Thinking of starting up a new campaign... just 1 thing holding me back.

[Dayve]

EB is fantastic, it really is, couldn't ask for more from a mod... or at least not anything any modder can fix. I really want to start a new campaign but after a short while i get really pissed off because there's nothing there anymore, i have too much money to spend, i can pump out army after army and steamroll anything in my path... blah.

What really gets me the most is my armies have no importance whatsoever. Losing a full stack, with huge unit sizes, should have consequences. It should have loyalty consequences within cities, it should have monetary consequences, political consequences, all sorts of consequences, but it just doesn't. I click a few buttons and in 2 turns i have another full stack and it hasn't even dented my treasury at all.

Does anybody have any ironman rules to make it more interesting? I thought of... sort of... not allowing myself to recruit a new army for like 5 years after one gets destroyed, but that just isn't realistic i don't think. I'll be playing as the Romans by the way, i don't play other factions. I know they had the ability to churn out army after army but there would eventually come a point where they would have no armies left to conjure, whereas in this game that point never comes. Money never runs out and neither does population. Once you have Italy, you've won, no matter how many battles you lose or anything.

So... suggestions?

[General Appo]

Ehhh.... don´t play as Romans? They are the easiets faction in the game after all.

[Dayve]

They're also the most interesting and fascinating of the time, for me at least. I will play as the Romans, i said that in my original post. If you don't have something useful to say... Well, you know the rest.

[abou]

So let me get this straight:

1. You state that you want the game to be a more of a challenge.
2. You state that you will play as Rome.
3. You state that the game is easily won once you take Italy.
4. You reafirm your position to play as Rome.

Dayve, if can't make a useful thread then... well, you know the rest.

[Subedei]

T If you don't have something useful to say... Well, you know the rest.

Well, you asked us. It is your problem you don´t wanna give any other faction a try...not our problem. I was about to state: "Try Saka!" if U needs "a challenge".

So maybe go role-playing or try to reconstruct the historic developement of the Roman Empire....or make an AAR...many ways to alter the gameplay/ perspective.....

[zooeyglass]

Well, you asked us. It is your problem you don´t wanna give any other faction a try...not our problem. I was about to state: "Try Saka!" if U needs "a challenge".

So maybe go role-playing or try to reconstruct the historic developement of the Roman Empire....or make an AAR...many ways to alter the gameplay/ perspective.....

excellent response. if you are definitely stuck on romani and none of the other 19 factions, then the above tips are excellent - try playing in step with the actual dated history, or follow one unit's growth.

what difficulty are you playing on? have you considered VH/VH?

[Dayve]

Usually VH/M, but i was thinking of trying M/M this time because on VH/M i end up having to fight 10 battles per turn which gets very annoying very quickly.

I know it's impossible to play as Rome and have a challenge, what i'm asking is if anybody has any rules that they use to MAKE IT challenging. I don't enjoy playing as other factions and i always follow the historical expansion of Rome in every campaign, it's what i enjoy doing.

[zooeyglass]

Usually VH/M, but i was thinking of trying M/M this time because on VH/M i end up having to fight 10 battles per turn which gets very annoying very quickly.

I know it's impossible to play as Rome and have a challenge, what i'm asking is if anybody has any rules that they use to MAKE IT challenging. I don't enjoy playing as other factions and i always follow the historical expansion of Rome in every campaign, it's what i enjoy doing.

how about also using the historical (as far as possible) set up of the legions?

also, how about trying M/VH - to give you the challenge in battle but not the overacting hunting AI....

I appreciate you don't enjoy playing other factions, but perhaps you could explain in a bit more detail why that's the case - there's surely another that might suit you a little bit more, esp as you've said you feel the game's won once you hold italy. perhaps a radical change to saba or baktria would spice things up?

[The Celtic Viking]

Uhm... if it's impossible to play as Rome and have a challenge, there's no way to make it challenging. Even if you write "make" in caps. So in other words, you're asking us to do help you do something that, by your own words, cannot be done.

