Titanomachy

[Conqueror]

So it begins

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In terms of sheer military power, the Ptolemies are far ahead of me. They have become a monster that just rolls over everything it comes into contact with. Even worse though, is the unbelievable treasury of the Pharaoh. I fear their diplomats far more than I fear their endless armies

I expect the battles to be primarily resolved automatically. There is no way I'd personally command the 1,000,000 fights that'll have to be fought before all is said and done

[General Appo]

Clash of the Titans. Kinda feel sorry for the Sele´s though, trapped between two superpowers.

[Chaotix]

Wow. Good luck with that. What difficulty are you playing on?

[Chirurgeon]

So it begins

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

In terms of sheer military power, the Ptolemies are far ahead of me. They have become a monster that just rolls over everything it comes into contact with. Even worse though, is the unbelievable treasury of the Pharaoh. I fear their diplomats far more than I fear their endless armies

I expect the battles to be primarily resolved automatically. There is no way I'd personally command the 1,000,000 fights that'll have to be fought before all is said and done

Who is to say that you are not a monster that rolled over everything? I will side with the Ptolemies on this one :)

[Laevex]

I've yet to see a really advanced screenshot of a Baktrian empire (like conquering Europa or Africa so good luck with crushing the Ptolies!
Looks like they've done unusually well though... at least you have the incentive of the prettiest colour. I personally much prefer a royal blue death to a grey or yellow death. They won't be too hard if you use quality troops, most of their armies are probably persian archers and levy phalangites. Although if you want to guarantee wins against phalanx troops then the time spent manually fighting the battles will pay off.

[underthesun]

THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!

[CaesarAugustus]

Want to have a bit of fun? Conquer your way through the steppes, picking up as many Horse Archer units as you can, then ride through the Caucasus and cut the Ptolemies in half right through the Fertile Crescent. Of course you wont be able to autoresolve those battles due to the HA's weakness in auto-res., but you won't want to anyway. Just enjoy raining arrows on your slow moving foe, and gaining silver and gold-chevron HA stacks in the process! That will definently put you ahead in the war. Or, better yet, just surrender. The Blue Death is an ugly colour, I much prefer to see pretty yellow spreading all over the map.

[Conqueror]

Campaign difficulty is set to Hard. Going further to the steppes is not something I'm willing to do at the moment, as it is very difficult to keep the areas under control with my "allied tribes". Plus, I need to keep most of my horse archers to the East to guard against nasty surprises from that direction *cough*Yuezhi*cough*

So far I've sought to stabilize the border while raising some invasion armies. To this end I've built up a chain of forts that completely block the Ptolemies' access to my lands:

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The individual garrisons aren't all that big, but when one fort is besieged the other garrisons will march to relieve it. All together they make a sizeable force.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

The individual garrisons aren't all that big, but when one fort is besieged the other garrisons will march to relieve it. All together they make a sizeable force.

Heh .. so it is kind of 'limes' you have there
the romans weren't the first ones to build it then
but .. hope to see some pics from those epic fights between you and the ptolies

[CaesarAugustus]

Hmmm... I didn't even take the Yuezhi into account. I guess if I was playing I would have gotten a nasty surprise...

So where are your planned points of invasion? I still think that it would be wise to try and surprise the AI by hitting in some "soft spot" of the Ptolemaic Empire, maybe an unexpected naval assault could achieve this. And those forts look just brutal. It's going to take them a lot of manpower to get through those.

[underthesun]

Great Wall of Baktria, I like it.

[Conqueror]

My first target will be Charax, second one Susa. The Ptolies are having problems in their conquest of Arabia, mainly that the cities keep revolting back to Sa'byn. This is the reason why the Sa'byn have been able to survive so long, and there won't be many troops coming at me from that direction. I've also made truce with the Seleukids (and have no fears, for they are too crippled to pose any real threat ATM) so my natural route of expansion goes directly west. The good thing about Charax and Susa is that they are protected by rivers and mountains, which enables me to concentrate defense on chokepoints (bridges, fords and passes). I'll launch my invasion with three fullstacks, once ready.

[underthesun]

there's a VERY handy bridge west of Babylon that, in my experience, they'll just throw stack after stack at. Aside from that you'll only need to worry about attacks from the direction of Edessa.

[Maion Maroneios]

Wow, this really is a clash of titans... Good luck with the looong war, Conqueror!

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

Don't you trade map rights?

[Conqueror]

Didn't get around to it in the early game, and it's hard to get the AI to sell it later. Then the Ptolemies, 2 turns before the war started, demanded that I pay a ridiculously small sum (was something to the tune of 4000 mnai) lest they attack. For some odd reason they included their map info on the "offer" and I thought I might as well agree to it.

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

Ah, I see. I use toggle_fow only occasionally, so I send spies around every now and then to have an up-to-date map.

[Conqueror]

I began my invasion of Charax through the southern mountain passes. Having one army engaged in a staring contest with the Ptolemaic forces, my other armies take another route and manage to sneak to the river and take control over the crossing.

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I find that my speedy march to Charax pays off, as the city is very lightly defended. I quickly overpower the weak garrison and station troops to all the river crossings. Susa is my next target, and I approach it from multiple directions. The Ptolemaic forces are unable to make use of their superior numbers since they are blocked from crossing the rivers and tied up sieging forts.

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The battles really aren't much to speak of, being largely bridge/ford defenses. You know how those play out.

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Turning off the fog of war reveals some pretty scary sigths.

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[CaesarAugustus]

I thought the Ptolemies in my game were bad. Do you plan to conquer all the way to Carthage? What do you think your limits of expansion will be? I'd try to make the cutoff point with fortifications at Bosphorus, Hellespont, and Sinai... but your still a long way off from those. I dont envy you at all, friend, best of luck.

