Poll: scale the difficulty of each campaign

[siegfriedfr]

Hello,

Please rate the campaigns by order of difficulty and give your opinion on what could be done to make it more friendly to the average player.

From hardest to easiest:

1. Hayasdan
> possible fix: adding basic mines building in all caucasus city and upping population, making core relationship with seleucid "allies"
2. Saba
> adding basic mines building in meroe, tamane and carna, a fleetport in homna, making core relationships with seleucid/ptole "ally"
3. Saka
> not much to do, rush or die
4. Pahlava
> Adding mines in cities bordering the caspian sea, making the reformed parthian gov a lvl 1 native MIC
5. Sauromatae
> just like saka, not much to do

All the factions listed after that don't suffer any severe problem and would not require a tweak.

6. Pontus
7. Getai
8. Casse
9. Sweboz
10. Arverni
11. Aedui
12. Baktria

The easy factions:

13. Seleucid
14. Lusotanian
15. Greeks
16. Epirus
17. Macedon
18. Ptolemaioi
19. Carthage
20. Romani

[Cambyses]

Having "hard" factions is entirely a good thing IMO. That way it allows a player to progress through the game and encourages replayability.

Having said that I didnt find either Saba or Sauromatae to be particularly difficult. Saba you get all the time in the world to subdue arabia, and finances are pretty strong. The hard part is that beating the ptolies on the battlefield requires different tactics to most factions as they have no "obvious" way to kill phalanxes. Also they do tend to suffer high casualties so invading far from your homeland without access to reinforcements isnt straightforward. But overall you have a secure and easily defendable position, its just expansion thats tricky.

With the sauros, the money part is tough, but using horse archers and one FM its easy as hell to win almost every battle with extremely low casualties. Taking on the other nomads is a little tougher though.

I suspect many people might put Pontus in the tough category also. But certainly no-one needs a "fix" IMO.

[Arjos]

To me every faction gives you a different experience.
What ruins the game is the tendency of the AI to attack the player regardless the diplomatic relations. But I believe that the M2TW system will "fix" that.
In RTW what's missing is the genuine alliance...

[siegfriedfr]

Having "hard" factions is entirely a good thing IMO. That way it allows a player to progress through the game and encourages replayability.

Having said that I didnt find either Saba or Sauromatae to be particularly difficult. Saba you get all the time in the world to subdue arabia, and finances are pretty strong. The hard part is that beating the ptolies on the battlefield requires different tactics to most factions as they have no "obvious" way to kill phalanxes. Also they do tend to suffer high casualties so invading far from your homeland without access to reinforcements isnt straightforward. But overall you have a secure and easily defendable position, its just expansion thats tricky.

With the sauros, the money part is tough, but using horse archers and one FM its easy as hell to win almost every battle with extremely low casualties. Taking on the other nomads is a little tougher though.

I suspect many people might put Pontus in the tough category also. But certainly no-one needs a "fix" IMO.

Sure hard campaigns are good, and pontus is hard. But possible, because you can funnel the AI into specific cities and hold them here.
Arguably, you can theorically conquer the world with HA factions with zero casualties, and players have done that (or, they claim they have without cheating anyway). Altho my experience is that a quickly stretched front without a developped military chain eventually leads to not enough horse archers remaining and cities depleting of their pop.

But hayasdan... how can you realistically complete this campaign with low population cities, no mines, and the seleucid attacking you on 3 fronts, and pontus joigning the party as soon as they can?
Saba... i've been trying several strategic campaign (not taking carna to avoid early wars, rushing for ptolemais theron/elephants) and eventually saba doenst make enough money to counter the stack spam from memphis/alexandria. Sure, you can beat a few half assed stacks of ptollies with elite units (but it's goddan hard), but you cannot beat the spam.

And as Arjos says, if the AI didn't permanently break alliances to ruin the player life, no campaign would be difficult anyway.

hell, in one of my pahlava attemps, the seleucid was litterally emptying the west and bringing all their stacks to me at some point (i was up to persepolis and sacked susa/ekbatana) - wasn't making enough money to rebuild so had to quit.

[Arjos]

Also with M2TW the whole "control the town square for 3 minutes" is out, along with the control of the gateway. This would make the RTW's hard campaings into really impossible ones, if it wasn't for the new diplomacy...

[Cambyses]

Also with M2TW the whole "control the town square for 3 minutes" is out, along with the control of the gateway. This would make the RTW's hard campaings into really impossible ones, if it wasn't for the new diplomacy...

eh? You control the town centre in M2 as well, just the same as in R. But now u can also do it when the enemy still has some guys left alive in the square, so that you dont need to kill every last warrior. Provided that you have a huge numerical advantage. AFAIK some other mods have fiddled with this feature a bit, but its definitely still there.

