EB impressions and questions

Hello everyone,

I'm a long time RTW veteran (as well as an avid player of all things M2TW, especially over at the Throne Room) I've long been delaying my head-first plunge into EB. Several things had me thrown off - it looked visually very different (darker menu, changed sea water), the campaign map performs somewhat poorly on my stellar PC (dual quad-core I7, 16 GB ram, GT 570 etc.) and the traits system and government system seemed so radically different from vanilla that I simply said "to hell with this" and just devoted time to M2:TW. Oh, and the historically accurate names did not help either, especially the Greek ones.

I am however, a great history enthusiast so I've decided to take time and learn the traits system, the unit names etc. and to make myself feel comfortable playing EB since it's basically the Stainless Steel of RTW as far as historical accuracy and depth is concerned. I have a couple of questions however:

1. I see conflicting opinions on what difficulty I should play on. In vanilla I could take any faction on VH/VH and win, probably even with Numidia if I bothered with them. What of EB? I tried VH/VH with the Romanii (since I'm now reading "The Enemies of Rome" by Philip Matyszak) but the rebels at Segesta and the town west of it cut my Principes to shreds and a charge by my Equites Consularii and Equites Romanii directly at their backs accomplished little. I have heard of people beating a VH/VH EB campaign so if it's indeed not that hard let me know what I'm doing wrong. I started a second campaign, VH/M last night and I just sat back for 3-4 turns building economy buildings, temples to Mars and training Pricnipes before catching Epeiros with their pants down, but still I'm reluctant to continue if VH/VH is viable. I don't like feeling that I'm taking it easy on myself.

2. Is there any way to make the campaign map perform smoothly like M2TW does? It gets choppy when i scroll the map and switching between cities gives me some delay.

3. Which are the HA factions in the mod? I'd assume Scythia (called the Getae here?) and Parthia exist. Who else gets HAs? Does the AI use them well? What of the overall unit balance? In vanilla the Romans steamrolled everyone eventually due to their unrealistically high stats - an Urban Cohort with upgrades can just charge trough a phalanx of Spartans and smash them to bits. However the chariots, cataphractoi, HAs and elephants all were very strong as well, especially in the hands of a human player. The phalanxes pretty much sucked unless they were Spartan/Armoured or Sacred Band.

4. Is anyone interested in a Succession game where each player plays out the term of the faction leader and when he dies, the save is passed on to another one? With roleplaying the FL according to his traits, making historical choices for expansion and diplomacy, setting faction goals etc. We could even have one or two players as the Consuls and the rest of us as the Senate.

5. Where can I make suggestions based on historical sources I've come across? For example I read an interesting bit about Carthage's surrounding farmlands, which made the city independent for it's food supply unlike Rome which had to import. I don't know what farming level the city has been given in EB but if it's anything lower than or equal to Rome then values must be changed. That's just an example though.

Where to start....?

You have a very thorough understanding for a new person to EB but there are several things that were off in your post. Firstly, the internal names of the factions are almost not usable as a reference to who they are in the game. The Getai are in fact a barbarian faction that was, I guess, represented in Vanilla Rome as 'Thrace'. The horse archer factions are Parthia, the Sauromatae in the northern steppes and the Saka in the top right of the map. Several other factions can also recruit 'native' horse archers, among them the Hayasdan faction and Baktria.

I mentioned 'native' units. In this mod the recruitment is based on an AOR (area of recruitment) which means that you are more likely to find units where they originated from. So you end up with native troops and regional troops. There are two 'barracks' for the recruitment of each line of troops. I will explain more about them later. For now know that while those are the only 'native' horse archers there are many factions that can recruit 'regional' horse archers if they control the right areas. For some factions these are only the very basic ones aand for some factions they can almost match the native recruitment of others.

About the barracks (we tend to call them MIC's = Military Industrial Complexes). There are 5 levels of each but they are limited by your 'government building'. For most factions this is Levels 1 through 4. Each level represents a decreasing amount fo centralised control with 4 being an independant allied state (but you still control them). At level 1, the strongest factional control you have, the Native troop MIC will be able to go to top level but the regional one is limited to level 2. This means you will most likely get many many more, and powerful, native troops in this city once you develop it. A level 2 government, still very good leaves you with a max of Native 4 and regional 3. Then level 3 government is native 3 and regional 4. Finally an allied state has access to 100% of the natives troops with a max regional of 5. Unfortunately since it is allied, your 'limited influence' there is shown by only having a max level 2 native, factional troop MIC. Plus many of your high end cultural buildings cannot be constructed.

