Feeling alone in the world

[The Celtic Viking]

Hey, guys.

Hi!

Anyways, here's what the thread is about..
The one thing that always bothers me while playing these kind of games is that I always feel like the only one doing anything. The game tells me when alliances are set, wars are declared, and peace treaties are made, but other than that I have no clue what's really going on in the world.

I was thinking about using the fog of war cheat, but thought I'd ask this question before doing that.
Is there a way to obtain information on recent battles that occurred between the AI? Like something that pops up every turn. And if that's too much, is there any way to make something pop up whenever one nation takes over another nation's land?

It might be possible to make such popups, but the easiest solution by far is simply turning off the fog of war. I'd just do that.

Oh, and also. I'm at war with the "Safot Softim biQarthadast" (the ones to the south west of Rome over the sea), but they're not doing much.. I sent an army over the sea and captured one of their settlements, and they're trying to take it back, but that's only because it's next to their other settlements. They'll never attack me on my homeland. They never send any armies overseas to get me. Are there no naval invasions or something?

I'm playing the game on steam and I guess I'm using the RomeTW.exe, but I have the Barbarian Invasion.
I heard that there's a way to play EB with the expansion's exe, and that it includes naval invasions, but I also heard that it breaks things..

Hmm. I used to play on the BI.exe before I got Alexander, and while I did notice more frequent naval invasions, I never noticed anything being broken.

So what should I do? Should I just start anoher campaign on very hard and hope they attack my homeland more? Or only start wars with people who aren't separated by sea from me?

The tribes to the north of my lands don't attack me either, so it's pretty easy..

Thanks in advance for the help and advice!

If by "the tribes to the north" you mean the Eleutheroi, well... yeah... it's the Eleutheroi, the "rebel" faction. They never really do much offensive (with some exceptions if you play on VH; with the Alexander expansion, they can be very active - relatively speaking, at least). It's hardcoded, I'm afraid. The closest, non-Eleutheroi faction to the north would be the Aedui, and they're busy with a bloody civil war against the Arverni, and so they're likely to focus more on them than on you.

The Romans is the easiest faction in the game, so if you want more of a challenge, you should either make strict house rules for yourself to follow, or try a different faction. Besides Rome, Carthage - the Safot Softim biQarthadast you speak of - and Ptolemaioi are usually listed as good factions to start with, because they're relatively easy and start up with a rather stable economy. With other factions you are likely to have to choose to either blitz (i.e. use your starting army to quickly conquer new territories), disband or go into debt. They can be tough for someone new to EB for that reason. (Which is not to say starting with any other faction is impossible or even necessarily a bad idea; I personally started with the Sweboz, for example.)