The Boredom of Large Empires...

[Arkeolog4]

First of all, I'd like to congratulate the EB team once again for their great mod, I really think it surpasses all others. Congratulations!

But now, dear members of the EB community, I need your help! (lol) I really have fun getting out of debt and becoming a solid regional power with any faction, but my problem is when my empire gets bigger; you know, when you get attacked from all sides,have tons of cash and taking cities and fighting stacks seem to be more an annoyance than a challenge. Now dont get me wrong, I'd love to reach victory conditions, but it just seems so boring fighting factions that don't stand a chance, or building ''Wonderous'' temples in some God-forsaken town... I don't know if I'm the only one thinking this way, but I'd really appreciate any suggestions from the community to make mid-late game more interesting. Cheers

[Cadwalader]

You could try to engineer a civil war. Hax has a guide on how to do this the Gameplay Guides and AARs forum.

[Morte66]

Ignore victory conditions and do what you enjoy. It's a game, not a job.

When you stop enjoying a faction, start a new one.

[fomalhaut]

Yeah this is my issue, I love getting out of the initial problem and becoming a small regional force, nothing more. Seleukaia is already too big for me by a huge margin, but i do love getting out of their initial issue of rebellious satrapies. but once your power is consolidated, it's boring

My tips?
Here:
ROLE PLAY
this is more than a game, if it was just a game we'd be playing Rome Total War, not EB.
Ask yourself: What is the goal of my king? why are we invading this region? what are the gains? what are the hardships?
Don't invade just because you have the ability, but think of a historically valid reason.

Think about history, what did most powers want? political and economic stability, not total hegemony. As the Basileos of Pontus, my goal is stable trading in the black sea. Do I need the Middle Mare or the Caspian for that?


In terms of Armies, DONT RETRAIN NEVER EVER RETRAIN. Your initial army should be your draft, and should take their losses, not be sent back home to get the extra experience and numbers. It's awesome to have your 3/4 stack of initial draftees and few professionals, and watch it slowly take losses, gain experience, and by the time they are disbanded after the campaign, their numbers are perhaps halved but their fighting power isn't.

When you draft an army, make sure that it is mostly levied soldiers from every corner and region, from vassals and your home, not a full stack of professionals. For instance a Pontic army for campaigning against encroaching enemies could be: 2 Pantodapoi, 1 Caucasian Spear, 1 Pontic Spear, 1 Hellenic Archer, 1 Caucasian Archer, 1 Hippokontistai, 1 Eastern Skirmisher, 1 Peltastai (only from Sinope or Bosporos), 2 Heavy Swordsmen (only from Amaseia) and 1 Chalkaspides (also from Amaseia), then some Celtic professionals who you can Roleplay that are only loyal to a certain general, like my Thracian Peltastai are loyal to my Thraikian Noble, and if he dies, they leave.

This gives you a small core of professionals that would be directly loyal to the king, while the bulk are levied subject people called to war, expected only to fight for a season or so. Drafting an army like this is fun, realistic, and doesn't give you the same fatigue of having le Grand Armee consisting of hyper professional Chalkaspides, Peltasts, and Heavy Archers.

[Saldunz]

Play on VH/VH. Even when you reach the mid-late game, the smaller factions at war with you will be enough of a threat to keep you worried.

[I_damian]

Arkeolog, I know exactly how you feel. I'm just like you. EB is the best anybody could do for a generally crap game like RTW, and EB really is absolutely brilliant, but it's still the RTW engine underneath, and the RTW engine is ridiculous. Diplomacy is non-existant, no matter how nice you are to your allies, you know they're going to betray you, and no matter how hard you beat an enemy, as long as you share a border they will never accept ceasefire, not even for millions of mnai. There is no long-term decay of your empire. No internal power struggles, no civil wars, no rebellious family members who can decide they want to be king and take half of your empire with them like they used to do in MTW.

