Ilergetes - A case for a new faction

**Aemilius Paulus** · 06-02-2009, 01:14

Hmmm, too many factions. Lusitannians, Karthadastim, Iberians, and possibly a Celtiberian faction is more than Spain could fit. If Ilergetes were the only Celtiberian faction, then it could possibly be made I suppose. And I do not believe Iberians are making it to EBII, are they?

Nice pictures but euhm... I wonder how many more factions EB is going to place right in the way of Roman expansion. By putting Massalia where it is, and making Syracuse a faction, Rome is even more likely to be stuck on it's peninsula. While I definitly don't want Rome to blitz the world, confining her to Italy isn't perfect either. Maybe that's why I would prefer to have extra factions not interfering with the early-Roman influence (like Asian nomads, a Baltic tribe, a second Arabian faction, Pergamom, ...).

Is that sarcasm, trolling, or baiting? Or are you actually serious? You know EB is not about paving way for the Romans to expand. EB is neutral; it does not favour one faction over another. Those factions existed. If the EB team can make them unique enough, then they will be and EBII faction. Whether they interfere with Romans or not is irrelevant.

That said, I do think some factions should have their AI modded so that they will not expand much. For one, conquering unique Eleutheroi is often more fun than grinding stack after stack of same AS spam, for instance. Secondly, some faction will probably destroy others, and become superpowers, which is not desirable either.

**Andy1984** · 06-02-2009, 03:03

Originally Posted by Aemilius Paulus

Is that sarcasm, trolling, or baiting? Or are you actually serious? You know EB is not about paving way for the Romans to expand. EB is neutral; it does not favour one faction over another. Those factions existed. If the EB team can make them unique enough, then they will be and EBII faction. Whether they interfere with Romans or not is irrelevant.

That said, I do think some factions should have their AI modded so that they will not expand much. For one, conquering unique Eleutheroi is often more fun than grinding stack after stack of same AS spam, for instance. Secondly, some faction will probably destroy others, and become superpowers, which is not desirable either.

I wasn't spamming, trolling or baiting... I was rather thinking about one aspect of the TW-engine. The biggest difficulty in defeating minor factions is their high number of general bodyguards (and maybe part of the EB-script as well), which makes sure minor factions are pretty capable to defend themselves. You mentionned AS spamming stacks. But I believe the factions that are actually spamming stacks are factions like Bactria. These minor factions are capable to have 2 full stack armies based on a two-province economy. The AS nor the Ptolemeans come close to that.

I'm not arguing this system is bad and needs to be revised. Rather I wish to say this system allows to prevent factions from overexpanding. If you put several of these minor factions on a relative tiny space, they're unlikely to kill each other, because taking that very last settlement will be that much harder. On the other hand, if you want an area to be conquered by one of the bordering AI-factions, make sure most of it's neighbours are Eleutheroi and they will conquer it. That's why I see the Sweboz (who start by far in one of the most dire positions) conquering all of Germany: they simply don't have any resistance. They'll need some time to do this, but eventually they are likely to succeed.

What I was suggesting (or wished to suggest) was: if you want to have any Roman expansion in almost 300 years of game-play, you might want to leave some room for them. With Sicily and Northern-Italy heavily defended, you might make it impossible. All that said: no, I wasn't aware of the fact EB wanted to give everyone a fair chance. I merely thought some Roman expansion in the long run would be considered historically accurate.

By the way: you say all these factions existed and have a right to be represented in the game. Of course they existed, but given few of these factions had real 'governments' or borders, the EB-team actually has quite a lot of freedom in deciding how big a faction is and where it's home-territory should thus be. E.g.: one could argue for one single Gallic faction, two factions, or even more. Since there seems to be hardly any objective basis to say two gallic factions are much less accurate than three, I believe you could place them so that it favours the kind of expansion you wish. I feel that, up to a certain point, EB already did this. By having only one German faction, the EB-map mostly evolves to a situation where the Sweboz occupy most of Germania, which in itself influences both the gameplay of Gauls, Romans,... On the contrary, creating e.g. a strong Belgae-tribe, would probably be historically accurate as well, but it would severly affect the expansion of Aedui, Sweboz and perhaps even Casse.

just my two cents,

apologies for the length of my post,

Andy

**A Very Super Market** · 06-02-2009, 03:21

Lusos stay in Iberia until Rome has already finished Italy off. Carthage does nothing at all. If anything, this faction would only contest them for the title of second most inactive faction. First place is obviously the Casse.

**Moros** · 06-02-2009, 11:37

Well if there's be more factions in spain wouldn't the fighting under eachother make them weaker instead of stronger? Look at the Aedui and Averni? They usually don't hold out that long in campaign because of the sweboz who barely have competition. While the gauls have better economy and units. The more competition those smaller factions get the weaker they become, as they can't expand that much anymore and can't pick their fights that easily anymore. This would help rome as they have a very good basis to start from, they would already get the divide like that the AI only has to get them the impera. As Rome can pick their fights, grows stronger, pick a new fight,...

**Andy1984** · 06-02-2009, 12:07

I guess you're right, because I didn't take into account the fact Romanoi only have two borders (Sicily and Northern-Italy). Therefore, the Romani do have the chance to fight them off one by one, at least up to the point where Sicily and Northern-Italy are firmly Roman. I may have been comparing their situation too much with the AS, which starts to spread out and too undermanned to defend her borders against her (mostly) minor neighbours. Romans would quite soon start to concentrate her units at her two borders, which counts for something.

Andy

**Elmetiacos** · 06-02-2009, 12:11

Someone can have fun reconstructing unit and building names for them...

**Bucefalo** · 06-02-2009, 14:19

Yes i agree on that the Turdetani were another important iberian tribe, probably the most civilized (by greek/roman standards) of them all. Thing is that there are several quotations that tell us how they used frequently celtiberian mercenaries to protect their lands, and how they were not much united agaisnt the carthaginians. The Turdetani became quite mixed with the phoenicians, and probably saw the carthaginians as their heirs. That explains how the Turdetani did not unite agaisnt the carthaginians as other tribes did, and only some of them tried to resist the invasors, like Istolacio e Indortes.

I suggested the Ilergetes not only because they were one of the few iberian tribes (not counting the warlike celtiberian/lusitani/cantabri tribes of the interior regions) that were united and fought fiercely agaisnt the invaders. Also imho they would be a quite interesting faction, having a military structure greatly influenced by their greek and celtic neighbours, they would add some flavour to the normal iberian roster.

Also i think the presence of more factions in the peninsula would make them fight between them, as happened in history, and ultimately make them weaker and the romans/carthaginians could use the opportunity. Siding with one tribe or the other to ultimately conquer all of them