Did Romani twice, Baktria, Koinon Hellenon, and am just finishing a Getai campaign. Next I'll probably do Lusotannan or Casse.
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Did Romani twice, Baktria, Koinon Hellenon, and am just finishing a Getai campaign. Next I'll probably do Lusotannan or Casse.
Wow, surprised to see not that many have completed more than me. I've finished a Arverni, Casse and Swêboz campaign - each one more difficult than the last!
NONE (in EB) About 2 or 3 Vanilla and RTR but I'm not sure. I simply play too many campaigns at the same time - sometimes I also loose my saves or run into comp trouble:wall:
About saving/letting live Factions: some like to, some not. I think I fall to the 2. group, I like to see other factions fall and mine spread.:yes:
Poll needs a zero option. That's my saldo too - sooner or later a well-going campaign starts running smoothly enough (or a badly going one becomes desperate enough) that it becomes a somewhat repetitive and tedious exercise in stack-crushing and ceases being genuinely interesting. At which point I lose interest and start a fresh one with another faction. Apparently I just prefer the build-up phase or something, as I find myself behaving like this in other "build and conquer" games such as MOO 2 too...
Or as my brother summarised his experience with Fallout 3: "The second you hit the level cap there's nothing to look forward to anymore and the thing goes stale."
I would have gone for 0 had there been the option
I must confess to having completed a Brutii and a Greek campaign in Vanilla, yet I just can't get there in EB, though my current Makedonia file seems to be on the way :yes:
I think that it adds to the challenge, especially as you become an empire. For example if my "ally" Ptolemy Egypt is getting destroyed by Carthage and AS (I was Epiros) then I would offer them land and money in an area where i could control their destiny. If Egypt fell completely, I would use the faction as my own private Foederati, and offer them the occasional buffer area between my empire and dangerous neighbors. Eventually, restoring the Ptolemies to the Nile became a justification for a major invasion of Egypt, from which I benefited immensely. That is one of many scenarios in which I have saved a nearly extinct faction and used them for role playing purposes. Just before Macedonia was destroyed, I gave them land in India(I was Baktria) and they became an Indo-Greek kingdom.
The point is that the "no faction can be destroyed" house rule ups the challenge considerably and allows for a number of roleplaying opportunities in the game. Some people also want the game to follow a historical path, so they don't want factions destroyed until a set point, therefore they use force diplomacy to keep them alive.
The one thing that mostly deters me from finishing campaigns is the absolutely ridiculous diplomacy on VH campaigns, where the AI will almost NEVER allow you to call a ceasefire with them once war begins. This keeps happening in my Epeiros campaign, where the Ptolemaoi, even though I've reduced them to about four settlements in the Levant and offered them 30,000 mnai with my truce, will not stop throwing every last unit they can afford at me. Likewise, even though Carthage is at war with Rome and they only share the smallest of borders with me (Syrthim and Augila), and even though the Romans are fighting the Carthaginians and the Lusotannan, they BOTH attacked me on the same turn. It's likely only a matter of time before the Sauromatae and Pontics disregard their current wars and attack me in Thrace and the Hellespont, too.
The only time I have EVER seen reasonable diplomacy on VH is in my Carthaginian campaign, where the Romans, after several years of fighting in which I did not attack them but defeated all of their assaults, not only offered truce, but actually accepted when I offered to throw in 8,000 mnai for Rhegion. The same thing happened a few years later and I employed the same strategy and was even able to get Taras for 5,000. Mind you, this is all in ALEX, where the diplomacy is supposedly better, but aside from these two incidents I've yet to see it. It seems as though any time you go on the offensive against a faction, they will settle for nothing less than your complete destruction.
3: romani, Baktria, and Getai
maybe my house rule is weird, I love to roleplay, but, I roleplay that those factions was utterly destroyed, their FM's decapitated, and their towns razed to the ground.... do many times on Barbaropolis... Well, the only reason to destroy a faction was VC... so I usually sent their executioner squad on the very very last time...