Oh no...oh please no

[bmer]

So, I'm playing a Baktria game on H/M, it's about 256 BC. I'm not very experienced with EB, so I'm having a bit of a hard time holding the four provinces I have right now (Baktria, Paropamisadai, Aria, Drangiane) against the Seleukids, but I'm managing.

My spies were doing their work in the enemy cities, causing unrest and tying down some Seleukid stacks while the Pahlava (my allies) were doing their fair bit of distracting the Seleukids as well. In the mean time, I built up my cities' economies and maintained a 1 stack army that was divided in two main parts, one part defended Baktria and the other did some running between Aria and Drangiane as needed.

Things were going alright I felt, "I can pull through" I told myself.

Then the Ptolemies made an alliance with the Seleukids.

The Seleukids don't have another major enemy (they currently have cease fire agreements with the Makedons and KH). Pahlava is just plain starting to feed units to Seleukid stacks giving them silver and gold chevrons here and there. My campaign, I sense, is going to start sucking really hard pretty soon.

What do I do?

[Ibrahim]

So, I'm playing a Baktria game on H/M, it's about 256 BC. I'm not very experienced with EB, so I'm having a bit of a hard time holding the four provinces I have right now (Baktria, Paropamisadai, Aria, Drangiane) against the Seleukids, but I'm managing.

My spies were doing their work in the enemy cities, causing unrest and tying down some Seleukid stacks while the Pahlava (my allies) were doing their fair bit of distracting the Seleukids as well. In the mean time, I built up my cities' economies and maintained a 1 stack army that was divided in two main parts, one part defended Baktria and the other did some running between Aria and Drangiane as needed.

Things were going alright I felt, "I can pull through" I told myself.

Then the ******* Ptolemies made an alliance with the Seleukids.

The Seleukids don't have another major enemy (they currently have cease fire agreements with the Makedons and KH). Pahlava is just plain starting to feed units to Seleukid stacks giving them silver and gold chevrons here and there. My campaign, I sense, is going to start sucking really hard pretty soon.

What do I do?

don't worry. simple as that.

have you conquered the Indus river valley area? those are the 4 or 5 provinces towards the edge of the map, near where you are. as long as you have those, and a few seleukid cities, you'll have the money to continue the war.

also, try to get the anemy stacks to fight you on bridges, or in narrow mountain passes; no amount of silver or gold chevrons can help them there.

and you may want to consider editing the post a bit; personal experience has shown that moderators don't like certain words-for good reason.

EDIT: oh, you only have those. your loss; should have stayed allied with AS, and taken the time to conquer the Indus. you can in theory still make it, but it'll be harder to do so.

[bmer]

Okay, I edited my previous post.

Well I didn't remain allied with the Seleukids because in a previous failed campaign, they back stabbed me very early on anyways (within the first 10-15 turns). So in my new campaign, I didn't bother holding on to my alliance with the Seleukids.

Really the problem here is one of diplomacy...how is it that the AI is able to negotiate ceasefires and alliances without much of a problem, while it is much harder for a human player to negotiate successful treaties (let alone maintain them)? Keep in mind that I am talking about an early game situation, where I don't have an experienced diplomat, or gold in the coffers to appease enemies with.

[Ibrahim]

Okay, I edited my previous post.

Well I didn't remain allied with the Seleukids because in a previous failed campaign, they back stabbed me very early on anyways (within the first 10-15 turns). So in my new campaign, I didn't bother holding on to my alliance with the Seleukids.

Really the problem here is one of diplomacy...how is it that the AI is able to negotiate ceasefires and alliances without much of a problem, while it is much harder for a human player to negotiate successful treaties (let alone maintain them)? Keep in mind that I am talking about an early game situation, where I don't have an experienced diplomat, or gold in the coffers to appease enemies with.

forced diplomacy mods can help with that, if its as bad as you say. its also a good idea to try to play factions against one another (which, since you have little money towards the beginning, still requires forced diplomacy).

I'm afraid the AI's unreasonable nature is, otherwise, hardcoded.

[SwissBarbar]

Staying allied to the Seleukids may cause you troubles later. With Baktria you have to take their eastern cities as long as they have no great armies there - meaning at the beginning of the campaing!

Good advice: many, many, many footarchers and huge stone (the greatest ones) walls as soon as possible will make your cities damn hard to conquer

[Ca Putt]

The AI is hardcoded to HATE the player especially when they border you having declared war on a fellow ally is one of the few things that can maintain peace with a neighbor(like you did with the Pahlava).

but look at it that way: you don't have to fight the Saka rauka ... (yet).

[athanaric]

Set taxes to maximum, focus on building paved roads, mines, large mines (especially in Kophen!), paved roads, healers, and paved roads. Oh and did I already mention paved roads?

