Living with the Yellow Death (Ptolemies)

As we all know, the AI Ptolemies faction is unbalanced at the moment in EB 1.0 due to a couple of their units being near-invincible in auto-calc battles, and they take over the eastern half of the world unless the human player stops them.

I was wondering how other people are managing to live with this.

For myself, for long campaigns, I've resorted to playing factions who almost never have to fight the Ptolemies throughout the campaign - the northern and western barbarian factions like the Casse, Aedui, Arveni, Sweboz and Lusotanns.

And usually, these barbarian factions are fighting enemies who themselves aren't too greatly affected by the Ptolemies, so I'm not fighting enemies who the Ptolemies have 'unrealistically' over-weakened.

Or I'll play short campaigns with the other factions (except for the Seleucids) that end once the Ptolemies start taking over.

What do you do?

I accept the inevitable, and go from there.

If I can't accept the inevitable, I destroy the inevitable.

the first time it was funny, i remember in a KH campaign EB0.74, i destroyed the Ptolemaics, but a second time it become boring, so a Chartaginian campaign in 0.81 and another in 1.0, just ended as Ptolems started to send stack after stack of armies.

The Ptolemies or any faction which become to dominant, in the interest of variety and fairplay in my campaigns, recieve a military/skulldugery rebuke.

In my present Rome campaign I am giving the Seleukids their cities back, and holding off the Ptolemies armies at Jerusalem, in an attempt to redress the balance somewhat.

Well if you play with the Seleucids or Carthage you can keep them at bay. You just have to try to stop them before they become unstopable.
When i play with the Seleucid i Conquer all of their provinces in Asia Minor and the Levant, keep a strong army near Jerusalem, to fight any possible invasion.
If i play with Carthage i conquer cyrene and give it to KH to whom the Ptolies are allied. It helps to create such a buffer state.
But if you play with Pontus or Hayasdan you pretty much can't stop them from attacking you relentesly:whip:

If Carthage goes to war with the Ptolemies, the latter will eventually be crushed, even if they've got as far as Seleukia.

At least that's what happened in one of my campaigns.

If I'm not the AS then I'll sometimes create_unit decent armies in Seleukid cities, I know it's cheating but sending armies over simply to give back land to those that lost it gets tiring

I play as the Casse in my 1.x campaign (well it's the internal version). Let's just say apart from the fact that I like the plotting and grand-joint-alliances against the Ptolemies on the one hand, and on the other don't care too much: I've got my hands full of the Aedui atm, after finally having locked the Sweboz.

Let's just say my domestic affairs are complicated enough without having to worry about the Ptolemies, and in fact I kinda like to see how the AI manages to cope. Yes, it manages to cope ! Albeit, barely because the Ptolemies can afford not to trade with anyone, since they've got an massive internal sea-trade network.

In my current campaign as the Arverni, the Seleukids crushed the Ptolemies early, and owns the east while they've also invaded Makedonia and taken Pella. They're a true monster.

And no, in case you're wondering, the Carthies never went to war with them (the Ptolemaioi, I mean). They're more interested in knocking my head off, even though we've never shared any border, were allies and both at war with the Romani. :no:

I don't object to the map being one half red one half yellow :beam:

The Yellow Death is indeed very much like the Black Death.
It has a high percentage of killing you very painfully, and even if you do survive you will not do so without pain and possible amputation of arms or citys.

I noticed that they dominated in my last campaign, but in my current campaign they're kinda average, to be honest.

hmm amputating a city..

Well, in my campaign too they where doing a great job in taking over from the Selucids. Allied with Pontos, Hayasdan and the Poeni, they invaded Asia Minor, but failed to take Pergamon after at least 3 sieges. Pontos have three provinces, while the Hay are doing well too. So the Senate decides to intervene, by sending spies. Mazaka has erupted in open revolt, but for now the AI manged to control the population, but Halicarnasus? revolted to KH. So did Byzantium after being captured by Pontos. The KH are doing well too, but cant take Pella, and Epiros, a client kingdom of Rome keeps the balance in Greece.