Once you start making money you never stop. You can beat a thousand full stack armies of an enemy faction, or they can beat a thousand full stacks of your own, but still both of you will have absolutely no problems recruiting another army within 1-2 turns. The AI is braindead. Suicide family members, nonsensical formations (even with Darth formations mod), full stack armies of lugoae with no family member to lead them, 1 unit of slingers wandering deep in to your territory and laying siege to a city defended by something that can easily defeat them, never-ending warfare for no reason, constant declarations of war just because you share a border, it just goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on, and for all those reasons, there's absolutely no incentive for me to play for any more than about 60 turns (until around 250 bc), because after that you're making 20,000 mnai per turn (even when putting strict rules on yourself to stop becoming stupid rich) and your enemies are all engaging you with 10 full stacks of lugoae (or the cultural equivalent) per turn which you beat back with little/no effort, and you have 2 options. Continue to wade through this same chain of events every single turn, or quit and start again and have 60 turns of fun before quitting again.

That's just the way the RTW engine is. Utter crap.

[Klemens]

Arkeolog, I know exactly how you feel. I'm just like you. EB is the best anybody could do for a generally crap game like RTW, and EB really is absolutely brilliant, but it's still the RTW engine underneath, and the RTW engine is ridiculous. Diplomacy is non-existant, no matter how nice you are to your allies, you know they're going to betray you, and no matter how hard you beat an enemy, as long as you share a border they will never accept ceasefire, not even for millions of mnai. There is no long-term decay of your empire. No internal power struggles, no civil wars, no rebellious family members who can decide they want to be king and take half of your empire with them like they used to do in MTW.

Once you start making money you never stop. You can beat a thousand full stack armies of an enemy faction, or they can beat a thousand full stacks of your own, but still both of you will have absolutely no problems recruiting another army within 1-2 turns. The AI is braindead. Suicide family members, nonsensical formations (even with Darth formations mod), full stack armies of lugoae with no family member to lead them, 1 unit of slingers wandering deep in to your territory and laying siege to a city defended by something that can easily defeat them, never-ending warfare for no reason, constant declarations of war just because you share a border, it just goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on, and for all those reasons, there's absolutely no incentive for me to play for any more than about 60 turns (until around 250 bc), because after that you're making 20,000 mnai per turn (even when putting strict rules on yourself to stop becoming stupid rich) and your enemies are all engaging you with 10 full stacks of lugoae (or the cultural equivalent) per turn which you beat back with little/no effort, and you have 2 options. Continue to wade through this same chain of events every single turn, or quit and start again and have 60 turns of fun before quitting again.

That's just the way the RTW engine is. Utter crap.

And just to lash out like a rabid dog, people call this kind of AI behavior "balanced" and "giving the AI a chance." It's ridiculous.

[QuintusSertorius]

Arkeolog, I know exactly how you feel. I'm just like you. EB is the best anybody could do for a generally crap game like RTW, and EB really is absolutely brilliant, but it's still the RTW engine underneath, and the RTW engine is ridiculous. Diplomacy is non-existant, no matter how nice you are to your allies, you know they're going to betray you, and no matter how hard you beat an enemy, as long as you share a border they will never accept ceasefire, not even for millions of mnai. There is no long-term decay of your empire. No internal power struggles, no civil wars, no rebellious family members who can decide they want to be king and take half of your empire with them like they used to do in MTW.

Once you start making money you never stop. You can beat a thousand full stack armies of an enemy faction, or they can beat a thousand full stacks of your own, but still both of you will have absolutely no problems recruiting another army within 1-2 turns. The AI is braindead. Suicide family members, nonsensical formations (even with Darth formations mod), full stack armies of lugoae with no family member to lead them, 1 unit of slingers wandering deep in to your territory and laying siege to a city defended by something that can easily defeat them, never-ending warfare for no reason, constant declarations of war just because you share a border, it just goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on, and for all those reasons, there's absolutely no incentive for me to play for any more than about 60 turns (until around 250 bc), because after that you're making 20,000 mnai per turn (even when putting strict rules on yourself to stop becoming stupid rich) and your enemies are all engaging you with 10 full stacks of lugoae (or the cultural equivalent) per turn which you beat back with little/no effort, and you have 2 options. Continue to wade through this same chain of events every single turn, or quit and start again and have 60 turns of fun before quitting again.