Anyway, you could of course make your own soldiers cost much more to train and keep. You could also edit the script so that when you get more than x money, y money will be removed from your coffers until you've got less than x again. Or you can take off those Romani blindfolds and try another faction. If you won't edit this, and won't just choose to wait with creating a new army, and won't play as another faction, and... just... won't... then this thread serves no other purpose than for you to mask your bitching and whining about there being no challenge under the guise of a plea for help.

I'm sorry if I'm being too much of a Frank here, but it just feels too much like you're complaining about a problem that you've brought on yourself.

[The Wandering Scholar]

A comedy of errors from Dayve. So you say it is too easy, so you reduce the difficulty? Something wrong there Dayvey. Why don't you try using armies of peasants?

[Obelics]

hi dave, try to use this:

- never Retrain troops as Romans, just merge it, even the troops you use as garrison inside the towns, that make more challenge. If you have not the money to train a new unit you cant merge it with an old one.
- always start a siege the turn just after you attack the town.
- before to siege a town, try to pur a spy there inside so he open the gates, and you have to take the town with no siege engines, that's really difficult!
- dont attack a faction that is neutral, never betray an ally etc.
- leave chartage the time to grow up as a power.

- never do sea invasion for luck! for example you cant just put all your best trined troops on a single transport ship and sent them to take Chartage...
You have to disembark in the neighbours of a province you want to attack, and you can just siege the town, 1 or 2 turns after. So wait 2 turns before to start the siege of a town in a province you invaded via sea.
- you can't do naval invasion, like above, with just a transport ship, but you have to gain Talassokratia (dominion of the seas) at first! That means that i cant invade chartage if i have not the wealthy to afford a great flot of war-ships, and i "must" have control of the sea, at last for the sea-part between me and the province i want to take.

- try to use some thought stacks, this means, not all Triari, or principes stacks, but use allied units and skirmishers too.
- Just one unit of Slingers! Not more! If you can train some archers, try to use them instead of slingers.

i dont know if this can be useful, that's what im using at last in my current campaign. Hope there is something that can be of some use. It was just what come in my mind now BTW.

salut!

[LorDBulA]

I know it's impossible to play as Rome and have a challenge, what i'm asking is if anybody has any rules that they use to MAKE IT

To add to Obelics post:

VH/VH difficulty.
Huge unit size. Only General Camera, even in sieges.
No river battles ( unless attacking ).
Dont use captains to do battles.

This will make campagne very hard, and long.
I just dont know if you can handle this.

There is always a way to make it more challenging if you really want to do.

[Redmeth]

Once 1.1 is out I've been thinking of starting a Roman H/H campaign using general camera, the problem with general camera is that you miss out on a lot of great angles of troops fighting but it sure does increase the challenge...

[LorDBulA]

But you get unique perspective on the battlefield.
Plus lots of great cavalry charges from close up :) (for mounted generals).
Actually I see more close up combat while playing with General Camera since with TW camera most of the time I spend high up in the sky.

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

EB is fantastic, it really is, couldn't ask for more from a mod... or at least not anything any modder can fix. I really want to start a new campaign but after a short while i get really pissed off because there's nothing there anymore, i have too much money to spend, i can pump out army after army and steamroll anything in my path... blah.

What really gets me the most is my armies have no importance whatsoever. Losing a full stack, with huge unit sizes, should have consequences. It should have loyalty consequences within cities, it should have monetary consequences, political consequences, all sorts of consequences, but it just doesn't. I click a few buttons and in 2 turns i have another full stack and it hasn't even dented my treasury at all.

Does anybody have any ironman rules to make it more interesting? I thought of... sort of... not allowing myself to recruit a new army for like 5 years after one gets destroyed, but that just isn't realistic i don't think. I'll be playing as the Romans by the way, i don't play other factions. I know they had the ability to churn out army after army but there would eventually come a point where they would have no armies left to conjure, whereas in this game that point never comes. Money never runs out and neither does population. Once you have Italy, you've won, no matter how many battles you lose or anything.

So... suggestions?

Sounds like you are playing a slow, historical expansion of Rome in the campaign. So that's not the problem.

It's the battles. You are finding the battles boring because you are winning too easily.