For now the campaign is becoming more interesting than v.82.

Cheers.

Titus,

playing a Saba campaign here on VH/M, and the Ptolies were a nightmare primarily due to those Galatian swordsmen... so I went to the EDU and changed them from 'highly trained' to 'trained' and now they are just good shock troops, not supermen......

seems to have adjusted the game balance for the better.


cheers,


Pobs

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Originally Posted by Tom0

hmm amputating a city..

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Well, I meant like in gifting it to say the Seleukids to use it as a buffer.
Though that might just make the matter worse and bring the Grey Death on you as well.

Well, I've only been playing one single campaign on EB, as Epirotes. How I was able to deal with them? Classical battles until I took Tarsos, coming from the west. There's a funny thing with Tarsos. When the settlement is besieged by an army coming from the east, and you try to sally out, the ennemy always moves to the left and in the process comes close to the walls.

Garrison with one general, six horse archers from Kallatis (did someone notice how much this settlement is useful to an Hellene with type IV gov, scythian riders, bosphoran heavy archers and scythian archers) and thirteen (!) scythian archers.

Sally out, archers on the walls and horse archers rushing out of the gates. And watch the Yellow's death.

That was turn one... Since I had my first army standing close I brought it to the easternmost bridge in the province. There is a ford on the left flank. Let the Yellow army engage your phallanx that is holding the bridge, then run your archers, assault infantery and heavy cav on the east bank using the ford. Be cautious, emptying your quivers should be enough to rout an entire army. Mop up the remains who dumbly try to flee through your phallanx.

Gain an heroic victory and retreat to recomplete your troops, waiting for the next Yellow army to besiege Tarsos.


Cheating you say:furious3: ! IA cheats, I use my ennemy's weapons.

Anyway, within erh... Thirty turns you'll be able to field a fantastic army lead by a legendary general, almost all bearing gold chevrons. Ship it to the Nile valley.

Done.:clown:

PS: currently playing a Parthian campaign... The Ptollies are going to be some other kind of business when I meet them...

Well to be quite honest I didn't have a problem with defending a ford either when the Sweboz decided to backstab me and launch an assault on my 'empire'. The boy scouts were quickly dealt with, and hence the weakly garrisoned settlements of their trading backbone were conquered quickly to.


But then they decided that really all they wanted was to launch a full-scale migration with just 5 full stacks or so. And I barely managed to field one/two armies without being able to call upon reinforcements other than mercs.

I still lost that ford battle though: a full stack of nearly all infantry + BG is not something you are going to stop with your nearly depleted less than half a stack of crappy units + a few good mercs.

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Originally Posted by Tellos Athenaios

I play as the Casse in my 1.x campaign (well it's the internal version). Let's just say apart from the fact that I like the plotting and grand-joint-alliances against the Ptolemies on the one hand, and on the other don't care too much: I've got my hands full of the Aedui atm, after finally having locked the Sweboz.

Let's just say my domestic affairs are complicated enough without having to worry about the Ptolemies, and in fact I kinda like to see how the AI manages to cope. Yes, it manages to cope ! Albeit, barely because the Ptolemies can afford not to trade with anyone, since they've got an massive internal sea-trade network.

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Tellos, are you saying that in the internal version you are using - Aegypt is as power as in EB 1 ? ~:shock:

Are you ok with that, considering that when you reach North Italy Alexandria is going to be the center of the world :coffeenews:

Actually work is being done on making the AS put up more of a fight against them Ptolemies on one side, but keeping them from obliteratin Pontos, Hayasdan, Parthia and the like.

Let me say only this: my original starting point was one of the earliest revisions, and IIRC the Ptolemaioi have been toned down (quite?) a bit since then. In any case I was pretty stunned with just how well the Seleukides initially managed to cope, that is until Parthia got a wee bit too eager and expanded far enough into the heartlands to directly threaten the Median Satrapy. From where on the Seleukides started to neglect the Western front and concentrate on the Eastern one, hence the Ptolemies became 'The Successors'.