That's just the way the RTW engine is. Utter crap.

I agree entirely, its for this reason that whenever my enthusiasm for EB is rekindled, it doesn't tend to last long before I get frustrated by the same RTW-engine-specific problems.

Unless I use Force Diplomacy and spend a lot of time every single turn giving money to AI factions, moving armies that threaten the smaller ones, encouraging them to expand in historical directions, the game heads somewhere I find unfun rapidly. Its primed to create a handful of super-factions who send multiple full stacks at each other turn after turn ad infinitum/nauseum.

I just hope there's some modding of the M2:TW engine that allows the EBII team to do something about that, otherwise it's going to be a brief bit of fun for me.

[Sapper]

I think that role play and variety are the keys to avoiding boredom in your campaigns.

Try the Arche Seleukeia. Here are a few reasons that I think make them rather less boring than most:

- Its not easy. You are almost forced to retrench (retreat!) at the start, shedding remote Eastern regions that its not cost effective to even try and hold.
- You need to treat each region seperately, as they can only aid each other with difficulty i.e. you need Satrapies, and will evenytually have FMs gain the Satrapy attributes.
- Each satrapy can be played like its own separate faction, with its own aims and objectives, its very own enemy or enemies and its own group of FMs.
- You have to recruit different units in different areas of the AS; your various armies will therefore be very different, and not just a few auxiliaries but core units too.
- Your enemies are many and varied, fighting you with different troop types and in different ways.
- It will be a very long time before you can afford to build and recruit everything you want; many towns and cities will not build or recruit for years at a time.
- Because of limited resources, but with huge demands placed on them, you have to make real strategic decisions and prioritise.
- The Seleikid Empire has a long and fascinating history over the period of the game to explore/replicate/improve on. Seleukeia fell in 141 BCE, Antiocheia not until 64 BCE.
- Immersing yourself in the game, following individual characters etc. I find better in a faction with greater variety, choice and range; like the AS.

Finally, if a campaign is boring because its too easy, crank up the difficulty next time, because, if it is boring you should stop and start a new campaign anyway.

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

If you have too much money, spend it. Buy huge fleets of the largest ships you can build. Hire every mercenary in sight. Pay huge tributes to your allies to deter them from attacking you (really big sums of money over very long periods, like 4,000 mnai per turn each for 100 turns.)

If your treasury is overflowing, that means you lack the imagination to spend it.

[Saldunz]

If you have too much money, spend it. Buy huge fleets of the largest ships you can build. Hire every mercenary in sight. Pay huge tributes to your allies to deter them from attacking you (really big sums of money over very long periods, like 4,000 mnai per turn each for 100 turns.)

If your treasury is overflowing, that means you lack the imagination to spend it.

I have to agree. You can't have too much money and too many wars at the same time. I end all my turns by giving a percentage of my treasury to my peaceful neighbours to keep them from attacking me. Doing that and maintaining reasonable garrisons along the peaceful borders is an easy way to lose a lot of that income and keep the warfare side of the game manageable. I have even managed to buy peace treaties from the AI with large amounts of mnai (the last one I remember was for about 35,000 mnai), of course, only after soundly asserting my superiority over them. Just don't do this if the AI still has armies in your territory. Otherwise they'll just accept the gold and then attack you the next turn.

[fomalhaut]

If you have too much money, spend it. Buy huge fleets of the largest ships you can build. Hire every mercenary in sight. Pay huge tributes to your allies to deter them from attacking you (really big sums of money over very long periods, like 4,000 mnai per turn each for 100 turns.)

If your treasury is overflowing, that means you lack the imagination to spend it.

Nonsense. This does not reflect the actions of real political entities that would do this or would have the ability to on a whim

[mlc82]

A little OT, but much of this may well be fixed in EBII, since the Medieval 2 AI is much more "moddable" (some great M2 mods are out there with working and sensible diplomacy, unlike the vanilla game), and the game has some sort of civil war triggers as well (helps ALOT with the "all poised to conquer the world and nothing can threaten me, now it's a just an inevitable grind from here" feeling). Although vanilla M2 was just as awful as RTW out of the box, the game engine apparently is much better overall, as some of the great M2 modders have shown.

