How fast is it possible to blitz the game?

[zhuge]

For many turn based strategy games, the question of fast completion arises once in a while. I certainly understand that fast completion is not a goal for some players. But just like others who like to have playing themes and house rules, this is basically just another target to aim for to make the game a bit more of a challenge by pushing the limit and by proving it is possible to blitz your way through and that battles and province management need to be adjusted to slow down the pace a little (to make it more like previous games in the series).
It is not at all intended to be some sort of bragging contest and there are no prizes involved nor any checks for validity via saves, but you can describe in some detail on how you did it if you want to.
I have thoroughly enjoyed the Carthage and Numidian short stories by Maltz which indeed show that blitzes are quite possible though I would have preferred if certain bugs like protectorate were not involved.

The goal: To complete the long campaign in 20 turns or less.

To help standardize matters, here's a list of playing conditions. Some border on being outright exploits but the rest are not necessarily fair, nor do most players use these house rules. They are merely suggestions on my part and what I adhere to so feel free to ignore and/or add new restrictions as you see fit.

General settings:
1)Playable faction of your choice
2)VH/VH
3)Timed battles
4)Unmodded
5)Units at regular size (most infantry at 40 men and most cavalry at 27 men)

The following is aimed to keep troop generation/troop strength within reasonable bounds:
1)No bribing
2)No merc hiring
3)No retraining/reequipping troops with upgraded weapons and armor (merging depleted units still allowed)
4)No elephants, no wardogs

The following are added to keep denarii production within reasonable bounds:
1)No diplomacy (allies, selling map info, protectorates, etc)(if approached by foreign diplomat, answer no to all requests)
2)No extermination (the most you can do to improve public order is enslavement)
3)No razing

Preventing too many promoted generals/too many lines of expansion:
1)All voluntary attacks on any enemy army or enemy town led by a general (captains may fight battles only if first attacked)

Additional rules:
1)Try as far as possible to keep all province loyalties at Content or better. You may not voluntarily move troops from a province if this results in dropping Loyalty below Content (so minimum is 85%)
2)No queueing up units (to reduce population only to cancel them later) and no queueing up buildings
3)If you sally from a besieged city, attempt as far as possible to NOT get any enemy troops shot by towers
4)No sieges past 2 turns (fighting is the aim here, not exhausting food supplies)
5)No forts, no watchtowers

Anyone want to take up the challenge? Or do you think the time should be shortened/lengthened.
There are lots of highly skilled veteran players here so I'm hopeful some will take up the challenge and show that in R:TW it is quite possible to simply blitz your way through (even with some house rules and what more without) and we therefore need a serious battle AI/management tweak to improve things.

[Oaty]

Short or Imperial campaign?

[zhuge]

Long (Imperial) campaign - acquire 50 provinces and take Rome

[mcveigh]

I dont think its possible to take over +- 45 provences in 20 turns.
I think your looking at about 50 turns before completing the long campaign.
IMO i think the imperial campaign can be done in 20 turns.

[Jambo]

I think what you just outlined is nigh impossible in 20 turns (10 years)...

[*Ringo*]

I'm with the general consensus here, pretty much impossible. Assuming you start with say 4 provinces, you would need to capture about two and a half regions a turn. Considering low populations, money and poor units you'd be hard pushed to produce enough units to garrison provinces alone!

*Ringo*

[zhuge]

Ok, ok, perhaps I was a bit hasty putting the time limit at 20 turns. Still it wouldn't be called a blitz if one were to take one's time in completing the campaign. You needn't choose a faction that starts with few provinces and isn't completely fiscally sound initially. Some factions such as the Greeks start with 5 provinces, have a solid economy to boot and can potentially expand on more than 1 front, so it is possible to take multiple towns in 1 turn. Admittedly you will be spreading yourself rather thin and that's risky but well that's the challenge.

Remember that you get instant cash for each town you take and an extra source of income so once you can take a few early towns, cash flow should stabilize. As for garrisoning these new provinces adequately, you may need to babysit the town for 1 turn but once you get a couple of peasant units, public order should be tolerable. I've had towns with no garrison (-15% public order) but with a low tax rate, sometimes you can still get by. Any province you take counts to the target of 50 provinces so you need not necessarily take highly populated provinces (despite the fact that they have very good income) if you think that they are too well guarded and hard to garrison (when you've taken them).