Levels 1, 2 and 3 allow your faction members to govern them. Levels 4 do not allow faction members to govern. Each turn they remain gives them an increasingly high unrest trait (which goes when they leave). To compensate you can recruit a very useful (but expensive) mercenary general to govern. If they remain in the town for a turn after being recruited they receive a powerful influence boost which will all but negate most unrest in most towns making them cheaper in terms of garrisoning. Alternatively, move them out immediately upon recruitment and they can be a powerful general. But they cannot govern you gove level 1, 2 and 3 towns.

For difficulty, stay on medium battles. It is the one recommended by the EB team and is where the balance is calculated to. If you go higher you end up with your roman game...unbalanced and unrealistic fights. For campaign difficulty: VH is recommended by the team but since most players roleplay to a great extent this can cause the AI to go berserk and ruin your fun. Some players therefore use M/M. Decide what kind of game you feel like and go for it; no one will judge you :yes:

There is much much more and I have but skimmed the surface but its cold and my fingers are numb, plus this post is beginning to ramble. Have a read and let me know if you have any more questions. I am very happy to help as are most of the community. They are a good bunch!

Aye I got that bit about the governments. For example, recovering Tarsus I chose to build a Type 1 government since it's Rome's home region. VH campaign is a must, because I enjoy blitzing the AI. They get 10,000 mnai/turn and can't go bankrupt so it should be good fun! VH on the battle map gives them 7 attack 4 defence and (7?) morale AFAIk. In vanilla this was not a problem, as even Hastati + Veites could rout Spartans. Here though the enemy are not drooling idiots but actually have comparable stats to the early Republic cohorts.

Any idea of how to make the campaign map perform normally? Oh, and thanks for the reply!

There will always be some sort of lag of the campaign map. The script that is running is several megabytes of text data I think. But it shouldn't be too bad.

What might be your problem though is sometimes if you try and give new orders to a unit that has fully moved already the campaign map will become very sluggish. This can be fixed by moving another unit a small amount. Normally sending something one tile out of a city and then back in will fix it. Otherwise your computer is not strong enough. I don't have much of a problem most of the time. Even when I ran it on my old computer. Try turning campaign shadows off if you have to.

If you read my original post you'll see that my computer is quite adequate. It runs Skyrim on max detail without so much as a hiccup.

BTW In the "post your empires" thread sevearl people have reported winning a VH/VH game. None of them were playing the Romanii though - all had either phalanxes or HA from the start.

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Originally Posted by Myth

Aye I got that bit about the governments. For example, recovering Tarsus I chose to build a Type 1 government since it's Rome's home region. VH campaign is a must, because I enjoy blitzing the AI. They get 10,000 mnai/turn and can't go bankrupt so it should be good fun!

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The fun with VH campaign depends on how large your empire is. In late game, you are up against at least four or five factions at once, three of which hate you for no particular reason. That means ~5 battles per turn. Gets kinda tedious.

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VH on the battle map gives them 7 attack 4 defence and (7?) morale AFAIk. In vanilla this was not a problem, as even Hastati + Veites could rout Spartans. Here though the enemy are not drooling idiots but actually have comparable stats to the early Republic cohorts.

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Actually, most factions have elite units that are superior one on one to your Roman units (except for Extraordinarii, both foot and mounted). Expect the Gauls to be three times as tough as in Vanilla RTW (in which their unit roster kinda sucked) and to actually be able to build up an economy. Also, their naked fanatics are a very good reason not to play VH battles. Their stats are already monstrous on Medium.
Generally, barbarian factions can be very dangerous on the battlefield for a Roman player, if he or she doesn't use proper tactics (shouldn't be a problem for you - I'm just trying to say it's different than Vanilla RTW in this regard). The non-Celtic barbarian factions have a lot of AP troops, too. Some units, like Germanic clubmen and Dacian falxmen (Drapanai AKA suicide bombers) can rip through your armoured units if you're not careful.
Phalanxes are another royal pain in the ass. As for HAs, even the Romans can recruit some basic (still quite powerful) variants via regional MIC if they hold the right territories - for example, one of the two Crimean provinces. If you really want to indulge in HA warfare, you'll have to play one of the three Iranian factions (see Blxz's first post).

RTW wasn't created to run on multi-core systems (even Skyrim only uses two cores) so speed is mostly limited to CPU frequency and HD speed. A 3.5 Ghz single core is faster than a 2.5 GHz quad-core, bear that in mind.

As was said above, moving units further than their maximum movement allows them lags the campaign map, just move another unit one tile and the lag will disappear.
You might also check here if setting the game to just one core speeds thing up.

Development for EB1 has stopped, so if you want to contribute you should post your informations and sources over at the EB2 forum.

XSamatan
VH for campaign and M for battle is recommended.

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Originally Posted by Myth

sevearl people have reported winning a VH/VH game.

