How to take your neighbor's territories without pissing him off

**rs2k2** · 08-27-2005, 06:34

Step 1: you need an army...go figure..

Step 2: you need spies...lots of them...around 4 will do but bring 6 just in case

Step 3 (recommended): you'll need one really good (or at least competent) assassin, bring 2 or 3

Now, most people know spies cause unrest. Unrest = bad. Spies carry plagues too. Plague = bad. Spies = bad. You = bad. Hence by transitive property... You = Spy = Plague = Unrest. Ah, but moving on. So, now take these (plague-ridden optional) spies over to say...Rome. Rome is nice, great weather, good beaches, hot women, mean Senate though

we all know they do a little too much of this

and not enough of this

and the occasional this

So, tell your "employees" to go on a "holiday" in Rome (and tell them to send you back a postcard). Oh, and knock down a temple or two while you're there. Now watch as the loyalty drops from 1XX% to <50%. Once the rebels decide to make Rome their home, intercede "on the Senate's behalf" (course they're dead so you might as well keep it).

There ya go, you just took Rome in less than 10 turns (unless you trained assassins) and not only that, your brethren aren't too pissed either, merrily trolling over some Africans or those weird olive eating people in the land we like to call Greece, starring John Travolta...

It works even better against those expansionist factions whose provinces talk together every now and then but prefer not to be seen around each other...

**barocca** · 08-27-2005, 11:20

Originally Posted by rs2k2

Step 1: you need an army...go figure..

Step 2: you need spies...lots of them...around 4 will do but bring 6 just in case

Step 3 (recommended): you'll need one really good (or at least competent) assassin, bring 2 or 3

Now, most people know spies cause unrest. Unrest = bad. Spies carry plagues too. Plague = bad. Spies = bad. You = bad. Hence by transitive property... You = Spy = Plague = Unrest. Ah, but moving on. So, now take these (plague-ridden optional) spies over to say...Rome. Rome is nice, great weather, good beaches, hot women, mean Senate though

we all know they do a little too much of this

and not enough of this

and the occasional this

So, tell your "employees" to go on a "holiday" in Rome (and tell them to send you back a postcard). Oh, and knock down a temple or two while you're there. Now watch as the loyalty drops from 1XX% to less than50%. Once the rebels decide to make Rome their home, intercede "on the Senate's behalf" (course they're dead so you might as well keep it).

There ya go, you just took Rome in less than 10 turns (unless you trained assassins) and not only that, your brethren aren't too pissed either, merrily trolling over some Africans or those weird olive eating people in the land we like to call Greece, starring John Travolta...

It works even better against those expansionist factions whose provinces talk together every now and then but prefer not to be seen around each other...

you must not use less than signs on this forum, it is a software bug - it cuts the rest of the post off

**rs2k2** · 08-27-2005, 12:36

ahh thanks, didn't know that...

**Horatius** · 08-30-2005, 18:16

Great idea, they will take Athens on my behalf, and then theyll send me a postcard :-)

**Cheater** · 08-30-2005, 18:23

You wanna take someone's land without killing him or pissing him off? It's called buying. You send your diplomat over and have him buy over all his lands with an exception of his capital (the one you can't buy, anyway). You can do this with the tons of cash that you get out of editting the Desc_Strat.txt!

**Horatius** · 08-30-2005, 18:26

The current patch put an end to that. I really miss buying cities and noblemen.

**lars573** · 08-30-2005, 22:26

Really cause i buy them all the time. I bough a city just this afternoon. Modding the game to start with 5 million denarii makes for a good game.

**therother** · 08-30-2005, 23:20

Originally Posted by barocca

you must not use less than signs on this forum, it is a software bug - it cuts the rest of the post off

I thought that we'd learned something about loosely throwing the "B" word around!

The less than sign will not work on the forum because html is disabled (see the posting rules box at the bottom left of this thread). Most forums disable html code as there are security issues with posts with html. All html tags are enclosed by less than/greater than signs (e.g. < html>). You can use the < sign as long as there is a space between that and the next character. Otherwise the board will assume that you are trying to post html code and will remove the rest of the post as a security feature.

**Zenicetus** · 08-31-2005, 01:03

Buying cities isn't disabled, I think it's just more expensive with the current patch. I recently finished a Brutii full campaign. Towards the end, I was buying off my last few Julii provinces because I just had too much cash and nowhere else to spend it. All the really big battles had been finished, and these were just a few small to medium sized towns with low-strength garrisons and captains in charge.

**Ciaran** · 08-31-2005, 10:45

Buying cities isn´t a good solution in the first place, if you do, you can´t enslave or exterminate the population and that leaves you with high unrest. The only upside of it is, it avoids the pesky sieges which turn into a real pain if you´re besieging large cities. They´re goddammit labyrinths PLUS the fact that taking the wall towers always involves a lot micromanagement and the stupid troops often as not idle around and get shot up.