[QuintusSertorius]

I have to agree. You can't have too much money and too many wars at the same time.

You can most definitely have too many wars at the same time. If I'm fighting more than a couple of battles a turn for a short period of a "war" campaign, then there's too many. Worse still, several multi-stack battles each and every turn is more like a boring chore than fun. Especially if they're in almost identical locations with almost identical compositions, because of the way the AI behaves.

As much as is possible within the limits of the engine, I like to have a war which lasts no more than about 10 turns, and features 2-3 major decisive battles, then peace. Constant, total warfare for the entire existence of an opposing AI faction is dull.

[Cambyses]

Yeah, in the real world politicians only spend money that they dont have!

[ziegenpeter]

I actually changed to M/M and roleplayed everything. its nice, I mean you rarely have economical problems, but I found that the ai stacks are more resonably composed and the ai is not in a beserk mode and its diplomacy makes a bit more sense.

[fomalhaut]

yeah sertorius, once war is declared it's never ending, literally never ever.

It's boring.

I force diplomacy peace in a really realistic manner, i'll give land or take land according to what's reasonable (if i just beat every army they had and taken half their land i'd consider that fair grounds for me to be on the superior side of the bargaining table)

[Crassus Creed]

I know what you mean I find myself rarely finishing campaigns after a certain point. The mid-late game gets tedious really quickly when most of the remaining ai factions are at war with you and you get fullstacks sent against you every turn. There isn't much you can do about the ai as even on m/m they still despise you after your empire reaches a certain point and even when they have 1 city left they still refuse ceasefires. To make the game more fun just try to be creative with your faction and cities. Try to roleplay a bit and create a narrative for some of your family members and cities. Maybe have a certain family exclusively control a certain set of provinces and assign them specific frontiers to guard and expand when needed. Maybe start marrying off your daughters to members of a specific ethnic group once you conquer a certain territory to simulate a sort of ethnic takeover (I started bringing a lot of Yavanas into my family tree in my Saka file). Try to give each city a certain theme I find this helps as after you gather 25-30 settlements it gets hard to distinguish one territory from the next. The poor ai cripples the game so you could always do what I do and try to wipe out as many factions as possible and let their territories rebel to create several independent states to act as a buffer zone. Like I said just try to get into the faction and come up with a narrative regarding what you wish to accomplish and what direction you want to take your faction. Maybe enact seveer shifts in national policy when one faction leader replaces another.

[fomalhaut]

frater i think many of us do the same thing, it really does breathe new life into the game.

once it gets to the point of boredom, i roleplay a downfall of sorts. very fun.

Little things like only Basileos Pontikos can become Basileos, isntead of the most qualified, can help in the roleplaying. You can then maybe do a sort of upheavel of the royal house by letting the Thraikian become the heir.

And remember, think of your government types not in terms of 'what can i recruit with this' but of literally the way the faction and its people live. The color coded borders are arbitrary lines, so don't think of all the Purple/Red/Whatever as directly loyal to empire X, but many as just towns that recognize the sovereignty of empire X and pay taxes and send troops to insure this.

I do this with the Galatians, rp'ng that basically they can incorporate themselves into the Pontik Kingdom on their own terms without loss of anything, we are allied. I think many people might not make the distinction between lands incorporated, and allied lands because the gameplay functionality of both remains the same. Maybe have your allies NOT send you soldiers, or have taxes in allied lands be reduced as to represent their independance.

I really wish there was a way to represent Allied lands on the map, like a lighter shade of your faction color.

[Saldunz]

You can most definitely have too many wars at the same time. If I'm fighting more than a couple of battles a turn for a short period of a "war" campaign, then there's too many. Worse still, several multi-stack battles each and every turn is more like a boring chore than fun. Especially if they're in almost identical locations with almost identical compositions, because of the way the AI behaves.

