoning armies in cities, and province edicts (have to own the entire province to issue these). In my first Rome campaign, the happiness in Italia dropped like a rock (big province wide hit the turn after conquering another city in it) but climbed back up. One region got hit by an earthquake. In addition to damaging every building in the city (which cost money and time to repair) it imposed a -10 happiness modifier for two turns; I had to garrison both my armies in other cities of Italia for those two turns as a counter.

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Well if thats the case this province wide happiness sucks big time. It would mean that if you capture an enemy region in your province and loot their city, this will effect the overall happiness of your own city. Thats bad, really bad.

That is why within your main area, you only occupy the cities. Leave the sackings and the like for the far away ones.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tiaexz

That is why within your main area, you only occupy the cities. Leave the sackings and the like for the far away ones.

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Yea, why do wanna go around robbin' and rapin' the cousin of someone in your capitol? Save that stuff for the barbarian cities.

Oi - who are you callin a barbarian! this is an Iceni thread.

On my to do list - I think I have solved this, I knew you have province wide happiness
BUT

In my head what was happening was - I am +5, occupy neighbour and get -25 for 1-2 turns as a penalty then I should be +5 again - wtf I am still -5 a few turns on
In game what happens is I was rocking +5 including a region stability bonus of +? - then at occupation I get a temp penalty of -25 and a knock on of stability bonus of -? for ? turns.
I get revolts - put the revolt to the sword and the stability bonus +ive is back in swing and off we go

to do -
what is the ongoing negative impact and how long does it take to wear off?
does it just add when occupying multiple regions or compound?

which leads to -
When I go a conquering - how many turns do I need an army hanging around and getting tax penalties until I get the revolt and level things off
Should I keep building squalor buildings to get the revolt (and lack of tax income) out of the way?
What -ive happiness can I run during this flux period and be sure it will bounce back?

this is the kind of meta game I was looking for - way more complex than S2 where I would chuck an army in and convert religion and maybe stop taxes for a couple of seasons

The first Etruscan city I took gave me a -25 penalty for conquest that lasted one turn, and a -10 political instability penalty that reduced one point per turn. The second city was a -33 conquest penalty that lasted one turn, but nothing new happened to the instability penalty. The overall happiness came back pretty quickly once I enacted the "Bread and Games" edict on the province (it adds 4 food and 4 happiness per turn).

Interesting, TBH I felt like an idiot because the tooltip says -25 one turn and on instability it says -8 decreasing 1 per turn (DERP - its in the tip) - I just ran a test on hard difficulty and did discover a cool thing

1 - attack 1 city and occupy
-25 one per turn
then -8 that reduces once per turn

HOWEVER
I went on to take another city in the province while i was still at -4 on city one
- 25 one turn
and - 8 that reduces once per turn

so the -8 was capped at 8 i.e. if I took 2 cities at once I would get -8 in each rather than -16
result

That's why it's best to blitz a province. It puts you at -100, which spawns a rebellion with 4 units. Every turn, that rebellion adds 4 units but your happiness goes up by 20 since the malcontents are leaving for the rebellion. After 4 turns, you'll be at -20 with a 16-unit rebel stack. I just kill it afterwards and get a temporary happiness bonus for putting the rebellion down.