House rules

[Baktrion Agema]

What are the rules you employ during a campaign to make EB more realistic/balanced/harder/easier?

Mine are as follows:

No cheating except the occasional toggle_fow when I cant be bothered to spend 10 turns looking for the settlement I'm after in the steppe

No corner-defences in the battles, where you go to a corner of the acsessable battlemap and place your troops accross it so your flanks are covered.

No building large stone walls, or using siege towers on them, as theyre unrealistic.

Thats about it, what rules do you lot use?

[Swordmaster]

For the usual stuff, see QuintusSertorius. I don't really follow his guide, but we've got quite some points in common, such as no retraining, historical expansion, etc.

A new thing I've been using lately is keeping flanking manoeuvres to a minimum, except when I'm clearly on the losing side. Makes battles you'd normally win with ease slightly more interesting, even though you still win in the end.

[Ibrahim]

use darth's AI formation mod-the AI is a bit better afterwards

[Fish-got-a-Sniper]

-Must have a naval unit at important trade routes.
-Succession in Republican governments is determined by influence and succession in monarchies is determined by lineage.
-must use semi-historical armies.
-can use the move_character cheat to better represent naval and terrestrial travel considering the pitifully slow rates in RTW, but nothing over the top
-expansion is limited to areas were the faction had historical interest
-After a conquest and the establishment of a temporary military government, build a level 1 barracks to garrison the city. After a government is established build up the infrastructure before building up the military buildings and happiness buildings.
-Set up logical governments. For example, if your playing KH, Spartan Agoges only in places that used that type of government like Laconia, Crete, and Thessaly. And for Carthage, build a New Colony government and then after a generation or so upgrade to a colony if possible.

[QuintusSertorius]

My next game, which will be as Epeiros-Pergamon, I'll use similar houserules.
1) Cheats are perfectly fine to aid the AI factions and preserve historicity. Force Diplomacy is necessary to get anything like sensible diplomacy.
2) I'll be limiting my borders to that of the Kingdom of Thrace, and probably not even as far out as that.
3) Use move_character to transport the AI rather than relying on the crap naval invasions you get with either rtw.exe or bi.exe.
4) Always use balanced armies; no stacks of heavy infantry and slingers or the like. I'll probably use mostly regionals, not all that keen on the factional units Epeiros gets. Apart from Prodromoi.

[Hax]

What are the rules you employ during a campaign to make EB more realistic/balanced/harder/easier?

Kill the Ptolemaioi!

[Aaldaemon]

Note that I do not use these rules all the time, and there are many others I use on occasion, but some rules I'm fond of are:

1)Do not fight more than 1 war of expansion at a time - that is to say I shall only expand on one front, using only one main offensive army - other armies are used for support, to replenish loses, garrison etc, but I'm only conquering one province at a time with my main army - usually led by my most beloved character of the moment.

2)I roleplay my characters to varying degrees - for example I will abstain from using over elaborate tactics if my general is a dimwit with 0 strategic/tactical knowledge... If my character is a hater of some particular culture... death follows in his wake when dealing with them, etc.

3)Try to expand in a logical manner, or rather invent a plausible logic for my expansion.

4)Act more like the ruler of the state rather than a gamer who knows the best way to play the game. For example it might not make a lot of sense for the gamer to fortify some border provinces to a large degree when I should be building more useful things in game terms, but I will still do it - roleplaying my king's fortification effort on the kingdom's frontiers... Another example would be the building of schools to simulate an effort to change the culture in a particular region etc... There's many things I do that make little sense gaming wise.

[satalexton]

i tend to limit the number of armies (aka stacks) that i field, depending on the size of my empire. I rarely field more than 4, then i use the excess cash to fund decent border garrisons.

[artaxerxes]

1) Treat 'not-endangered' borders as endangered borders (more or less what Aaldaemon said as his number 4) -> fx I'm well aware that nobody is EVER gonna invade my Indian satrapies from the east, cos' the map ends there. But I still fortify, since they ARE a border

2) Use Auto_Win Defender for battles that you KNOW you can win. That is because Saba besiege my Bostra and Homna EVERY fourth turn. And my computer is REALLY slow. So instead of waiting 15 minutes for the battle to load, then wait 10 minutes for the Saba to suicide on my Phalanx (yes I use that tactic, but why not, fighting Saba infantry is boring) and then wait 5 minutes for the campaign map to load again - and having to do that every half hour (which can REALLY ruin your day), I use the cheat to win the game - even though I'm certain of victory, the normal autocalc of course value their (completely irrelevant, since we're talking gate fighting) numbers and command stars, and therefor I need this cheat to get rid of them. I do however ONLY use autowin for that kind of battles as well as for ones that I have played but which were deleted by CTD's

3) Avoid all other kinds of cheat, even FD - not because FD isn't a good tool, but because I don't have the discipline to use it. Before I know of it, I've used it to double my empire, and then the game makes no sense anymore. Anyway, as I'm usually Seleukid, I blitz everybody till Asia's divided between me, Saba, Saka and Sauromatae. Saba I hold at bay as noted before, Saka usually attack my northern frontier, but never with numbers that actually threaten the local garrison (in most redudant cases I'll use auto_win here again). Sauromatae are for some reason NEVER at war with me, and therefore my Caucasus frontier doesn't even have to be guarded (but see 1) - i do it anyway). Besides these easily-held frontiers, I garrison Cyrene and Byzantion heavily AND LIVE IN PEACE :)
Since Saka and Saba are never strong enough to harm me and Sauromatae are at peace, I have the resources of one third of the map and only need to hold 2 settlements. Obviously I'm then capable of garrisoning them strongly enough to withstand most attacks and therefore, at this point, IT DOESN'T MATTER who's at war with me ;)

4) use toggle_fow to see what's going on far away (fx how are they doin' in Northern Europe - something which won't give me any advantage anyway, since I'm not fighting there.) Using togglefow I DON'T check position of enemy armies among my neighbours, but only how the territories are dispersed on the minimap. I usually jump to the Indian Ocean before using togglefow, so I'm certain not to see anything concerning army status of my neighbours.

5) I do betray allies, cos' I know they'll betray me, and I don't see where the historical accuracy is in never betraying anybody. But ones who've helped me (who side with me in conflicts and attack my enemies), I try my best to be faithful to. But after several Seleukid games, I no longer have any nice feelings concerning my relationship to any of their starting allies, Makedonia excluded

6) If Iu se FD, I NEVER use it to weaken an AI. Even if one faction is winning more than is historically accurate, I find it a kind of cheating to limit their expansion - its like cheating to remove a strong competitor. Their lands are spear-won, who am I to tell them to give them up? If I use FD, it should ONLY be to salvage dying factions into remote corners of the world, where they can live on. But unfortunately, I'm currently aiming at sooner or later interfering in Greece (in my current campaign, Getai are more aggressive than I've ever seen them before, and amazingly, KH, Epeiros and Makedonia have reached some sort of stalemate, with LOTS of fighting going on, but NO results being achieved - I find these wars fascinating and far more interesting than a peaceful Greece under my control would be, but as I want to fulfill my VC, I hope Rome can wipe them out and then I can avenge them). I would like to salvage the Hellenic factions (whom I admire very much) into other areas, but there are really NOWHERE to put them, that isn't either my VC's or completely unhistorical. I'll prolly put Makedonia as the Bosporans, but I can't put anyone in Italy, cos' I want a strong Rome to function as the main rival of my empire. So there's really nowhere to put KH or Epeiros...