Controlling gates (and towers) is also much improved in M2 IMO. Im afraid I dont see how this will make the campaign harder at all. If anything the free upkeep units and multiple recruitment/turn will make things quite a bit simpler (in defence at least).

[Arjos]

Uhm... Maybe someone had it modded out (I don't play vanilla XD)
About the gateway, I meant that even if you take control of it, the defender can still enter, and you can't enter it at leat you destroy the gate...

[NoHelmet]

hell, in one of my pahlava attemps, the seleucid was litterally emptying the west and bringing all their stacks to me at some point (i was up to persepolis and sacked susa/ekbatana) - wasn't making enough money to rebuild so had to quit.[/QUOTE]

In persepolis, destroy the tomb, it will get you 10000, and try this: go ahead with all your horse archers you can quickly get, attack, spend all your arrows, then retreat if you are in a serious situation. I currently play with pahlava on VH/M, AS isn't posing that much of a threat. Now, i am a rusher, but picking lone squads and raiding pretty much does the job. I only once lost a city, and took it back the next turn. it is winter 268bc, and i am at susa, and The Gray Death is on the way to it's own death. Baktria is still far from hostilities, and Sakas are too busy dealing with two AS provinces i left as a buffer to them. Now, with AS sufficiently weakened, i turn to baktria and it's mines. Pahlava is on a steady way of becoming my favorite faction... And for hayasdan, i think it is hardest. I played it once, but i really was pretty bad back then. I should try it again. Pontos isn't that hard, Nomads in generall are the hard ones, because you have to preserve your armies (or army, with sakae i gather one army and roll). Any faction that gives you a lot of infantry and places you far from nomads, is generally easy. And yes, breaking alliances is what keeps the campaign alive, i agree.

[Mulceber]

I think to a certain extent people tend to underestimate the difficulty of the Romani campaign. They have a good starting position, stable economy and good troops, but as the Romani you have to conquer a LOT of land, which makes for a grueling campaign. Plus, once you run into the Yellow Fever or Silver Death, reinforcing provinces becomes very difficult when they're half-way across the map. I wouldn't say the Romani are as hard as Pontos, Pahlava or Hayasdan, but I just thought I'd put in a good word for them. -M

[Arjos]

Maybe it is if you want to end it as fast as possible.
The roman campaign is the second one I played till 14 AD (fulfilling the victory conditions) and I had to face the yellow death, it happened that I had to fight something like 3-4 major battles in a sigle turn for three times, but it wasn't anything special. I was facing also several Agema phalanxes...
But as I said I don't feel like there are hard ones and easy ones, everyone is unique...

[vartan]

But hayasdan... how can you realistically complete this campaign with low population cities, no mines, and the seleucid attacking you on 3 fronts, and pontus joigning the party as soon as they can?

Been there, done that.

Hayasdan is possible to win wtihout cheating, but it's not very fun at all without force diplomacy

I find it to be one of the most fun campaigns, and I don't even use FD (I find FD boring).

Exactly, but a whole army of "Sun Shaders" isn't enjoyable nor accurate XD

It's accurate enough if you're referring to the Hye, and it certainly isn't enjoyable watching people die unless you're a sadist. Indeed.

So what's your strategy with hayasdan? How do you cope with AS relentless attacks?

You don't cope with the Seleukid attacks, you counter-attack. Cope implies a defensive posture. The turtle's shell will eventually crack. Come out of the shell and blow with your hammer where it hurts the most. Cut through, slicing the Seleukid empire in two. Break their lines.

[siegfriedfr]

Been there, done that.

I find it to be one of the most fun campaigns, and I don't even use FD (I find FD boring).

It's accurate enough if you're referring to the Hye, and it certainly isn't enjoyable watching people die unless you're a sadist. Indeed.

You don't cope with the Seleukid attacks, you counter-attack. Cope implies a defensive posture. The turtle's shell will eventually crack. Come out of the shell and blow with your hammer where it hurts the most. Cut through, slicing the Seleukid empire in two. Break their lines.

Just like every dood who claim completion of the hardest campaigns, you prefer to brag ("i've done it"), than actually explain what are your army composition, which settlement you go for first, did you develop before attacking, did the ptolemaioi keep the seleucid busy whiile you were being superman, how far you went before quitting, or provide a screenshot.

Please enlighten us.

[Duguntz]

Just like every dood who claim completion of the hardest campaigns, you prefer to brag ("i've done it"), than actually explain how you did, and how far you went, or provide a screenshot.

