game is broken

[Jikot]

I played this game for years on end, for hundreds of hours.
I started playing a new campaign as Baktria last week after about a year of not playing at all.
And i have to say, this game is simply broken.

1) There is no way at all to keep the seleucids off my god damn back. Nothing works, not tribute, not regular tribute, nothing at all.
It has degenerated to the point where seleukia is now constantly besieging my capital baktra with what seems like an endless chain of half-stack armies. I am now using force diplomacy to lift their relentless sieges after each turn (during which they will invariably besiege me again), but as you understand, that's no fun.
I thought starting as a petty kingdom in the fringes of the alexandrian empire would be tons of fun, keeping my head low until i reach a certain point where i can challenge the big guys. Alas, there is no way in hell you can ever play that way in this game.
As a still puny power I am pressed for resources (see point 2 below) and am mustering all i can to attack taksashila to the east.
I have tried from the very start to keep from confronting the seleucids, placating them at every turn.

2) From the very beginning i have focused 90% of my resources on economy buildings, and was gaining revenue at a pretty decent rate (about 2500 per turn).
But then i got besieged ONCE. I decided to wait it out and let them bust their teeth on my walls, which they did after three turns. BUT, despite being in the exact same economic position as i was just before the siege (with less troops and thus less upkeep) i found myself bleeding money out the bunghole.
What kind of mechanic is that anyway? Seriously, i would greatly appreciate someone explaining this one to me.

So yeah, i'm done screaming at my computer screen. Just thought i'd put in some feedback at least.

[Captain Jazzy]

As a matter of interest are you on Very Hard difficulty? This makes the AI relentlessly attempt to destroy you and as a result isnt very funny for many people. The game isnt broken but if you play in a certain way of the higher difficulty as a small power it becomes very difficult. Personally I have done a Bactria campaign on Hard and while it was very challenging I found this to be one of the best campaigns in EB. Try rapidly expanding East and capture part of India, then build up an army and strike at AS first, once you gain a few cities off them it becomes fairly "easy". Either this or go for AS straight off, none of its easy but that's the point of the campaign. :)

[Jikot]

medium difficulty. And i am no rookie at this game either.
I did everything i could to mollify the seleukids, and was indeed expanding east, to no avail.
I seriously hate it though that you start losing money after one siege (or any other economically detrimental event) even though you were gaining money like no other right before that siege (or any other economically detrimental event).

[Rahl]

But then i got besieged ONCE. I decided to wait it out and let them bust their teeth on my walls, which they did after three turns. BUT, despite being in the exact same economic position as i was just before the siege (with less troops and thus less upkeep) i found myself bleeding money out the bunghole.

Have you been at peace with the Seleucids before? Then you lost them as trading partner when they attacked and with paved roads Baktra has a good amount of trading income to lose.

I'm playing a campaign with them myself. The first one in 1.2, but I played them 2 or 3 times before in earlier versions. I never got defeated...
But what did you expect? EB tries to be as realistic as the engine allows. It would be very hard even without the bad AI.
If it's to hard why don't you play on hard or medium difficulty? I'm playing at very hard and had 6-8 years peace with the AS before they attacked (I payed tribute). I know there's some luck involved, sometimes the AS has enough problems with their other neighbors and can't attack you as easily as in other campaigns were they throw everything at you they've got.
To tell the truth, some years in the war with the AS I began to use the money cheat to take away some of their mnai since they where winning on most fronts because of their higher aggressivenes the AI has when it's neighbouring the player. Though I did this to make it more realistic and allow me to play slower. I don't like blitzing anymore.

EDIT:
I wrote my post before you had send your second one. That's why I thought you were playing on very hard like most players do. I actually don't understand why you were unable to hold peace with the AS on medium. The AI shouldn't be too aggressive then. Maybe you should play on easy? Or read some more threads about the gameplay? There's a lot to learn about how to hold peace and how to defeat the AI. It's hard to give you advice because I don't see where you lack skill or experience and because I'm so deep into the gameplay that everything is easy for me in EB.

[Jikot]

Have you been at peace with the Seleucids before? Then you lost them as trading partner when they attacked and with paved roads Baktra has a good amount of trading income to lose.