Several possible solutions:

1. Pump up the Battle difficulty level to Hard or Very Hard. That will give you more of a challenge.

2. Restrict your viewpoint in battle to the General's View. This is in the game options. Making it hard to see what's going on, and if you send your cavalry haring off the field after some routers, you won't be able to direct them to do something different.

3. If you don't like the AI beating you because of 'cheating uber stats' in VH, then ROLEPLAY your generals during the battle.

What I mean by this, is fight the battle as if you were the particular general you're using. For a young, inexperienced general, fight badly. For an average one, fight conservatively. For a great general with lots of stars, fight as you would normally.

If the general has never fought a battle before, fight the battle like a rookie. As if you were playing R:TW for the first time and didn't have a clue what you were doing! Just march your troops head on at the enemy and fight. A rookie general only has a Plan A and hasn't even considered what the enemy might do, so he'll have no Plan B at all, which means his troops won't react to enemy maneuvers. If the enemy outflank you and you've got no reserves to engage them, then just charge your general at them (even if they are a phalanx!) and watch the results. If the battle is going badly, then if your general is a bit cowardly, just withdraw your general off the battlefield and leave your troops to manage without a general.

For an average general who has fought a couple of battles, you can start to react to what the enemy do during the battle, but only slowly - your general is still unsure of himself and needs time to think. (And of course, while he's trying to think, the battle is still continuing, and probably things are getting worse and worse.) Finally he reacts, and half the time he does the right thing, half the time he makes a mistake.

Only if your general has lots of command stars and is greatly experienced would you fight a battle anywhere near as well as you would normally.

Other ideas:

Issue as few orders as possible. In real life, issuing orders to units took a long time, orders had to be taken by courier or by signal. Make a battle plan before the battle starts, decide what all your units are going to do, and then stick to that plan no matter what the enemy do in response.

Cavalry can react to new orders quicker than infantry as cavalry commanders are more enterprising and have a greater sense of initiative. But infantry should basically stick to the original battle plan almost as if it was set in stone, and only react if attacked from an unexpected direction.

If a unit is actually fighting the enemy in melee, don't change its orders. Don't send it off to attack another unit. Leave it alone until the enemy it's fighting routs.

Fighting battles like this is a lot more realistic. Your losses will be higher, and you won't be able to exploit the stupidity of the AI anywhere near as much as you usually do.

[woad&fangs]

I know that there is a give money cheat. Is there a take money cheat? If there is than you can penalize yourself if you lose a legion.

Edit: or you could just give money to the faction that destroyed your legion.

[Dayve]

hi dave, try to use this:

- never Retrain troops as Romans, just merge it, even the troops you use as garrison inside the towns, that make more challenge. If you have not the money to train a new unit you cant merge it with an old one.
- always start a siege the turn just after you attack the town.
- before to siege a town, try to pur a spy there inside so he open the gates, and you have to take the town with no siege engines, that's really difficult!
- dont attack a faction that is neutral, never betray an ally etc.
- leave chartage the time to grow up as a power.

- never do sea invasion for luck! for example you cant just put all your best trined troops on a single transport ship and sent them to take Chartage...
You have to disembark in the neighbours of a province you want to attack, and you can just siege the town, 1 or 2 turns after. So wait 2 turns before to start the siege of a town in a province you invaded via sea.
- you can't do naval invasion, like above, with just a transport ship, but you have to gain Talassokratia (dominion of the seas) at first! That means that i cant invade chartage if i have not the wealthy to afford a great flot of war-ships, and i "must" have control of the sea, at last for the sea-part between me and the province i want to take.

- try to use some thought stacks, this means, not all Triari, or principes stacks, but use allied units and skirmishers too.
- Just one unit of Slingers! Not more! If you can train some archers, try to use them instead of slingers.

i dont know if this can be useful, that's what im using at last in my current campaign. Hope there is something that can be of some use. It was just what come in my mind now BTW.

salut!

Thankyou very much. I was getting tired of the barrage of crap people were throwing at me up until this post, this is all i really wanted, you know, what i asked for.

