Strong future enemies for Makedonia

[vnnv]

I've been playing my second campaign with Makedonia, this time vh/h and in Huge settings. As I avoided producing troops in Pella and Demetrias until they reached at least 15000, I relied mostly on mercenaries and I got much richer than my first campaign( m/m, medium size)!


macedonia 220 by up_hinh, on Flickr
The year is 220. So anyway, I've been using the last few years to save Romani from getting overrun by Carthage. Carthage practically kicked the Romans out of the Italian penisula a few years ago, which meant I wouldn't get my Reformed phalanx due to the MoT. So I cheated, using auto_win and process_cq to take back all the settlements in Italy and gift them to the Romans. I also upgraded most of their cities to great, a few of them to huge. Fighting against the Romans are much harder and more exciting than the Carthage anyway from my previous expirience. To compensate for the fact that I helped the Romans and upgraded their cities, I won't expand westward or southwards for the next 20 years. Im also thinking of upgrading some of the Carthaginian cities to great cities and give them 500k. So here are my questions:

Can the Romans achieve the Marian reforms on their own? Or at least can they fight back the barbarian factions and Carthage with Poblybian troops? They got mauled badly by Carthage with their Camilian troops so I don't know.

Should I conquer the Euletheroi settlements in the north,upgrade them and give them to Sweboz? Will they give me a good fight later on, like 30-40 years? I'm already destroying the neighboring rebel settlements for Casse as they have been doing practically nothing in my 2 campaigns. Also does Casse's tech tree reaches large/huge cities? And do they have paved roads? I don't think the huge cities are going to rebel against the AI but I just want to make sure..

What about the steppe armies? Pahlava and Bactria were client kingdoms of Saka Rauka so I (again..) gave them a coupld of settlements and upgraded them to great cities. I did that because I remembered(wrongly) someone on the forum saying that Saka Rauka has weak troops. Now I know I mistake them for Saba and kinda regret it haha. And another thing I've realized is Pahlava and Saka Rauka can't reach huge cities. Or can they?? I don't know about Bactria. So can anyone tell me which steppe factions should I help or should I just turn back the settlements to Saka? I want to fight some good steppe armies and cataphracts later in the campaign and I'm giving them time to build up their armies. Who can give me the most trouble in 30-40 years?

I'm going pretty slowly this time to enjoy Makedonia more. I'm going to attack Saurotomate and destroy them as they have been sitting idly for 30 years. Ptolemaioi is also quite weak this time but somehow AS couldn't overrun them. Wel I'll see how things turn out in the next few years and then decide.

[Lazy O]

You made a Mistake, you shouldve added the population to 24000 but should not have upgraded them yourself.

[vnnv]

I understand what you said, it's just that the AI took so long to upgrade. And I just built the palace and some basic farming buildings not everything available. So far(14 years), I've seen few revolts in those cities.

ON the other hand, I checked the Romani in 218 and they already had the Marian reforms! Is that unusual? I thought you couldn't trigger the reforms until 172 or later..

[Biowulf]

AI Rome has different requirements for the reforms. They have an easier time of triggering them since the AI can't manage traits and whatnot.

[Lazy O]

The March of Time only occurs when the Romani AI build an Imperial Palace in a city which has the italy resource. Just check which provinces have them and if anyone is still left.

[Rahl]

I understand what you said, it's just that the AI took so long to upgrade. And I just built the palace and some basic farming buildings not everything available. So far(14 years), I've seen few revolts in those cities.

ON the other hand, I checked the Romani in 218 and they already had the Marian reforms! Is that unusual? I thought you couldn't trigger the reforms until 172 or later..

The AI needs 20+ provinces for the marian reforms and nothing else.

[FriendlyFire]

A commenter in my Pontos AAR mentioned giving the Roman legions two secondary hitpoints, which makes them much tougher in auto-resolve battles and should give Rome a fighting chance of expanding instead of being swamped by Lusos or Carthage. Could be fun to try in your Macedonian campaign too?