I should have emphasized the "and", because I know you can have too many wars. You can have too much money. I meant you can't have both of these problems at the same time. And if you do, then start spending that money on getting peace treaties and maintaining them. I never have to deal with more than 2 battles a turn. Many turns in the mid-late game, I am blessedly free of battles. Also...

yeah sertorius, once war is declared it's never ending, literally never ever.

That's just not true. I have gotten out of several wars, without ever having used Force Diplomacy.

[Crassus Creed]

I should have emphasized the "and", because I know you can have too many wars. You can have too much money. I meant you can't have both of these problems at the same time. And if you do, then start spending that money on getting peace treaties and maintaining them. I never have to deal with more than 2 battles a turn. Many turns in the mid-late game, I am blessedly free of battles. Also...



That's just not true. I have gotten out of several wars, without ever having used Force Diplomacy.

You are pretty lucky if that is the case. I have played through several campaigns on m-vh and once my empire reaches a certain size I find myself constantly tied up in petty skirmishes with the ai factions. Aside from cease fires offered by the ai (that they break the next turn like clockwork) I have never been able to maintain a steady peace with the ai. What strategy do you use to make peace with the ai?

[I_damian]

I should have emphasized the "and", because I know you can have too many wars. You can have too much money. I meant you can't have both of these problems at the same time. And if you do, then start spending that money on getting peace treaties and maintaining them. I never have to deal with more than 2 battles a turn. Many turns in the mid-late game, I am blessedly free of battles. Also...

I'm sorry, I don't believe you. I quit my h/m Romani campaign at 245bc yesterday because the Sweboz had advanced in to Pannonia and were sending 3 - 5 full stack armies over the border at me every turn. After a couple of turns of this I sent an army up through the mountains and sacked and destroyed 3 of their cities, including the one that gave them a border with my tiny empire, and let them all rebel to the eleutheroi. I then offered a ceasefire and, despite not sharing a border with me anymore, they flatly refused and within 3 or 4 turns were back in Pannonia sending multiple full stacks over the border at me.

I decided to try a Kart-Hadast campaign and in 259bc, despite me not taking any cities and only holding what I started the game with, the yellow death decided to besiege Lepki with an army of 2 pantopadoi, breaking our alliance. I lifted the fog of war to see what they had and on their way to my lands were more full stack armies of pantopadoi and akontistai than I could possibly count, so I quit that one as well.

I have also never, ever, ever been able to obtain a ceasefire, no matter how much money is offered and no matter how hard I beat an enemy, unless we do not share a border anymore, and even then they'll only accept it occasionally, and will break it again as soon as we share a border again.

[QuintusSertorius]

I've found playing in M/M and roleplaying to give the best experience, along with using Force Diplomacy to put the AI back in its box when it goes off on one. If you expand slowly (and I mean at the rate of about one province every 3-5 years) and give the AI time to adjust to the way things are, it doesn't tend to be as bad. What is also fun in the later game is punitive expeditions and trying to maintain a balance of impotence amongst the AI. Without treaties or anything, intervening on behalf of weaker factions and reducing the capabilities of the stronger ones. But never conquering anyone, just making sure no one gets too powerful.

But to prevent the game going boring, I spend more time managing the AI than my own faction (and another reason to expand slowly and not take too much territory is to avoid turning the game into primarily settlement-management). I do my faction things, then turn off the fog of war and look for who needs money, which armies need moving, and occasionally who needs to be made to besiege something. I also give shed-loads of money to the rebels at the start and boost their garrisons; they're a really effective bulwark against too-rapid AI expansion in the early game.

[Saldunz]

You are pretty lucky if that is the case. I have played through several campaigns on m-vh and once my empire reaches a certain size I find myself constantly tied up in petty skirmishes with the ai factions. Aside from cease fires offered by the ai (that they break the next turn like clockwork) I have never been able to maintain a steady peace with the ai. What strategy do you use to make peace with the ai?

Once I no longer want to be at war with a faction, I offer a peace treaty and half of my treasury. They usually say no. This means they're not subdued enough to accept peace for that price. If the AI thinks it can win, it won't accept peace no matter what. But after taking enough of their cities, destroying enough of their armies, eventually the price becomes just right for them. So there's an element of luck and persistence to this. You could throw in some of their captured cities back into the peace deal, but I don't like doing this mainly because I don't want to have to reconquer them a decade or two down the road. If they attacked you in the first place, it's because they became too powerful with the cities they had.