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Any game is winnable. It is just very unbalanced and not fun (for me) when you get to the mid-late game. You are of course free to play on your own settings. Remember the EB script includes money for the AI factions so there is no requirement to play on VH just to avoid AI bankruptcy. It helps give them some extra spending money but they have other ways of surviving.

Also, I forgot to add. EB has added lethality to weapons. This slows the battles down considerably when compared to vanilla. So don't expect insta-routs as easily and don't expect to chop through a bunch of guys and move on. Some battles can turn into a meatgrinder as both sides just wear away at each other for a long time. It's by no means perfect but does a damn fine job of making the battles better. But this may require different tactics to what you previously employed in the other games/mods.

Yeah, I played a few games on VH map difficulty, and although it was a good challenge building an economy against the much better AI factions, the battle spam really got boring - and auto-resolve is often not a realistic option (unless you want to lose your units and faction members when you really shouldn't). If you don't play a blitz game, M/M is working well for me.

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Originally Posted by XSamatan

RTW wasn't created to run on multi-core systems (even Skyrim only uses two cores) so speed is mostly limited to CPU frequency and HD speed. A 3.5 Ghz single core is faster than a 2.5 GHz quad-core, bear that in mind.

As was said above, moving units further than their maximum movement allows them lags the campaign map, just move another unit one tile and the lag will disappear.
You might also check here if setting the game to just one core speeds thing up.

Development for EB1 has stopped, so if you want to contribute you should post your informations and sources over at the EB2 forum.

XSamatan
VH for campaign and M for battle is recommended.

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CPU speeds shouldn't be a problem. I can play it without lag with an 1,87 ghz.

1): VH battle difficulty is not recommended. It warps things to the point that a unit of AI-controlled levy spearmen can beat your legions in one-on-one combat. Medium is the recommended difficulty, and does not detract from the enjoyment from playing a campaign at all.

3): The three nomadic factions in EB are as follows: Sauromatae (Sarmatians, replacing Scythia), Pahlava (Parthians) and Saka Rauka (New Indo-Scythian faction, they're the red faction in the utmost northeastern corner of the map). Horse archers are bread and butter for these factions.

The non-nomadic factions that start out with access to horse archers are as follows: Getai (Dacia), Hayasdan (Armenia), Arche Seleukeia (Seleucids) and Baktria. These factions rely primarily on infantry, with horse archers being used primarily as auxiliaries. And yes, the Getai replace the Dacians, not the Thracians.

Balance-wise, the Romans are good, but if you get careless you'll find your troops being massacred by your 'barbarian' enemies. The Lusotanna in Iberia are particularly deadly, since a good half of their roster have armour-piercing weapons. Cataphracts aren't quite as useful in this mod, and elephants have been nerfed a fair bit, making them very vulnerable to javelins. Archery in general has been nerfed greatly, and even levies have extremely good missle resistance from the front. Horse archers are still deadly in the hands of a human player, but unless you're playing as the Sauromatae, you'll find your enemies to be more than capable of putting up stiff resistance.

5): I'm fairly sure Carthage has a higher base growth than Rome.

After all these usefull comments, I'd like to add

1. that next to The three steppe factions[Sauromatae(Sarmatians), Saka Rauka(Sakans o.0) and Pahlava(Parthians)] not only Bactria and Hayasdan(armenia) field factional Horse Archers, but the Getai do so aswell. Regional HAs are probably accessible to all factions once they conquer the right province. The AI uses them... in that they activate the skirmish button and run around nothing special^^ but very annoying. In an autocalc battle they will preform extremely bad meaning even my little sister could win those battles or at least go out with more enemy casualties/own losses. Unlike Phalangites (not spartans only the macedonian style) who are quite good a bit overpowerd at autocalc.

1.1 the Steppe Factions also have thier special nomad MICs and Governments, which complicates the situation even more, in essence you have two "governments":
-Nomadism: All the horse archers you want.
-Pastoralism: Only basic horse archers but also basic infantry(archer and cheap spearmen) and the armored dudes. + more buildings, duh
both have their own set of "MIC"s:
-Court/Herds: Elite/nobles
-Community/Camp: commoners
unlike normal governments these are preceded by the "Migration" building and not the Pacification.

1.2 Pahlava have the option to "reform" their Government which essecially gives you a level 1 government building and enables the according MIC with all the worthwhile infantry and the REALLY heavy chaps. When you play as them, search for "Parthian Reform" or something along those lines, there is a rather good thread about the topic.

