So ...

[Garvanko]

Yeah, I hear ya. Its pointless asking for assistance from Allies.

[Rodion Romanovich]

I've been trying the last 10 turns or so to get to fight a battle with allies, just for fun, but I've failed miserably. Then my allies the Alemanni decided to try and assassinate and sabotage in my newly conquered city of Ravenna, so I sent assassins to kill their assassins, and succeeded after a few turns. But then one of my assassins missed and died, and the alliance was broken because the Alemanni had found out I was the guilty one... This will make for an interesting war because the Alemanni seems to be the largest faction after me (I have 11 provinces or so by now). However, so far I've been avoiding direct confrontation by keeping garrisons in my cities and moving south through the Italian peninsula to conquer their relatively unguarded cities there... I was a little nervous for a while when I read that the Alemanni victory conditions were 10 provinces including Rome, something else and Aquincum, when they had perhaps 9 provinces already. I was relieved for a while when I saw Aquincum was rebel controlled, and I had a chance to grab it. But when I conquered Aquincum and built a church the population went mad - big mistake on my part - and threw me out. A large WRE garrison appeared and I had to retreat and use the severely damaged army to conquer another city - Provincia Dacia that I had earlier lost to the vandals and hadn't yet retaken. I also finally managed to wipe out my very first faction - the vandals. It's really hard to wipe out any faction at all in BI, due to the horde feature. I mean, if they've fled, they get so many stacks that it's not at all easy to touch them until they've weakened themselves a little, as the stacks stick together.

Anyway, BI has forced me to think more strategically and been fairly challenging so far, I've sometimes even had to avoid encounters with enemy armies that looked too strong - in R:TW I would almost always go to battle. Now, for example, the ERE had an army with their heavy infantry, some good archers, and very much heavy cavalry and camels, when I had goth spearmen, raiders and a small detachment of light cavalry. I had to wait until my horse archers arrived, before I could form an army that I dared to send close to that army.

However the game still seems to get easier towards the end, but it's probably nearly impossible to make a stragegy game that doesn't.

[Orda Khan]

Yes, it is very difficult to destroy a faction now. The Alemanni committed suicide early in the game when they attacked my hordes with their depleted amies. I finished off the Vandals last night, after the WRE chose treachery. I made a mistake by hanging around to teach them a lesson, a huge WRE army, twice the size of mine attacked. Balamber was successful in defeating them but his army suffered quite a few losses in the process. Still, it was fun

.......Orda

[Dutch_guy]

I had really nice battles yesterday, I was defending Vicus Macorbori ( sp ? ) settlement just under the Allemani capital.
I was playin the Franks (vh/h)(large units ), I had my best army in that city which I just conquered from the WRE, anyhow I qued up stone walls and decided to linger in the city to keep the populace happy, that was a mistake , but then again it wan't :

When I took the city I saw a Gothic horde ( well 5 stacks ) a turn away from my nearly conquered settlement.
Anyhow they decided to attack my city ( wooden walls ...) so they did , they sieged my city and biult 8 rams for the walls.
After 2 ( 3 ) turns they attacked, and got aided by another of their 5 stacks.
It was ~1100 Franks against ~2400 Goths.
I decided to not defend my walls and just wait and fight the battle at my town square where my units wouldn't rout.
So I did , the one army sent in the rams while the other Goth army on the other side of my settlement ran to the other goth army - the one with the 8 rams.
Due to the wooden walls the fast Horse archers didn't take a lot of tower fire casualties, and the horde swordsmen and other infantry were wise enough not to come near my towers.
So the armies were united when the gate and the walls fell.
I prepared my army at the town square ith the infantry in front ( sword and axe men ) and some 5 raider cav. behind them, allong with 2 archers and a general.
The Goth army walked to the square and my swordsdmen sufferd badly ( even in loose formation ) to the numerable Horde horsemen (HA's ) however the slave spearmen couldn't beat my army head on an routed. I then sent my Raider cav (RC) to charge the HA's which were all bogged down in the street leding toward my town square, the RC and my warlord routed all the hord horsemen and left lot's and lot's of dead bodies.in the streets to the square.
now only a couple of HA and swordsmen were left , I retreated to the the town square once more , awaiting the onslaught of at least a full stack of swords and slaves ( with a couple of depleted HA, who rallied ), however since the Ai let it's 3 star general wait outside the gates the Goths didn't stand a change against my swords and francisca hebeernans'
I sent my RC and warlord to pursue to routers and eventually to engage the 34 soldier enemy general which they killed. I wanted to kill the other enemy gen. ( who resided on the other side of the map, where the ram-less stack began ) but the time ran out. I killed 2400 men and lost about 400.

