Athens: Summer. Harvest. War (R2TW succession game)

The Reign of Carpus 149 - [to be determined]

149 BCE All hail new king Carpos!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/...0454631A61D9E/

King orders boosting of food production all across the vast Athenian empire. Through conquest of Tanais, the province of Bosphorus gets united under Greek rule.

148 BCE Restoration of Greek glory in the Iberian peninsula begins as black sails fold near Tarraco, king's army occupies the city. Defenders get put to sword.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/...E933584512B98/

Meanwhile, treacherous armies of Cimmeria attack Trapezos and get utterly destroyed by Athenian mercenaries. Our ally Rhodos grabs the last remaining Cimmeria region nearby. This could turn out to be a problem for our state's economy later.

147 BCE - Hellenization of the Iberian peninsula continues. King's army destroys Cesetani forces at Arse and occupies the settlement. On the other side of the map, the last remaining forces of Cimmeria get sunk at sea by brave Athenian sailors. In the East, a great Baktrian host gets ambushed as it hastily pushes its way towards Baktra.

146 BCE - A great host of Baktrian elephant herders gets ambushed in the woods near Baktra. Not a single elephant survives.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/...52A4584994418/

King's armies are busy pacifying the newly obtained territories in Spain.

145 BCE - Egyptian rebels wrestle the region of Jerusalem from our allies, Seleucids. Carpos himself leads Athenians to the rescue. Jerusalem is safe from rebels (and Seleucids).

144 BCE - delegations from Baktria and Arachosia arrive in Athens. They beg for peace. There can be no peace between us and these people... Armies of Carpos encounter 3 hostile hosts in Northern Spain. A battle is to ensue. In the Eastern part of the world, Baktrian Marakanda comes under Athenian siege. The general is considering a full-out assault.

@Myth, ahem, getting a bit frustrated with this one. Need help, if possible. The game is crashing in the middle of my assault on an Esetani city. I tried to replay the battle, but two times in a row got into the lagged-rain situation and, it seems, the radar map (+ the tactical map) is disabled (even though the game is in VH, not legendary mode). I have successfully used the tactical map in the past to get past the 0-fps rain-bug. As the tactical map is disabled, I cannot.

I am not sure I understand why the tactical map is disabled though. The difficulty is set on VH and the 'battle realism' is not checked. Has anyone been playing this with some mods enabled?

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The difficulty is set on VH and the 'battle realism' is not checked. Has anyone been playing this with some mods enabled?

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I had same observation about BR during the first reign. I didn't have BR checked either, but Myth did start the game with BR. If I understand correctly, once a campaign is started with BR, apparently it cannot be toggled on/off.

Luckily I was still in areas of the world where rain isn't quite as common.

Ok, got it to work, had to autoresolve the Tarraco battle in the end, was crashing in the middle constantly. Posted further updates to the storyline.

Great work Slaists! I'm glad this game is able to continue. I laughed at the 145 BCE comment :laugh4:

Yeah, I did start it with BR and that was a bit inconsiderate of me since a lot of people like the new overhead map feature. But I wanted us to be challenged to the maximum to get a great story going. Since we're owning half the known world by now I'd say the might of Athens cannot be contained by mere checkboxes and lack of radar maps.

Rain however, seems to put a dent in our mighty bronze armour...

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Originally Posted by Myth

Great work Slaists! I'm glad this game is able to continue. I laughed at the 145 BCE comment :laugh4:

Yeah, I did start it with BR and that was a bit inconsiderate of me since a lot of people like the new overhead map feature. But I wanted us to be challenged to the maximum to get a great story going. Since we're owning half the known world by now I'd say the might of Athens cannot be contained by mere checkboxes and lack of radar maps.

Rain however, seems to put a dent in our mighty bronze armour...

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Yeah, rain and flaming missiles during sieges. Weird, I no longer seem to get that lag during my own battles but it does kick in during the Athenian campaign. Whenever, the AI starts using massed flaming missiles the battle kicks into "slow motion". Curiously enough, the frame rate does not drop (stays in the 60-30 range): just every move takes 6x time. So, the bottleneck must be CPU related. I used to be able to migrate past these flukes using the tactical map overview.