Good advice: many, many, many footarchers and huge stone (the greatest ones) walls as soon as possible will make your cities damn hard to conquer

Also Baktrian Hillmen, for dealing with the Seleukid phalanxes (from behind) and with the elephants of the Indian Eleutheroi. Peltastai for the same reason.
Use a lot of cavalry, especially Dahae Riders, and later on all types that are available. Arachosian or Dahae mounted skirmishers are especially effective against elephants and heavy cavalry, whereas Dahae Riders are good vs infantry.
Swat their annoying generals ASAP, either on the battlefield or with an assassin.
Use slingers to support your archers on the walls. They are best used against heavy cavalry (Seleukid FMs) or heavy infantry.

[MisterFred]

I sometimes have success building vast alliance webs even on the harder difficulties. Generally it happens because a few AI players are willing to ally with you, and as your alliance web grows in power more and more are willing to do so. For instance when I played my Bosphoran campaign (Pontus abandoning Anatolia) I started by allying with the Getae, as they are bizarrely friendly and reliable neighbors virtually every time I play. Then when AS inevitably declared war on me, I got an alliance with the Parthians and the Baktrians and the Ptolemys, which was easy, as all of them were at war with AS. Then I went through the barbarian lands, and between the Getae and my already strong-looking alliance web, I picked up the Germans, Romans, Lusotann, and Carthage (Aedui and Arveri were either at war with Rome or their vassal). Eventually everyone who was a potential ally was my ally. Then it was just a matter of picking and choosing which to keep as wars broke out across the map.

Now most games don't go like this... but it IS possible. And I didn't offer anything for the Alliances. Just either Alliance + trade rights straight off, or trade rights + alliance a few turns later. Its also usually pretty easy to build up your first diplomat by just agreeing to trade agreements with everyone, giving him a string of easy treaty accepts with no rejections. Luck also helps.

As for peace between Ptoly and AS, well, you may be screwed. This happened to me just when I was FINALLY starting to make real gains in my Saba campaign (around 150). As a result I was forcibly evicted from Mesopotamia and my tenuous gains in Africa were put under severe strain.

[Drunk Clown]

But.. I don't get it, how can you lose? The AI is so stupid that it's just impossible.

With one stack you should at least be able to destroy 5 enemy full stacks (if not more)

[MisterFred]

Well if you're playing Saba and you've installed one of the battle formation sub-mods, its really really hard to beat a full-stack of galatian klerouchs and elite ptolemaic phalanx with only a stack of your own troops, unless you bring elephants. And its really hard to tech up to elephants when the ptolies keep throwing elite stacks at you. Doesn't mean you can lose... but it can be really hard to win. Also, it takes a few EB campaigns before the human player becomes unbeatable. I up-and-up lost my first Baktrian (also first EB) campaign, and my first Pontos and Hai campaigns. For awhile in my KH campaign (second EB campaign) I thought I might have to make a comeback from the islands.

I also prefer to not get the largest possible walls, if I'm trying to be as brutally effective as possible. With the largest walls, you shoot up their least valuable troops, burn some towers, and watch them come back for more the next turn. And if they reinforce the besieging army, it slows works its way up in quality, as the cheaper troops are easiest to kill with arrow fire. And sometimes a fluke will happen and a tower will actually live, and you lose a city.

Wheras on the lowest level of stone walls, with a mixed archer/AP force, you can field the same number of men and obliterate their army thanks to ladders (and towers don't have ballistas). Super-cheap, but effective if you're lokoing for that.

[bmer]

Yeah, I lost the campaign. The Seleukids ended up taking Drangiane, leaving me with not enough cities to support my army (so I was losing something like 1000 mnai per turn). I managed to beat off an assault on Baktria (I had the lowest level of stone walls, and lots of Persian archers and archer-spearmen), but my second half stack got mauled in a close defeat against a Seleukid 'almost-full' stack. I did manage to inflict heavy casualties, but the Seleukids could replace their losses, and I couldn't. Pretty soon, Baktria was under siege again, and I was able to sally out for 2 turns to whittle down the sieging enemies, but on the third turn was assaulted by a tower that I could not beat off, I took heavy losses in fighting off that assault too.

Although I was gaining money per turn again, as my army had been mostly destroyed, seeing another Seleukid stack coming at me made me give up. I couldn't have raised a feasible army in time, and two of my best FMs had been killed. This was my second campaign (first one was Pahlavan, but I got bored of the HA warfare).

I think I'm going to start a Romani campaign next. Do you guys have any other suggestions?

[MisterFred]

Sounds pretty similar to my Baktrian loss, which was my first campaign.

Romans are easy, and they let you learn the game quickly... but I think they're too easy. Same with Carthage. Koinon Hellenon was my first real campaign I won, and its fun and hard, especially since I only took Greek cities/victory conditions and didn't just create a giant empire. You have to not go insane pitting hoplites against phalanxes early though. Makedon or Epirus can be good if you want to command phalanxes.

