barb vs greek question

[quackingduck]

so it seems to me that the civilized fractions(romans, carthanage, and greeks) get a huge financial advantage.
the civilized fractions (i know we could argue about that but im just using that as a term for romans, carthage, and greeks) get better road, port, farm and trade upgrades. and the biggie: they get the big mine upgrades. so is there a way to compensate for this or am i just destined to be poor as the lustonians?

[Khazar_Dahvos]

I'm staying away from this one

[quackingduck]

I'm staying away from this one

i dont get it? just a simple question/wondering.

[antisocialmunky]

... You just need to develop your economy ...

Go play a steppe faction, by comparison you're rolling in dough. Also, Iberia is one of the richest places if you develop it well. Gotta love all that silver.

[russia almighty]

Your problem is, stuff is expensive for luso. Their decent units are gonna cost you, cause either they are really large, or small and armored somewhat to the teeth.

[PenguinLobster]

Your a barbarian for gods sake, go find those 'civilized' cities and burn them to the ground. After afew huge city sacks you'll have tons of money.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

The 'civilized' factions seem to have more coastlines with more trade routes. They aren't really all the richer, they just have better access to the money you can get from sea trade.

[quackingduck]

The 'civilized' factions seem to have more coastlines with more trade routes. They aren't really all the richer, they just have better access to the money you can get from sea trade.

idk man, i had a lust campaign and a mak one. mak's can build the big mines and are in mineral rich land. i was rich as hell 600k gold and i had like 5 full stacks for armies. i only owned italy, greece, and part of turkey.

lustonian campaign was also in land that was rich with minerals, but i couldnt build the big mines. was very poor, i was only making 700 per turn for awhile and that was right after i built a shit load of mines. i aslo didnt go crazy with expensive units or anything.
mines make the biggest difference, the total trade income of the richest places is like 1 or 2k if ur lucky, max mine income can get up to 5k.

[LorDBulA]

max mine income can get up to 5k.

Dont belive building descriptions.

I think you can get max around 4K. But its only in few Very mineral reach provinces. Usually its max 2-3K.

[konny]

600 for simple mines and 1200 for advandced mines is the norm. You'll usually make much more money with sea trade in larger towns.

With the Lusotanns there shouldn't be any problems with economy after some time: save for two towns, all settlements in Spain have sea trade and a lot of - even simple - mines too.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Play the Casse. Once you get going you may just have the single most formidable economy in the entire Northwest...? Litterally ALL cities have ports... But you gotta work a bit to get your hands on them, first.

[General Appo]

True about the Casse, I was almost bankrupt until I took the last Goidilic towns and started to build up my economy. After like 100 turns of always being just above the red I suddenly went to something like 400000+ and started pumping out Ebherni´s to kick some mainland ass.

[LordCurlyton]

Its not only that but also that the area of Italy/Greece/Asia Minor has a LOT of small provinces crammed next to each other, which just multiplies the effect of sea trade that much more once you dominate the area. The Luso are can hold its own what with all the mines but there less provinces and until the other AI factions start taking all those Eleutheroi towns you have a relative paucity of trading partners. Plus I think Greece is the center of the map or nearly so, no? Doesn't the RTW engine give a hefty bonus to income for the middle of the map? Or am I just blowing steam out of my orifices?

[konny]

Doesn't the RTW engine give a hefty bonus to income for the middle of the map?

Never heard of that before. I can't recall anything of the like from playing KH or the Maks.

You should include trade in your considerations on peace and war: Eleutheroi settlements that might make good trading partners should be first on the list. Other factions' towns that add a lot of trade can also be good targets - or factions that you do a lot of trade with should not be attacked because of the interrupted trade during the war.

[quackingduck]

i would play as the casse but im trying to be some one that can have armies with very few troop types, alot easier to re-enforce armies and merge units, and the casse get too many different troop types that u kinda need. i was thinking parthia (just have ur standard horse archers with a few elite cats, and cat archs), carthage (just sac inf, ib cav, and some slingers), or lustonia (ib cav, pick my fav inf to spam, and slingers)

any suggestions on this? didnt wanna make a whole new post

[pezhetairoi]

Try KH. Hoplites are all you need, and decent cavalry.

Or Gaul, you can conceivably just build an army around family members, lots of bataroas, and iaosatae.

Or Brihentin and Neitos, in the later stage.

Or the ultimate: Rome post-Marians. Just spam Cohors Reformata.

[Ymarsakar]

The Successor empires have a nice jump start on training up the experience level of your units so you don't have to start from scratch with those "merges".

Baktria, since I am on that campaign right now, can provide a +3 experience bonus right from the get go. Big difference when training kataphracts and phalangites. Archers and slingers too.

Seleucids and Ptolemies at least get +2, I believe. One from government and another from gymnasium.

the civilized fractions (i know we could argue about that but im just using that as a term for romans, carthage, and greeks) get better road, port, farm and trade upgrades.

As far as I know, only Rome gets highways. Every other faction gets paved roads. I've seen Arverni and Aedui build paved roads, although maybe not Luso.

The barbarian factions also get a critical advantage in that their cultures are interchangeable, so are some of their MICs. That means faster expansion. Rome has a different culture from everybody, so their expansion is a little bit on the slow and requires large garrison forces to quell civil strife.

The barbarian factions, especially Gauls, get 2 battle casualty recovering ancillaries together, plus the druid training trait. This matters to your economy because the less troops you have to retrain, the more money you can put into your economy and thus grow it faster. Because your culture is the same as what you would be most likely to conquer, you can also concentrate on building economy temples/markets and stuff like that, instead of public order buildings if you were Western Greek or Romani.

The unique units of the Getai and the Gauls are something I want to try out after Baktria. Along with their berserker character traits, of course. I'll miss my armored elephants, though. I can just imagine crashing an armored elephant through a swarm of barbarians.