Ironman Campaign Rules.

[lugh]

Given some of the... eccentricities, shall we say? of ETW, my lack of interest in MTW2 and my beloved MTW not working on this pc anymore (why oh why isn't it backwards compatible? ), I've decided to start a new RTW game. I reinstalled it and it's running gorgeously on v-high, all the trimmings graphics wise on my 9500GT 4GB Ram pc.

I'm up for a challenge though, so does anyone have any suggestions for "artificial restrictions" to make the game that more difficult and flavourful?

My usual are as follows but I'm sure I've forgotten some.

1) A Governor for every city. (Expansion is reduced because you either run out of Governors, or early on, if you adopt loads of people you break your bank balance rather easily.)

2) No field armies without a General and Adjutant to take over. If they both die the army must fall back to the nearest city.

3) Must honestly attempt to fulfil every mission you're assigned.

4) No preparing for civil war. (Largely because I used to have stacks of navy units ready to blockade the entire Empire decades ahead of time...)

5) No retraining units.

Interested to see what anyone else does.

[SubRosa]

Try a Defensive Campaign. Just hold your starting territories for the entire game. I did it with Scythia and it really pushed my limits. Pick a faction where it will be a challenge, like Gaul or Greece.

[gollum]

Interesting thread topic.

I always play with the following;

1. No training/constructing allowed in cities unless a family member is in.

This is a good one really that makes the strategic part more interesting and enhances roleplaying. Try it out and see for yourself.

2. No pillaging/destructing of buildings allowed

This vastly improves the game and the AI performance.

3. No retraining/no disbanding

You are right to not wanting use retraining but disbanding is just as bad - and whats more the AI cant do it at all - it puts things much more on a par.

4. Always offer money every turn to allies

This improves your reputation and makes allies less prone to betray you esecially when you dont play in VH/H campaign difficulty.

5. Wait for 5 years to demolish basic shrine and add 5 years more for every level after that

This represents time needed to assimulate - and it makes the game much better as the AI cannot demolish (he can only continue the line is he has an equivalent god). In BI it makes things interesting!

[Celt Centurion]

I'd noticed that the A.I. does not seem to retrain or disband, but it had not occured to me that they could not. That is probably why they do silly things such as attack a full stack army with eighteen unit cards of between one and seven men without upgraded armor.

Over the past, I have always tried to utterly destroy an enemy army so that it could not retrain and come at me with better armor and more experience.

I have noticed that they will merge fleets, especially if there is a refugee army on board. A few nights ago, I won a battle and the remnants ran to a nearby fleet. I attacked the fleet and they fled to another shore after I beat them. Then, I defeated another army which the remnants also fled to the same fleet, 20 depleted units on board now. I threw every fleet I had at them but they kept merging with other fleets on the change turn phase. It took about ten turns to finally get the last ship to go down, with all twenty depleted units!

Strength and Honor
Fortitudo et Fides

Celt Centurion

[Quirinus]

I've been meaning to try out a game where: you take a young general, make him faction leader somehow, and then 'role-play' as the general only until he dies. Meaning, everything else is auto-manage, including troop recruitment, and auto-resolve everybody else's battles. And for the one general, you play every battle. You can manage cities, but only if that particular general is in the settlement.

I figured this would make the game a lot more challenging as the AI automanage tends to make cities revolt after a while, and force the player to use units they don't usually use, but the AI builds. (For me, it's units like peltasts or higher-tier cavalry.) Also it might make the game a little more realistic in regards to the behaviour of older generals. Normally (or at least for me) when a general gets past, say, fifty-five, we transfer his retinues to younger generals and stick him somewhere to retire, but I imagine some generals like Marius or Pompey might have craved more glory in their old age...

Has anyone tried something similar? My computer is acting up now so I can't play campaigns at the moment.

[gollum]

Older family members can be a lot of times quite useful - not wroth it to let them simply retire always.