But again, I'll re-state that I've started my campaign on what is to be considered an outdated version ... so my view of the Ptolemies is kinda skewered: the last revision was only a week ago or so, hence the call for people willing to do this most laborious and tedious of jobs -- okay, okay: they get to play with a very new and very much enhanced version of EB nearly nobody else has. :grin: But we also want reports! :whip:

I've never had the Yellows dominate any of my campaigns. It's always the AS giving them a hard fight and stalemating the scene while expanding in the west while Carthage eats them up from West Africa. Hmm.

Well, in my Getai campaign, they obliterated (almost) AS, but in so doing, their forces are very thinned, so I can conquer their cities quite easily, only desperate and pathetic counter-attacks are being done (aka they are dying and there is nothing they can do to stop it). The annoying part is the number of cities they have.

In my campaign as Rome they have the upper hand against AS, with a total victory only a question of time probably. I wonder though, will the Ptolies be able to handle the big empire better than AS?

I'm considering to help the world by using naval supremacy to raze their coastal cities before they build up an unreachable continental empire in Asia. Does economical warfare work in EB? I could also send a general to Persia to raise some mercenary ruckus, blockading roads, ports, do the pillaging...

Hm, or send an army through the Persian Gulf to get to the Mesopotamian hinterland.

Scato, I have recommended several times my method of dealing with endless Seleucid/Ptolemaic stacks - Scythian Horse.
You can have 3 armies entirely consisting of Scythian horse archers, and if you use them correctly you can have them wipe out over 10 full stacks each without losing one man.
You'll soon have an elite stack of horse, and you won't have to expend anything to keep the plague away.
Just some time to fight the battles.

However, in all my 1.0 campaigns the two deaths have locked jaws from 270 through to 170 BC, with neither side giving way.
One year, the Ptolemaics have split their adversary in two and hold from Seleukia to Sardis.
Next year, Seleucids have all of this back, and in addition they are attempting to cross the Nile.
I have never seen either win out, and all the while the little border successors nibble away slowly.

As for taking out these empires, it's a matter of naval assault.
Same with any faction, levy a fine army that will need no reserves, recruit up to 3 stacks of pure, one-unit levies.
Then study the empire and draw a line from the capitol, or target city through the weakest garrisons to the sea.
Then launch a very fast campaign, taking the cities with ease and leaving 4-5 units as a garrison, letting your army move on each turn.

In this way, I can take half the Seleucid Empire in about 9 turns.

Glenn the master tactition

Glenn the contributing to a thread without spamming for once.

Luckely I haven't had to deal with them yet, because my Romani lands are still small. Looks like the Ptolemies are having trouble though. The selucids fought hard but are almost pushed out of asia minor. The Makedonians have been pushed out of Greece and are now fighting the Ptolemies in Asia minor. (Kind of found that funny.) It looked like the Makedonians were winning at first but now they are starting to be pushed back. I think this campaign is pretty interesting.

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Originally Posted by blado

It looked like the Makedonians were winning at first but now they are starting to be pushed back. I think this campaign is pretty interesting.

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That always happens in my campaigns... Macedon conquers either Sparta or Athens. But then the KH somehow defeats them, and in 20 - 30 years there is only the Lesbian Empire left:no:

Same here. Which is why I always engage in a little rowdy empire-manipulation for the Makedonians so they end up with a viable empire to challenge me/AS/Ptolemaioi. Like in my current 1.0 Roman campaign, I have helped them to take Thrace, Korinthos, Rhodos and Ionia.

talking about Ptolemaics.... i was too curious (when i saw they had a town in Naissos...) to ask them for Map Informations...

well:

https://img153.imageshack.us/img153/9061/ptol2fz7.jpg