Zero credibility.

He actually did it... show respect!

[Brave Brave Sir Robin]

Well here is my Hai campaign, H/M no cheats, no modifications.


I fought my way to Persepolis with my faction leader who wanted to see it before he died. He ended up making the trek back to Armavir with his army intact and he's still hanging out there. He has great command skills, but is totally inept at running the capital. I would put him in the field but I wanted to retire him. Another family member recently captured Trebizond giving him the Arkhan Arkah trait as well.

At war with AS and Ptolies. I lucked out and Sauros never attacked me in this campaign. They are even more difficult to deal with than AS when playing as Hai. Basically I started off conquering the Caucasus regions, then invaded Karkiotherta. Held it while my main army sacked Seleucia giving me enough funds to build mines which, when completed financed a good enough army to move east taking Ecbatana, Susa, Gabai, and Persepolis. With these towns I could afford a small second army which headed south and took Seleucia and Arbela. I bought Babylon from the AS during a brief ceasefire, Charax rebelled from them and I grabbed it. They attacked me again and so I conquered Gerrha even though I don't really want it but they had a full army in it and a full merc army wandering the desert around town so I didn't want them in my rear. Now Ptolies attacked me and Pontus. I'm doing well, Pontus is not. I should be able to counterattack Ptolies soon and maybe gift Pontus some territory so I can consolidate my nice little Persia-Hai Empire.

[vartan]

Just like every dude who claims completion of the hardest campaigns, you prefer to brag ("I've done it"), than actually explain what are your army compositions, which settlement you go for first, did you develop before attacking, did the Ptolemaioi keep the Seleucids busy while you were being superman, how far you went before quitting, or provide a screenshot.

Please enlighten us.

Nice to meet you, too. I know it's really tiring to use the search feature, especially since it doesn't work half the time, so let me make this convenient. I remember in the past there were far more Hye campaign guides than there are now (yes, Hye; who came up with "Hai" anyway? was a Japanese guy working on the faction?). I don't see many around nowadays, but not to worry.

The way I go about things is different than how some others might. As you can see in this thread, another Hai player has chosen to go about replicating, more or less, the shape of the country of modern Iran. I'm still trying to find the Persian cat resemblance, but oh well, maybe another day. I personally find that a very plausible approach, but as usually is the case, there are always options for the player. I also cut through the Arche Seleukeia by going through Karkathiokerta (Arshamshat), Arbela, Susa (Shushan) and Babylonia (Babelon). By sacking each of these towns (I would occupy Karkathiokerta), you make bank whilst splitting the AS in half, destroying its trade routes and military lines of support. The example in this thread shows a progression towards the east. I myself move toward the west, occupying the region west of the Jordan, at least to Antioch, since you need to make that the stronghold standing between you and the Ptolemaic empire. At this point you have effectively recreated ancient Hayastan, but by almost 2 centuries before the fact, since EB is blitz-friendly. Some things you could do at this point are build up your economic base (more than you have done so already), defend your eastern borders against futile attacks, take Asia minor, or invade and annihilate the Ptolemaic empire (I would do this last). I would argue against anybody who says that Hayastan has the hardest campaign, but that would be useless since I'm in no objective position to argue (you know what I'm talking about?)

So lighten up. Have a Red Bull. Gives you wings.

EDIT: Oh, sorry, I forgot about the people without a sense of humour...this one's for you. Don't invade the north. You can make the Sarmatians your allies by turn #3, no questions asked, every single campaign. Guaranteed. This is VH/M, as recommended by the EB dev team. Next, have archers, lots of archers. Archers take out lightly armoured ground and mounted troops, easy easy lemon squeezy. Slingers and your remaining arrows take out heavily armoured troops that should be pinned by your lightly armoured men. You do lose men in the process but you should expect no less and no more. That's why you keep re-filling those voids of pins by mercs and/or more light spears. And I don't need to talk about the use of lance cav, almost exclusively on the Heavy aisle for the Hye. And I certainly need not talk about the early stages of the campaign. If you can't figure out that you need to secure the Caucasus, I sure as heck hope you're not running for Governor of Cali, coz you ain't getting my vote.

[Skuda]

Hayastan is a hard faction? Maybe on VH/VH, but on H/M is pretty easy even without rushing. The same for Saka and Sauromatae.

NB: I'm playing my own minimod where all the spearmen have -4 attack. But I think it doesn't make any difference in this case

[seienchin]

Hayastan is a hard faction? Maybe on VH/VH, but on H/M is pretty easy even without rushing. The same for Saka and Sauromatae.