2. To reassure you: VH/M is suggested by the Team, I play on M/M because I like my games relaxed and full of Roleplay elements^^. I'd suggest you Try a game on VH/M and when you have acclimatized to EB you can turn up the battle difficulty if you wish. OR you simply choose a different faction, because eventho Rome does normally not steamroll everything in EB they are amungst the easiest factions, apart from their Victory condition but few people here play for those. This is because most of their units are much cheaper compared to Units of similar strengh of other factions and their economy is great. On this board you'll find plenty of reviews/suggestions to most factions.

Have fun with EB and Welcome to the EB forum :)

I hope you enjoy your time playing EB 1.2. Can't wait for EB 2 on M2TW to come out.

When I cam over to EB the biggest difference is the Romani faction. Also the most improved. I'd say reforms are a welcome change. It makes the world and battles change as your progress. Recruitment wise you have your Polybian maniples, Camillan maniples, Marian cohorts and Post-Marian auxillaries and Imperial cohorts. You can play historical and line up like a Roman would with its historical composition armies. Something about 1/4 to 1/3 of an early Roman army was made up of allies, infantry and cavalry. However I am a Mercenary General, I want units that can hold their ground, give the enemy a nasty sting and leave the population of my cities growing and taxed. So my army is 1/2 Roman, 1/2 Mercenary. If I can recruit native allied units, I will, which are generally the same as the mercenaries.

That's also different. I was also a mercenary general in vanilla but the choices were so limited. I ended up going after specific regions that produce the best mercenaries in vanilla. Also it took many turns for just one unit of merc's to show up. In EB the merc roster changes every turn and usually something worth recruiting. Especially useful is that peninsula southwest of Sparta only reachable by boat which has mercenaries from Italy, Greece and Anatolia.

If you play a HA faction you may find you sacrifice an economy to be able to ride on horseback with a bow. Baktria has a good economic starting position. Same with Pontos, which can also recruit HA. Sauromatae has the possibility of gaining a strong economy. The Sweboz are close to certain regions where they can recruit merc HA's which I do when I can when playing them.

Happy campaigning. Oh, yea I prefer VH campaign, M battles.

Thanks for the replies everyone! I'll play as Rome since you know, it's RTW and all that :) But going for Scythia next might be fun.

I'm still on my first EB campaign...Sweboz that seems to take forever...was a thread about midgame blues :P

Anyhow, from reading around here I've gathered that the AI bonuses for VH battles are the same as for Vanilla, but as you've probably noticed, the stats here are quite a bit higher, hence the actual advantage should be less. Thoght there is the moral issue, even with medium battles there are plenty of units that fight to the very last man even if you surround them and charge them in the rear.

That said, from the ones I've seen talking about VH, they promote scare tactics, meaning that they don't actually fight the enemy, something sturdy to pin the foe, phalanxes for example then they take their special forces:
Naked men (scare), with an eagle up their butt (morale boost + scare?, Note:Romans aren't the only ones with eagles here), fireing flaming arrows (scare), while riding camels (scare horses), that in turn are mounted on elephants (scare).
These they charge into the enemy rear for instant rout effect.

There's also the nifty HA:s if you want an easy time. 500 slingers/archers in guardmode and loose formation against a single unit of unarmoured HA in a straight on shootout (50 horsemen) will give you losses in the 80-ies or 90-ies. Pretty ridiculous, but there you have it. HA:s are extremely unbalanced, I just took it for some team-member, or several being in the HA fanclub, a party that's quite prominent in the vanilla section, so why should it be any different here? (Oh and HAs can be used quite well in charges too, unlike most of the the HAs in vanilla.)
Ok, I've only encountered the Sauomate so far, perhaps the other HA:s aren't as overpowered, but I have my doubts...a tip, when you take their cities, don't build a wall, let them come into town, because if you sally they flee and besiege you again the next turn. If you let them inside straight away though, then you can butcher them the way they deserve.

Another thing, height difference is really important in EB, much more so than I recall it being in vanilla. Higher ground truly is your friend here.

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Originally Posted by Alrik

Ok, I've only encountered the Sauromate so far, perhaps the other HA:s aren't as overpowered,

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Saka and Pahlava HAs are just as good (they also have some heavier types than the Sarmatians, and the Saka have three HA units with the same range as Kretan archers). Also the Armenian ones, but they are more expensive. And the Getai have two HA units, one of which is pretty derpy.
All of them die rather quickly, though. Cavalry in EB is of the "glass cannon" type - meaning very strong at a charge or at missile output, but vulnerable in melee. For example, one unit of Celtic levy spearmen can easily destroy a unit of Lusitanian elite skirmisher cavalry (costing four times as much) in a proper melee encounter. Definitely an improvement from Vanilla.

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Originally Posted by Myth

But going for Scythia next might be fun.

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Scythians are not a playable faction if I remember correctly. The Sauromatae were the tribe that came in and displaced the scythians. So one of the rebel areas (to the west?) of the Sauromatae are the scythians....or what is left of them.