Also I'm not saying I could do it and freely admit I probably couldn't. But even though I've played S:TW and M:TW before, my battle skills and experience are probably considerably inferior to some of the really hardened vets around here.

I didn't say that you had to search blindly for town locations for provinces with no roads. I expect those who attempt the challenge to have completed the long campaign at least once and are therefore roughly familiar with town locations and will therefore zero in on the town upon entering the province.

Lastly I'm sure you will not have failed to notice that I did not put some of the more demanding house rules like no pause and general's camera only. I don't or I rarely use them but some of the more skilled players (especially the MP ones) appear quite comfortable with it.

So all things considered, I'll revise the goal as:
To complete the long campaign in 30 turns or less (I did ask for opinions regarding the time limit since I wasn't too sure anyhow).
That's quite a difference actually. Uhm... ok... any takers?

[Maltz]

I just finished a Vh/Vh Scythia long campaign on 253BC or so, so that's ~35 turns.
But I love bribing

I don't see why not to hire mercenaries or bribe, sell maps and so on. If you want to finish a campaign as soon as possible, then you can do whatever you want to accomplish that goal. It is a fair game, still, if everybody can do whatever he wants. As long as you don't type a cheat code or mod the game to become your favor, we are also playing under the same restrains. If you are so good that you found a lot of ways to exploit the AI to finish a campaign in 20 turns, you are an evil genius.

[Empedocles]

I ended a brutii campaing VH/H in 207BC without bribing armies, trying to take care of senate missions, and not hiring lots of merc. I defeated, dacia, pontus, greeks, macedonia and egypt. I was happy for the fast success I achieved and I believe I could have been faster.
But I was lucky to have Marius reform around 260 bc.

Diego, from Argentina

[zhuge]

I need your help, the help of the community members here. I'm about halfway through the Greek campaign and have gotten them off the blocks so to speak, but will have very little time to play for the next 1 or 2 weeks. Having that in mind I thought why not let other players have a go at it. They might make even better progress.

Zipped save is here:
http://www.sharemation.com/zhuge/Gre...0turn%2012.zip

So anyway, the details are:
Middle of turn 12 and have 30 towns in all but haven't conquered Rome, good economics but still rather lacking in troops for certain armies.

Turns and towns taken:
0 Syracuse, Thermon, Sparta, Pergamum, Rhodes
1 -
2 Apollonia, Kydonia, Nicomedia
3 -
4 Messana, Corinth, Sardis
5 Larissa, Athens, Ancyra
6 Thessalonica
7 Bylazora, Lilybaeum
8 -
9 Salona, Masaka, Tarentum, Tylis
10 Carthage
11 Tarsus, Sinope, Croton, Capua
12 Cyrene, Byzantium, Thapsus, Antioch

Did the last fight a bit hastily and lost a few more troops than I should have and Rome looks real tough. Maybe it might be a good idea to not fight Rome right away even though we're close. We could always return later when we have more troops.

You can carrying on playing in whatever way you like but it would be nice if those continuing the game could stick to the rules I've outlined previously for consistency and try to complete it in 30 turns (in 20 if possible). Hope to have some volunteers.

[Razor1952]

Its a bit pointless unless you have standardized rules, but just allowing bribery makes it all too easy.I've only completed 2 campaigns, as Julii M/M in 238bc before I knew the rules, and 249 as the Greeks on M/M.

Now as Selucs on VH/M having too much fun to worry , just letting things roll a bit and looking for tight victories. Still tight victories are hard to come by, usually things go very badly for the ai --like casualties of 20-100:1 for the poor ai.(once they lost >900 to only 3 losses).

Boy that patch has a lot of work to do.

I reckon using the map info exploit alone( where you get tribute for 100's of turns) would allow perhaps a victory in 20-30 turns, imagine Egypt giving 20k for 200 turns!...poor Egypt.

[zhuge]

Its a bit pointless unless you have standardized rules, but just allowing bribery makes it all too easy.

