How to avoid these full stack campaigns...

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

Me too.

To make things fun on M/M, with many factions, you can afford to hire a mercenary general and a full stack of mercs and go interfere in the affairs of other empires, either to turn events back into a more historical course or to throw a spanner in the works of a strong power. This is great fun, and allows you to use up your extra money, and fight battles with troops that wouldn't normally be recruitable by your faction. On M/M, the AI doesn't hire very many mercs, so most of them are available for the human player to buy.

So as Ptolemies you could raise a merc stack in Greece to represent the Aetolian League, for example, or maybe Pergamon, and mess up the Macedonian conquest of Greece. Koinon Hellenon can raise a stack to fight in Sicily. Carthage could raise a stack to set up Tyre and Bostra as a buffer zone between the Ptolemies and Seleucids, or set up an Irish enclave in the British Isles to fight the Casse. There's lots of opportunities for Rome to interfere virtually everywhere.

At the moment I'm playing Saba on M/M, and I used Force Diplomacy to force Carthage to give me Kirtan and Gabene, which I now run as a Numidian 'sub-faction'. It plays havoc with my economy as the Numidian cities are corrupt as hell, but it's great fun playing as the Numidians, even when the Carthaginians squash me like a bug!

[konny]

On M/M, the AI doesn't hire very many mercs, so most of them are available for the human player to buy.

To be correct: on M the AI doesn't hire any mercenaries from the map at all. That why I usually make them available from core buildings too.

[KyodaiSteeleye]

Yes, I've gone off playing above M/M. I think as long as you don't blitz you can still have an enjoyable game and as you say, you avoid the endless mind-numbing spam. Really enjoying my current Saka M/M game, the first i've played with a nomadic faction.

[bobbin]

I used to play M/H. That along with limited army sizes, serious turtling (eg: didn't leave italy until 190BC as Romans) and expeditions to keep the other factions in line made for some pretty fun games, they weren't really that challenging though.

[Bob Doad]

I agree all my M/M campaigns are fun as long as i don't go out and conquer all a faction in a turn in fact a lot of times ill lose on purpose for the sake of roleplaying and challenge lol! And also if my faction had or would have had trouble conquering an area i usually take a long time to subdue it AND i also try and defeat the enemy armies in the region before attacking the settlements i just find that more fun tbh

[Fluvius Camillus]

If you hate streams of uninspired full stacks I have a simple solution!

RUSH!

There's a reason I'm good at rushing. And still, I hold back.

~Fluvius