Eh, you know what I meant. Funny how the EB faction selection screen says "Nigh-on-impossible" or "Very Hard" for factions who have HAs. HAs have always ruled vs the AI in terms of cost-effectiveness and overall efficiency. In fact the only time I've seen HAs fail is when you use regular, inexperienced men versus heavy knights with 28-30 armour in Stainless Steel (a M2TW mod), but SS gives great combat bonuses to the AI (cav is faster, stronger, deals more damage, dies a lot harder etc.)

I like EB's scripting though. Having read about the Punic war and how it all started because Rome interfered with matters in Sicilly I was pleasantly surprised when Carthage declared war on me for taking a reel settlement there. Now this means they simply must die but that was sort of the plan anyway. BTW I was going to sort of object to the point of Triarii who didn't seem as the end-all, be-all of the early Roman units but then I made them charge trough the city gates and smash into the enemy lighter infantry and phalanx units, and I was pleasantly surprised to see their staying power.

Oh, and any takers for a succession game? Come on, it's fun!

The difficulty in playing nomadic factions isn't in their unit roster, which tends to be top-notch, but their general lack of infrastructure. You can only build basic ports, level 1 mines, low level farms, etc. Thus, while you might have good units, you'll find yourself frequently outnumbered by the AI. Add to that the heavy nerfing of cavalry and missiles (And the strengthening of infantry and phalanxes) and you will find nomadic campaigns very, very difficult. The exception to this is the Pahlava, who get Persian reforms as they expand into Iran, allowing them to upgrade their settlements further and recruit a more diverse roster.

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...the campaign map performs somewhat poorly on my stellar PC (dual quad-core I7, 16 GB ram, GT 570 etc.)

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It performed horribly for me also. But now it works fine for me on a crappy laptop. Go find your preferences file saved somewhere in an EB folder - there are two files. I can't remember which one to edit, so edit both (make backups, of course). It has some settings that don't pop up in game mode, and after playing around I was able to get a respectable mouse movement on campaign map.

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...and the traits system and government system seemed so radically different from vanilla that I simply said "to hell with this" and just devoted time to M2:TW.

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Nah, don't let any of that intimidate you. I found that getting up to speed was rather fast. As a veteran, you will too.

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1. I see conflicting opinions on what difficulty I should play on. In vanilla I could take any faction on VH/VH and win, probably even with Numidia if I bothered with them. What of EB?

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Go VH/M (gold standard from what I understand).

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In vanilla the Romans steamrolled everyone eventually due to their unrealistically high stats - an Urban Cohort with upgrades can just charge trough a phalanx of Spartans and smash them to bits.

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You can win with anyone, but Roman units in EB (at least infantry) are awesome. All things considered, I'd say their infantry is the best in the game. Take a look at the stats vs. cost of hastatit/principi/triarii and compare with other factions starting units - it's a joke. Personally-speaking, I know I can say I annihilated with the Romans without even trying (VH/M of course). I'm sure the veterans around here would say the same.

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The phalanxes pretty much sucked unless they were Spartan/Armoured or Sacred Band.

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Phalanxes are very good this game - probably the best infantry, all things considered top to bottom. Essentially unbeatable if attacked from the front (of course they must be supported).

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Where can I make suggestions based on historical sources I've come across? For example I read an interesting bit about Carthage's surrounding farmlands, which made the city independent for it's food supply unlike Rome which had to import. I don't know what farming level the city has been given in EB but if it's anything lower than or equal to Rome then values must be changed.

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AFAIK, Kart-hadast is a pretty awesome starting city - better than anything the Romans get I think.

As far as suggesting balance changes and what not, I found (personally-speaking) that many here don't seem to take kindly to that, or even to critique/discussion/questioning of balance or unit stats, but perhaps they just don't like me :-D

At any rate, I did some of my own balance changes, and found it was fairly easy to do once you know what you are doing. If you don't know it already, you may disover that elite and upper-tier units are not cost-effective by any means. This rubbed me the wrong way, so I modded it. Also, Casse generals (who are in celtic chariots) are incredibly sucky, so I modified that too. But others here (probably most) seem to be totally fine with the game as balanced.

I found it interesting to read all the opinions on horse archers and the horse archer factions. I guess I have a dissenting view. I've always found it ridiculously easy to fight against horse archers. Just recruit foot archers.