They attacked me before the siege, and i didn't lose that much on income from their trade.

I play medium because otherwise the AI gets to cheat way more with money and army stats.

i usually played makedonia (few forested areas, awesome availability of low-tier hoplites, good horses) and never bothered much with AS, so it was never really that much of a problem until i decided to start attacking them. When i decided to play baktria i knew AS would be able to steamroll me within the first few years if i disregarded them, so i made a solid point of keeping them on my good side. I've read a bunch of threads on pacifying enemies in the long term, applied those tips, and generally stayed out of their way.

[ayekides]

Here are some tips that might help:

In my experience with Bactria you have to make good use of your BGs early on.

I find that field battles are the way to go with the early attacks from AS.

Using forts at the river passing near Bactria can also buy you some time, especially if you try to expand towards far away cities of India.

I tend to use horse archers and BGs early on, hence field battles being most effective for my early forces.

The archer-spearmen are also very effective if used right.

After you expand a bit you can start making some nice Hellenic armies.

[XSamatan]

Your first point is somewhat out of reach for the dev-team (and other RTW-modders), CAI is not modable and designed to hate the human player. Playing on medium campaign difficulty just delays this point.
As you already use FD, maybe you want to move attacking stacks away to maintain peace in the beginning.
Btw: Baktria has a difficult starting position, no doubt.

Concerning the second point I advise to check the settlements detailed income and trading screen, you should find a devastating malus, quite sure some of the economic loss comes from this.

XSamatan

[Ca Putt]

Btw: Baktria has a difficult starting position, no doubt.

you can say that again :D

With Baktria there is a lot of luck involved as three things can go wrong
your case - the largest empire in ye known world sizes their chance to reintegrate a rouge Satrap into their Realm, in other cases they are often helpless prey to an agressive eastern faction as they are showing two of the factions with most potential(and the Sakans) their soft underbelly, which they can actually defend, if they choose so ;)
my case - the Saka Rauka are not ruled by a compleate Idiot and regard your weathy citiesy as a golden opportunity for Income and a Springbord into India where they get their cheap reform(not like the AI knows that). they may not be as mighty but increadibly more annoying to fight, as you can't just Heroic victory them with a BG and a Horse archer.
the unlikely but most deadly case - the Pahlavans get their ass up and show that they(and the romans) are the only ones who you can play without fearing your empire getting ahistorically big right away.

often enough all three are occupied elsewhere/Misguided/sitting ducks. This gives them the rateing of beeing easier than Pontos or Hay as they fight the AS EVERY BLEEDING TIME, but personally I think that (In one of the cases mentioned above) a Baktria early game is much more difficult than one with Pontos or Hay. oh and the Exellent roster of the Baktrians also decreaces their difficulty in lategame.

so, game is not broken, you just had bad luck that the AS favors taunting lil Balkh with their Stormtroopers(ok no they don't have them yet but you get the point) over defending It's real assets in the west. Come to think of it, which provinces did you take, as when getting sieged it's all about how centralized you are - as Makedon your early empire consists mainly of high income cities thus a siege is bad but not the end of the world, baktria on the other side of the Alexandrinan empire has, Baktra ... and ...
the other places you conquer need to be developed before they can give you an ample profit.

I'd just start another game as Baktria(as they are awesome) and just hope you don't get the Empire of Christmasthe East present, Yet to come or the evil Horse guys knocking on your front door.

[fomalhaut]

you have to remember the base game EB (my favorite mod ever ever) is modifying is absolute garbage in its diplomacy. I'm playing Alpha Centauri thanks to GOG.com and I don't think I can go back to EB for a logn while because diplomacy in AC is soooooooooooooooooo good comparatively.

[Jikot]

@ayekides: assuming BGs are bodyguards, i make EXTENSIVE use of them, they are like the backbone of my army at the start (especially seeing how they spawned very fortuitously for me during this particular game).
I tried keeping the battles afield (Baktra has a horrible city layout when attacked from the west, even with huge walls), but no matter how close i am to the city, they seem to be able to just bypass me and besiege the city without involving my out-of-city army at all :(

@XSamatan: i know that the AI is hard-coded (or whatever the technical term), and i guess i was just venting out of frustration. Getting his ass handed to him can wreak havoc on a man's pride. I'll keep better track of the settlement details next time (maybe i'll outsource that one to my irl accountant :)

@Ca Putt: I had the following cities: Baktria, Haomavarga, Sulek, Kophen. I already had them for quite a while when the AS suddenly decided to attack Baktra, and I had about 20,000 in the bank, a steady 1,500-2,000 income, and a fortune invested in huge markets, mines and the like; so it's fair to say i was not slouching on the development. Yet my economy still plummeted after a single detrimental event. Even when a large/huge market was finished a few turns after the siege.