[vnnv]

Thank you for your recommendation but can you tell me how to do that ;_;? Last night I fast fowarded the campaign to see how the AI progressed and Rome again got kicked by Carthage.

Anyway can anyone advise me on the steppe factions? Any recommendation is appreciated!

[FriendlyFire]

Here's what I *think* you have to do - I'm about to try the same myself, so any confirmation from expert modders is much appreciated!

• Edit the file export_descr_unit.txt (often abbreviated "EDU") in the EB\Data\ folder of your installation
• Search through it for all the legion entries (easiest way is to search on "legion")
• Change the line in each legion entry that reads "stat_health 1, 1" into "stat_health 1, 2"
• Voila, the legions will now rule in auto-resolved battles

If you're using the Trivial Script shortcuts, I think you have to change the copy of export_descr_uni.txt in the EB\sp game edu backup\ folder instead, because every time the game starts it copies whatever is in there to overwrite the copy in EB\Data\.

And before you do anything, MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF ANY FILE YOU EDIT. Just in case :)

[vnnv]

Thanks FriendlyFire, I followed your instructions and it worked well. It should be "stat_health 2, 1" though.

[vollorix]

stat_health 2,1 means the units become 2 hitpoints. The secondary hitpoint after the comma is normaly used for mounted units, afaik, therefore it is usefull for the horse archers in autoresolving. Granting units two standard hitpoints makes them kind of "uber" unit like Gaesatae. You should have fun fighting Roman legions, though^^

[vnnv]

Does anyone know how to make Roman AI stop spamming useless Vigiles? I've tried raising their recruitment cost and turn but it made few change. Shouldn't they be recuiting principes/triarii instead?

[vollorix]

The AI loves quality, but also quantity. Preferably both in one unit, like Elite Phalangitai, and Vigiles got 60 men in a unit
You could make Vigiles 2 or even 3 turn to recruit, just change the bottom line entry in the EDU: stat_cost 1, 1121, 280, 50, 70, 1121
You also can lower their stats compared to the biggest next unit the Romani would recruit, perhaps the attack stats, since the "light_spear" attribute is good enough to deal with cavalry, but the value of 11 makes them unproportional stronger against infantry ( i lowered all "light spear" units by "4", btw. ) Since the AI is set to recruit specific type of troops, Romans are mostly "infantry" heavy faction, the Vigiles might appear to them as a good alternative to other light troops available to them, i´d guess, cost effectiv or kind of to spam them like Gauls love their levies.

[vnnv]

Thanks a lot vollorix!

[Cute Wolf]

stat_health 2,1 means the units become 2 hitpoints. The secondary hitpoint after the comma is normaly used for mounted units, afaik, therefore it is usefull for the horse archers in autoresolving. Granting units two standard hitpoints makes them kind of "uber" unit like Gaesatae. You should have fun fighting Roman legions, though^^

hmm, I wonder what will he say if he face the romans in the field....
everyone need to be killed twice, and I bet right now, princepes in his campaign will rout argyraspidai in frontal combat

[FriendlyFire]

• Edit the file export_descr_unit.txt (often abbreviated "EDU") in the EB\Data\ folder of your installation
• Search through it for all the legion entries (easiest way is to search on "legion")
• Change the line in each legion entry that reads "stat_health 1, 1" into "stat_health 1, 2"
• Voila, the legions will now rule in auto-resolved battles

A few followups to this: it's better to search for "cohort" than "legion", else you miss one entry. Or just scroll through it and check manually. As vollorix noted, I think "stat_health 2,1" will give you Galatian-wildmen-style legions, hard to kill in onscreen battles, whereas "stat_health 1,2" makes them hard to kill in autoresolve battles, which is what I was after. And finally, another alternative to fixing the vigiles problem is apparently to just remove every mention of them from the export_descr_buildings.txt file. I'm about to try this myself, as the Romans are still creating stacks that are about half vigiles.