Venting frustration at BI

OK, I get sick of playing the BI campaign on normal (I usually never play any game on anything other than normal as I feel that this is the way the game is intended to be played) as it is far too easy and boring, so I stick it on very hard.

Everything is going great, I am having a few problems with the ERE as the Sassanids but I am beating them and having fun using my cities as roman killing machines, watching their armies break off the walls like water on rocks etc. etc.

I take Campus Alanni and I see that the loyalty is down to 10% because of religious differences. I build a temple but since the settlement is small I can't go beyond a "small" temple....so next turn the settlement revolts. Fair enough.

Except that the revolt consists of around 10 units of double gold chevron horse archers. OK, I think, I have lots of missile troops that should be able to outrange them, and Clibinarii and immortals and countless light cavalry that can deal with them. I choose to fight them and the battle loads up

MY CLIBINARII IMMORTALS ARE GETTING SLAUGHTERED IN MELEE BY THESE HORSE ARCHERS! I can't kill them with arrows because they gimped the archery so much from vanilla to BI, and they are charging my immortals and slaughtering them! They have something like 25 defense, 17 melee attack and I didn't even check what missile attack. Basically it takes 4 units of Sughdians to break one unit of these unrealistic steroid-pumped uber units and that meant losing 85% of the Sughdians! I quit in disgust....I understand that very hard should mean very hard but I am an experienced RTWer, not to mention MTWer and STWer and there is just no way that is "gameplay". My army completely disappears. However I have another almost full stack almost a full turn's movement away to the North.

I can take one defeat, so I think OK, I will flee if they try to attack and take out that other little town to the North and think about how to deal with this. Next turn the uber rebels attack me again, and I have the option to withdraw, but get this, MY ARMY COMPLETELY DISAPPEARS! Where did it go? I had full movement points! I just lost the entire army. After that I quit in disgust.

We are talking about a settlement that contained less than 1000 inhabitants, the army of which had just been destroyed by me. In 6 months they somehow managed to train all these units to 8 experience (at least I should be extended the same ability, don't you think?) and gather troops that almost rival the population of the province's capital city? Ridiculous

So the choice is either far too easy on normal/hard or ridiculously unrealistically impossible revolts on very hard. I know exactly the type of responses I will get from the macho men players who play on VH while chewing lightbulbs and punching themselves in the face, but come on, where is the fun in this or the realism?

The problems you describe are preventable.

Things you can get away with on M/M, you can't get away with on H/H and VH/VH.

OK, so with a full stack as garrison in a town with around 1000 inhabitants it's perfectly reasonable that this town is going to revolt producing an army (with many years of experience....where were they when the town was being attacked by my army 6 months ago?) almost the same size as the total population of the province's capital settlement, men women and children apparently included? I didn't know babies could master horseback archery and beat the crap out of Clibinarii immortals!

How exactly do you prevent this from happening on taking aforementioned settlement? I was Zoroastrian, it was pagan, loyalty was 0% with a full stack at almost 100% strength as garrison, small temple was built right away, can't remember leader v/v but there were none that affected public order, etc. What's your advice?

I can't stand that gamey arcade crap. It really stinks that the only choice I have is a walkover or challenge via unrealistic AI stat bonuses ala 1980s games. I would be really, really glad (and I suppose I secretly hoped) that the AI would improve on harder settings, but no.

Oh, well, this one is going back on the shelf. Hopefully the next one is more than a flimsy graphics-fest for the ADHD crowd like this one turned out to be.

you can prevent them , the HA I mean, by destroying the stables before it revolts, if you had done that, you would have ended up with a full stack of fully experienced peasants.

:balloon2:

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Originally Posted by Dutch_guy

you can prevent them , the HA I mean, by destroying the stables before it revolts, if you had done that, you would have ended up with a full stack of fully experienced peasants.

:balloon2:

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Hmmm good point. I wish I could type a reply without dodging "AOL unlimited broadband" popups though.

Thanks for the advice.

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Originally Posted by GFX707

the crap out of Clibinarii immortals!

How exactly do you prevent this from happening on taking aforementioned settlement? I was Zoroastrian, it was pagan, loyalty was 0% with a full stack at almost 100% strength as garrison, small temple was built right away, can't remember leader v/v but there were none that affected public order, etc. What's your advice?

.

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well , if the city has been pagan since the beginning of the vcampaign, then it's 100 % pagan.
So meaning that even of you -as you did - built a temple right away, it is still 100 % pagan, convertion takes time, and you convert the city with temples and governors, and agents.
Depending on the bonus they each give, religious wise, it can take a long time, or no time at all.

To make it the shortest time, without getting kicked out of the city, you should slaughter everyone in the ciy- aftert the conquest, then nock down their temple immediatly, and then set taxes to low, and build peasants.
Stilll after the initial conquest, the city will be probably still be at 0 % happyness, but it will rise with about 20 % with each turn, depending on you religious traits, buildings in the city , or province.