@fomalhaut: i hope the base diplomacy/economy for medieval 2 is much better in this respect, because this really is the very finest strategy game out there and it's such a shame to see all that potential compromised by things like this, which are entirely out of the modders' hands.

[Jikot]

Alright, so i gave this another try. Went about things reeaaal careful-like. Cancelled my alliances to pahlava and KH and made an alliance with AS, providing them with regular tribute. I had Haomavarga and Baktra, and was taking things slow and steady, building my economy and military infrastructure.
And then AS besieged me. I have two towns and, accordingly, a puny army. I'm all for difficulty, but there is literally nothing you can do.

Putting someone in a giant blender and telling him to try to stay alive as you turn it on isn't "making things difficult", it's murder.

[A_Dane]

I've tried VH a couple of times, but unless I'm romans, I'm not gonna bother.

Anyways, on to the topic: While I havn't tried Bactria in ages, I've played Armenia extensively, and suffer the same issues.. I really feel your pain, even on medium, AI seleucids are horrible to face, if you don't want to rush/be faced with endless stacks of death s:

Getting mines is essential though, and I end up relying quite a bit on mercenaries of all sorts to bolster my armies.

Should probably try a bactria campaign again to see if it's as bad as armenia :D

[Arjos]

Baktra I rushed it in the first turns, and once I got the Indus valley had so much money it all turned to killing routine :D
Instead of keeping an alliance with the Arche, try to side with Phalava (keeping alliance with Baktra), I did the same with my Phalava game and turned out pretty well, gave me time to deal with the Saka...
Anyway the RTW engine's diplomacy is to go on rampage soon as the AI borders the player, try to get stone walls in Baktra asap and focus on your eastern border...

[fomalhaut]

It's hard to roleplay as Baktria, which is a shame because they are the most potent for roleplaying. AS never leaves you alone, either. EVER

[ayekides]

Yeah in my experience fomalhaut is correct. AS always come knocking, making your only options trying to take their cities, ahistorically expanding in the wrong direction, or having to constantly defend against their attacks while trying to expand eastward.

And using a 2-3 generals and a couple of horse archers can be pretty effective, especially against AS early armies. With forts you may have a few more turns in which you can attack and retreat. An army like this can keep away the AS from your capital long enough for you to expand towards India and a larger purse.

I've found that fighting like a nomad around Bactria is the most effective way for me to compete with the enemies early in the game.

Build up each city you get economically, most cities near Bactria have great potential. After you raise the profit from that city to begin recruiting more soldiers, even if you start going into debt. You can always disband some troops after taking another rich Indian city.

AS always attacks, heroic victories sometimes feel like a requirement for you to make it early on. I find them harder than Pontos at times.

Just wanted to add, when you finally have a fully formed Indo-Hellenic Bactrian stack, it feels worth the early game stress.

[Taedius]

Another thing that tends to buy me time at the start of a Baktrian campain, is to keep a sizeable garrison in Baktra. Don't make it look like an easy target. Expensive, but remember, the AI doesn't consider troop quality. Cheap, but numerable skirmishers will do just fine.

Until they assault the walls, of course.

[Jikot]

Another thing that tends to buy me time at the start of a Baktrian campain, is to keep a sizeable garrison in Baktra. Don't make it look like an easy target. Expensive, but remember, the AI doesn't consider troop quality. Cheap, but numerable skirmishers will do just fine.

Until they assault the walls, of course.

