Economic warfare?

[Ksifos]

Well it pays to combine espionage along with diplomacy, to prevent AI gangbanging.Making some good alliances before (if aggressor) or in the beginning of a conflict, seems to work well.Allied AI will (or can be provoked) declare war and create one more front for the enemy AI to fight.

But many times (especially when I am a BIG and STRONG nation) I am too lazy to deal with those boring aspects of the game and concentrate on battles:-P

Also I 've never see pure elite stacks, rather than mixtures with a 20~30% percentage being elite units.I guess you are refering to such when mentioning "elite spam".

[moonburn]

i doubt the ai can read into the waiting time to recruit so it would mainly mean the ai would be alot slower recruiting armies

[Captain Pugwash]

two tactics - use assassins to destroy the barracks thus denying recruitment. second target the key recruitment centres - key cities which are often 'unguarded' with some feeble unit and take it destroy the infastructure and leave. it will take years to rebuild. do that a few times and the elites dissappear. AI cities never revolt - some have been rioting for years then go straight to green somehow? so the economic route is pointless

[TheLastDays]

They do revolt. AS cities in the eastern outskirts regularly revolt to Eleutheroi

[vollorix]

You need good spies, 2-5 assassins, and no enemy FM in the town ( normaly those freaking AI FM´s become administratively inept, but often gain cool ancillaries like "judge", or becomming "drillmasters" with law bonuses when the town riots, depending on the taxe rate ).
The easiest way to let a city revolt is when there are penalties of any kind:

first cultural ( or even freshly conquered, of course )
then distance from capital
and the squalor ( if the town has overpopulation, and the government building isn´t upgraded yet, this is a very good chance to start your plot ).

When a settlement riots, citizens are getting killed, and depending on how large it is, there might be a significant decrease in population so that the public order might stay out of "red face".
Also, AI loves to put the taxes as high as possible, so while you might observe public order of 60% only, this is due to "very high" taxe rate; going to "high" will bring them additionaly +20% public order, to "normal" +45% ( 20 + 25 ), and to "low" +75% ( 30 + 20 + 25 ).
Numerous assasins are needed to destroy multiple buildings in the town at once ( once the AI stops/partially stops repairing damaged buildings, you might need only 2 for the barracks )

- target barracks + auxillery, don´t ever let them stay repaired for even 1 turn, or new units might be recruited
- destroy temples, depending on the size and art of it
- all happieness and law buildings starting with the highest bonus given by them
- once you notice that AI isn´t repairing all buildings at once ( they mostly concentrate on the most vital ones, and the barracks, of course ), you know it´s bit short on money ( you should observe their chash flow in the statistics and hit while they have none; on the other hand, playing on "vh" enables AI to always rapair ( due to 10k mnai cash per turn ) but if you hit the really expensive buildings, it´s still gonna heart ).
You should make sure that the AI has no troops near the town, nor any FM ( assasins and spies suck mostly if FM are present ) which they might bring into the town to boost up the public order.

Also, an enemy spy in the town can destroy all your plans ( enemy spies are almost impossible to kill within a town - "spyguildmaster" trait, no matter how trained he is ).

Well, that´s briefly how i act, but there is no guarantee for your succes - some cities do not revolt, others get "bugged" through you own spy who is increasing the public order instead of decreasing it - in this case try to replace the spy, double them, etc.

[Ksifos]

TBH I 've never cheated, most of my games are VH and in most I can achieve both diplo and economy warfare success.So to all who say it's impossible I disagree.It's just a matter of how patient you are to actually bother with these kind of moves.I many times catch myself forgetting to send the spy, or the assasin etc but it all can be done.Maybe not the easy way the "all-knowing" AI can or harder than prevailing by the sword.Still it can be done.

In EB some things are improved.Revolting AI cities? Are they border cities? No FM governor? No public order buildings? Then can easily revolt.Send a good spy and two or three assasins destroying each round core happiness/law buildings and you 're done.Or if an FM in charge, assasinate him and then sabotage.There are plenty of actions if you really WANT to :-)

Vollorix - In VH the AI doesn't repair always.Actually he prefers to be militarily superior so he ALWAYS build armies first.

[Jackaloboulos]

So, here is another thought. If one wanted to simply reduce the bonus cash, what percentage decrease might be reasonable?

[fomalhaut]

yes anything where elites take up more than 20% of an army is elite spam. that's because they compose 20% of 100% of their armies :P


and NEVER EVER EVER EVER has opening up new fronts EVER worked. Which is why fighting Arche Seleukeia is so infamously stupid, because the 7 front battle it is supposed to face NEVER HAPPENS if you play as an eastern faction because the A.I. collaborates basically understanding "this is the player, therefore he must die". So the AS will make infinite peace with every Satrap AND! Ptolemaioi and focus on you if you are Saba, for instance. Play a western faction, however, and watch the Arche fall in 2 decades.