Big thanks to Titus as well, i'll definately try that in battled, never thought of that before. :)

[konny]

Does anybody have any ironman rules to make it more interesting? I thought of... sort of... not allowing myself to recruit a new army for like 5 years after one gets destroyed, but that just isn't realistic i don't think. I'll be playing as the Romans by the way, i don't play other factions. I know they had the ability to churn out army after army but there would eventually come a point where they would have no armies left to conjure, whereas in this game that point never comes.

Yes, Rome certainly had these problems in the late Republic. That was the reason for the "Marian Reforms". Certainly, Rome never had a problem with population itself, neither would you have in the game. But she had problems with finding enough men qualified for military service (i.e. of the required wealth), able to replace all the casulties.

You can try the following: every town can muster a maximum of 10% of the population for military service. That would be, for example, Rome with 20,000 inhabitans can recruite 2,000 men; inculsive retraining and replacements.

Recruitement is done the following way:

Note the recruitement pool of every town and the recruits left every 5 years. That would be in, example 270:

Roma 2000 (pool) // 2000 (left)
Capua 1000 // 1000
Arpi 800 // 800

usw.

When you rectuite units in a town or retrain a unit in a town substract the number from the "recuites left" and also note the new recruitement pool after recruiting (10% of the actual population).

In our example, say you raised all 2,000 men in Rome, 100 men cavaly in Capua and nothing in Arpi. Rome's population would have dropped from 20,000 to 18,000 what would make your recruitement pool 1,800. In Capua from 10,000 to 9,900 (pool then: 990) and Arpi unchanged:

Roma 1800 // 0
Capua 990 // 900
Arpi 800 // 800

Now, you see that you can only recruite or retrain in Capua and Arpi, what also requires you to maintain the appropriate barracks in all these towns becaus there can be no cheating: these units must be recruited in the respective towns, else the pool wouldn't be correct and you would start recruting "negative" population of the "recruites left". For retraining it doesn't matter where a unit was raised, so you don't need to keep track of your units.

After 5 years you make a Census to check for population growth and new recruites. Say in our example the population in Rome in 265 would be 20,000 again, in Capua 12,000 and Arpi 10,000. That would make for the new pools:

Roma 2000
Capua 1200
Arpi 1000

You see that Rome has the same number than in 270 BC; but because you have drafted 2,000 men the population has in fact grown by 2,000 men to be on the same level again. That means you have 200 new recruites in Rome (10% of the growth). The same would be in Capua with 210 men and Arpi with 200.

The formula is

[POOL NEW] - [POOL OLD] + [RECRUITES_LEFT OLD] = [RECRUITES_LEFT NEW]

That would be

Roma: 2000 - 1800 + 0 = 200

Capua: 1200 - 990 + 900 = 1110

Arpi: 1000 - 800 + 800 = 1000

Roma 2000 (pool) // 200 (left)
Capua 1200 // 1110
Arpi 1000 // 1000


Looks a bit compliacted, but you just have to check the population of your towns every five years, divide that by ten, substract it from the old pool and add what was not recruited so far. About a minute of work per town.

With every Reform the pool is rested in the towns that are affected by the reform as soon as the new barracks are built. That would be, when Rome has population of 30,000 when the Polybian Reforms appear the pool is set to 3,000 fresh recruits regardless of what was recruited in Camillan times.


I have been using this rule in two Roman campaigns now. The effect is that you won't really run out of soldiers, due to population growth, but that losses badly hurt. And that you have to use regionals much, much more. Because when there are no more Polybian recruits left in Rhegion you'll have to raise Greeks in Messana, for example.

[Pobs]

One thing I have tried is to assume you can only be present with one army per move, all the other forces have to autocalc their battles... certainly increases the difficulty rating and makes you think hard about which battles are most important to you.


cheers,


Pobs

[Narhon]

give large amounts of tribute to the other factions.

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

Good post, konny.

I operate a much simpler system with Rome.

Towns can only raise 1 unit every 2 years (1 every 8 turns.)
Large towns can raise 1 unit per year (1 every 4 turns.)
Minor cities can raise 2 units per year (1 every 2 turns.)
Large cities can raise 4 units per year (1 every turn.)