[Conqueror]

Long time without update, but here it comes.

The siege of Susa would be a long one. My forces quickly occupy all the stratetic chokepoints, and after I'm done dealing with the Ptolemaic armies that were left inside the "quarantined" territory, the garrison within the city could abandon all hope of relief forces showing up. Even so, they persist stubbornly for years under siege:

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The forces that sally out are thoroughly decimated from starvation and disease, capable only of token resistance. They are soon to meet a bloody end,for I have spent the many turns building a very large number of siege machines:

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The sky is darkened by the missiles from the towers and the archers, and the corpses of the doomed defenders pile up:

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Conquered Susa is made the new capital of my empire. With the frontier secured, I begin to plan for future expansion. The Fertile Crescent looms before me, but these lands are very heavily defended:

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Instead of banging my head against the Ptolemaic wall, I take a more radical approach. Entering into an alliance with my former enemies the Seleukids - now reduced to a piddly regional kingdom - I raise armies from Hyrcania and march them across to the Ptolemaic-controlled Caucasus. Military forces in this area are considerably weak, allowing me to raid through the countryside and storm the poorly garrisoned cities in a kind of a blitzkrieg:

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Honouring my alliance with the Seleukids for the time being, I hand over the administration of these conquests to them. This enables my armies to keep up the momentum, for I need not bother trying to pacify and hold on to the Caucasian lands, all the while denying them from the Ptolemies. The expeditionary forces arrive to the coast of the Black Sea, where a permanent foothold is established. Trapezous and Ani-Kamah will act as bases from which to expand further into Asia Minor. My hope is that this will act as a distraction, drawing the Ptolemaic armies away from Mesopotamia and thus enabling me to push the frontier westward to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. As you can see from the map, significant events have taken place in Arabia. Where it looked like the Sa'byn were doomed to fall, they have miraculously turned the tide and kicked the Ptolemies out! They offered me an alliance, which I gladly accepted:

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[PershsNhpios]

Conqueror - this is the most simple, enjoyable and interesting AAR I have ever read, completely without super-imposed storylines, unpretending, and well-explained in the scenarios.

In fact, I am very envious of your situation - I have never had so many armies to move about, against so large an empire.

I believe on that scale, I would play every battle and make the whole campaign seem like a truly long, devastating war!

Very nicely presented.

[Conqueror]

Thank you. The thing is, with this large of scale to the campaign comes the realization that this is a war you can't win on the battlefield. A crushing victory against one army just doesn't mean much when there's six more fullstacks hanging nearby, and dozen or so large cities with well-developed MICs pouring out more units each turn. Such a war will be won or lost through grand strategy and control over resources.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Haha, I love how you used the siege towers defensively.

[XSamatan]

you can use them as defence??

I didn't know that..

[Conqueror]

In the "Pontic Wars" I adopted a different strategy with forts. With minimal garrisons they won't stop the enemy, but hinder them for a turn or two as they have to construct battering rams. This could be used to buy enough time to finish crucial sieges - when they get past the forts I already own the city:

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After I had taken the walls of underdefended Mazaka, a lone Ptolemaic unit roaming the streets was caught between my forces, being sandwiched between two phalanxes. I almost felt sorry for the poor buggers:

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My strategy of opening a new front in Asia Minor paid off. Just as I had hoped, the Ptolemaic armies in Mesopotamia were drawn north, leaving the land of two rivers less heavily defended. I immediatly began exploiting the opportunity to push the frontier westward - Arbela and Seleukeia were the first targets:

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With Mesopotamia in my hands, new river crossings are occupied, while forts are built to protect Babylon and Seleukeia from attacks from the northwest. Luckily, I can here make use of the same army that guards the bridge by Babylon to drive away any Ptolemaic armies that lay siege on the forts, since the marching distance is so short. Not to mention that the cities will produce fresh units to replace losses once MICs have been built. This appears to be a very good stratetic location to hold when expanding from east to west:

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A peek at the Yellow Death's progress in North Africa. They really are determined to push all the way to the Gibraltar. See also the crazy Lusitan mini-empire challenging the Romani and Sweboz for domination of Gaul:

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Sadly, this is where the campaign ends. I was looking forward to capturing Asia Minor, Syria and the Levant at least, but a persistent crash prevents me from getting past the spring of 172. I've found no way around this bug, even going back to earlier saves only results in the crash happening again the very same turn.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Have you tried getting past the bug by not activating the script for that turn?
Or (this is v1.0, right?) have you installed all of the fixes?

[Conqueror]

Leaving the script off had no effect. Yes I'm playing 1.0. As for fixes, I'm not sure I got them all There seems to be no links on the download page for patches on the EB site.

[thelord]

CTD's are often caused by rebelling settlements somewhere (not necessarily yours) if you can find it and prevent it from rebelling (buy it or something).

Failing that I have found a bug where foreign government buildings in your settlements causes a crash, so go through your cities and destroy any foreign government buildings.

Hope that works.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Leaving the script off had no effect. Yes I'm playing 1.0. As for fixes, I'm not sure I got them all There seems to be no links on the download page for patches on the EB site.

The fixes are in the bugreport subforum. The v1.0 fixes should still be stickied there and the links should still work...

[jhhowell]

Best of luck finding the rebelling city, if that's what's happening. There's a thread in the bug reports forum explaining a "perfect spy" function, but I couldn't get it to work (maybe it's a 1.1 addition? my game is also 1.0). Just luck that I had a spy in the right place in my game. If you can't see the rebellion, trial and error might work - start slashing the populations in far-flung AI provinces (that Ptolemaic province on the Persian Gulf, say) until the CTD goes away.

Great AAR, it would be most unfortunate to end this campaign prematurely! Very interesting and effective use of forts!