On the Path to the Streets of Gold: a Suebi AAR (updated 11-17, final chapter)

[Hooahguy]

Reduce the amount of artillery pieces from 4 per unit to 2 or maybe 1. At least that way, if you are going to win with siege equipment, you are going to have to build your army around it. Now it's just ridiculously overpowered. Level 1 workshop Ballistas are all the siege equipment you will ever need. They're accurate, they're deadly and 2 units can make big enough breaches into the biggest wall for you to send in all the huns at once.

Wasnt that how it always was? I remember in R1 a single unit of onagers could smash the walls. Granted it would take time, but they did it.

Though I do miss tunneling. Always fun to bring down a wall with sappers.

EDIT: And I do agree that at least for heavy artillery there should be a max of two engines per unit. Thats the way I remember it in M2- the trebuchets had 2 per unit, though maybe that huge cannon thing had just one? I cant remember.

[Hooahguy]

Alright, good news everyone!

So initially I thought that my campaign was broken because it kept crashing when I was loading the savegame. I could load the game just fine, play a battle, whatever. Just I couldnt load my campaign. I was so scared that patch 5 broke my campaign that I was writing up a huge plan to go back start a new campaign and get to where I am now but I forgot about my mods. So I went back and looked at the mods I was loading and went through each one. Turns out that I can only load the savegame if I have the complete Radious mod package. But I wanted a different battle mod so I got the separate Radious packages (AI, campaign, economy&research) and installed another battle mod. Which causes the crash because I went back to the complete Radious mod package and I could load the game fine.

Anyhow, I finally have time for this game and will be updating this weekend. I will also post an updated list of the mods Im using, as they have changed.

Also I did play a little bit and I have noticed some improvements, havent played enough to notice many changes. Well, there was one big change but you will find out!

[Hooahguy]

Chapter Thirteen

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As quickly as our war with the Artrebartes had begun, it ended.

Soon after our capture of their capital city of Nemetocenna, an envoy arrived at my camp, offering terms for a truce. They seemed desperate, and they even offered us a nice sum of money



So I accepted their truce, and with that war ended, we started preparing for our invasion of Roman lands. It didn’t take very long; as most of the armies were already created, and all we had to do was bring them towards the front. Ricfried with the Bloodsworn were to strike first, against the lightly defended Roman town of Octuduron.

With the pieces on the board set, we declared war and launched our attack.




It wasn’t a very strong garrison, so Ricfried decided to bide his time and make the Roman garrison scared. People always fight worse when they are scared.

He calmly moved his men into position on either side of the town, seemingly in no rush. The Romans weren’t going anywhere, and the nearest Roman army was a week’s march away.




A few hundred feet he stopped the men, in full view of the Romans. He addressed his men.

“Sons of the Suebi! We stand in front of the Roman dogs today for what? Why do we face them in battle today? Is it because we are bored? Is it because we have nothing better to do with our lives than to kill our enemies, steal their women and pillage their towns? YES, IT IS! Even as I speak, these Roman animals are wetting themselves in fear of us, the mighty Suebi, who have come to take their homes and lands! So let’s put them out of their misery, and show those barbarians what it means to be a proud Suebi warrior!”



And with that he gave the signal to charge.



The battle did not take long.



Crushed from either side, Roman resistance was short lived and futile.




Soon the last member of the Roman garrison was either slain or had fled to the hills.



It was a very clean victory. We had lost only ninety men, killing almost all of their men. Octuduron was ours, and with that victory, one of the biggest wars we were ever in had begun. Next we would move onto the fortified city of Medhlan, for which I had a plan. I would not allow another fiasco like Nemetocenna to happen, so we would take the Roman's strongest weapon and beat them at their own game with it.

Yes, I know, I forgot to take a screenshot of the results.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Authors note: So with patch 5 I'm using a few new mods, and had to discontinue the use of others: Other than the Radious mod, I'm using the AI Food Fix (helps prevent AI armies from starving out), loose formations for all units, faction uniform colors by Mitch, a battle zoom mod called “Zoom all the way down!!!,” and that’s it. As for the mods I had to remove, I had to remove the Armored Suebi mod as the creator went AWOL and hasn’t updated it for the changes, giving me a CTD upon startup. Also, the Natural Dyes mod had to go as it was incompatible with Radious.

[Bramborough]

Glad this is back on track!

Looking forward to the Medhlan...your screenies of Octuduron made me realize that despite two Rome campaigns, I don't think I've ever seen a Roman capital city during battle. One hardly ever has to defend one's own city against the AI, and when it does happen the battle is so laughably one-sided that I've almost always AR'd it. And other than Rome, there's no other Latin factions with a walled city. So interested to see what it looks like (although my Pontus is beginning to mull over the the idea of capturing Roman Brundisium...).

[Hooahguy]

Yeah, Im really excited to continue this- at Medhlan there is a large and well equipped Roman army and Im eager/nervous to see if my armies can take on the Legions, since I heard that the Roman legionnaires are OP.

[Myth]

Can't see berserkers and other sword armed infantry in your SS. Why go with predominantly spear stacks?

[Hooahguy]

Well first of all, the Suebi have a poor choice of sword infantry. The Radious Barbarian unit pack gives me a bunch more sword units, but until I got that mod my main line unit was and still is the spear brothers as they have good damage and defense, and are pretty cheap. Slowly Im moving over to Wodanaz spears and other unit types, but they are almost double the cost of spear brothers. Also, my older armies are very experienced so no real point in moving them over. For example, the Champions of Wodanaz all have 3 golden chevrons.

As for berserkers, they are expensive and great shock infantry, but dont hold the line well. Also I didnt get access to berserkers until around chapter ten of this AAR. So what you will find is that the armies towards the front are the more experienced, but less diverse armies while the new ones I made for this war with the Romans have more swordsmen.

Also spears are better anti-cavalry, and the Romans have a lot.

[Sp4]

Wasnt that how it always was? I remember in R1 a single unit of onagers could smash the walls. Granted it would take time, but they did it.

Though I do miss tunneling. Always fun to bring down a wall with sappers.

EDIT: And I do agree that at least for heavy artillery there should be a max of two engines per unit. Thats the way I remember it in M2- the trebuchets had 2 per unit, though maybe that huge cannon thing had just one? I cant remember.

No, a single unit of onagers, which was still only 2 actual onagers could make maybe 1 hole into a big stone wall? That still meant sending everyone through one breach and the AI was quite good at putting stuff on the other side, so the battle was a massacre. Now, a single unit of ballistas (not onagers, I never tried onagers, I don't even wanna know what they do to a city, maybe the battle just defaults to a victory) can make a big enough hole into a wall for you to send your entire front through at once, which the AI has no idea how to deal with but they have no idea how to deal with sieges anyways.

Like I said, it's all kind of silly cause siege battles are easier than most land battles.