[antisocialmunky]

The easiest way to not be rolling in dough: Never set your taxation above normal or high. It works pretty well for the Hellenic Factions atleast and its what I always use. It works pretty well, you'd be surprised at how much taxes Very High rakes in compared to everything else.

[Long lost Caesar]

hey i reckon the romans can still be a challenge, just because they have more units than most doesn't automatically make them easy to play as. why does everyone seem to think the romans are a cake walk?

[Megas Pyrrhos]

I know that there is a give money cheat. Is there a take money cheat? If there is than you can penalize yourself if you lose a legion.

Edit: or you could just give money to the faction that destroyed your legion.

You could take money away by typing in add_money -25000 or w/e amount up to 40k. I do this sometimes, like if I lose a key city that I might imagine contains a sizable portion of my empire's treasury.

[Tarkus]

I second Titus' statement -- great post, Konny!

After reading through your logic, this only reaffirms my desire to add in the City Mod to my next campaign...by this, I mean the mod that restricts the growth of cities to a more reasonable level (not sure this is the right name for it). I'm growing a bit weary of North African outposts like Kirtan and Siga growing into huge cities so quickly...

Thanks again!!

[Tellos Athenaios]

hey i reckon the romans can still be a challenge, just because they have more units than most doesn't automatically make them easy to play as. why does everyone seem to think the romans are a cake walk?

Because, compared to every other faction, the Romans are the easiest to play as. Neither economy nor military, will every really present you with a challenge...

EDIT: Of course it's pure opinion. But the fact of the matter is no other faction will give you fully developped baracks at the start. No other faction will have to do as little to survive as the Romans. No other faction really can lay back and say 'we've got our economy covered' right from the start- apart from Carthage & Ptolemaioi (but they still need to build everything up...). No other faction gets such a wide AOR of its military back bone.

[LorDBulA]

But also no other faction has to conquer so much to achieve victory.
So although start with romani is easy winning game is not.

[d'Arthez]

Ya, but a lot of those cities that need to be conquered are quite closeby to Rome, for the distance to capital penalty, assuming you stick to Rome as the historical capital. Only at the west coast of the Iberian peninsula, and beyond Asia Minor (including the Levant) you will be suffering from higher than 40-50% penalties. Which is not bad at all. It also means you can have a lot of settlements generating huge incomes (with lvl2 govt this is a bit easier as well), to pay for the garrisons in the more rebellious cities.

However, if you are playing in the east, even in a stable empire, your penalties are increasing much faster as the cities are a lot farther apart from each other. The economy there is represented as much poorer in comparison with the West. It is much harder to conquer everything the Romans don't need for their VC (even if we exclude Britain, Ireland, and most of what nowadays is Germany and Poland), than to conquer what is needed for the Roman VC.

I am well aware that this is to represent the difficulty in maintaining order (and deal with rebellions etc.), but effectively you are penalised twice for the same thing.

[Disciple of Tacitus]

Dayve,
Great question and too bad it got snirky at the beginning. But it looks like people are giving you some good "house rules" to make the game more challenging. I, myself, was inspired to play the Romani after viewing Konny's recruitment guide :
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=93896

In general, you will find Rome a great challenge if you add some historical accuracy to it. I run a quick and easy spreadsheet of my FMs (Family Members) by their rank in the Senate. Wiki has a quick to read and easy tp understand explanation of the "Cursus Honorum" (aka FMs political path).
I would be happy to share my own House Rules if you are interested.
For starters, try this. Create historically accurate legions. 10 units to a legion. Now 20 units is a Consular Army - i.e. 2 legions and it can only be lead by a Consul. Praetors have "imperium" and can thus lead legions (10 unit armies) - no problem. With only 2 Consuls and 2-4 Praetors on average , you can see how quickly you have to scale back your armies and thus expansion plans. NOW, you have a challenge.

If you are interested, I can PM you some of my house rules. Either way, enjoy!

[Tellos Athenaios]

But also no other faction has to conquer so much to achieve victory.
So although start with romani is easy winning game is not.

Hmm. I don't really agree there.