I have already given the list of house rules above. Have a look and see if there's anything important I missed. That includes no bribing and no map info exploit as all forms of diplomacy are barred. Kill ratios of 100:1 are certainly impressive. Were you using ranged troops? Were you sallying? How were the odds ratio for that fight?
My current saved game in my last post is with the Greeks on VH/VH and adheres to all rules above with no sallying so far. You are more than welcome to continue the campaign if you are interested and play strictly according to all rules above.

[Razor1952]

Sorry I was abit vague there Zhuge. I meant unless people agreed with all your rules then comparisons are meaningless. The only standard rules at present are the vanilla game and my comments relate to that.
100:1 casualties
Defending up a hill with good phalanxs/archers after softening them up with a few sythed chariots/elephant units and finishing off routing units with cavalry(I use cheap alt-attack missile cavalry for this). By the time they run at my spears(I'm thinking of Falxmen) after chasing my chariots and running up a hill they completely buggered and easy to slaughter. Archers are really awesome when protected(contrary to some posts) and many units route before they even get to the phalanxs, so are slaughtered with no losses.

On attacks often will still often get 10-20:1 when the ai doesn't field a balanced army.

Sieges are a bit more tedious IMHO and I loose patience through those streets with phalanxs sacrficing cavalry usually for a quick victory.

As to your rules though they are quite reasonable, I think there are too many for widespread acceptance. Bribery is broken IMHO so must be excluded. Otherwise the other things largely take care of themselves if you expand fast enough.

I would couch a general challenge

" Earliest Victory VH/VH, bribery excluded" Your choice of faction, unit size etc.

What faction would you choose? What unit size is most advantageous?

( My answers with limited experience of all factions at present Julii, Huge)

[zhuge]

I would couch a general challenge

" Earliest Victory VH/VH, bribery excluded" Your choice of faction, unit size etc.

What faction would you choose? What unit size is most advantageous?

( My answers with limited experience of all factions at present Julii, Huge)

Well if you are allowed to use captains to lead small fights and also allowed to hire mercs and also to mass retrain units back to max size then the only barrier is cash, in which case I would hardly build anything as most economic investments take about 10 turns or longer to repay you (ports excluded) but focus all cash on getting troops.

Therefore it would make sense to take the most financially stable faction with a sizable number of generals and troops to start with. The Greeks start with 5 provinces with good finances, so that's always a good choice. Romans can get hefty sums of money from the Senate (if they are lucky in being awarded cash) so that's another viable choice. Gauls start with lots of provinces so they are also in the running.

There's also always the measure of luck in the game. I managed to finish off Pontus by taking their 2 provinces which were weakly defended. My navy located their main army at Chersonesos. Apparently they sailed there to take that rebel town and also Byzantium but Byzantium was contested by Thrace and I suppose they decided to back off and before they could take Chersonesos, I took both Masaka and Sinope which eliminated them without any direct clash with their main army.

[The Hun]

Why the rush? I would rather enjoy the game

[zhuge]

I've played a little more with my Greek campaign and made it halfway through in turn 16, taking another 13 regions, including Rome for a total of 43 regions. I am now thoroughly convinced that it is quite possible to finish the game in 20 turns (quite possibly 19 turns) and may or may not finish it - combat is getting rather stale after Rome.

There were quite a few AI moves which had me totally baffled.

Dacia had a large army about 1 hex northeast of Campus Iazyges which probably would have stopped my invading army from Porrolissum dead in its tracks. I caught sight of the near full stack army and decided to hang back for some troops, thinking if the AI tried an attack, I would skirmish, do some damage and retreat as my troops were insufficient to win. Next turn, as I approached, there was no sight of that huge army and all that was left in Campus Iazyges were 2 generals and about 3-4 units. Naturally I sieged and took Campus Iazyges fairly easily. As Porrolissum was old territory for Dacia, the AI should have seen my army coming from a mile off and reacted accordingly to defend their last region. What made it desert its last town in sight of an invading army is a total enigma.
So this is the second time the AI has neglected defence of its towns when an obvious threat is sighted (first case was Pontus as outlined previously). Coupled with the fact that the AI likes to send piecemeal armies instead of combining them into one solid mass, battles become much easier than in previous games of the series.