Yeah, I rolled back a number of turns and gave it yet another try, and that did keep them at bay. I noticed that there was this seleukidian diplomat just outside of baktra flapping his hands at every turn but never actually speaking to me, and i believe AS was using this guy to check out the garrison. When I pulled away the bulk of my baktra garrison AS would invariably attack.
I killed the sucker, and the AS kept feeding me diplomats to kill.
Nevertheless, my large baktra garrison was the only army i could afford - this is with mines and markets and everything everywhere, and trade with practically all factions - and at a certain point I needed them to revive my anemic economy by taking taksashila, at which point both AS and saka (both allies) attacked me with huge stacks from both sides.
I decided to cheat me some money and fight a few bitter and tedious heroic victories, which involved kiting four-five AS units in the town square of Baktra with a single general unit the timer ran out.
Cheating takes a lot of fun out of the game, but at least i can keep playing. And it makes up for the glaring lack of balance in a few key respects.

[Blxz]

As ayekides said, using the rivers is the way to win. Hold those bridges, a force of 2 phalanxes and a javelin troops with maybe a bodyguard or 2 thrown in can hold against stacks double size and more when played right. Just make a V shape and hold them at the bridge exit. Fighting rebel cities is not the way to go, you are wasting your strength while not diminishing the AS at all. It can be worthwhile taking a few of the AS cities early on while they are still weak. If you have no desire to expand in that direction then you can Exterminate, destroy every building and then move back home. This will provide some needed cash.

As for your money problem, I can only think it would be trade income and possibly land devestation from the seige. If you are going to cheat force diplomacy them then it can be worthwhile to at least auto_win attacker their stack first to send it packing from your lands. If thats not working then try easy campaign mode and/or easy battle mode. if thats still not working then your 1 year hiatus has ruined your skill and you just need to practice more and get back into the EB feel for things again. Best of luck Jikot. Stay strong until EB2 when hopefully the CAI can be calmed down a bit.

[d'Arthez]

Not sure why you bother with Haomavarga and Sulek. Those cities are prime targets for Saka, and not that wealthy. The same holds for Alexandria-Escate and to a lesser extent for Marakanda. While rivers can be used effectively as a defence, the aim should be to avoid war with the AS at first.

Since you are a minor power, at most you should aim to fight one enemy, until your economy is solid. Take Kophen, build mines and advanced mines there, and slowly start saving money until you have enough money to create an army capable of taking Takashila by force: you do not need an army full of elites, if you know what you are up against. If you keep your garrison in tact in Baktra, AS is unlikely to attack you. Once you have Takashila, you can work your way down south, slowly but surely.

Depending on the developments in Syria, and to a lesser extent the Pahlav-AS wars, you may even be able to take Alexandria-Arianna and Prophtasia from the Arche without too much grief. Try to keep the borders with the AS limited to as few cities as possible.

[Jikot]

i just wrote half a page saying how i can no longer play this game because i cannot get a single break EVER in this game, listing the dozens of things that went wrong the past hour of play and how it was affecting my health, and when i grabbed my mouse to submit it i accidentally hit the "back" button and i lost the entire diatribe.
I'm going to go lie down now, hope i don't fall and break my humerus on the way to the couch.

[Burebista]

Blitzing and quick maneuvering is a must for Baktria. you need to take cities in a few years otherwise AS can crush you , as you may very well tell.

Solve your elephant rebel problems with some skirmishers and get the indian cities ASAP. AS won't attack you the first 3-4 years but you can bet they will come after that in full force so either you're ready to match them in numbers/money , or you die .
You should have at least 2 stacks and +5k economy to have a chance against AS and Saka.

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

i just wrote half a page saying how i can no longer play this game because i cannot get a single break EVER in this game, listing the dozens of things that went wrong the past hour of play and how it was affecting my health, and when i grabbed my mouse to submit it i accidentally hit the "back" button and i lost the entire diatribe.
I'm going to go lie down now, hope i don't fall and break my humerus on the way to the couch.

I know how you feel, it is sad how bad the AI diplomacy is.

My only solution with Baktria was to blitz the Seleucids immediately, making sure the Parthians are doing the same thing. I take Alexandria-Ariana and Prophthasia for myself first. Then I'd take Antiochia-Margiane and either keep it if I think I can hold it, or give it to Pahlava if I can't, using Force Diplomacy. Saka or Pahlava will usually take care of Marakanda for you, and while a big AS army might build up in Alexandria-Eschate, if it survives the Saka invasion, it doesn't usually do anything to Baktria.

