State of the Game

[Sp4]

You make province specialities yourself. I kind of like it.

[Hooahguy]

So here is a great video on siege AI in patch 14 and also mentions why some people experience "skipping" in battles, which I recall some (I think it was Sp4 notably) had issues with.

[Sp4]

It's gotten less bad with the non beta patch again. For the last two days, I've been enjoying my first co op campaign with a friend, which is pretty fun although I think starting as Egypt and Seleucids may have been a bit over the top.

[Myth]

I had to restart several times with my Macedon Legendary campaign. The early game is a challenge now, it's not a steamroll at all. And your diplomatic decisions influence the actual war on the map. If I ignore the east, Athens and Sparta crush Epirus and stay friends. If I make peace with Tylis (which gives me negative rep) then I have to attack Epirus first whcih gives me more negative rep. But Epirus has Larissa and Apolonia and both are essential for trade because of their resources.

Sparta turned on Athens and churned out huge stacks. I crushed one army with merks and made the bad decision to leave 1 general alone. That general recruited EVEN MORE MERCS and took Sparta back. Overall, those Veteran Hoplites and Thureus Spears that you can hire in Hellas are stronger than early game armies. I'm still to gauge how to have a flawless start. But I love how my troops say "For Makedon" and are generally custom voiced, instead of the bland "YARRRRRRRRRR" all the barbarians have.

Macedon is quickly going up the rankings for me as one of my top 3 factions.

[Slaists]

Yeah, those single general armies are dangerous now more than before... Had a situation last weekend where I took Carthagena from Nova Carthago and 2 turns later proceeded to wipe them off the (visible map) by taking the neighboring regions as well. I wondered why the "faction destroyed" message did not pop up.

The next turn I found out; Nova Carthago had a 1 general hiding in Averaci territory nearby. This bugger popped back into Carthagena with an army full of mercs and easily took the settlement back.

[Sp4]

I kind of hate the sudden merc armies out of nowhere. I always think it's just there to annoy you. If the AI had all that cash and used it for mercs during the actual war with the player, it could have won then and would not have had to lose its provinces.

[Slaists]

It's not exactly out of nowhere. Every faction gets 3000/turn (consider it resistance donations by the nobles resenting your occupation) even if the faction has no taxable regions left (some turns after a faction has lost their last settlement they starve to death though). That merc army I saw appeared a few turns after I had defeated the faction's last visible stack. 3 turns x 3000 = 9,000: quite enough to hire a merc army.