Noob asking questions

[ViriathusTheDestroyer]

Firstly I'd like to say I really enjoy this game, I find it great how skirmishers and light infantry actually have a use in this game and generals body guards aren't too over-powered. One of my favorite moments is when I attacked Numantia with a half stack army ignoring the warnings about how they would gather the hill folk and make a great hill billy army. I defeated their great red neck army and then went on siege the city, sadly they did not all commit suicide but were actually happy under my leadership.




Anyhow I have some questions to ask.


1. Why can't you recruit elite units early on? , historically their should be elite units available to a faction at any time (although they wouldn't be as good as later elite units) for example in my Iberia campaign I can only recruit light infantry and skirmishers at first , yet I can hire medium lustos spear men and scutari as mercs. Although I have noticed in the Roman campaign you have access to Triarii early on.

2. Why do elephants have such a high up keep, I understand their high recruitment cost but they shouldn't cost much once you've already bought them.You would just have to pay/feed their trainers/riders and feed the elephants, unless I'm missing something.

3. I attacked the two Carthaginian city's after Rome attacked me and Carthage became neutral towards me, once they were conquered for some reason instead of homeland it said subjugation available. Why aren't the two Carthaginian city's in Iberia considered home land?

4. For some reason when I try to play custom battle I don't get any native troops , and when I try to play historical battles it doesn't work at all, is there any quick fix for this?

[Brennus]

Welcome ViriathusTheDestroyer!

1. Not sure.

2. I think this point is to prevent the AI/player simply spawning massive armies of elephants. It also reflects, historically, just how exotic and high status elephants were in an army.

3. This reflects just how long the Phonecians had been settled in southern Iberia by 272BC, these regions would have been thoroughly Punic by this time, at the least the cities would have been.

4. Play custom battles via the Multiplayer option, the single player custom battles only allow to recruit mercs.

[Lysimachos]

1. Why can't you recruit elite units early on? , historically their should be elite units available to a faction at any time (although they wouldn't be as good as later elite units) for example in my Iberia campaign I can only recruit light infantry and skirmishers at first , yet I can hire medium lustos spear men and scutari as mercs. Although I have noticed in the Roman campaign you have access to Triarii early on.

Probably for gameplay reasons. There is not much to look forward to and to work towards if you can build your elites from the start. The Triarii are not a very good comparison: they are not an elite unit in the conventional sense, but are part of the regular line up. True elite units for the romans are the Extraordinarii.

2. Why do elephants have such a high up keep, I understand their high recruitment cost but they shouldn't cost much once you've already bought them.You would just have to pay/feed their trainers/riders and feed the elephants, unless I'm missing something.

Well, "just" feeding the elephants means several hundred lb of food for every single elephant, every day. One elephant literally needs the same amount as dozens of men.

3. I attacked the two Carthaginian city's after Rome attacked me and Carthage became neutral towards me, once they were conquered for some reason instead of homeland it said subjugation available. Why aren't the two Carthaginian city's in Iberia considered home land?

4. For some reason when I try to play custom battle I don't get any native troops , and when I try to play historical battles it doesn't work at all, is there any quick fix for this?

See Brennus' answers.

[d'Arthez]

1. This is partly done to avoid the elite spamming problems, the AI can be notorious of. And of course, for some factions lack of ability to recruit and maintain elites was closer to reality than we may think - for a season or two, yes, but for years on end? This has also to do with the fact that RTW engine suggests factions used standing armies of sorts, which is of course not true.

2. Part of the reason here is I suspect replenishment issues. To train elephants is a costly affair, and having to replace them, because death, of injuries have rendered them useless will be a costly affair as well. Those costs are included in unit training and upkeep costs. It is not perfect, but it is a very sensible compromise, given the limitations of the RTW engine.

[athanaric]

Why aren't the two Carthaginian city's in Iberia considered home land?

Because Iberia had different cultures. Your faction is Lusitania, an IE-speaking entity (AFAIK) with some Celtiberian elements. The settlements to the South and East, however, belong to older indigenous cultures who mostly speak "ancient European" languages. Also, the Punic and Greek influence in those areas, as mentioned.

[FinnishedBarbarian]

Welcome to forums Viriathus!

Quite the same what other posters have answered already

1. Because RTW game engine doesn't make recruitment limits possible like MTW2 does it would be enormously ahistorical to have elites in great numbers during early game when most factions either didn't have those or their numbers would have been around 100-200 men. Spartan hoplites and successor's hypaspistai and hetaroi being good examples first ones numbers had diminished and latter had been split up between antigonid's, ptolemy's and seleucid's (and dwindled by diadochi's infighting).

2. No recruitment limits?

3. Throughly punic nature of those settlements with no lusitani related population prior to conquest.

4. Copy mp game edu backup from your EB folder to sp game edu backup folder (placing singleplayer edu to seperate folder there so those files won't be overwritten).

[ViriathusTheDestroyer]

Interesting , so will you have access to elites early on in Europa Barbarorum two?

[Moros]

Interesting , so will you have access to elites early on in Europa Barbarorum two?

The mic system as known from EB will be completely changed. Thanks to recruitment pools we can restrict elite units on a better basis. Not just money or the historically quite incorrect infrastructure (in most cases) but by just making them rare, as they were.