Next turn they attack again , and queed up 4 rams.
The run after that the yattack again, one army with rams the other supporting army without rams ,~2500 Goths against my poor `~750 Franks, again I deployed my army at the square, the Goth armies waited till they were united ( meaning they waited till the other Goth army had ran to the other side of the map , towards the hole sin the walls ) and then assualted again , their army was build more or less similar to the other 2 stacks of the previous battle, about 1 stack of HA and one stack of swords and slaves.
Again due to my RC who charged the HA ,who got bogged down ( again ) in the city streets , and killed them all ( well most of them ).
Now the slaves and sword hordmen were now match against my better quality sword and axemen.
I won again , killing about ~2500 men and losing another ~300 ( maybe more )

So in the end now only one Goth horde stack is left, and it also immediatly laid siege to my poor town and depleted garrisson, could I defeat them again ?
Well no I coulnd't my units gave one hell of a fight but couldn;t defeat the last full stack. however we killed about ~750 men, of the ~1500

I am currenly ruthlessly chasing the last and depleted horde stack who plundered my city , and didn't even settle in it , despite losing over 5000 men to just plunder it....
Anyhow I'm really going to enjoy destroying their last horde stack.
And I'm really enjoying my first campaign, as the Franks.

[Kraxis]

Yes it seems the Hordes are a bit plunderhappy. Not that I mind too much, but the Lombards plundered Ravenna... Shouldn't they have settled there? I mean it is so close to their objective lands.

[shootfast]

BI is definitly better, AI tactics and strategy are actually smart and nasty!

Playing WRE VH/VH and managed to survive and hold all my provinces while making a profit. Problem is that it's not the hoards of Barbarians I expected to attack but the ERE Those ERE backstabbers took full advantage of my eastern weakness and are pushing towards ROME! Now with bulk of my army in Gaul,Hispania and Cathage this really is going to be tough with my ill equiped 1stack eastern legion facing a 5 stack highly equiped ERE legion as the only thing blocking it from taking ROME! as I have nothing in Italy after round 1 mass firing.

[Garvanko]

Plunering is a moneymaker. The more you do it, the more money you make. Going on a rampage throughout Europe before you settle makes you rich, and gets makes your enemies poor.

First major thing I did in my frank campaign (after spending all my cash on recruitment) was Horde.

[shootfast]

The battles are much better and the ai is smarter. In my WRE vs ERE battle I had even numbers with full stack legions facing each other and equiped along the same lines and barely won with 70%of my men dead majority of my inf and calv, only the archers survived mostly intact which won the game in the end.

That battle was the first epic battle I had, lasted almost a hour as it took 10minutes of skirmishing between both armys before the main melee started which had two stages with his attack with his weaker first line and my counter attack on his much stronger second line which he almost won with his general breaking my centre with a well timed calv charge. Only by killing his general with my General did I stop a full rout of my army. But by then 2/3 of my army was dead or had routed and he outnumbered me. It was frantic melee between the survivors in the end and my archers ultimately turned the battle with help from my heavy inf which were the only inf to not rout.

After that I relised that RTW BI had something to offer instead of eye candy. It was more like MTW battles I had then RTW ones.