EB, 1st thoughts of a TW fan
This weekend I first played Europa Barbarorum. It's a great mod, in fact, it's what I had thought Rome would have been... here is what this first weekend taught me about EB:
1. Javelins, boy, does everybody have javelins! It's THE weapon of ancient Europe apparently, everyone has 'em and in bucketloads. I'd always thought that the Barbaric warbands lacked javelins in vanilla Rome... and I was right to think so probably. The tribes chucked bucketloads of javelins at each other and the romans. In hindsight, it was just wrong to limit the barbarian javelins to skirmishers in vanilla rome (did they do that to conform to the popular believe of the Roman military's uniqueness?). and couldn't have CA took to heart the significance of the spear in the tribal cultures of northern/western Europe?
and now most cavalry throws pointy sticks too.
2. I learned how prominent the Hastati/principe-type warrior actually was. Every civilization seems to have a similar unit (javelin hurling line-infantry).
3. The campaign is a lot harder. No real garrison units and everything is suddenly so expensive! Start a game as a tribe (gallic/celtic, germanic, or Thraikian) and you'll be in the red by the 2nd or 3d turn... Especially with the tribes that start of small (1 province), the 2-3 armies you've got in the field are a huge burden. You'd either have to conquer 2-3 cities fast to offset the expenses. Gone are the days that you'd have a full-stack army for each city. 1 army for each 4-8 cities is more like it...
I should've also realised the hatcheting of the "sell map&trade" strategem. Didn't work and was a loss of time and efforts. oh well, I'd only began using that thing once some one told me I could. Now that I can't, my attention is brought more to actually doing real stuff to improve my economy.
Lesson 1: Don't build or train anything in the first few turns unless the financial status has room for it. Take some rebel settlements first withj your expensive armies untill your economy becomes balanced... then start upgrading the economy to give you headroom for a second expansion. still, it took almost 2 years for the Sweboz to get out of the red after conquering Gawjam Rugoz, Gawjam Heruskos and Gawjam Harkonez (Chattii).
4. this makes expansion a slower and more gradual progress. Soon I learned how carefully you'd have to balance between military power and economic clout. Basically, if you can't spend money on both in the same turn if you don't want to screw up your economy. I never refered to the financial stats so often to see if the army upkeep wasn't growing beyond my capacity, if my profits were high enough to make investments etc. Conquest takes a lot of planning, and I realised I was conquering more deliberately, looking to expand to profitable area's, gaining territorial security, buffer zones (in my Sweboz game, I allied with the Aedui and kept Branbande/belgica-don't know EB name- as a buffer while I'm going for the eastern neigbours of my starting province) and alliances.
Lesson2: Diplomacy is now more than mercintalism and racketeering
5. The new government-types add flavour to the game very much, as do the auxiliary units you'd get in subjugated provinces.
Lesson 3: learn about the government types... don't leave family members hanging round at type 3 and 4 in the first few years (they will gain fame as interlopers and nuissances to the locals)
6. I especially like the Sweboz as most unit- and building names are etymologically very interesting. there's a lot of words in modern dutch, german and English that can be traced right back to the Sweboz names of EB: Jugunthiz= Jeugd (dutch), Jugend (German); Skutjonez= Schutters (Dutch), Frijot= Vrijen (dutch), Freier (german), free (English)... for a language nerd like me, it's great.
all in all, a great mod which brings variation and a greater challenge.
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