Eremos, WTF?

[KingBobertVII]

So... I'm playing as Carthage, and I decided to make Hanno march south and take over Garama, and then keep going south to whatever is down there, since I never went that far south before with the Sweboz who I usually play.

Anyways, I keep wandering around, sent 6 spies, and hanno and 3 diplomats, and nobody can find the city.

So, I look at the map on EuropaBarbarorum.com, and I see its Tchazzar or w/e, and I send spies to check it out, but none of them can get to it.

So, my question is, why can't I conquer it, or is there some secret passage to it, which only opens if I believe/I'm not a muggle?

[Olaf Blackeyes]

You CANNOT get there without completely cheating. Even if u do conquer it you mess up ur game cuz that settlement is used as a game counter to monitor youre game.
Lesson:DONT MESS WITH TEZZARA

[A Very Super Market]

It's not like you would ever want it either. Like, it's just a bunch of sand

[antisocialmunky]

Salt.

[A Very Super Market]

That would need to be brought across a bunch sand, that you would have to find by digging in a bunch sand, in an extremely dry climate with little water

[Olaf Blackeyes]

Not worth it in other words so /ignore it.

[Tiberius Claudius Marcellus]

So, my question is, why can't I conquer it, or is there some secret passage to it, which only opens if I believe/I'm not a muggle?

Actually, the magic to get in there goes like this:

"You put your left foot in, you put your left foot out, you put your left foot in and you shake it all about. You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around. That's what it's all about."

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Your description, Bobert, is pretty historically accurate. If anyone were to march an army into the Sahara they would just get lost and never find anything.

[O'ETAIPOS]

The only missing part is that such army would never return home

[Cyrus]

What about the arabian desert? how am i supposed to conquer that region? i never see any city in it.And it's in the requirements to finish my saba campaign.

[/Bean\]

You cant conquer the central part of Arabia since theres no settlement. It's a desert...

[Mediolanicus]

What about the arabian desert? how am i supposed to conquer that region? i never see any city in it.And it's in the requirements to finish my saba campaign.

Arabian Desert is Eremos too.

And it's not all in the victory condition (VC's) for Saba! Check the cities in the trait of your family leader and click the "?" on your faction summary page and then look at which settlements are blinking to see your VC's.

[bobbin]

Central Arabia and the sahara are one province which was made unconquereable to represent the difficultly of maintaining a miltitary presence in such eviroments in those times. The victory requirements map for the Saba is out of date and a leftover from an older version on EB where central arabia was conquerable. Press the help button on the faction overveiw window to get a list of the cities you need to achivie victory.


damn my slow typing

[Cyrus]

Oh ok thanks.

[KingBobertVII]

Ok, thanks you guys. This was helpful, if a little bit annoying. Unfortunately, now my empire has spiky borders... Kind of annoying . Also, had to restart my game since I made Hanno wander in the desert for 10 years...

However, if any of you know, can you tell me if this will be the same in the next version? I realize the enormous difficulty in keeping control of the Sahara, however didn't Alexander march across a desert once thought impossible to cross? I mean, maybe it would just take a lot of effort but it could be done in the next version or something?

It seems like the achievement of taking the desert would be very worth it to whoever managed it, due to the huge deposits of minerals and such that are very abundant, as well as camels and salt and all kinds of goodies.

And, why was the Rub-Al Khali made unconquerable? The same reasons would motivate the Arabians to conquer it, and the Arabs in particular would be able to "Administrate" the sands well, considering a lot of their land is no better, excepting the coastlines.


Excuse my ramblings on the frustrations of an unconquerable desert, but I thought it would be better to ask these things and hope one day I can lead a huge army to its death in the desert for no other reason than to RP a mad king... (Or a king who found future-schematics to automobiles or some such nonsense and wanted oil )

[antisocialmunky]

Didn't he lose most of his army and regret that whole idea back in Babylon?

[KingBobertVII]

Well, no, he got to India and then his men were so pissed at him for doing all kinds of crazy stuff like jumping into cities with only a few guards, that after a few battles and reaching the Hyphasis river, they decided enough was enough and wouldn't budge. Alexander was pretty pissed, and decided to make his army march through the Gedrosian desert, to punish them and 3/4ths of them died of lack of water and exhaustion. Then Alexander died in Babylon .

[desert]

Gedrosia vs Sahara:



Case closed.

[Megas Pyrrhos]

Lesson Learned: Don't take shortcuts, especially in barren deserts. You might just lose a hellenistic army in it.

[antisocialmunky]

Technically the Sahara should be a little smaller than in that picture. 2200 years of desertification is alot.

[Tiberius Claudius Marcellus]

...However, if any of you know, can you tell me if this will be the same in the next version? I realize the enormous difficulty in keeping control of the Sahara, however didn't Alexander march across a desert once thought impossible to cross? I mean, maybe it would just take a lot of effort but it could be done in the next version or something?...