I am playing Ptolemy now and i am the AS' only enemy, and when i played Pahlava i was the AS' only enemy.

It's a fundamentally broken set of campaigns :P :P :P :P

[Ksifos]

Well it seems so but actually the AI must have some method of measuring your strength and relations.

In my KH campaign I went to the end (was around 170BC) with having the Getai loyal allies and firends.What I did was just gifting them each round 200 mnai.
The same now happens with Aedui in my Casse campaing.In fact with Aedui things are supposed to be more complicated since I have grabbed all their core provinces.I stopped gifting them and a full Aedui stack comes near our border.Immediately I started raising army in nearby towns, Aedui stack goes south towards Averni ;-)

IMO diplo is not won once but needs constant effort, because the AI factions "fight" you there too.Also raising armies helps discouraging the AI since he probably "calculates" a high resistance and looks for better opportunities.The RTW AI is highly opportunistic.

With AS as enemy you have a bunch of nations (Baktria is a good candidate) to try diplo deals, and with Ptolemaioi you have a great economy.So offering some ...gifts along with your proposals should get you there.Plus there is the "Attack Faction" diplo.In my experience sometimes they respond and attack.Or you can try provoking the AS near an "ally army" and if attacked the ally comes automatically into assistance - same goes with ships.These are small tricks I use when building my nation, because afterwards I just don't pay attention.

Also there are times when you get some nice gifts from AI.In fact I havent noticed that before.As KH I was gifted from Lusos 60k - I saw their diplomat in a town, thought he was bribing but when AI round finished I look in my cash and, wow.I open economic details and see in diplo income some 60k.Nice.

[fomalhaut]

I don't think the A.I. has any measurements of anything. They are suicidal to a comical degree.

attack faction doesn't work im prettttty sure, and i give lots of tribute. some for roleplaying, some for survival, some to keep them from eating me alive.

[TheLastDays]

Yea... I've done "attack faction" hundreds of times... for example, especially when playing Baktria or Saba... the stupid AS will either make peace with Ptolemies - that happened when I was Baktria, they concentrated on me the whole time, while Pahlava was eating away their heartlands they still sent their armies against me... Even though each and every single army died, utterly defeated... and I have used "attack faction" for the ptolemies a few times in that campaign, they accepted but never attacked the AS...

then as Saba, I was allied to them and they were fighting the Ptolemies, the AS never cared about me much... as soon as I conquered the one arabian territory next to their borders they started to sent full stacks down there... my army was still there, able to defend, beacause these towns were nicely developed over there I could retrain and it didn't break me but it's just so ridiculous and makes RPing impossible... I mean, they obviously have the money to send full stacks almost every turn but they don't use it on real threats (Ptolemies have taken all of Mikra Asia, cut the AS off the Mediterranean and the Pahlavan are eating their way down to Persepolis... no, they have to invest into attacking Arabia...

The Campaign AI's bias against the player is ridiculous and makes them ignore critical threats to their existence just to attack the player one more time...

[A_Dane]

AI is ridicolous. This is the main reason why i never play VH campaign. I like a challenge, but it's not fun having every nation attack you, once you share a border..

I had a game as Hayasdan, was locked in a war with the seles, who were also fighting the Ptollies and Parthians.
Once i shared a border with the Ptollies, they immediatly made peace with the Seleucids and focused on me, and on top of that the Parthians, who i didn't share a border with, was allied to and paid tribute to, marched an army around the caspian sea, to attack me...

That was the last game on VH i ever played, was simply too insane for me to actually bother with.

However, I should mention, that in another game (on hard), I stayed allied to Pontos, even though we had a long border (they conquerored mikra asia without my help, was kinda shocking), for some 60 years (campaign is on pause), without ever bribing them anything. I was, for once, pleasantly surprised.

[TheLastDays]

Yea it works SOMEtimes.. like 1 in a million times, or that's what it seems like... the depressing thing is, I don't even play on VH anymore... the aforementioned examples were on H (Baktria) and M (Saba) campaign difficulty. So, I play on M or sometimes H because I like to RP things and that includes resting times between wars... it includes, at least to some extent, reasonable behavious from an ally...

And it doesn't happen with every faction... In the above mentioned campaign with Baktria I also share a border with Pahlava and have been neutral with them in the beginning when they declared war on the AS, because I tried to stay on good terms with the AS, then the bastard Seleukids declared on me and I allied with Pahlava and have stayed allied with them ever since... It's strange but in the end, after taking India, I had to station forts on strategic passes and finally they'd keep the peace... I had to garrison these forts with substantial forces though... so yeah, now Pahlava has secured Persia so there's a "buffer" of Persians between two split-up parts of the AS so I've started taking over the eastern Sleukid kingdom (hehe) and we'll see what happens once I share that large border with Pahlava...