As far as playing with HA factions instead of against them - sure I can dominate with them just like with anyone else. But I find I have to do a lot more micro as far as surrounding units with HAs, pulling back or kiting with them continuously, retreating the ones who run out of arrows, etc. Then retreat everyone once all arrows are dry and immediately attack again, rinse, repeat. I find this tedious. I don't have to do anything like this with a more "normal" faction - I can just win the first battle straight up with no "special tactics." If I had to play against myself, one of me with a HA faction, one without, I'd much rather be the "me" that gets to choose the non-HA faction, if I'm interesting in winning that is. But if I just wanna have fun, or play a faction with units that are cool - sure, HA factions are as cool and fun as any other. That's my view, anyway.

Aye but there is a reason why HA spam is banned in MP (CWB rules) and HA armies can pull off 0 casualty Heroic Victories with consistency. Essentially a quality HA stack can go on a never ending conquest spree. Unless it meets top quality bowmen (in vanilla things like Pharaoh's Bowmen/Sacred Band Archers. Or Longbowmen/Genoese Crossbowmen in M:T2 and its mods)

That being said I enjoy more standard armies with infantry/ranged/cav compositions instead of HA spam or Cataphact/Chariot spam etc.

Not sure about criticism, I can simply state the sources of what I have discovered and they can make up their minds. For example, the performance of Roman maniples vs. Makedonian sarissa phalanxes - military experts contemporary to the time have discussed this (Livy for example) and have even theorized Rome's answer to Alexander invading them instead of Persia. The battles vs. Phyrros also are further proof that the more flexible maniple proved decisively better then the slow, immobile phalanx.

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Aye but there is a reason why HA spam is banned in MP (CWB rules) and HA armies can pull off 0 casualty Heroic Victories with consistency. Essentially a quality HA stack can go on a never ending conquest spree. Unless it meets top quality bowmen (in vanilla things like Pharaoh's Bowmen/Sacred Band Archers. Or Longbowmen/Genoese Crossbowmen in M:T2 and its mods)

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You are talking vanilla RTW? I never played MP with that game, I just know that in SP HAs were ridiculously easy to beat - even elite HAs. All I had to do was recruit foot archers. If he brought heavy cavalry too, I just threw in spears. So basically at that point I'm fully countering him with an army that's 10 times cheaper.

Again though, I can't speak exactly to the situation you outlined above as I didn't play MP with RTW, but it sounds like generic bowmen didn't have the ability to pierce the armor of elite HAs... is that right? So if you were a faction that didn't have access to decent bowmen, you were screwed? Did fielding a melee cavalry force that could catch the HAs help?

There are some MP types here, and they even use a modded version of the game specifically for MP. Maybe one of them could chime in on this HA question you pose. My guess though (this is just a guess) is that on an MP battle, assuming limited ammunition, you could field a very heavily armored infantry unit - perhaps a pike phalanx type - and an HA unit would run out of ammo before being able to kill you. From a Saka campaign I played I know I had to completely isolate and surround Selucid and Baktria pike phalanxes with HAs, and that wasn't enough generally (I had to come back again next battle and do the same).

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Not sure about criticism, I can simply state the sources of what I have discovered and they can make up their minds.

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My impression (I'm speaking "generically in life" here, not specifically about this forum) is that if you are liked, you can say anything you want to any group and it's fine. For instance, a hot chick in a classroom stands up and says something controversial. She is either applauded, or at the very worst politely challenged with another view. Parallel universe - fat ugly chick stands up and gives the same view to the same group of people that the hot chick did. She's shouted down and told to "sit down and shut up bitch!"

I think what I just said applies to this forum too in a generic sense, but more specifically, if you aren't the popular hot chick I just spoke of, my guess is if you just "simply stated sources of what you discovered and let folks make up their minds," that would be generally fine - provided that's all you did. Now, people might 1) challenge your view with a rational argument (unlikely, but it could happen), 2) tell you development of this game is finished and thus take balance suggestions to EB2, or 3) most likely tell you "balance is fine" or "if you want a totally balanced game go play starcraft" or "you just don't know how to use [insert unit type]" or a plethora of other things I heard. But that would be fine, because you did what you set out to do - "state sources, let people make up their own minds, blah blah." And that's all you did, and it ended.

Where it has the potential to degenerate and get nasty (at least it did for me) is if you respond back to either 1, 2, or 3. Bottom line, if it's just "state sources blah blah" that's likely to generate minimal controversy and you will probably be fine. If you are a hot popular chick, you can say anything you want and it will probably be fine.

Note that I'm not personally discouraging you from saying whatever you want, whenever you want, on whatever topic you want. I fully support that 100%, and actually enjoy reading balance critiques and suggestions and what not, especially backed-up by logical rational arguments.

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Originally Posted by Sylon

The difficulty in playing nomadic factions isn't in their unit roster, which tends to be top-notch, but their general lack of infrastructure. You can only build basic ports, level 1 mines, low level farms, etc. Thus, while you might have good units, you'll find yourself frequently outnumbered by the AI. Add to that the heavy nerfing of cavalry and missiles (And the strengthening of infantry and phalanxes) and you will find nomadic campaigns very, very difficult. The exception to this is the Pahlava, who get Persian reforms as they expand into Iran, allowing them to upgrade their settlements further and recruit a more diverse roster.