When you rout enemy troops that sally, they will attempt to retreat back to the town square. This predictable behavior pattern enables a fast friendly unit following close behind the routing enemy unit to enter the town before the gates close shut. Once inside, kill off the routing unit completely before it reaches the town square and it is possible to secure a victory by occupying the town square for 3 minutes while your other units play catch me if you can with enemy units. Sometimes the AI pulls units back to retake the town square but not always... and in their haste to rush to the town square despite the threat of hostile units bearing down on them, they appear to make easier targets.

The AI for navies is also rather surprising. I have seen Seleucids and Thracian sea navies which acted in a highly aggressive fashion, killing every weaker navy in range and even chasing them halfway across the map. On the other hand, Julii ships tended to ignore my ships more often than not, even when they outnumbered my fleet.

The Brutii AI is probably scripted to take Apollonia soon. I took it sooner and although the Brutii landed with a pretty large army (12 units or so) it never attemped to conquer Apollonia. I had no large army within easy reach and had already resigned myself to losing the region. But to my utter amazement, in the next turn the Brutii army reentered their ships and promptly sailed away instead. I guess my 1 peasant unit in Apollonia must have posed too much of a threat. LOL

Unfortunately, the showdown Vs Rome wasn't the big battle I expected it to be.
In my first battle, which I mounted with Kleomenes my faction leader, I basically had to resort to luring and skirmishing - killed 3 generals, crippled 3 Velites, took out 1 Triarii and then had to flee to avoid losses when the main bulk of their army surged forward. Next turn, I would tried a full battle but Kleomenes kicked the bucket and I had to resort to using another nearby general (Cleon). Instead of staying in Rome, the AI decided to split its troops some more and had a field army with most of its troops out front. Strangely, the field army never tried to siege nearby Capua.
Meanwhile, Cleon took out Ariminum, hit Arretium the next turn and then turned down south to siege Rome with a small army. I transported a lot of reinforcements to a position just south east of Rome, bypassing the aforementioned enemy field army. To my surprise, the much larger field army did not turn back to attack the reinforcements to relieve the siege but instead just used the town troops to battle.
It appears my reinforcements made it to the battlefield and together with Cleon's army, they so badly outnumbered the enemy troops that the battle was a foregone conclusion. With Rome taken, that entire large field army obviously became rebels, which meant I never really needed to fight the bulk of Rome's forces.

In general, land armies are very much less aggressive as compared to navies. It is too easy to avoid confrontation in R:TW by just withdrawing armies. In previous games, withdrawing meant losing the region concerned outright. I like the current implementation but as mentioned by other forum members, the AI really has to perform pursuits for withdrawing armies to kill them off completely and besiege the region's town at first opportunity. But I guess with the current implementation of sieges, sallying and getting shot for fun by towers, the AI is better off sticking to field battles. I managed to avoid using any sallies in the Greek campaign to prevent using these exploits but hopefully with the coming AI patch which will be available within the week, players will be able to play more colourful battles with more varied tactics without fear of the AI being unable to respond adequately. As it is just about the only notable AI moves are its use of diplomats to bribe your armies, I've had about 3 or 4 armies bribed away and one contained an archer unit. Certainly irritating.
There are several other cases which feature not-too-smart or just plain illogical behavior by the AI but I think I'll stop here (I believe I've ranted long enough). Time will tell if the coming AI patch is all that it is made out to be.

Turns and towns taken
12 Cyrene, Byzantium, Thapsus, Antioch, Segestica, Porrolissum
13 Ariminum
14 Caralis, Lepcis Magna, Arretium
15 Campus Getae, Palmyra, Rome
16 Halicarnassus, Campus Iazyges, Aquincum, Chersonesos

Below is the last save for anyone interested:
http://www.sharemation.com/zhuge/G16_7.sav

[Mightypeon]

