Introductions from an EB noob

[Scud]

I have to confess I played my first game as Bactria, and on easy!

Mine was Pontos...on Very Hard.

Well I tell a lie, I messed around with Romani for two turns, tried a battle to get used to the new feel of the mod, and that was that. Anyway I had manged to capture Trapezous, Ani-Kamah, Kotais, Sinope and Byzantion before I was betrayed by AS and I was 20,000 mnai in debt. My mistake was going eastwards at first, instead of the trade-rich towns of Mikra Asia instead.

Needless to say, I tried my best, but then a full-stack of mine was wiped out by an earthquake next to Kotais (this was 1.0), so I put that campaign on hold!

I haven't actually been able to finish a Pontic campaign as of yet, I restarted again in 1.1 and had a large empire containing all of Mikra Asia, Mesopotamia and the levant, but then 1.2 came out! I think I shall finish my Epirus campaign first, then mabye my Pahlava and/or Casse campaign before starting up again.

[Ariovistus Maximus]

PONTUS... on... VH...VH...

Awsome! GO SCUUUUD!!!!

Yeah Pontus would be an... interesting... first game.

I've actually just had EB for a few months. I more or less won a game as Casse, but then I made such a mess of government types in conquered cities that I just dropped it, and used the experience in other games. I just assumed I needed TypeIV for any city outside of Brittania, so it messed with my recruiting abilities.

And now I'm playing one Romani game and one Aedui game. That is the extent of my EBing. So far!

@ RomanHoliday:

The EB AAR forum is here. It has the best ones IMO, not necessarily due to writing ability but because the EB platform gives you WAAAY more potential to write a realistic and immersive AAR.

The RTW AAR forum is here. Wait a minute; the link for RTW AARs just takes you to the Mead Hall. Well, that will have lotsa RTW, M2TW, and ETW AARs all together.

I guess that's where the M2 and ETW AAR sections link to as well.

Enjoy! Don't read too many at once though or you will feel an urge to play every faction at once!

[soup_alex]

Enjoy! Don't read too many at once though or you will feel an urge to play every faction at once!

Aye, it's bad enough having three fun campaigns in progress at once, and having to restart the program when you want to change around.

[RomanHoliday]

yikes!!

wow, AAR is a whole other world, I think I better spend some time on my own 1st campaign before reading too much more!

[Ariovistus Maximus]

Wise move! ;)

But be sure to check out the AARs in my sig sometime; they are truly excellent. And then of course, there is the King of the AAR forum, his Highness MarcusAureliusAntonius. His are quite in-depth; very goooooooooood!

Enjoy EB!!!! As if you couldn't if you tried.

[Atraphoenix]

Welcome to EB forum
ı think no one expressed before:
here is the link to our last bug fixes for 1.2.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=109936

you should install them or you may some CTD.

I am one of the "blitzers" too.

[V.T. Marvin]

Speaking of famous AARs, you must not miss these ones:
The Waste Land by Artaserse/Obelics

Sons of Atlantis by Obelics
and finally
The World according to Royal Pontic Satrapy of Ancyra by Quirinus Kuhlman

I know it is only my own personal opinion, but I really recommend these as the best examples of what is possible in terms of role-playing and story-telling in EB. My deepest admiration to the authors of these!!!

In fact, I started playing EB just because of reading Artaserse´s Waste Land back then on RTR forum. It is a tremendous loss that that story disappeared when the server went down.

P.S.- My signature contains links to my own humble attempts to write something distantly similar too.

[Fluvius Camillus]

where is that link of that old AAR about Sabaen foot soldiers... That one really rocked. It was about the life of a simple Sabaen footman.

With Spear and shield, was that the title?

~Fluvius

[RomanHoliday]

OK! so I've had a weekend of pretty solid play and I think I'm ready to give feedback and ask some questions. First, a summary:

- I'm now in the late (or is that early when you count backwards?) 250s, have all of Italy and Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, making inroads into Gaul territory immediately adjacent to Italy, and have taken Carthage and the settlements close to it along the coast of Nth Africa. Now moving west along the coast of Nth Africa to finish taking this region, then I'll move up in to the Iberian peninsula from there to finish off the Carthaginians (sorry at work, don't have the proper faction names or settlement names to hand). Once the Iberian peninsula is secured, I'll move on Gaul and Germanic controlled Western Europe from 2 directions - coming up from Iberia and across from the North of Italy. Sound like a sound strategy?

- I'm only playing on m/m but I would have bee fine on h/h. Once I got through those first few lean economic decades it has pretty much been business as usual. The economy is really well balanced, well done modders! I have minimal garrison, 2 stacks in Nth Africa and 2 stacks in Nth Italy...

