How fast is it possible to blitz the game?

[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]

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