Once that's done, I'd use FD to make peace with AS, who should be tied up fighting Pahlava invaders by this point. That's usually enough to get AS off your back long enough to get Kophen, Alexandropolis and Gandara. With those you've got a strong enough empire to hold off the Seleucids if they return in strength.

In EB, you just have to accept that the stupid Seleucid king is more frightened of you, up till now his loyal satrap, than he is of King Ptolmey or the Pahlava! He's a paranoid idiot, more frightened of potential treachery from a friend than of downright hostility from an enemy. When you think of it like that, it's quite believable, if not quite historical. (Think about the story of Justinian and Belisarius of the Byzantine era, Justinian feared Belisarius more than the barbarians, because he was such a successful general.)

[Blxz]

i just wrote half a page saying how i can no longer play this game because i cannot get a single break EVER in this game, listing the dozens of things that went wrong the past hour of play and how it was affecting my health, and when i grabbed my mouse to submit it i accidentally hit the "back" button and i lost the entire diatribe.
I'm going to go lie down now, hope i don't fall and break my humerus on the way to the couch.

Haha, I've been wondering where my bad luck went. Seems its found a home with you. You need some good easy wins for a while to rebuild morale. Maybe play the romans or something.

Personally, now that I found out the way to massively reduce CTD's on multicore systems I am loving EB all over again in every orifice.

[Randal]

Another important trick/quasi-cheat is to build stone walls in your border settlements and garrison them with 4-6 or so units of cheap slingers and archers.

Then, when the enemy besieges you, you can "sally" without ever leaving your walls, just bombarding the enemy with stones and arrows. It depends on the settlement and the angle of attack, but very often the enemy will just march its troops halfway across the battlefield just under your walls and well in range of eastern slingers and the like. Since the enemy rarely storms a city quickly, you can whittle down sizeable stacks this way with just a few defending units.
Javelin cavalry can also inflict quite some damage when sallying. They can chase the enemy as they manoeuvre at the start, bombarding their rear with javelins at extreme close range. Good against phalanxes in particular.

Of course, you do lose a lot of income while your city is besieged. I haven't tried it with Baktria yet either, so I can't tell for sure how well it'd work there. But in other campaigns I use this tactic when I want to secure a front against stupid AI attacks without incessantly going to war, and it tends to work very well.

[Jikot]

I've taken Titus Marcellus Scato's advice and just stormed the AS immediately. I left Alexandreia Eschate and Marakanda for Pahlava and SR to handle (they're stacked full anyway) but am steamrolling along the south towards the west, and am about to take Charax and Susa, from which I will take their twin capitals (Seleukeia and Babylon I guess they're called).
Man it feels good to be on the swinging side of the hammer for once.

[Ca Putt]

haha that's more like it!

[Randal]

I started a Baktrian campaign to test my own strategy of using the starting money to build stone walls and a few slingers in Baktra to safeguard my rear while moving against the Indian rebels with my starting troops.

It worked, in that it's 259 now and the Seleucids have not attacked, my armies have taken Kophen, Taksashila and Opiana, income is high and I'm gradually expanding infrastructure and soon I'll be able to field a pretty good Indo-Hellenic force. (I could learn to love those spear-armed peltasts. Now there's some versatile troops.)

On the down side though, (for my strategy) part of the reason the Seleucids didn't attack must be that the Parthians are attacking them hard and fast and from what my watchtowers show must have taken most of the Seleucid provinces around me. And taking Taksashila with just my starting archer-spearmen and pantodapoi phalangitai and bodyguards (I dismissed the starting cavalry to avoid bankruptcy) was bloody hard. Even hiring all the mercenaries I could afford (2 more archer-spearmen, all I had money for) I lost all but a handful of troops and 1 of my family members died. Turns out you can have five units of archers each shooting 10 volleys of flaming arrows at elephants and not kill a single one of them. And I had no skirmishers. (Yes, you guys already knew this. What can I say, my previous campaigns were in the west.) Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. I think this is the only time I've ever won an "average" victory in a major battle against the AI. I -did- win. But in retrospect the Seleucids are looking like a soft target. Blitzing probably is the smarter move.

[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.