I finished a campaign! (some thoughts)

**Maltz** · 10-03-2004, 06:33

I just completed a short campaign as the Julii family, going for the hardest difficulty + no cheat. It took me about 12 hours in total.

Probably due to an instinct inherited from STW, I captured the 2 northern Italy provinces in the very beginning. Still the familiar "lightning strike" approach for the early game. I also assigned each of the 4 starting cities to become a "legion capital", a "missle capital", a "horse/dog capital", and a "boat/diplomat/spy... capital".

Because I don't want to see the annoying squalor, I simply exterminated every new town (of course, including the rats! wohoo!), and all survivors were under my terrorism rule.

The down side was my technology fell so far behind due to the lack of population. I got the upgrade to the "principles" just a few years before my 15th province. I never used a new archer in my battles. (only the original unit, and finally it still had 25 men!) I have never been able to get an assassin...

But I was rich! I was never short of money since the beginning. I bribed my way through with constantly ~20k free cash. The Gauls had quite a lot of forces evaporized that way.

My navy sucked despite I had about 10 ships together. The goaty Spanish navy really was something, but their ground force... well they looked at my wallet, so I didn't really see them in battle.

Alliance was a big furstration, because I was always forced by the senate to open war with multiple nations. Maybe playing a free fraction is more satisfying that way.

I won a few harder battles and there was a permenant marker on the ground! This is a very good design.

However, the gameplay tends to become very tedious. I had no patience to fight every battle after I had about 6 or 7 cities, so I just auto resolve or show them the money.

**Maltz** · 10-03-2004, 06:55

I think the reason that the campaign becoming "tedious" later on is there aret too many details to mange.

It is good to have the AI to help manging the $$, but the military aspect is overwheliming enough. There are so many small groups of armies, ships and whatever here and there. (It is also not very fun to let the AI control the money because I think I can earn a little more if I do it myself

)

Another aspect is the lack of excitement. I expected to meet some huge, strong army to do a decisive battle, but there was none. Instead, there were many small armies here and there like mosquitos.

Note: In larger battles, I think the camera angel not high enough to oversee everything at the same time. I had to constantly pause the game and to see what's happening in another region, which is quite tiresome.