From robbers to royalty, a Pahlav AAR.

[zooeyglass]

This has been a fantastic AAR - excellent angle for the story, great style and exciting journey the pahlava are on. i really hope those CTDs can be resolved, it's such a pain in the arse. I nearly started a casse AAR and then it was ruined by a CTD. Oh well!

but please do continue, it's a great story.

regards

[johnhughthom]

Thanks for the feedback, unfortunately I doubt very much I'll be able to continue with this as I've tried everything I can think of to get the saves working. It's very frustrating as this is the only EB campaign, out of dozens, I have ever lost to a recurrring CTD. I'm playing Fallout 3 at the minute so no time for EB, but I plan to have another go at a Pahlava AAR in a few weeks and I want to do a reform guide as well. I really enjoyed that campaign and hope to get a proper Parthian Empire, maybe even a war with Rome, to share.

[Aemilius Paulus]

Why?! Why?! Why?!

Every single AAR I have seen end ended because of unbeatable CTD or a corrupted save. Your AAR was one of the best I have read, along with Chirurgeon's and MAA's. I find it very odd and sometimes even suspicious (although not your necessarily yours - especially since you said you were going to do another AAR) that AARs end that way. Is it normal to experience unbeatable CTDs and corrupted saves in EB while just casually playing (i.e. not making an AAR out of it)?

EDIT: Is it possible for you to post your savegame for maybe someone like bovi to possibly fix it/find out what's wrong?

[johnhughthom]

I tried the install validation and took bovi's advice on what was wrong, no luck unfortunately. I had noticed a higher than usual number of CTDs through the campaign but they weren't repeating CTDs until the last one, then all 3 saves I had wouldn't work. I'm going to have a test game for a few turns before I do a new AAR to make sure I don't have a corrupted install this time. I'm finding Fallout 3 very disappointing, not an RPG at all in my view, so I may start a new AAR sooner than I had imagined.

Edit:the save file is available here https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=109074 it's for a RTW.exe with only the permanent fixes. If you try it and it crashes I will know it's a corrupt save and I can give up trying to get it working...

[LordCurlyton]

Nice AAR. I fired up a Pahlava campaign and am enjoying it. Stll haven't quite figured out all the req's to get the reformed gov't, nut I've got time.

[johnhughthom]

1.Military occupation.
2.Migration
3.Pastoralism
4.Large Nomad Market
5.Settled Community
6.Warlords Horse Herds
7.Reformed Pastoralism
8.Advanced Settlement
9.Settled Aristocracy
10.Reformed Parthian Government.

http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img....png&srv=img34

There you go, list of requirements and regions you can get the reform. Good luck.

[LordCurlyton]

TY good sir. And do keep this AAR going. Pahlava is my second-favorite faction, behind the Romani, of course. I like that you stick more to text than pictures but those you use are effective IMO.

[johnhughthom]

I was just wondering if a few people would be so kind as to give me some info on their own Pahlava campaigns? I plan to start a new one for an AAR soon but don't want to play through the same situations again. I was thinking of trying to keep the alliance with the AS for as long as possible, perhaps giving them 100 per turn for 100 turns or something, and try to take out Saka, Bactria and maybe even Sauromatae. I have a feeling that if I do that it will only allow the AS to build up and make them extremely difficult to defeat when the inevitable betrayal occurs. I thought about trying for an historical expansion but that would be a lot of sitting about doing nothing in the first 30 years or so (at least I think it would, I have ordered a few books on Persian history, so hopefully I will be more enlightened when I do the AAR Speaking of which anybody read The Persians by Maria Brosius?).

[desert]

That's actually what I did. I waited for 20 years before attacking the AS. They actually declared war on me very soon into the game, but all I did was fight off their biannual armies, until an AS army around 250 BC unexpectedly killed my FL, the grandfather of Tirdad and his more famous brother.

He died in a charge that instantly routed the enemy unit, making him the only casualty of the battle.

But anyway, giving AS gifts is probably a good idea. That way you can disband your entire army in 272. Build some mines in your starting cities so you can make a bigger military when you finally decide to invade too.

[Kuningaz]

Hm actually with my Sauromatae I first united all Steppe regions, then conquered Baktria and afterwards AS (took me about 15 years to accomplish that, I think). From my experience attacking the AS wasn't difficult at all, as I had (and u'll probably have too) an almost full stack army with golden experience chevrons. I virtually destroyed and raided 80% of the AS territory in 5 years and now they're pretty much done (although I have to admit, I just erased their counterattacks with those golden armor/weapons/experience apeleutheroi with auto_win). Actually I kinda enjoyed wiping out the population and destroying every single building in every town I didn´t have to hold. Soon I´m going to raid egypt Which means: =