I'm now in the waning days of my first Julii campaign. Last night I eliminated the Armenians and the Egyptians (getting Pontus to pay me to do both, the suckers). That just leaves the Germans with two little territories with nominal armies that will be crushed momentarily, plus the Scythians, who have been fairly aggressive but as of yet haven't attacked me, and my longtime allies in Pontus and Parthia. Unless my allies backstab me (and my diplomats have been busily bribing any of their armies who come close to make that very, very diffiicult), I'll save them for later and take on the Scythians next. Anything I should know about them, other than their territories are far too large? Do they have any sizable cities? When I get down to the last few territories will I have a big problem with unrest like I understand is the case in MTW? I find lots of guides talk about the early game and few discuss the late game of conquering the entire map--I guess because at that point it's a breeze and no one wants to hear about it? I was shooting for finishing by 200 BC, but I don't think I'm going to quite make that since I'm in 204; it took me far too long to move my armies into Germany from my military-producing cities, and the Egyptians were more than a handful, and Scythia alone is too much territory to cover, not to mention Parthia. If the cities were closer together it'd be no sweat.
The Egyptians' final conquest was particularly gratifying, though. They made a well-intentioned sally out of Jerusalem, their last stand, outnumbering my forces by 50%, and very much outgunning mine too--I hadn't really meant to attack them with that army, which was mostly mercenary Arabs, but thought, what the heck, I'll start the siege until the nearby 3/4 stack can get here in a turn or two. Bad idea. Things were going fairly badly for me, with many of my units routing and my newly-bribed ex-Pontic general getting killed early on by an arrow. But his bodyguard fought on valiantly nonetheless, routing the foot archers in turn and chasing them inside the city, somehow dodging the boiling oil.
Things were exceedingly desperate outside the walls, with a chain reaction of routing from my mercenaries under the chariots' arrow fire. But after the bodyguard killed the routing archers they had pursued, I realized the city was completely undefended, and high-tailed it to the city square. Since the Egyptians had defeated most of my army, their chariots were merrily racing down the routers, and apparently paying no attention to the timing slowly ticking down from 3:00. Having won on a technicality, and having few troops left (ummmm 14) I exterminated the lot and that was that for the proud pharaohs. Amazingly, I got a green happy face....I guess Jerusalem really didn't mind the conquest and ensuing slaughter......
Bookmarks