[EB AAR] Pontos Rising

[FriendlyFire]

This is a Pontic campaign AAR using Europa Barbarorum 1.2 and BI.exe. I'm playing on hard campaign difficulty, medium battle difficulty, and huge unit sizes. I'm also using the city mod, which limits the upper size and growth of most cities to historical proportions.

I love Pontos in EB for three reasons: first, it's a complete underdog in an almost impossible position, starting with one small town and the Arche Seleukeia breathing down its neck. Second, even after fighting off that initial threat, Pontos finds itself in the center of the map, with danger and opportunity in every direction. This makes the campaign much more unpredictable than that of a "corner power" like Carthage, Saba, or the Casse, where you pretty much know who you'll be fighting and in what order. Third, Pontos doesn't really have any factional elite troops worthy of the name, so late-game armies tend to have a lot more interesting regional troops in the mix.

I've tried and failed to complete AARs before, so this time around I'm trying to be a bit more character-based. Hopefully the story will drive the gameplay, and the gameplay will drive the story, and I'll get past the second page! And I apologize in advance for battle screenshots where cavalry have transparent necks and forelegs: there's something about those textures that my laptop just can't render, although I try to change camera angles and positions to minimize its effect. This is why you'll never see one of my generals doing the heroic-rearing-horse thing - it just looks too bizarre with a floating horse's head :)

For in-game numbers, I'm applying the AAR rule of multiplying unit sizes by a factor of 10, so that the story has "realistic" historical battle sizes. Then I round things up a little, so I'll say "approximately 2,500 phalangites" instead of "2,420 phalangites".

I'm also cross-posting the AAR to the Total War Eras AARs section at twcenter.