:balloon2:

The golden peasants are still badass melee units that can wipe the floor with your elite infantry, but even with gold chevrons they are slow moving and quickly exhausted. Use an all horse archer army to beat them in a field battle. They don't have shields so they are vulnerable to missile fire, although their insane defense skill means that you might run out of arrows. If that happens, move your units near the red border and use the white flag button to make them retreat. Then attack them again the next turn to finish them off.

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I wish I could type a reply without dodging "AOL unlimited broadband" popups though

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I feel your pain, they've turned up on my pc too now...

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The golden peasants are still badass melee units that can wipe the floor with your elite infantry, but even with gold chevrons they are slow moving and quickly exhausted. Use an all horse archer army to beat them in a field battle. They don't have shields so they are vulnerable to missile fire, although their insane defense skill means that you might run out of arrows. If that happens, move your units near the red border and use the white flag button to make them retreat. Then attack them again the next turn to finish them off.

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@Conqueror:

yes you can use an all HA army to beat them, though I always like to train my infantry on them, makes the battle more fun imho.

:balloon2:

Hello, sorry for disturbing, but what is the meaning of IMHO???? ~:confused:


Thanks for helping

Abdel Hak

In My Honest (or Humble) Opinion

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Originally Posted by GFX707

OK, so with a full stack as garrison in a town with around 1000 inhabitants it's perfectly reasonable that this town is going to revolt producing an army (with many years of experience....where were they when the town was being attacked by my army 6 months ago?) almost the same size as the total population of the province's capital settlement, men women and children apparently included? I didn't know babies could master horseback archery and beat the crap out of Clibinarii immortals!

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Leaving aside whether it's reasonable, it is what happens when there's a revolt. I'm sure it was done that deliberately to make it worth putting in some effort to avoid revolts, and to limit the viability of the leave-exterminate-leave-exterminate for cash exploit.

Most importantly, maintaining order in a 1000 pop town is really easy.

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Most importantly, maintaining order in a 1000 pop town is really easy.

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well right after the conquest this is not always the case.

Especially when the religion differs from your own, and your governor also has a different religion than the locals.
Knocking down the foreign god's temple, will not make the populace happy - and leaving it will get you culture penalties which make you wish you'd knocked down the temple in the first place - this is , as you might now by now , as tricky situation, which can work just as good as it can go bad.

So there never really is a garantee for a revolt free city , when it has a foreign deity, religion, culture,far from capital, and is a know hot-spot ( ie Jerusalem )
This doesn't of course mean every city isn't to be held on to, in hte first stage of occupation , sometimes - well most of the times actually - it works fine, and if there is low happiness it doesn't stay long.

:balloon2:

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Originally Posted by Dutch_guy

well right after the conquest this is not always the case.

Especially when the religion differs from your own, and your governor also has a different religion than the locals.
Knocking down the foreign god's temple, will not make the populace happy - and leaving it will get you culture penalties which make you wish you'd knocked down the temple in the first place - this is , as you might now by now , as tricky situation, which can work just as good as it can go bad.

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OK, a few things:

- Knocking down the temple is an option. Don't do it if you can't afford the unrest points. It will save you virtually no culture unrest (maybe 5%, there's little point even messing with culture until you can rebuild the governor's building), may cost you another 5% for having the wrong governor (you can have him step out of the city to avoid this as well. It will cost you about 100% unrest if you knock it down. Perhaps more if its a big temple that provides lots of law or happiness as well as religious contentment.

- There are other things you can do: bring a decent governor, bring a big garrison, bring a general who is a pagan if you have one, set taxes very low. If you can't hold a city with what you have brought, consider waiting to take it until you can.

- You can leave up/repair all sorts of other happiness buildings.

I suggest you set taxes to very low and see if you can afford to knock down the temple before doing it. If not, try to get some conversion going, or at least wait until the takeover unrest dies down.

well as you rightfully said knocking down the temple, how good it may be , is an option.

Though I always knock it down immediatly - I find this works best in the long run.

And taxes are then also set to low when the temple is destroyed, minimizing the damage form disloyalty.

:balloon2:

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Originally Posted by Dutch_guy

Though I always knock it down immediatly - I find this works best in the long run.

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In the long run, knocking down the temple immediately and waiting a few turns to do it work out about the same.

In the short run, waiting can often save you some headaches.

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Originally Posted by Dutch_guy

well as you rightfully said knocking down the temple, how good it may be , is an option.

Though I always knock it down immediatly - I find this works best in the long run.

And taxes are then also set to low when the temple is destroyed, minimizing the damage form disloyalty.

:balloon2:

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If the siege has been quick (meaning that the family members and agents in the besieging stack have not started to convert the population much yet) then I leave the temple for a few turns until the other happiness-producing structures are repaired and I have built a few garrison units (if I have had time to plan my attack, I normally have a second stack of garrison troops as a "reserve column" who can occupy the conquered city while the "field force" stack moves on to attack something else).