But my best suggestion would have to be play Sweboz. You're isolated, so you have time to build up a reasonable start position without worrying about the big dogs knocking on your door. But you'll still eventually have to face large stacks coming up from the south, which can be a challenge with a lack of superior ranged units and heavy cavalry, the two most human-friendly types of units. Plus, you get to play one of the barbarian factions, the full development of which is one of the things that sets EB above other mods. Sweboz was my third victorious campaign, and I found it a ton of fun. Probably a bit more of a challenge for a newer player, which is to the good. Especially if you play on huge settings, and have to manage depopulation, thus making heterogenous armies of various tribal levies.

[bmer]

Ahh, I see. You know what, I will go try out a Sweboz campaign, just because I've always felt so xenophobic against the barbarians that now I feel guilty about judging them without a try. Time to give them a try.

This thread is going to turn into a giant off-topic nest...I can feel it, but anyways here goes: if the barbarians were not all that 'barbaric', how come they never made as many contributions to our intellectual history as did the Romans, the Greeks or the Carthaginians? Why were they never able to conquer and thereafter properly maintain a sizeable amount of territory? Why did they have ugly customs such as human sacrifice, cannibalism, etc.?

EDIT: by the way MisterFred, I have been reading your AAR and I think it's really very nice :D

[MisterFred]

Thanks bmer. I think I'm going to head most of the vast replies off at the pass and answer you. They didn't make as many contributions to our intellectual history because they didn't keep large libraries. Many of their languages didn't have a written form, and though their leaders (I'm speaking of European tribes here) could usually read and write, it was usually only in Latin or Greek.

They DID conquer and maintain sizable territories, the best of which were taken (or disrupted) by the Romans. Most people don't know about these confederations or kingdoms because they get cut from history courses required for compulsory education (K-12) to focus on things educators and governments think will make people better citizens. Some areas stayed disintegrated, where individual tribes held prominence, much like European Greece. A few barbarian tribes had ugly customs such as human sacrifice, cannibalism, etc., either for the same reasons other people have done such things in history (the ritual power of such these atrocities: taking your enemy's strength through their flesh, the importance of blood and using it to appease gods, much like the Aztecs), or because Romans and Greek writers made up the fact that barbarians had these customs because they were relying on rumors of rumors or trying to make them look scary people who should be killed to justify a war.

EB only mentions cannibalism in reference to the Vojinos, where there is at least some archaeological evidence to back up assertions, and reminds us that the Germans and Celts were using soap more often than their neighbors at this time.

Also, the Romans were not above the occasional human sacrifice at rare moments in their history...

[Tuuvi]

I read that it was against Celtic religion to keep written records, so that is one explanation as to why they didn't make as much of an intellectual contribution.

[Rahl]

Why were they never able to conquer and thereafter properly maintain a sizeable amount of territory? Why did they have ugly customs such as human sacrifice, cannibalism, etc.?

I'm no expert, but IIRC in the dark ages many tribes especially the germanic ones conquered much land that once was part of the roman empire. The Franks where a germanic tribe and conquered was once was Gaul and now is known as France. And I think you allready see that, but France seems similiar to Franks...

[vartan]

I read that it was against Celtic religion to keep written records, so that is one explanation as to why they didn't make as much of an intellectual contribution.

Perhaps it was tradition not to keep records. Just look at modern Iraq and Afghanistan. They don't have birth certificates for girls, only boys.

[Ca Putt]

since when do barbarism and expansionismus contradict each other? many great conquerers were considered barbarian by the ones they conquered not to mention that who is a barbarian is extremely subjective, consider the motto of EB "everyone is a barbarian to someone". examples would be Huns, Mongols, Macedonians, Persians, Franks, ... those who write down history often brand their enemies as evil, child eating, primitive, smelly barbarians.
on the other hand many extremely civilized people did not conquer a lot or anything at all rather were overrun by less civilized neighbors. they often get exterminated by expansionist militarisic empires who ridd the world of anything that would have shown their additions to science, technology, philosophy, literature... and claim those advances as their own.

[vartan]

The problem with the misuse of the word barbarian lies alongside (the problem of) periodization. Barbarian today was not barbarian twenty-five centuries ago. This thread's about a campaign so this extraneous topic of barbarism the concept and all that comes with it should be placed aside, in another thread.

[Tuuvi]

Perhaps it was tradition not to keep records. Just look at modern Iraq and Afghanistan. They don't have birth certificates for girls, only boys.

The book I read stated that writing was explicitly against Celtic religion, because the Celts felt that keeping written records would dull their memorization ability. The Celts did write things on occasion, but when they did they wrote in Latin or Greek and they did not write down any of their religious stories, histories, or anything like that.

[vartan]

The book I read stated that writing was explicitly against Celtic religion, because the Celts felt that keeping written records would dull their memorization ability. The Celts did write things on occasion, but when they did they wrote in Latin or Greek and they did not write down any of their religious stories, histories, or anything like that.

They felt this way not because they thought, but because they knew that records dull memory. My father used to be able to recall over 500 contact records. Now we have electronic phonebooks. His father before him recalled his own written texts. Those before him recalled whole texts, not their own.

[Tuuvi]

Yes you're right. When I used the word "felt" I wasn't trying to imply that they were wrong, if that's what you're thinking.