I thought the Team said that there would be no more versions of EB for RTW, only minor bug fixes if they were deemed important enough. They're all busy working on EB II for MTW.

Sorry, EB 1.2 is all that there ever will be. No desert ownership

[KingBobertVII]

Well, I was hoping after MTW's version, they might come back and do another version.
But, as to the post about the Sahara being much larger than Gedrosia, Yes, that is true, but the thing is that unlike Gedrosia, people DO live in the Sahara, and always have. Oases are still around, and were much more abundant back 2200 years ago, as the above post said 2200 years of desertification have done wonders, tripling the size of the Sahara, and drying up oases left and right.

As I said, it would be a monumental acheivement, but I believe that it should be at least possible to get to this settlement, albeit with major penalties, like minus morale un-bonuses, which could be specifically tied to spending time in this region.

Being that the desert is so large, I think that the un-bonuses would be an effective enough representation of the extreme difficulty in crossing the desert. I do not know how far the un-bonuses go up to right now, but I have only seen -3, which wouldn't be enough. But, I'm sure this could be fixed.

Not that any of this will likely be done, but I just thought I would throw out some ideas in case anybody with a bit more experience scripting Total War files comes across this and desires to become the King of the Sands. Unfortunately I can't do this myself, I only have experience in Morrowind editing and doing a few quick fixes to Baldur's Gate II, and other Infinity Engine games.

Well, I think I should get back to enslaving those pompous Ptolemaioi on my Punic Quinquiremes
.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Case closed.

Desert knows his deserts.

[Tolg]

Well, I was hoping after MTW's version, they might come back and do another version.
But, as to the post about the Sahara being much larger than Gedrosia, Yes, that is true, but the thing is that unlike Gedrosia, people DO live in the Sahara, and always have. Oases are still around, and were much more abundant back 2200 years ago, as the above post said 2200 years of desertification have done wonders, tripling the size of the Sahara, and drying up oases left and right.

As I said, it would be a monumental acheivement, but I believe that it should be at least possible to get to this settlement, albeit with major penalties, like minus morale un-bonuses, which could be specifically tied to spending time in this region.

Being that the desert is so large, I think that the un-bonuses would be an effective enough representation of the extreme difficulty in crossing the desert. I do not know how far the un-bonuses go up to right now, but I have only seen -3, which wouldn't be enough. But, I'm sure this could be fixed.

Not that any of this will likely be done, but I just thought I would throw out some ideas in case anybody with a bit more experience scripting Total War files comes across this and desires to become the King of the Sands. Unfortunately I can't do this myself, I only have experience in Morrowind editing and doing a few quick fixes to Baldur's Gate II, and other Infinity Engine games.

Well, I think I should get back to enslaving those pompous Ptolemaioi on my Punic Quinquiremes
.

Well, of course if there's somebody willing to make such a minimod out there he's free to do so, but you're ignoring a few problems:

1) Due to the region limit you would need to remove another region or live with a totally absurd situation in arabia.
2) You would need to spawn the skript building in another settlemnt making it unconquerable.
3) It would be very strange if you can conquer the sahara but not the land south of it.

Also you can always use move_character to reach Terhazza if you really want to.

[KingBobertVII]

Yeah, I understand why we can't conquer it. Just seems silly to have to have an unconquerable settlement :P.
But, if it would be weird to conquer the desert And not south Africa, why wouldn't it be weird to not be able to ride all the way to China as the Saka, or something like that?
Well, I suppose my insane desire to rule over all the sands will not be fulfilled, but oh well.

[desert]

I am indeed the lord of all deserts.

And you exaggerate the growth of the Sahara. I can assure you that it was quite large 2000 years ago. Oases weren't that common in the deep Sahara anyway.

Even if you could reach Terhazza, morale penalties would not be worth crap. You would still beat the three-unit army defending the city with 0 losses.
SOMEHOW, your army of, say, ten thousand apparently immortal soldiers suffered not a single casualty in the long desert trek which should have reduced the force to a few hundred, even if they managed to reach Terhazza in the first place (knowing the exact location of everything is unfair).

[Novellus]

I say, take the stupid city since you've already gone so far! Make them pay for wasting so much of your precious time by relishing in the excitement of subjecting the city to your harshest punishment!

Just make sure you remember to save your game in case anything should happen by accident.

EDIT: Oh wait, you restarted? Darn! You should have sacked the city like a REAL warrior! "HOW DARE THEY MAKE YOU WANDER FOR TEN YEARS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SAHARA!"

[A Very Super Market]

It will only screw things up if you conquer it right? Sending a spy in won't change anything?

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

As long as you don't destroy any of the weird buildings there, there really shouldn't be any harm in cheating to conquer it.

[A Very Super Market]

Weird, it seems to be a regular Carthaginian town... all it has that I've never seen before is a "Desert" building, and even that seems pretty normal