NB: I'm playing my own minimod where all the spearmen have -4 attack. But I think it doesn't make any difference in this case

What?
If you dont rush wih Saka you must wait like 40 turns to make money, even more with sauromatae and hayasdan is hell if the seleucs decide to atack you.
It isnt impossible (I have never seen the pc beat me^^), but it is tedious as hell fighting stakc after stack.


Anyway I hate playing all the rush or die factions, because one of the funny parts of EB is building your cities to economical greatness, which is nearly impossible the first 100turns with these factions.
The only exception beeing the lusotans, which are easy to manage after you conquer one or two settlements.

Anyway if this were Vanilla you would give you a*** handed to you if you had like 10 levy units and you were atacked by a fullstack of elite infantry and cavallery.
Ebs high defense and moral system makes for intense battles, but I think its broken, when it comes to horse archers. They werent the dominant force in EBs Timeframe, but in EB they are the strongest units.

[Skuda]

What?
If you dont rush wih Saka you must wait like 40 turns to make money, even more with sauromatae and hayasdan is hell if the seleucs decide to atack you.
It isnt impossible (I have never seen the pc beat me^^), but it is tedious as hell fighting stakc after stack.

Of course I conquer 5-6 provinces for Saka in first turns (for Armenia you need to to have no more then 3 to have a strong and stable economy). But then you can sit back and build up or raid your enemies' cities with army of HAs :)

[Olaf The Great]

I really cannot wait for EB2, The AI in M2 seems to be less hellbent on destroying the player.

[Blxz]

The Hai game is meant to be hard. In history they failed. Admittedly they lasted for a while but still went in the end. Thats what I like so much about this mod, if I want to change history I have a big uphill battle to fight. Especially considering I am too lazy to be very 'gamey' (or strategic) with my tactics. I tend to make a big line of dudes and charge the enemy and hope that enough of my guys come out the other side still alive. Tends to work most times, at least I am a good player on the macro campaign, I just suck at micro control.

Man, I am gonna go play a game of them now. Thanks for the inspiration guys.

[siegfriedfr]

Hayastan is a hard faction? Maybe on VH/VH, but on H/M is pretty easy even without rushing. The same for Saka and Sauromatae.

NB: I'm playing my own minimod where all the spearmen have -4 attack. But I think it doesn't make any difference in this case

So what's your strategy with hayasdan? How do you cope with AS relentless attacks?

[Duguntz]

Honestly, I played two campaing (not finished as i got bored) with Saka and Sauromate (as a rider myself, I've a weakness for cav. based armies!!!) and I don't get why people say it's so diffivult. with saka. the first few turns are tricky, but when you get out of the red in your finances, the game's over! (meaning, you literally can kick the ass of anybody! I mean, their bodyguard, like sauromates, are literally german tiger tanks that came down from world WWII (3 FM alone can stand their own against "almost" anything). the only real danger when playing one of those two are the other (Sauro when you play Saka and vice versa). I played both on hard and well... with sauromates, go west and you can eat getai and hellenes for breakfest, go south with Saka!

In any cases, they're not the hardest faction I played! (well, it's only a personal experiance, I'm not saying they're "easy" factions, far from that, new commers would probably be discouraged if they tried Saka first!)

[Skuda]

So what's your strategy with hayasdan? How do you cope with AS relentless attacks?

You mean, Ptolemies? ;) Together with Pahlava they smashed AS to splinters and I even had to save them conquering in one campaign with my faction heir whole Mesopotamia and then giving it to Seleucids back.

Now I'm holding against Ptolemaioi. It's not very hard if you have Karkathiokerta. It's a perfect city for sallying because it's located on the hill and two of its walls are situated just over the steep slopes (and enemies always attack from these two directions). I keep strong garrison here with 4 units Eastern slingers and 4 HAs (Armenian and Scythian), some infantry and FM. I've had at least half dozen heroic victories here and attackers just have no chance. Call it cheating if you like ;)

[Duguntz]

Hello,

Please rate the campaigns by order of difficulty and give your opinion on what could be done to make it more friendly to the average player.

From hardest to easiest:

1. Hayasdan
> possible fix: adding basic mines building in all caucasus city and upping population, making core relationship with seleucid "allies"
2. Saba
> adding basic mines building in meroe, tamane and carna, a fleetport in homna, making core relationships with seleucid/ptole "ally"
3. Saka
> not much to do, rush or die
4. Pahlava
> Adding mines in cities bordering the caspian sea, making the reformed parthian gov a lvl 1 native MIC
5. Sauromatae
> just like saka, not much to do

All the factions listed after that don't suffer any severe problem and would not require a tweak.