Hmm, I also finished a German camapign in 35 years,
I did sell maps but only at the prices the AI offered.
No bribery because enemys are expeience points for Germans.
Some Mercs were necceassary, but I dont think that you can complain about hiring some barb Cav.
I send almost a full stack lead by 2 generals south, another small stack with the faction leader went north to get Saxony, Vicus Gothi and Domis Dulcis Domus.
Meanwhile the Vicus Marcomanny guy grabbed some spears and snathced Bohemia and Pripet (beat the Dacians by one turn on both occassions)
Meanwhile, Treverum did some heavily defenisve action against wave after wave of puny Gaul attackers, than they killed equally puny (well, the Head hurles were annyoning) Britons, and wisely diceded to take out Alesia once they had enough Spears.
Howeverever, the real fun was in Italy.
My faction heir had some "training execricse" with the Ivavum rebels, decided that the Gaul towns werent wort sieging and went straight for the Julii capital.
After looting some 10K by burning it down ( I am a Barbarian Damnit!) he got a taste for ruthlessly burning down roman citys (apart from that I needed the cash). Because he rreally liked playing with fire, he soon attacked rome.
The huge big senate army was a bit overconifdent and lost their generals by charging straight into a german spear line.
The remainders tried to charge some Skirmishers, this lead to dead skirmishers but also to roman infantry which did not throw their Pila.
The Princips/Hastatie threw themselves agaisnt the German Spear wall, but did not manage to break them.
The Triari decided to attack my pride spear unit (yeah, Silver Chevron!) and got smashed.
My general had a lot of fun with hacking the crap out of puny equaites, than he returned to the field and got a lot of purple romas from behind.
Rome was mine.
This lead to a Barbfaction with loads of money and an existing acces to chosen archers after like 5 turns.
Soon after, the Romans were forced of the mainland, and some archers got their gold chevrons.
In addition I discovered that having 5 ports which can produce level 2 boats can actually leyad to naval parity with the other fatcions.
The RLF (Rome liberation force) spl9it up after bruning italy.
On part deciced to burn the rest of italy (the Gaul cities), the other part decided that the Bruti possioons on the Balcan also belong to Italy, and marched forth to burn them too.
This lead to an Alliance with the Greeks, who were happy with not beeing bunred.
The last group wanted to check with the bob the campfire god on Sicily (the Aetna) they saw that Sicily was Sipi-blue, the deicded to praise Bob by burning everything.
I had proplems with the Julii Navy so I decided to train a Diploment in Siciyl and ferry it over to Carthage.
However the Diplomant reported that Carthage was also "Blue". The Sicily force promtly boarded anothjer ship and lit some additional campifres down there in Africa.
Meanwhile, the "Burn norhtern Italy force" was done with bruning Italy, however they got high on bunring hairy Gauls and promtply deciced that they wanted more of it.
In short succession, they burned all parts of france which werent burned in previos encounters.
Because the Spanish were also reported to be ahiry, the quickly burned the Spaniards too.
The Treverum defense force (bolstered by some chosen Archers from Rome) moved north to burn some Britons...
The burned quite well, epsiecially the chariots.
Meanwhile, the Thracians decided that they wrere annoyed by the campifres in the former Balkan possions of the Brutii. The "Burn Brutii Burn" force soon domenstrated the cozy warm of some really big campfires.
The Greeks wnated to burn too, and actually took back a former roman city.
However they only occupied it, my barbas soon deomstrated that lighting some campifres is way more funny.
I than took some odd rebel provinces to get my 50 together.

Oh, just to make a thing clear, I burned every non rebll thing to the ground.

[Mikeus Caesar]

If some of you people can finish the game this quick on VH/VH, then RTW obviously isn't as good as it should be.

[Medieval Assassin]

...

[Shottie]

Nope, I think its still impossible.

[zhuge]

Got bored and decided to finish off the job. Here's the final screen at turn 18:
http://img83.exs.cx/img83/2711/262bcgreekvictory5xc.jpg

16 Halicarnassus, Campus Iazyges, Aquincum, Chersonesos, Patavium, Cirta
17 Salona, Damascus
18 Segesta, Campus Scythii, Lovosice

Thought there might be a few interested players replaying some of the more memorable battles, so I've selected 3 and put their saved files up.

1)Dionysos Vs Carthage, near Lilybaeum
http://www.sharemation.com/zhuge/DionysosCarthage.zip
I consider myself lucky to come out of this battle alive. Managed to isolate their forces a little and got the first enemy general to charge into the Hoplite phalanx while they were chasing my general. Halfway through, I managed to rout the elephants with flaming arrows but couldn't follow through. When they rallied and returned along with reinforcements and the 2nd enemy general, it was dying time for my troops. Lost about 2/3rds of the Hoplites, but somehow got the elephants to rout again and finished the job for good.

