Well, it's been almost a year since I first downloaded EB... and while I enjoyed it then... for many reasons I haven't been able to get too deep into a campaign as yet. Until now.

I fired up a Romani campaign on 1.2 and I'm in the 240s. That's as deep as I've gone... again, for a lot of reasons.

I just finished kicking Carthage out of Sicily, I've captured the 3 Homeland provinces in the north plus I've been continuing the war against Epeiros... taking Segestica.

Epeiros has almost completed conquering Makedonia so they are pretty strong. While I was fighting two fronts-- Sicily and Epeiros-- I felt spread thin a bit. Hamalcar hit me with a 3600 troop stack, I had 2500 and it was Epic. Hamalcar was like 10 stars and Blasio was 8. I had to pull off some rather tricky maneuvers to hold my line together while I slowly ground away at the left flank of Hamalcar's army...eventually turning it with 2 units of Principes and repeated charges into the flank by Blasio and Mil. Tribune Cotta. Like I said... it was an Epic... and until the rout I only managed a 10% spread throughout the battle... given that I was outnumbered...

I've immensely enjoyed using local troops in recently conquered territory. I've implemented a few loose house rules... namely new provinces have to have a level IV gov for at least 1 generation before being upgraded. Also, at least 1/2 of legions (stacks) raised have to employ units from the region in which (or close to) where I'm fighting. I like playing that way...not just cuz of the challenge but also the variety. I've fallen for Gaeros (sp?) and the heavy Greek skirmisher units played a huge role in holding the line in my Epic battle with Hamalcar.

I see that the deeper into the game I get the more variety in the units. It's quite beautiful... my new gaming rig gets delivered tomorrow. I've yet to be able to even play RTW on high settings... I finally dropped some bucks to be able to play ETW maxed. But I think I'll be re-visiting RTW for some time. It's just too Epic. And yes... I keep using that word again and again... but... it deserves it.

Wonderful mod. Really the best. Thanks EB. Looking forward to EB2.

As for this campaign... I don't think I'll be quitting anytime soon... I'm looking forward to hitting Averni soon. And Epeiros can eat my shorts...