A guide to EB blitzing, for new players.

[Beggarman]

I apologize for the thread Necro, but in light of a recent Aedui VH/H campaign, I was wondering a few things:

1) Why Avaricum? The city has 11 units in it's garrison, with 3-4 of those being experienced Bataroas, 2-3 Luecos Epos, atleast 1 Brihentin family member, possibly a second Brihentin, AND city walls, with that cursed boiling oil(Oh, and maybe a unit of Solduros, just for spits and giggles). So Assaulting the City is a risky endeavor, as the starting General probably has more stars than your troops, and until you can get your FMs and Luecos Epos into the city and murder-face the general, those Bataroas and ESPECIALLY the Solduros are not going anywhere. Which means lots of casaulties early on when you can't re-train your force.

Starving Avaricum out is also a bad deal, as you have to wait 9 turns before their will Sally forth. Speaking of Sally, the force at Avaricum is actually potent enough to give some bad news out in a field battle: All those horsemen will keep your cavalry tied up running them down, while the Bataroas and Solduros will happily chew though spearmen until they choke to death. So, you siege the place for more than 2 years, then you finally fight a field battle and stand a good chance of losing a number of bodies at a time when you can't afford to replace them, and also when you are at war with THREE factions(granted, the Sweboz won't be a problem for a decade, but the Romani could very well be up in your stuff by '68, and the last thing you wanna do is try to hold Mediolanum against the romans, while the Arverni keep hounding you from Gergovia).

2) Why keep the Arverni around at all? The Arverni are going to be enemies pretty much the WHOLE game, and they never offer status as a buffer, unless you leave them with Vesontio, which is a terrible idea. Why? Vesontio is the easiest source you have for Nekkid Spearmen, and those Nekkid loonies are absolutely clutch for field battles. They buff your troops Morale, which keeps your Luggoa and Gaeroas/Gaeliche from running, and they hack enemy morale, which makes it more likely for those SPQR Pedites Extradionarii to actually RUN, rather than butchering everything they touch. Leaving the Arverni with Vesontio means future Arverni armies will be notoriously hard to break, which means a big butcher's bill for fighting them. So the Arverni don't protect you from any enemies, especially not Rome(Leaving the Aedui in Mediolanum as the Arverni is clever, as it ties up Rome and lets you consolidate in Gaul... But... as the Aedui, YOU shoulder the burdern of keeping the Romani from expanding into Gaul, Pannonia and Illyria. Also, Gregovia is the only place the Arverni can recruit swordsmen at start date, so removing it from their possession means they are reduced to spamming Luggoa and Nekkid Doods. Not that that can't be a problem, because it definitely can. Viennos is the only territory I would consider leaving them with, and Viennos is necessary for connecting Transalpine and Cisalpine Gaul.

My preferred start with the Aedui goes like this:

1) All troops in Transalpine Gaul are massed into ONE massive stack, and lead by Tancogesta(whatever his name is, the BAD MAMAJAMMA general you get at the begining). This I will call Army Group A, and it will be used to kill Arverni field armies. I leave a Family member in ... Whatever the Carnute town is, Bribracte AND Mediolanum, to protect against the rebels who will spawn. Speaking of Mediolanum: the troops(army Group B) all march north through the Alps, to link up with Army Group A. No point in wasting them defending Mediolanum from ghosts(the Romans are NOT a threat until they take Boninia). The little group thats south of Gergovia(it's like, two Lugguoa and a slinger unit, IIRC) can either be disbanded OR used as Army Group C.

2) Army Group A marches towards Gregovia. Position yourself on one of the river crossings(preferabbly the one by Gergovia), and you will likely draw the Arverni out of Gergovia in a massed attack. Don't worry, you have a river you can defend, so this should be an easy battle. With all the Luecos Epos you have avialable, not a single man should make it back to Gergovia. Especially try to kill the Family members. The outcome of this battle should result in Gergovia having maybe 4 units or so left in the city. Army Group C besieges Gregovia, gets reinforcements from A, and Army Group A marches towards Viennos. Unless the garrison of Gregovia is VERY weak, don't waste time or bodies assaulting it. You'll be able to reinforce the besiegers before they Sally out.

3) Viennos: Army Group B should be able to reach Viennos by turn 3 or 4, standing on the River crossing to the north. This may provoke a field battle from the defenders of Viennos: Don't worry, Army Group B should be more than enough to handle the situation by defending the river crossing. Army Group A should siege, build as many rams as possible, and assault. Bam, by the end of the first year, you should have Gregovia and Viennos. This means the Arverni can only threaten you from Vesontio, and you have connected Trans and Cisalpien Gaul, so you can reinforce Mediolanum much easier than otherwise.

