About AI unit recruitment\upkeep

On my Julii campaign, things are now in a position where I'm getting ready for the final slog. All I need to do now is eliminate the Brutii- this would give me enough provinces to finish the campaign, as well as eliminate my only worthy rival.

The Brutii had an excessive number of troops, perhaps around 15 full stacks. He only has about 12 territories, though. I thought perhaps sea trade was the answer, and I am now in the process of blockading all his ports (done half of them now).

I was just wondering- the Brutii occupy all of Greece and the surrounding areas. Is the income from just taxes enough to support such huge forces? Will the blockading make a difference over time? I have at this stage destroyed about 5 stacks, which made a noticable difference in his overall amount. But I can see now that he's quickly regaining his forces.

When thier rich take thier cities and avoid thier armies to bleed them dry. Although from my experience a sudden war usually crashes the A.I.'s economy, when suddenly they went from no blockades to fully blockaded.

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Originally Posted by Oaty

When thier rich take thier cities and avoid thier armies to bleed them dry.

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Problem is that I can't really avoid their armies. They keep trying to invade my territories. The one stack that destroyed 5 of his so far was sent into his territory in response to this.

Two-pronged strategy.

Defend against their full stack incursions, and attack their cities with expeditionary forces, if possible on the same turn. Use spies and onagers, autoresolve if you have to.

Its the best way to kill their economy.

Okay, I'll do that. But I'm still in for a really long campaign. I don't have a huge army, but am building up as fast as possible at the moment. Thankfully, money isn't an issue (I have considerably more than 1,000,000 denarii).

Then bribe several of those stacks and make them fight for you. What are you going to do with all that money, anyway?

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Originally Posted by gardibolt

Then bribe several of those stacks and make them fight for you. What are you going to do with all that money, anyway?

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Money equals power! :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by gardibolt

Then bribe several of those stacks and make them fight for you.

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Haha, I forgot that you could do that. I could probably bribe a good portion of his force.

Bribing made unpatched vanilla RTW soooo easy....won the civil war with Senate and Scipii without breaking a sweat...they where losing armies and cities before they could scream "Corruption!"

At higher campaign difficulties, its hard to make a dent in the AI's finances, maybe even pointless since I keep hearing about 20 full stacks coming out of the blue at VH.

I prefer not to bribe at all and do not take advantage of the many hacky tricks and play at lower difficulty settings where hurting the AIs economy works.

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Originally Posted by orangat

At higher campaign difficulties, its hard to make a dent in the AI's finances, maybe even pointless since I keep hearing about 20 full stacks coming out of the blue at VH..

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Yep the AI cheats.
Last campaign with the Juli's (vh/h), I had the Brits crushed to two small towns.
Sieging one and sabotaging the other with my assasins.

They had 1 governor and 2 warbands stationed there.
every turn I destroyed everything from trade to military buildings.
Then a couple of turns later they had gained 2 chariot units! :inquisitive:

I think the same might have happened on my campaign, and it's on e/e.
All of the Brutii's cities were under siege, except for 2. I had my assassins destroy the barracks in both, yet they still somehow managed to recruit 2 legionary cohorts.

If anyone's interested, I have since destroyed the Brutii army (on the end of one turn, he sent 3 full stacks to attack my army, all were destroyed). I bribed the remenents of his forces and am now taking his cities. At present, I have about half, and all the others are under siege.