Casse Rocks! (and so do traits and ancillaries)

Ok, So I played for about 3 hours as the casse, and holy crap! Not once did I even meet another proper faction, but it was the hardest RTW game I'v ever played. I started off, realised I had too big an army but didnt want to disband anything, so I attacked that town to the north of my home town, took it but lost a lot of men and realised I didnt have enough troops to attack the town further north and I was in debt already. Realising I was in something of a pickle I marched south and attacked that town in devon (icatha maybe?) I had about a hundred men and they had about 200 but I took the town in a clever move where my chariots slipped through the gates and took the town centre while my other men distracted the enemy long enough for me to get a victory. From them on I had enough money to survive and eventualy expand into ynys mon and the midlands. It's slow going though and there were a few CTDs and stuff. Finally in 250 bc A CTD cropped up that happened every single turn I played and I had to abandon my game. Still, The awesomest mod ever by far :)

Anyway, One particular thing I have to mention is the traits and ancillaries, it just adds so much to the game when your generals have as much personality as they do in this game. as casse I started out with the old, wise, loyal but a lil pessimistic older general, and then the young, headstrong, charismatic impetuous king. THe old guy died during a seige however, but my king was alive and still going strong in his middle age when my permanent CTD happened.

I've also had son who clever but disloyal and lacked social skills, something about a dark temperament, but he was an awesome manager. I love all my little personalities, but I think you'd lose some of the closeness of it if you played a big faction like carthage or seleucia.

balancing seems pretty good too, no faction got annihalated through the game and most seemed to be doing pretty well. Even Koinnon Hellenon struggled on and took back corinth and so on.

One final thing is I see a lot of people complaining about the difficulty, but frankly I'v never had such fun. I'v only played one game, but somehow it managed to stay inside that 'sweet spot' that RTW had for about the first 5 turns, where every battle is life or death and every building is a massive cost, right through the 40-50 odd turns of my game. I know everyones different, but personally thats just the way I like it. I was worried that 'increased difficulty' was gonna mean huge hordes of enemy troops, but this is much better.

Yeah i like that it doesnt get the point where your indestructable and can just trample anyone in your way, no matter what your size.

Playing to 250 is pretty nice. It would be really nice if folks posted screenshots of their (revealed fog of war) campaign maps after 10 or 15 or 20 or 25 years. In the mod development we've had to restart campaigns so often with our constant changes and testing, that we rarely get very far in. It would be nice (especially for games where the human is the casse - fairlyisolated) to see how the rest of teh AI factions are developing in their expansion.

Thanks for the post GF19!

casse is the faction I'm playing, and I must say I enjoy the challenge.

The historically accurate generals are also a very good idea.

I assume that all factions have these historical characters right?

All the factions that we have any idea who may have been there. I'm sure more will be added later.

As for the Casse; they're potentially the most difficult faction. Little army, poor economy at the outset (but with great growth potential, Britain is very rich). Our guide really does give some good ideas for how to play them out. Economic growth in most cases should be the goal. Armies are best a temporary thing, maintaining only enough in peace time to garrison.

Yeah, these guys are a lot of fun to play. Unfortunately, I'm having a permanent CTD at around 20 turns in or so. The rebels sally, then CTD everytime. But the taste of the Casse thus far has been impressive. It'll be my first campaign once these fellas finish.

FYI EB modders:

I've played maybe 50 turns with the...shoot, can't remember their name. The Chinese area faction, and 15 or so with the Romani with no significant problems resulting in CTD. Some minor stuff, which I'm sure you all are dealing with.

The Casse final will have some nice stuff. Right now they have a number of placeholders. They'll be a lot more enjoyable later; the small number of provinces allows us to make each one-two provinces fairly unique in some way. There's not a province in Britain without some value, or, at least, there won't be. Once we get the CTDs ironed out, I'm sure they'll have one of the most rewarding campaigns, if only for the sheer difficulty of it; it's always rewarding to take a little trading power and turn it into an effective kingdom.

I played as Casse VH/VH for the fourth time... this time I waited for them (I read the guide) and managed to run them down with three family members of chariots on the flank even though I was vastly outnumbered. however the battle took me about fortyfive minutes. I think winning the first battle makes building up the city easy after that. but it seems to me like expanding will take hell of a lot of time due to lack of resources. challenging enough to keep the homeland clean from intruders. I'm planning getting a foothold in the town to the north, but they're probably too loaded. and unfortunately the archers really are uneffective alone, even though they seems to me like the unit I should mainly rely on if attacking before upgrading my military...

I would rather say that vanilla was way too easy than that eb is difficult. it's a whole new game, as everybody seems to be agreeing with me, and the most most impressive thing (or shock) has been gameplay.

just a question, is that familymember model (both for stratmap and battlemap) a placeholder?

If you experience a reproducable CTD, please test the "end turn" without the script reloaded. If you CTD without the script loaded, I am very very interested. If you do not CTD without loading the script, our scripting guys have to get involved.

However, we'll want the save game prior to the CTD regardless. Over at TWC they allow us to attach files to posts, Simetrical has a post up about this.

I decided to start playing as the Casse as well. One word.... fantastic. Battles are so much more enjoyable simply because I know that it can all go pear shaped very quicky. Much more of a challenge means more enjoyment and sense of achievment when it goes right. No CTD's yet either.
Happy days indeed.

I haven't played Casse yet, but I agree to the praise of traits and ancillaries. The winter campaigning is one of my favorite features, although in the first years I made the mistake of forgetting the winter restricted movement in making my plans.

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Originally Posted by LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix

I haven't played Casse yet, but I agree to the praise of traits and ancillaries. The winter campaigning is one of my favorite features, although in the first years I made the mistake of forgetting the winter restricted movement in making my plans.

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I love actually having to worry about winter now. :grin: But it's good to stop sometimes and break things up before a battle (since otherwise I'd wind up with poor morale due to long forced marches right before a battle).

i'm just wondering for my casse game (not much a risk taker and dont wanna get my city pwned cause of my small army but if i go an take the "native" town to the west will that fully stacked army north west of me come charging in and pwn me?

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Originally Posted by Rilder

i'm just wondering for my casse game (not much a risk taker and dont wanna get my city pwned cause of my small army but if i go an take the "native" town to the west will that fully stacked army north west of me come charging in and pwn me?

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They did when I tried to do that. It is best to wait awhile, disband most of your forces, and build up your city (pretty much what the guide says really).

The Casse start off with being at peace with the rebels in the beginning. UNless you want to brawl and get whupped right away, it is a good idea to just disband everything and build your economy a little. You'll notice that once you disband all but your FMs, you have a nice little profit machine running. Build a silo, market, and farms and by the time they are done, you can upgade with 6000 people. Then upgrade your barracks and you are ready to start the fun. It is a good idea to build a huge war chest before you start buying your army because you will want to amass as many men as possible before you start losing money. You will probably go into debt by the time you take your first city, so it is imperative that you have a big enough army to keep the momentum northward to carry the fight to ireland via the land bridge there.

I kept my army (minus the ship) around and it was a good thing, because by 269 BC the rebels seiged the capital. This was on H/M. I got them back, though, in the year 265 BC in a very hard fought, but victorious battle. They killed 83% of me, but I killed 79% of them, but more importantly their General. Battles are fun now.

*edit* And for the record I had not attacked them first.