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Exactly. Also the lack of factional heavy infantry, which becomes a problem when you're trying to take fortified cities - even for Pahlava, which has decent mid-tier factional infantry, it's better to bring along some foreign heavies.

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Originally Posted by Nightmare

My impression (I'm speaking "generically in life" here, not specifically about this forum) is that if you are liked, you can say anything you want to any group and it's fine. For instance, a hot chick in a classroom stands up and says something controversial. She is either applauded, or at the very worst politely challenged with another view. Parallel universe - fat ugly chick stands up and gives the same view to the same group of people that the hot chick did. She's shouted down and told to "sit down and shut up bitch!"

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That is indeed a correct observation, but it's not the way things went on this forum. Please remember that you came up with generalizing and rather aggressive statements about content and balancing of this mod, without having looked up EB's background info (e.g. the homepage) for the reasons of this setup, and without having had much experience with the combat system of this particular mod.
When I first played EB, I was once tempted to write something nasty about the scripted roving defenders in the Alpine provinces, but then I stopped myself and checked for strategic reasons that might justify such heavy scripting. And that's how things normally go here. If you discover something in game that puts you off, please reflect upon what it could mean before deciding it must be a mistake.

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That is indeed a correct observation, but it's not the way things went on this forum.

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I guess it's a matter of interpretation. I think that's how it went. You, and perhaps others, don't think that's how it went. That's perfectly fine - to each his own. But it's probably best not to turn this thread into a discussion of any of those threads - I'm just responding because I can't let such a characterization go unresponded to (with all due respect). Anyone who is interested can look up old threads and decide for themselves what transpired, presuming they haven't been deleted.

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Please remember that you came up with generalizing and rather aggressive statements about content and balancing of this mod...

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Not sure I agree with "generalizing." I would need more context, but even so, in and of itself I see no problem. "Generalizing" (whether I did it or not) can either be argumentatively appropriate in a given situation or not, but it's never a reason to shout down someone else's views or be rude. Probably the best response is to show why generalizing with the particular argument in question isn't logically or rationally appropriate, or is some sort of fallacy.

As to the "rather aggressive," while that's subjective (one man's "aggressive" is another man's...), if so, I don't see a problem there either. Is the only accepted way to state an opinion to do so "passively?"

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...without having looked up EB's background info (e.g. the homepage) for the reasons of this setup, and without having had much experience with the combat system of this particular mod.

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I don't think it had much to do with not knowing the reasons for the setup, because people stated various reasons for the setup right there in the threads we are referring to. I simply rejected those reasons as not being good reasons (or in some cases, "not good enough" reasons).

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If you discover something in game that puts you off, please reflect upon what it could mean before deciding it must be a mistake.

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I never initially DECIDED that something was a mistake. I ASKED (even in the title of the thread, even with a question mark to denote that it was a question) whether something was a mistake. Any "deciding" came later, after I was supplied with all the arguments and data people were able to give.

Again, I think you and I can agree it's probably best not to turn this thread into a discussion of any of those threads. Anyone who is interested can look up old threads and decide for themselves what transpired, presuming they haven't been deleted. I was simply cautioning the OP that in my experience this forum hasn't been very conducive to balance/stat discussions, although he is perfectly free to engage in such activity if he wants. I guess you'd say "it's conducive, just don't do it the way I claim nightmare did it." Fine - I guess he has two perspectives then, and can decide for himself.

Regards.

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Originally Posted by Nightmare

But it's probably best not to turn this thread into a discussion of any of those threads -


it's probably best not to turn this thread into a discussion of any of those threads.

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Indeed, so let's please keep it at that.

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That being said I enjoy more standard armies with infantry/ranged/cav compositions instead of HA spam or Cataphact/Chariot spam etc.

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In that case you will have your fun with EB, here you need your heavy infantry core and are happy to also have cav and archers.

About Carthage, I agree with you. Afaik the fields of north africa even were very important during imperial Rome. I'm sure there is no special script or building for the fields of north africa but I presume the Farming level and fertility is rather high.

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Originally Posted by Ca Putt

About Carthage, I agree with you. Afaik the fields of north africa even were very important during imperial Rome. I'm sure there is no special script or building for the fields of north africa but I presume the Farming level and fertility is rather high.

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Also, there is the "grain" resource, which increases trade. It's quite abundant in some provinces in EB. Moreover, Carthage is one of the few factions that can establish tier 3 farming upgrades (SPQR, Saba, and Pahlava are the others).