- So army configuration and retraining: actual Roman troops and can only be trained and retrained in those first few Roman settlements, then after that it seems to be all local troops. So when I use my Roman stacks outside of this area, i then have to sail them back for retraining. Its a hassle, but I like the realsim. So now I have my original two Roman stacks, then a stack of local troop types up in Nth Italy/Gaul, and a stack of locals in Nth Africa. I use the all-star Roman stacks to take heavily garrisoned settlements and powerful enemy stacks abroad, then bring them home for repair, replacing them in the settlement I've taken with local troop types. Is that pretty standard practice?

- Loving all the local troop types you can train though, very cool. And the mercenaries you can train in different regions are amazing!

- And assassins have been rendered useless right? I trained one but his chances of doing anything were as low as 1% in most cases, so I retired him to Rome. Likewise with spies, I've managed to get some in to settlements, but they don't get any trait increases - has this also been taken out?

- And the vast empty expanses in Africa, is there anything out there/ I've sent a spy out to path-find but he pretty much always ends up in a dead-end and has to re-trace his steps. I can see some resources down in the bottom left corner (Timbuktu?), but I couldn't find a way down theree...

ok that's it for now, sorry about the long post,
cheers,
DS

[soup_alex]

where is that link of that old AAR about Sabaen foot soldiers... That one really rocked. It was about the life of a simple Sabaen footman.

With Spear and shield, was that the title?

~Fluvius

I think you mean The Banners of Sab'yn? Apparently a sort of spinoff (which I have read, damn good,

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

shame it seemed to reach its conclusion so quickly

) from Spear and Shield (which I haven't, yet). I think MAA has started something with a similar approach also quite lately (again, another one on my AAR reading list after Practical Recording Techniques, The Microphone Book, Letters From New York, Don Quixote, etc. etc.)

[miotas]

Firstly, g'day to a fellow aussie and welcome to the .org.

- So army configuration and retraining: actual Roman troops and can only be trained and retrained in those first few Roman settlements, then after that it seems to be all local troops.

Yeah romans can only come from the first 5 until the reforms and tehn i think it's all of italy.

-
So when I use my Roman stacks outside of this area, i then have to sail them back for retraining. Its a hassle, but I like the realsim.

I prefer to send out reinforcements, but to each their own.

-
So now I have my original two Roman stacks, then a stack of local troop types up in Nth Italy/Gaul, and a stack of locals in Nth Africa. I use the all-star Roman stacks to take heavily garrisoned settlements and powerful enemy stacks abroad, then bring them home for repair, replacing them in the settlement I've taken with local troop types. Is that pretty standard practice?

I make my armies half homan and half allied troops.

- Likewise with spies, I've managed to get some in to settlements, but they don't get any trait increases - has this also been taken out?

They do get traits for successful missions but the best way to train spies is leave them in a city for 5-10 years, after this they will breaking into settlements and opening gates like nobody's buisness

-
And the vast empty expanses in Africa, is there anything out there/ I've sent a spy out to path-find but he pretty much always ends up in a dead-end and has to re-trace his steps. I can see some resources down in the bottom left corner (Timbuktu?), but I couldn't find a way down theree...

no way to get there.

[RomanHoliday]

Hi Miotas, thanks for your replies. Will leave the spies at home for a few years training first, thanks for the tip. And yeah the half/half stacks a re a good idea, less Romans to retrain. And when you say you send out reinforcements rather than return home, do you mean you just merge the damaged units?

So, a Ballina-ite hey? Small world - I've lived up there twice - as a toddler in the late 70s and then for a year in 1988 (year 7 at Ballina High). And my grandparents live up there now, will be heading up mid-june for g-father's 94th bday...

lets PM some more and figure out our two and half degrees of separation!

cheers,
DS

[miotas]

And yeah the half/half stacks a re a good idea, less Romans to retrain.

There is an excellent guide to accurate romani army composition hanging around here somewhere but I wasn't able to find it, perhaps someone else can provide a link.

I don't follow the guide exactly, but I try to follow a similar structure in my armies.

And when you say you send out reinforcements rather than return home, do you mean you just merge the damaged units?

I tend to have a small army of 3 or 4 units which tend to take the most casualties and have it tag along with the main army, it is useful for attacking tiny enemy armies that would normally slow your main army's progression, holding captured towns until a level 4 gov can be established, and to replenish any troops that are lost from the main army.

If I have a second general in the army who is gaining experience for role-playing purposes I will often have him lead my small army against those enemy small armies so that he can gain some actual in-game experience.

The best thing however, is to do what you think "feels" right, and to have fun of course.