4) Aventicos. I Normally avoid Eleutheroi towns early game as the Aedui, as they don't pose much of a threat, and generally distract from killing the Arverni usurpers. HOWEVER, Aventicos is relatively easy to assault and take, it's on the way to Vesontio, AND it's another teritory that supports Mediolanum. Also, the Sweboz WILL snatch it up if it's left undefended for long, especially once they roll on Vendelicopidos. So... Beat them there. At this point you have 6 territories to the Arverni 1, and you should start getting close to making a profit. Maybe.

5) The killing blow. Take Vesontio. Shouldn't be too hard: if you've kileld as many FM as possible, they Arverni should have limited cavalry support, so a field battle is easy to win. And with that, The Arverni are vanquished and you are left the sole master of Gaul.

6) Get a nice sized force back to Mediolanum ASAP. By this time(270 or 269ish) the Romani should be threatening Mediolanum. Getting a force down there can quickly change it from them declaring war(if you've managed to make peace) to them going for Segesta or Patavium. Pativium, imho, is pretty much the only expansion in Italy. Boninia is nice, but it's hard to defend(with threats from two, possibly three roman settlements and no river crossings). By staying north of the Po(I think it's the Po?), you give the romans only two avenues of assault over the rivers, which means you can keep their armies contained. Losing Mediolanum leads to romans popping up all over the place in Transalpine gaul. Better to contain them, rather than chase small armies around your lands.

7) Take Bratisporios. Batacorri, Milnaht and Remi are great troops. The Batacorri are especially useful during the Time of Freemen, as they are the best spearmen you can recruit outside of Massalia. Lemonum and the port city in Brittany should be next. Depending on how things with dem Romans are going, you may not have the time to amass a force to take Avaricum for some time. That's alright, because avaricum won't attack you either. So, no worries.

Also, how to assault barbarian cities: Slingers. Seriously. NO, SRSLY. Four units of slingers is enough, but the basic idea is to form your slingers up against the enemy gate, and let them target whatever troops are defendign the gate. Try to kill any Brihentin who are in the open(it's much easier to deal with them this way), but the enemy should pull back it's troops out of range. That's ok, because now you can move your ram up to the gate, and move your slingers closer. Anything that coems to the gate to stop you from entering gets a hailstorm directed at them, and you will be able to rapidly assemble a force of Spears and Swords in the town. Then bring in your cav, and chase down the dang FM, kill him, and then rout the enemies.

Also, try to make sure your main assault is attacking a gate with an easy path to the town center. Much better to be able to loop around the city and envelop the enemy than to be forced to slug it out.

Just my two denarii.

[Matteo]

I'm playing with Baka and after the initial turns I managed to stabilise my economy. I'm a new player of EB, sorry for the (maybe) banal question but how the hell I can increase the game speed during battles? It's changed everything.

[StrategosRiga]

Hello everyone, I finally decided to make an account after a couple of years of playing Rome Total War (as well as other total wars), as well as frequently viewing this forum. Finally decided to become part of the community...just so I can throw in my two cents.

To Matteo, I don't know if you already found your answer, but somewhere in the lower-left hand corner of the HUD, there should be arrows pointing to the right. Its around a pause signal and is right next to your mini-map.

Anyways, I play on VM/M difficulty. And I was messing around with the Sakas (originally was playing Sauromatae but my campaign became unplayable after a certain point due to a bug which crashed it every time, was doing good too)...Anyways...I was playing the Saka and I noticed that I was able to completely blitz south after I was able to take Cauch (or however you spell it) and the village on the top of the map to the West of the starting location (you start with an army within range of it in one turn if you ditch the infantry). You can take both of these cities in one turn. The number of dead doesn't really matter because after that I just gathered all of my family members and generals (one and the same to me) and head south taking the two poorly defended Seleucid villages with the awesome power of generals (had 3 together at that time).

I then moved south to Baktria and finished gathering my family members. By then I had a force of 5 generals who each had 3 silver experience levels. I harassed them for two turns destroying every soldier they had going towards my direction and sieged the city. I didn't need to recall my force because generals heal themselves by a certain amount each turn (for free) so I was just constantly harassing them. They sallied out to attack, I used all of my arrows, and then charged and flanked them when I could, luring them and striking at them from behind, and recalling before their pikes could do damage. First turn of siege I wiped out their general, and two archer units, and a skirmisher unit while losing only 20 lives. Second turn of siege I wiped them out completely, and there was a lot of phalanxes too (5 units of 240). By turn 7 or 8 I wiped out Baktria and had pretty good income (not once did I go into the negative). I was really cheap and using the remains of my normal armies as garrison (like 20 to 30 HA). It kinda made me want to try fighting on VH but I would get utter destroyed...its so hard for me to make the jump.

So my input on blitzing with Saka....generals. Sexy, sexy generals. Milk them for everything they're worth.