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Originally Posted by athanaric

Also, there is the "grain" resource, which increases trade. It's quite abundant in some provinces in EB. Moreover, Carthage is one of the few factions that can establish tier 3 farming upgrades (SPQR, Saba, and Pahlava are the others).

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Also, while this does not have anything to do with farming per se, Carthage has the largest ports (commercial and military) one can build, plus some "wonder" about their special port and harbor. I presume they also get trade bonuses and what not, but I don't know for sure.

Aye it was indeed important, it became Rome's granary during the imperial era. I can provide quotes from a book on that.

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Originally Posted by Nightmare

Also, while this does not have anything to do with farming per se, Carthage has the largest ports (commercial and military) one can build, plus some "wonder" about their special port and harbor. I presume they also get trade bonuses and what not, but I don't know for sure.

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Yup I forgot to mention that, they get extra trade boni from ports (I've looked it up in the EDB file).

Yet another reason Carthage is one of the few factions that does not go bankrupt for the first 6 turn. We(me and probably the EB team^^) hope that's enough to satisfy your suggestion :)

regarding the horse archers factions it´s important to say that altough the sauromatae don´t have acess to a few more elite and armoured horse archers their basic horse archers are cheaper and they can recruit their native horse archers from the mercenary pools wich helps save up some much needed population in the steppes and gives you the hability to recruit a fast native army wich is extremly cost effecient

Plus they (and possibly the Saka too) can recruit their settled horsearchers anywhere over the whole map. This gives them a massive retraining range (everywhere except the steppes themselves). Absolutely awesome!

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Originally Posted by Blxz

Plus they (and possibly the Saka too) can recruit their settled horsearchers anywhere over the whole map. This gives them a massive retraining range (everywhere except the steppes themselves). Absolutely awesome!

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By contrast this is the reason Casse games become very difficult outside the British Isles (although that is also the case for many factions outside their homeland, the channel just makes it more difficult, especially when swarming with Eleutheroi pirates).

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Originally Posted by Myth

If you read my original post you'll see that my computer is quite adequate. It runs Skyrim on max detail without so much as a hiccup.

BTW In the "post your empires" thread sevearl people have reported winning a VH/VH game. None of them were playing the Romanii though - all had either phalanxes or HA from the start.

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I have a good pc but i have no trouble with the map, it does occasionally lag but this is usually solved by reloading or closing background programs.

as for the diffulty, I play VH campaign always and M or H battle difficulty depending on what type of faction i am playing. I am currently playing VH/H arverni campaign, but i think this campaign is possible to play on VH/VH, same for romans i guess and the HA civs (HA's are insanely good in autoresolve... 3 general bodyguards can autoresolve against atleast 1000 seleukid regular troops...) But i also tried a Lusotannan (spain) Vh/H campaign and that was way too hard.

Horse archers are still a bit cheating tho, because definitly against civs that do not have HA's you can conquer entire empires with just 10 good horse archers and 2 generals to do the charging and breaking of units.

For me the reason why i would up battle difficulty is because in later midgame, when you get a good eco and a good core army it becomes way too easy to win battles. thats why i dropped the medium (recommended because the stats are untouched) difficulty for battle in favor of a harder difficulty.


challenging yet fun campaigns are Baktria (new faction), Pontos (Pontus, one of the hardest starts i've ever played), Lusotania (Spain), Hayasdan (Armenia, I've never tried but heard some good stuff about them) Casse (britain, never played, doesnt really appeal to me)

I've never tried the Arab faction because it doesn't really appeal to me, and I've never tried the Getai either but now that I've checked their unit roster they seem quite awesome. I dont know if they are a hard faction to play though.


btw the best Nilla archers were beyond doubt the Gallic Foresters, these guys were such beasts! just 4 on a river crossing could kill 1600 men with 0 losses :P

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Originally Posted by The Stranger

But i also tried a Lusotannan (spain) Vh/H campaign and that was way too hard.

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Yeah the start is very difficult (especially if you don't disband those four units of elite cavalry...). Once you have a few provinces and one or two mines it becomes easy though.

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I've never tried the Arab faction because it doesn't really appeal to me,

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Saba is a pro faction. Easy start but then you're up against several factions with a superior roster. Also, their victory conditions are insane.

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and I've never tried the Getai either but now that I've checked their unit roster they seem quite awesome. I dont know if they are a hard faction to play though.

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The only hard part about a Getai campaign is their weak economy. Their units are almost failsafe.

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btw the best Nilla archers were beyond doubt the Gallic Foresters, these guys were such beasts! just 4 on a river crossing could kill 1600 men with 0 losses :P

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What's amusing is that they're the second weakest archer unit in EB.