BI - when does anything happen?!

I decided to give BI another bash, since I'd not really played it much, and I'd heard the map was more dynamic than in RTW. I took the ERE, VH\M, and I've destroyed the (reasonably aggressive but hopelessly out-produced and out-matched) Sassanids.

It's 374 AD, and I'm occasionally using toggle_fow to see how everyone's doing, since I'm interested in how the western part of the map changes. Hmm.

The supposedly shaky WRE is phenomenally strong, with Lepcis Magna and Aquincum having gone to the West Roman Rebels. The WRE swiftly re-took Lepcis Magna.

The Saxons have failed to siege Campus Frisii twice - the Franks have it now. The Burgundii and Lombardii have taken a couple of rebel provinces. The Alemanni took two provinces and lost their capital to the WRE. The Berbers have done nothing.

The Celts have 1 1/2 stacks outside Dal Raida, and England is all but undefended, yet they refuse to make a move against their enemies! The Huns ignored the Roxolani (fair enough), sieged the Sarmatians, lifted the siege and moved south (why lift?). I'm defending the way to Constantinople with 2 forts and tough armies in each, and Sirmium also has a good garrison. The Huns decided not to attack, but mill around doing nothing. They've been doing this for a good few turns.

The Vandals sacked one of the Goths' two towns, and then moved back to the Sarmatians. Since then, they've been sieging the town one turn, lifting the siege the next, then sieging, then lifting... uh, what!?

Basically, nothing's happening except my destruction of the Sassanids. Only the starting two horde armies, who're almost frozen with indecision, are in a Horde, and the WRE's not exactly looking frail.

Oh, and no wars or ceasefires other than the starting ones have been declared, except for the Vandals and Huns warning me, before being too petrified to do anything.

Sorry for the long post, but is it always this static? I dearly miss MTW's fantastic campaign map fluidity - nothing was ever the same twice, and sometimes really crazy things happened, but something always happened.

Am I missing something here?

That does sound odd but if you are just in 374, you've only had about 22 turns (you do move fast, poor Sassanids :sweatdrop:). ERE is a pretty "safe" faction - they did survive for about another 1100 years afterall. I think the hordes are a bit erratic - sometimes they start off a chain reaction, hording other factions (usually the Sarmatians & Goths at least).

The hordes can mill around though - they don't immediately go to war. You've probably had messages that the horde has arrive in your lands & you don't have to respond to that by attacking them. They are lousy at sieges (their infantry is weak and they don't build enough siege engines); I'd almost be tempted to say autoresolve very unequal sieges to avoid cheesy defences. Maybe you've deterred the Huns by being so powerful and by strongly defending the settlements they can see?

The WRE is often surprisingly tough in AI hands - I guess the gold bonus on VH campaigns helps the AI.

Here's an ERE PBM for comparison:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=55882

To be honest, I am not sure I would spend a lot of time with vanilla BI. Maybe try the WRE and stick to some houserules like we did here:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=60188

with the following result:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=60372

But although I like vanilla BI well enough, there are mods that improve it greatly. The one I really rate right now is Goth's All Factions mod. It beefs up the hordes and plonks the Vandals right next to the WRE. It also gives the game a great graphical makeover and brings the combat to almost EB/RTR standards (higher morale, lower kill speeds, lower move speed IIRC).

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=41879

Another one that sounds like it makes the game harder for Rome (by fast-forwarding a few years[1]) is IBFD, but currently the WRE campaign in that is crippled by a CTD.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=113

[1]Some people have recommended that as a way of making total war harder - do nothing for 5 years and let the AI build.

Thanks - I'll have a look at the All Factions mod.