game is broken

[Jikot]

Randal, from my recent experience (see my first couple of posts here) I found it best not to rely on pahlava/saka to keep up the pressure long enough for AS to leave you alone to expand east. Leave the rebel Indian cities for later, and roll up the seleukid hinterland. The Baktrian campaign just went from my worst EB experience to my most enjoyable simply by turning the spears westward from the very first turn.
I swear i saw the white flags flying over the seleukid cities turn even whiter when they saw the boys in blue rocking up. Call me Alexander in reverse, next stop Greece!

[Randal]

Strategy-wise I agree with you.

But gameplay-wise I'm not so sure. Those Indian troops are pretty sweet, and using them rather than relying on more generic Hellenic troops seems like a lot of fun so far. I want some of those guild-warriors. Plus, India seems to be very rich and right now I'm swimming in cash and getting all kind of experience upgrade buildings in place to make a truly lethal army for once I finally decide to imitate your reverse-Alexander. Sure, the beginning was rather rocky (but exiting) but I'm thinking it was worth it. I've a solid power-base and a secure rear now.

(Seleucids still haven't attacked me, though stacks are marching around my territory. Better walls + garrison does seem to be working. For the record, I'm playing on hard game difficulty, medium battle difficulty.)

[Jikot]

So I was doing pretty good, got all the way to the mediterranean, but decided to leave Antiocheia to the AS because the Ptolemaioi wouldn't leave me alone there. But now that i'm this far the AS and the game in general appear massively buttpained, and are trying all sorts of nasty tricks to gain the upper hand:

- Pahlava and SR have barely even touched Alexandreia Margiana/Eschate (which are still in AS hands). In my last game (when i was trying to expand east) they were pretty good at harassing the AS with massive armies. This time they tippy toe around AS cities, but SR is coming towards me from the east with a massive five-star stack (although A. Eschate is right under their noses).

- AS keeps besieging my cities with tiny armies (seriously, with a single unit of skirmishers sometimes) even though those cities have massive garrisons. That would be funny if it did not wreak havoc on my economy.

- when i once attacked an AS "invader army" (a single skirmisher unit) my dozen or so units of persian archers emptied their quivers onto the skirmisher unit and killed 1 dude. The enemy skirmishers killed about thirty of my men.

- when i once attacked a single general unit of AS, somehow two of my units kept losing men even though the general and his bodyguards were practically on the other side of the map.

- when i attacked a city using three siege towers, none of the units pushing the siege towers were able to successfully climb their tower. I tried getting them back out and back in again and again, i also tried getting other units in there. Nothing worked.

- exhausted and routing native phalanxes outran fresh light infantry (axemen i believe).

- winded and routing skirmishers outran fresh bodyguard horses.

- winded and routing heavy bodyguard horses ran exactly as fast as warmed-up light cavalry.

This all happened within an hour or so of play, i'm pretty sure the game hates me.

[Randal]

That siege-tower bug hits me very frequently. It's annoying. So very annoying. I end up using sap points and ladders if I can, or just don't assault walls.

As for the pursuit problems, what happens quite a lot (and more often in EB than in vanilla) is that a fleeing unit will get spread out, while the pursuing unit sticks together in formation. Then, when some routing soldiers are behind your pursuers and some in front the pathfinding will -think- your unit is in the middle of the enemy formation and your horsemen will stop going at full speed, instead keeping pace with the routers. Nobody gets killed.
This is very annoying, but it can be fixed with micro-managing: order the pursuing unit to run ahead of the routers, and when enough are contacting them/in between them, order to attack again. It's not a perfect solution but it helps.

Some of those other things sound just plain weird though. Some must have been bugs. Were those skirmishers standing on a massive wooded hill and your archers all the way at the bottom? A good trick for that is to just charge up the hill; the skirmishers will obediently skirmish away from your archers, so then when -you- have the high ground you can shoot and massacre them all in a few volleys.

In my Baktria campaign, by the way, the Parthians seized every Seleucid settlement up to Susa. They expanded faster than I did! I ended up attacking the AS just so I'd have some room left to expand without being squished by a giant Parthian empire at some point in the future. (My armies are now seizing Persia, the Parthians have everything north of there and are conquering the Caucasus now.) Goes to show it all comes down to the luck of the draw. In my Roman campaign it was the Armenians who conquered half the east.

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

I play M campaign. And, since the AI doesn't recruit as much as on VH level, it's not necessary in M campaign to pursue and kill all enemy routing troops. You can afford to do the historical thing and let some of them escape.

I don't pursue with exhausted units, and I don't pursue at all with hoplites or phalanxes. Pursuing routers is a job for light infantry and light cavalry, and even then it's only worthwhile when there are a lot of routers. If there's only half a dozen left from an enemy unit, it's not worth the effort of pursuing them.

[Subotan]

I've played two different Baktria campaigns out in full, both following Randal's strategy. Baktria's a fun nation to play

[SD1987]

The game isn't broken. I've played Bactria and I've been able to keep peace with the Seleucids for ages and conquer tons of crap on the eastern side. Helps if the Parthians get their conquer on though.

[Jikot]

Most of what i enumerated i had already seen before at one time or other, it's just that this time around all of the little annoyances seem to be piling up in a highly concentrated manner (never seen three siege towers fail consistently at the same time for instance).
Earlier today i was besieging an AS town that was completely isolated, no hope of reinforcements, and then *poof* a rebel army spawns out of nowhere and attacks my besieging army. Seriously mind-boggling stuff i swear.

@Randal: i know about units sometimes getting stretched out, making your pursuing unit simply run along in the middle, this was never the case in any of the points i mentioned. The buggers simply pulled away effortlessly.

@Titus Marcellus: you'll find that i never pursued anyone with anything BUT cavalry and light troops. Exhausted and routing heavy infantry (still large units, clumped neatly together) still effortlessly pulled away from my fresh light infantry and horses.
Also; i pursue to the last man EVERY time. Too often have i seen units that were reduced to less than half their original numbers simply be replenished after the battle, without ever entering a town and without any reinforcements nearby.

@SD1987: i started over about seven times, each time hoping to keep the SA pacified long enough for me to go east, it never ever worked for me. In my current game i attacked SA immediately, and i seem to have broken their backs, but for the very first time Pahlava and SR seem incapable of getting a large enough army to attack SA in Alexandreia Margiane/Eschate. (You can bet they will after I decide to take these towns however).

Mind you, i'm still having fun, but i guess there just are these "events" that i feel need mention sometimes.