6. Pontus
7. Getai
8. Casse
9. Sweboz
10. Arverni
11. Aedui
12. Baktria

The easy factions:

13. Seleucid
14. Lusotanian
15. Greeks
16. Epirus
17. Macedon
18. Ptolemaioi
19. Carthage
20. Romani

"Adding mine and ports"??? what's the point of choosing a hard faction if it's to make it filthy rich and easy to play! As if I'd use Sweboz and decide to add mines to every cities (amber and timber excavation) plus add population until all settelements become huge cities... real challenge... i could also put all their units at 2 HP... just in case it's still too hard

[seienchin]

Maybe some people like realism ;)
Having a faction which is deep into bankruptcy by maintaining a small army, every rebell city in the game has, allthough you have 4, isnt really realistic and forces the player to exploit all the AI weakness.

[Duguntz]

Hmm, you do understand that in my previous post i was being totally sarcastic... do you?

[Moros]

Maybe some people like realism ;)
Having a faction which is deep into bankruptcy by maintaining a small army, every rebell city in the game has, allthough you have 4, isnt really realistic and forces the player to exploit all the AI weakness.

Small factions in this period never tended to be able to support large standing armies for long periods.

[xypherx]

Maybe some people like realism ;)
Having a faction which is deep into bankruptcy by maintaining a small army, every rebell city in the game has, allthough you have 4, isnt really realistic and forces the player to exploit all the AI weakness.

The problem with realism and so-called roleplaying is that it is simply the wrong game - sure it is possible to replay some historic campaigns with some factions - but simply not with every faction, and it is good as it is - only way to prevent the dependance to blitzing AI factions is to delete the scripted AI armies, and to reduce the Eleutheroi stacks in their settlements to give the player a chance to expand by not invading bordering foreign empires.
For realism in this game there are simply too much possibilities and influences missing, and to be realistic (with a bit smiling) every king general or leader in ancient times would have used every chance to expand his riches and territory if he had a engine given chance to do so^^. But beeing serious again - there are simply to much restrictions by the engine especially the economy will simply prevent you from beeing able to play a realistic game with every faction. I would prefer a better playability and a much better economy as well as more influence on the economy but then i will have to play other games - some paradox titles are nice and challenging but are missing the tactical part - so i play total war+mods for the challenge to expand strategically on the campaign map and beating the ai in the field employing a variety of tactics - the more challenging both modes are the better is the taste of success - , in reality nobody wins with one unit heavy cav and 3 units HA against 400+ men (normal unit size), in rome/ EB you do and you have to when the AI invades your territory with stacks bought of scripted financial support otherwise the game says "game over" or " faction destroyed - btw ahistorical destroyed".

And I don't like the argument (saw it in other post where some came up with it) about giving nomads zero unit upkeep due to the fact that they didn't even know money or a kind of money based economy - money is just a placeholder for a worth measured by other objects of trade, and economy so in fact - even in a nomad culture the employment of a heavy armored well trained soldier+horse will have a certain impact on his nomad-community's economy - so the upkeep is just a placeholder for this impact....

maybe it is a good way to enhance the gameplay via reducing the support for AI factions and autonomous settlements' troops in regard to the difficulty chosen by the player if it is possible - so both parties will be able to play a EB which is giving them their favoured gaming experience - hobbyblitzkrieger who seek kind of a challenge and hobbyvirtualreenactors who are seeking a smoother but more realistic balancing of the factions....
hope i am not to offensive to the second group of players ^^ ...

[athanaric]

"Adding mine and ports"??? what's the point of choosing a hard faction if it's to make it filthy rich and easy to play! As if I'd use Sweboz and decide to add mines to every cities (amber and timber excavation) plus add population until all settelements become huge cities... real challenge... i could also put all their units at 2 HP... just in case it's still too hard

I agree with you. Nothing should be done to make the game easier. All campaigns are playable on VH/M by a moderately competent player. Also, building things up from scratch is actually a major source of motivation for me to play the Swêboz.

Small factions in this period never tended to be able to support large standing armies for long periods.

I think you misunderstood him. He wants smaller starting armies for some minor factions.

[WinsingtonIII]

I think you misunderstood him. He wants smaller starting armies for some minor factions.

Actually, I don't think he's saying that. As far as I can tell, he's saying that it doesn't make sense for a 4 city small faction to be driven into debt by a small army the same size as the armies supported by single small rebel cities. So arguably he could be saying you need to reduce rebel garrisons for it to make sense, or increase the amount of forces a small faction can support.

Of course, I may be completely misinterpreting, so please tell me if I'm wrong, seiechen.