macedone direction of expansion

Im sure this has been discussed here before, but I couldnt find it for the recent version so I think it might be worth a thread.

In most mods Ive played Macedone tends to expand northwards and when they get a go theres nothing that can stop them except the human player - and he has a tidy job.

What I would like to see is:
macedone expansion in Asia Minor, to some extent in Illyria and Trace, but surely not to the North Sea. If the Macedone AI doesnt expand at all - I wouldnt complain about it.

I notice there is a land bridge at the hellespont, probably to encourage the AI to take such a direction. I also play with BI.exe. Still Macedone expands as if they want to see some manchester derby.

In TFT the roman faction gets extreme maluses fighting in winter, I think -7 Moral or something in that direction. It would make sense that the civlized factions (hellenistic, roman, carthage) get such penalties when fighting in snow and woods. I know that the barbarian factions has bonuses, but they are in my opinion not big enough. In a flat landscape the barbarion factions are lost against a phalanx or a roman legion. But in the woods they should really be hard to beat. Perhaps this could give us a macedone expansion nearer to their real political interests, which surely were in the hellenistic world and not i some german village.

Surley there must have been snow in highland regions of "Rome" and the "Greek" states? I mean, just as the summer was hot in the "barbaric" part of the world, the winter surly was cold in the civilized part.

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Originally Posted by DXL

Surley there must have been snow in highland regions of "Rome" and the "Greek" states? I mean, just as the summer was hot in the "barbaric" part of the world, the winter surly was cold in the civilized part.

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Well it was colder in Germany than in Greece. Also it was generally warmer in the Antique than today (still).

Of course there were woods in Southern Europe too. But this wasnt their preferred form of warfare, thats my point.

What I suggest is not necessarily a good idea. But Im so tired of playing rome, tryin to play a historical campaign and ALWAYS - in all mods ive played - some greek faction takes out the barbarian factions 200 years before I plan to get there. Well, if were talkin bout realism - that IS unrealistic. Remember Tacitus who pointed out that these regions were so poor and cold that they werent really worth conquering.

Actually it would be more realistic if some barbarian horde - like the galatians were - would take out some of those greek states.

EDIT: I just got another idea. Macedone has very good units, although they were over the top in 272 thats ok. They had still a high reputation until Pella. Mainly its a money thing too. After they get rich they just steamroll. We see this with other factions like Ptolemais, AS and Baktria too.

Theres a script givin AI money if they need it. What about a script TAKING money if they get too much? In my last game baktria, ptolamis, carthage and macedone had all about 1 million denari 220. And they began to take out the other factions. Of course if you play as rome you can go and destroy their mines, block their ports and so on. But I dont think thats really what most players are up too. If you can give them money, cant you then just take it back per script?

Most "barbarian" units already get combat bonus in snow, so I don't think there's a need for combat penalties (although I don't know if those even matter in auto-resolve battles). Some money balance script would be nice, it might fix the problem in the long run.

I think the solution could be found in unrest to restrict or slow down expansion, if only the AI wouldn't change their capitals...

If they would add cultures (from BI) it would help too, but then they must come up with a very stable solution to that revolt CTD.

Well in many of my campaigns the Macedons gott wiped out. So I dont see ur problem??

They have some solution for the revolt CTD in .81, and if that fails there's always the backup plan that MarcusAureliusAntoninus and Cheexsta came up with.
The EB team most likely will not convert the mod to BI, but if there's an unselfish soul of a guru somewhere around who'd be willing to work on EB Platinium Edition...

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Originally Posted by Birka Viking

Well in many of my campagnes the Macedons gott wiped out. So I dont see ur problem??

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The problem is when a faction gets too strong it steamrolls everything in it's way. The main problem of course is AI. When Seleukids get whipped by Ptolemaics and Baktrians, instead of defending their territory Seleukids sometimes start expanding north and south, while basically abandoning their western and eastern provinces allowing themselves to be steamrolled.

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Originally Posted by Birka Viking

Well in many of my campaigns the Macedons gott wiped out. So I dont see ur problem??

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His problem is probably stuff like this:

https://img138.imageshack.us/img138/6761/230bczl3.jpg

I dont have a more up-to date picture, but you can imagine what Macedon empire looked like if you know that after this Macedon only captured all the provinces of Sweboz, Sauromatae and the Eleutheroi provinces in the north.

I just love the Macedonian baltic sea expedition. You can find a hint of sarcasm in the last sentence.

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Originally Posted by Oleo

His problem is probably stuff like this:

https://img138.imageshack.us/img138/6761/230bczl3.jpg

I dont have a more up-to date picture, but you can imagine what Macedon empire looked like if you know that after this Macedon only captured all the provinces of Sweboz, Sauromatae and the Eleutheroi provinces in the north.

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Well that kind of Macedone expansion have I only seen in one of my many campaigns.~:cheers:

The money taking away script sounds interesting, since money is the main cause of factions steam rolling eachover. Thus if a certain amount of money was reached (500,000 or something) then they would stop getting profis.

Someone once told me that in 1.5 you can choose what direction the faction will prefer to expand in. I dunno if its true or if its been incoporated into EB.. Is it?

I have a question related to this. How does the money script work? I understand how the first one works (the one that only works for small, poor countries in the first few turns), but how does the general one work? There is just a single entry for each faction (giving 1200), but they get it many times. How is it determined how many times to give it? Is it based on number of provinces, because that seems backwards? Maybe turn it off for factions with more than 10 provinces. (Or completely off for the Big Three.)

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Originally Posted by Lovejoy

Someone once told me that in 1.5 you can choose what direction the faction will prefer to expand in. I dunno if its true or if its been incoporated into EB.. Is it?

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You can achieve that by placing their spies on the settlements which you want them to conquer.

If a faction doesn`t know that a settlement exist, then there`s less probability that they will conquer it...