Two, or three, turns after conquest its normally safe enough to knock down unwanted temples and build proper places of worship.

I agree with your actual complaint, I cant stand gimmicky settings that make a game 'hard' by just giving the comp bonuses. And you also get handicapped on this games very hard. I would prefer a harder oponent because it is a better strategist, has more options to choose from, is more competent, has actual skills not buffs etc.

I would prefer the bonuses to morale etc should be options you can tick on and off and the actual normal, hard, v.hard would affect the competency of your opponent.

Yes, the revolt garrison is completely absurd and the rate their golden 'basic' units will tear through your elite, mixed army is just frustrating, not fun.

However, if you knew it was pagan before you attacked and just expected to win the settlement over by running around with an army and demolishing buildings then it sounds like you have failed to grasp the game mechanics introduced in BI. Other posts have mentioned using suitable pagan governors but unless you bribed or let a marriage to pagan I doubt you have one. Send in alot of agents to affect the religion, both into the town and the region. Neighbouring regions will also affect them. Find out if you have a particularly strong religously biased general to use in the same way. Use all this to affect conversion before you even get there and you just have to 'liberate' them.
If you didnt know it was so adamantly pagen before you took it then yeah, that sucks, maybe use some recon and the advice above.

Oh and the dissappearing armies come back! It helps if they are on-route somewhere and still have a move or two to go before they get there.

dont destroy the temple imediatly ...just put a governer in it and wait a few turns till your religion is strong enough that a temple will actually make the town happier,,,,way better.

The army stack can vanish due to not having anywhere to run to, I lost a full stack in Iberia doing the same thing once.

Another option for religion is to move in a diplomat or spy with a religious trait, keep then in/near the city for some time prior to attacking.

You can use multiple family members in the same province to speed the conversion. They should all do at least 5%. In my last roman game I had one "preacher" family member who had a staggering amount of christian conversion. So I loaded him up with some holy relics and used him to take Pagan cities. Within a turn or two he had them converted enough to Christian that I could build a church.

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Originally Posted by LordKhaine

You can use multiple family members in the same province to speed the conversion. They should all do at least 5%. In my last roman game I had one "preacher" family member who had a staggering amount of christian conversion. So I loaded him up with some holy relics and used him to take Pagan cities. Within a turn or two he had them converted enough to Christian that I could build a church.

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Praise the Lord! ~D

Seems like every movie I have seen or book that I have read where the cavalry/heroes/seven samurai etc arrive to save the tiny town from the evil army... except this time you ain't fielding the heroes you are the mexican bandits against the magnifcent seven. ~:cheers:

You got Yojimboed :bow:

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Originally Posted by LordKhaine

You can use multiple family members in the same province to speed the conversion. They should all do at least 5%. In my last roman game I had one "preacher" family member who had a staggering amount of christian conversion. So I loaded him up with some holy relics and used him to take Pagan cities. Within a turn or two he had them converted enough to Christian that I could build a church.

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Out of interest, how long does it take before devastation starts to occur?

I avoided that ploy because I figured it would wreck the economy...

Also does the conversion still progress while you are laying siege?

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Originally Posted by Prodigal

Also does the conversion still progress while you are laying siege?

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Yep. I took a city with a Sassanid all-cavalry stack (starved it out) and when I took the place it was already quite heavily Zoroastrian. The combination of neighbouring provinces and my two family members (with piety virtues and some religious ancillaries) seemed to be pretty effective.

Not something I reccommend though, unless you like taking it slow, or can't be bothered waiting for your siege train stack. :)

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Originally Posted by Prodigal

Out of interest, how long does it take before devastation starts to occur?

I avoided that ploy because I figured it would wreck the economy...

Also does the conversion still progress while you are laying siege?

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that never worked well with RTR does it work correctly now...i never had sudden fire poppin up...though i did once burned city to ashes...that was cool

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Originally Posted by Prodigal

Out of interest, how long does it take before devastation starts to occur?

I avoided that ploy because I figured it would wreck the economy...

Also does the conversion still progress while you are laying siege?

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I think it take s 2 turns for attrition to occur.

:balloon2:

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Originally Posted by GFX707

Hmmm good point. I wish I could type a reply without dodging "AOL unlimited broadband" popups though.

Thanks for the advice.

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Get Firefox dude. IE sucks.

It's not IE's fault, I'm using IE and I don't get any of these pop ups, it's probably something else.

back to the topic though...

Well those pop-ups stopped now.

IE doesn't particularly suck, it's just popular. If firefox was as popular all the exploits would be written for firefox.

Ummm....also, to get back on topic....the original thing never re-occurred in my Sassanid campaign....must have just been a freak occurrance with that particular town....