Otherwise, things look peachy for Athens. There might be a little Baktrian related hickup. They just captured a Persian region right in the middle of our holdings and all our armies have moved on (deeper into Baktrian lands), LOL.

Um, what do you guys do for screenshots with the battle "realism" enabled? Without it, I would pause the battle when I felt the moment was right for a screenshot. I would position my camera in the angle I want and take the shot. With battle realism enabled, for pausing, I can only press "ESC" to bring up the menu, but that does not allow me to adjust the camera. If I do it real time, by the time I get the right angle, the moment is gone.

Usually my battles are played on 3x battle speed. When I slow them down to normal they are so slow i have no issue hitting the F10 screen on Fraps.

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Originally Posted by Myth

Usually my battles are played on 3x battle speed. When I slow them down to normal they are so slow i have no issue hitting the F10 screen on Fraps.

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That explains why you hate the early armies ;)

3x speed though is not that different from normal in RTW 2. Shogun 2 3x speed is much faster.

Not that I hate them but I find them terribly low on the cost-efficiency scale. Their upkeep is marginally better over that of more professional troops, but their abysmal morale and defensive stats means they will rout at the whisper of the wind.

By the way, I had taken a *long* break from Rome II. I hadn't played since the inclusion of the steppe factions. The recent combat changes made combat much more enjoyable for me.

Indeed pike units got reduced in efficiency. Spartan pikes with chevrons now give about double the amount of casualties to melee troops of comparable quality. Skirmishers demolish pike blocks (which lack a shield). Literally several volleys from your run of the mill javelin troops can evaporate a pike unit.

I now have a newfound respect for Perioikoi Peltasts for example.

Battle speed and performance saw an increase on my system.

Light cavalry are now actual cavalry that behaves like I want them to. They can waltz right past enemy spear units and they ignore them, even if one guy gets clipped by the tip of a spear.

My generals have a much higher life expectancy now.

The AI is a bit nuts with agents on the campaign map. I got stalled for several turns (various armies) due to being poisoned, assault patrolled, assassinated and so on.

The AI builds more top tier units. Cyrenica attacked my elite Spartan army (still 1 stack though) with 5,600 men, out of which we had about 10 or so thorax pikes and at least 8 elephant units.

I got a nasty CTD while playing my Sparta campaign so I'm tempted to just delete the save and start over come patch 8.1

Yes, changes introduces by patches are significant both on campaign and battle level. Skirmish phase is distinct and enjoyable now (unless one brings ballista to the field, which triggers AI rushing).

I am not sure I agree with the new loose pike formation though. Swords should not be able to push through pike formations frontally, even if those are elite swords.

I am on the road until Jan 9th and, unfortunately, won't have access to RTW 2 until then. I can continue updating the athens campaign only after Jan 9th. If that is a problem, I can post the current save game for someone else to continue.

No way man. We'll wait for your return. Plus, I suspect most of us are having a holiday anyway.

So is this dead? or?

Just got back from my travels. Will update this weekend :)

So, loaded it up with 8.1 this weekend, but ran into some persistent crashes... Will investigate further. Hopefully, some driver issue in my system. Since I was away for 3 weeks and my rig was offline, things were not updating as usual.

Sure thing. I suspect we may need to just start a new game (probably with a new faction) as this was started back on patch 4 or 5 and now we're a lot further down into patch-land. Any suggestions on the new faction? I'd try Carthage or the Massagetae.

Hmm...... I vote.... Royal Scythia

The Massagetae are Royal Scythia sans the jav-cav but with added cataphracts and companion cavalry with slightly lower stats.

But their standard is so.... horrid

Finally, got Rome 2 to work again last night. So, what's the consensus, should we continue with this one or switch? Like Myth said, patches have advanced quite far since this campaign started with significant implications for the game-play. Steam-rolling as was common several patches ago, is not likely to be possible in campaigns started fresh (on highest difficulties at least).

Ironically, the patches make most of the "let's play" youtube videos obsolete. Whatever those original posters were doing 6 months ago would not work at this point...