One thing I learnt was to never, ever try and get a peace treaty if the AI still has armies in my territory. Otherwise they will just take my money and break the peace the next turn. And I should be clear that when I say half my treasury, I mean in the tens of thousands of mnai.

Anyway, once you get the peace, and none of your border provinces are threatened, then you have to maintain it. I give small gifts (1% of my treasury) every turn to the AI faction. It seems to steadily improve the relations enough so that the defeated AI is deterred from starting the war over again.

As an example, in my VH/VH Getai campaign I kept several of my neighbours from declaring war and the current date is 146 BC. Some factions I couldn't keep from declaring war. These I either destroyed (Pontos) or bought long-lasting peace treaties from (Ptolemies for 55,000 and Saba for 30,000). At the same time, I've been neighbours to the Sweboz, Sauromatae and Aedui for over 50 years and haven't had a single hostile confrontation with these factions, and that's just by giving them those small gifts that maintain my alliances and peace deals.

[Cute Wolf]

make it a house rule, always only auto-resolve battles that you do without generals (FM / client ruler/ allied gen), and watch you lost your town and must try to retake it

[NikosMaximilian]

One way of micromanaging the entire map and avoid the "living factions" to expand too much or historically wrong and play the game at a slower pace:

Use toggle_fow in the console, check out for the Apisthemenoi (sp?), the vanilla "brigands" which spawn randomly in the map. Move those who spawn in a non-eleutheroi territory with the command "move_character", just outside the rebel towns that border non-rebel territories. The best position to move them is right in front of the route that the invading army will use to reach the city. Check each turn that the stack hasn't wandered and if it did, move it back as many times as necessary. Sometimes when a faction moves an army into that terrory and needs at least 2 or 3 turns to reach the settlement, the stack will enter the city and join the garrison to defend in the upcoming siege. Those 2, 3 or even 8 extra units will make a diference in the autocalc. If the stack did not enter, the defenders might sally out nonetheless because they have reinforcements, and the AI won't sit behind the walls until its starved to death.

If you do this each turn, you might be able to build quite an important defending force for many eleutheroi towns. I prefer moving the stacks to the closest eleutheroi town in relation to the point where they spawned. So you get Celtic Spearmen/Archer/Slinger defending Celtic towns, Numidian Skirmishers in Numidia, and so on. When the game progresses, you might be forced to create some curious stacks (Indian Elephants in Central Europe, Sauromatae Archers in Axum, etc), but it will work. The AI will be forced to send full stacks to take the cities, otherwise they will get defeated or the city will rebel because their troops took such a beating that they have too few soldiers left for a decent garrison.

The only rule I use, is not to move rebel stacks who belong to a rebel "ethnic group", unless their settlement has been captured, and it didn't rebel back. You might notice that some rebel armies have the "Tauri", "Maka", "Cottinii" names in brackets. That means that I try to keep those stacks close to the city they "belong" to, so they defend it when its invaded. If their city has fallen, and didn't rebel back in 10 turns, I move them to the closest eleutheroi town.

One tricky place to do this is Germania and Central Europe. The stacks you moved there might get hidden in the forests and you won't be sure where they are. Also be careful if you moved stacks there and you invade, between the ambushing hidden stacks and the roving defenders, you can make Varus look like Julius Caesar.

[d'Arthez]

You could also seriously up the ante for AI rebel money scripts. The problem in EB is that the money the get mainly goes to upkeep and only a few cities develop, and that because of a lack of money most cities eventually fall due to lack of unit replenishment.

[moonburn]

technically if there was a subfaction scrip every region could eventually get their own private budget to spend and only after every region had spent it´s own cash would the remanents be used to develop an economic building in any given region

another solution could perhaps be to implement 55 gold mines in the sahara and since it´s unconquerable the rebel factions would always have a semblance of an economy balance and maybe coup that with a 0 deficit script(meaning the rebels would never go into debt )