2)Antigonos Vs Thrace, near Thrace
http://www.sharemation.com/zhuge/AntigonosThrace.zip
Click end turn and the large captain led Thracian army will hit from the rear, with forces from Thrace as reinforcements. Another battle that is crucial to get rid of the first force ASAP before dealing with the second. Baited the Thracian generals into range of the Cretan Archers and ran my general in circles to give enough time to do damage. Finished off the job with Militia Hoplites holding the line and the rest charging in from the flanks.
Originally, I just wanted to decimate the first force before withdrawing but the Cretan Archers did so much damage to the main enemy force from a small hill slope that the more I played on, the more I was convinced that I had a small chance. Used up all ammo for all units and ended up with everyone exhausted but managed to rout the Thracians probably partly due to their poor morale.

3)Kleomenes Vs Brutii, near Croton
http://www.sharemation.com/zhuge/KleomenesBrutii.zip
This wasn't too tough a battle but it was certainly fun and considerably larger scale than the first two. As usual, placed my Hoplite line far away and baited the enemy generals from the first force with my own general and Militia Cavalry. Next came their Hastati and the Peltasts were sent to work, with cavalry clearing up sufficiently weakened units. Rushed the remaining Velites with cavalry and repeated the same for the second much smaller force of reinforcements.

Basically, with the Greeks, so long as you can lure the opposing general to commit suicide on your phalanx, you will usually have the battle half won. Whittle down the enemy with Peltasts, hit from the rear/flanks with your general followed by cavalry and let Militia Cavalry do the rout chasing. At the risk of being repetitive, I must once again stress that archers and slingers, especially uber ones like Cretans and Rhodians are too powerful in the game and desperately need to be toned down to preserve game balance.

[Maltz]

This is a great achievement.

After trying Germania spear warband I finally had some courage with Greek phalanx tonight. I fired a Vh/Vh, patch 1.1 vanilla with huge unit size. 3 turn past, and I took 7 more regions.

The battles on Sicily, against Scipii and Carthage are great phalanx classics. I put my line into the following formation:

====== ====== ======
--------- ---------

The better hoplites stand at front, 3 ranks, and the poorer militia hoplites are close backups, 2 ranks. This way, when the enemy disrupt my formation at front and my men switched into daggers, their charged will be stopped and had to face spears of militia hoplites.

With this formation I Slaughtered the Scipii in turn 1, and on turn 2 killed almost every single Carthage unit on Sicily. The 2nd battle I had such a disadvantage so I decided to shameless camp at the corner. Even the elephants are slaughtered by this formation!

I also took a different approach than Zhuge. The starting army on Rhode - I sent them to Asia minor. So 2 forces on Asian minor will go both north and south. I didn't realize this until I check back this thread.

The sieges are just taking too long that I had a few save/loads on Corinth - all I got was 22 minutes. This was definitely not enough for a stone wall assault with phalanx... so I cheated again by taking the timer off. With timer off it is very easy to manipulate the AI, though.

[zhuge]

Hah, I knew it was possible to do better, 7 more cities by turn 3 is incredible. I guess you'll be finishing in 10 turns instead of 10 years.
I never really tried that thin line concept nor that camping in the corner idea to reduce being flanked and usually felt my Hoplites definitely had room for improvement (well I guess I have the improvement right in front of me).

Regarding Corinth, I didn't dare touch it on turn 1 as the garrison had a unit of Archers in addition to 2 Militia Hoplite units and a general and everyone knows archers + stone walls = big time casualties when you are in a straight rush to beat the time limit.
So I had Kleomenes take Kydonia first which wasn't really easy either and in fact cost me a number of Spartans. When I returned to the mainland on turn 3, the Archers and 1 Militia Hoplite unit had left the Corinth to take Athens(?) or travel to Larissa. So I guess you could say I got lucky.
Without Archers, Corinth can be taken without too much trouble. You just need to select the best place to put the siege tower and then rush in with all speed. They'll probably place the Mil.Hops on the wall but Spartans can take out Mil.Hops without problems even on VH so it might be tight but it's doable.

Maybe I should try Spain next. Crap infantry, crap cavalry, no archers and doesn't have a booming econ like the Greeks. Sounds like a bummer already.