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Maybe it's just my luck, but in all the games I played all A.I. controlled Hellenic factions always seem to fall one after the other to an onslaught of Brutii, Parthians, Pontics and Egyptians. Usually, not a single A.I. controlled Hellenic faction makes it past 200 BC. Are these just my games or are Hellenistic factions universally underpowered in strategic combat?
The Brutii are he problem there, i think. Keeping in mind that Rome actually conquered Greece, along with the rest of the whole Mediterranean sea, it is not a surprise that the Brutii will eventually beat the Greek in the game. Even if they dont, they will sooner or later weaken Greece to the point when their other belligerant neighbours will start to chip at them more agressively. Its nothing new, actually. Even back in M:TW, if left unmolested, the Almohads would mop the floor with their opposition. So is with the Egyptians. It is really a matter of numbers with the AI factions: more cash-more power. Just for fun, in my current campaigh i pumped the Seleucid with milions of denarii, and, oh boy do they rock now! They are sporting those full stacks around and giving hell to the Egyptians, which is a miracle itself, considering the AI general dumbness.
What i dont understand, is why the heck some former strong factions, like the Egyptians for example here, still keep year after year their hostility with some unimportant little factions. It would be best for them to wage war on their strongest enemies, and leave be the insignificant ones, rather to waste time, money and troops on those backwater little provinces. Mah.
Bottom line: vs Brutii, Macedons, Pontus, Thrace and the oh-my Egyptians, the poor Greeks have very little chance to get somewhere. In one of my campaigns, with a tiny bit of help from me, the Greeks actually managed to keep most of their homeland for quite long, and moreover, managed to conquer almost all Pontus/Armenia lands along with some Seleucid provinces. but, in doing so, i neglected the Egyptians. The moment my Greeks buddies declared war on Egypt, the fun was over and their full stacks of hoplites slowly melted down in the hot desert sand :(
Y.
Hi rvg,
The Seleucid Empire, unfortunately, generally has the tendency to fall to the big yellow monster of Egypt. This is due to a combination of AI programming and the location of their armies. The AI seems to go for the nearest rebel settlement to it's largest forced army first. Sadly this does not in-cooperate mountain ranges, lack of river crossings or anything similar to that in their choices and, sadly for them, there is a mountain range preventing them from reaching the settlement. So, by the time they get their troops over to the settlement in question, another faction has taken in leaving them with an army a good distance away that they need to get back if they wish to defend. This leaves them vulnerable and allows the cursed Egyptians to take advantage and tear their faction to pieces. This can be fixed by moving the Selucid starting army in the descr_stat file, yet I'm not too sure how to do so - my humble mind cannot understand the complicated R:TW textfile - so you will have to request information from the modders in the modding forums first.
The might of The Greek Cities (in Greece and Scilly) generally seems to fall quite often due to their Brutii and Macedonian friends. It is engineered from the start that the Romans will often always survive at the end of the game through their superior post-marian infantry and their wealth - I have only seen the Roman factions destroyed once as the Scipii on VH/M. As for elsewhere, around Pergamon, the Greek Cities can often get rich against Pontus and they often end up in dead-lock - neither side moving for quite a while, however, eventually one side wins a decisive battle and takes over Turkey. Unfortunately that always ends quickly as, whichever faction takes over, Egypt has the man power and the chariots to beat (in auto-resolve chariots are greatly overpowered and the AI uses that to calculate who wins AI vs AI battles).
Macedon generally has a quite good chance. Their cities are wealthy, the Greek City Phalanxes are pretty humble compared to theirs - even in auto-resolve, and the (semi-)barbarians of the North, such as the Thracians and Dacians pose no threat against their brilliant early game military might. This enables them to remove the Northern and Souther enemies quickly and, due to the nature of early Brutii missions, create a common alliance between them preventing war. However, once the Greek Cities are gone, the Brutii decide against their alliance with the Macedonians and attack them with strong, and one could say overpowered, post-Marian infantry.
As for Thrace they just fall under a mix of Sythian cavalry invasions, Dacian attacks and lack of any good money. Also, early on, they always seem to be beaten, by the Macedonians, to their only chance of monetary gains at Byzantium. However, on the rare occasion they do beat the Macedonians too it, there still is a large chance that they will fall under enemy invasion.
Hope this helps you, good luck, cheers!