Fun way to play AS.

[Zim]

"In this particular case i chose to become a Karian/Southern Anatolian state. So i disbanded structures and troops, moved capital to Ipsos and let my empire crumble."

"If you want better "Crumbling Empire" campaign, you should try karthadast, FD your Iberian holdings for Lusotann, FD your Sicilian holdings for Romaioi, and your Islands holdings for Either Lusotann or Romaioi. Turtle arround in africa and try to conquer Ptolies."

Holy crap, I have saves of both of those situation (complete with Ipsos as the AS capital).

[Smelly Jelly]

"In this particular case i chose to become a Karian/Southern Anatolian state. So i disbanded structures and troops, moved capital to Ipsos and let my empire crumble."

"If you want better "Crumbling Empire" campaign, you should try karthadast, FD your Iberian holdings for Lusotann, FD your Sicilian holdings for Romaioi, and your Islands holdings for Either Lusotann or Romaioi. Turtle arround in africa and try to conquer Ptolies."

Holy crap, I have saves of both of those situation (complete with Ipsos as the AS capital).

Problem with crumbling empires is provinces revolting back to you. With Carthage, i "crumbled"* everything but Spain, my North African holdings, as well as the Island holdings, including Lilybaeum and did a classical Iberian Nation, problem was Carthage-city revolting back to me every now and then.

*By "crumbling" i mean disbanding all troops and public order structures, to get the province to rebel, to Eleutheroi.

[Teucer]

I've been tossing around a similar idea. I'm considering RPing some sort of civil war within the Seleukid state. The idea here is that you will play as the 'loyalists' who are reduced to a handful of provinces. I plan on giving most of the AS territories to Baktria through FD (and renaming them something appropriate). I might even use cheats to put in appropriate factional MICs before I do it so they can start building armies right away, but that would be a bit more work. The main question is where to place the AS loyalists. Anatolia might be best, but Mesopotamia would also work. If I went with Mesopotamia, I might also give Pontos some of the AS cities in Anatolia and rename them as Pergamon or something (I've already changed them to an East Greek culture). I'd probably leave a few eleutheroi buffers, but I suspect this set up would still get pretty brutal, fairly quickly.

My worst fear about this plan is that it will just result in an uber-Egypt. On the other hand, if you guys have seen them go passive without the Seleukid threat, it might just work.

[Smelly Jelly]

You'll need an Eleutheroi barrier between you and the Ptolies. Easiest to get this would be if you stayed in Mesopotamia,, rather than Micra Asia, because Ptollies are close there.

Also, i wouldn't bother getting a ceasefire & trade rights with them, until they solidly have Cyrene. Otherwise about every turn they'll attack Cyrene, and you'll get a scripted war. Makes me think... one should have the option to let the Cyrenians take care of their own bussiness.. but yea, the game's called total war after all, so what can you expect, huh?

Move your capital as far away from the provinces you'd like to lose.