oh no... is it really this easy?

[Grifman]

I don't see any way to account for the very wide variety of experiences people are reporting with the strategy game.

Actually, it's quite easy and you explain it yourself below:

Hordes are wild. Crusades in M:TW were usually focused on the Levant provinces. If not, they had a specific region as a goal.

Hordes are just looking for a home. They might attack your province. They might not.

You explained it quite well :)

There's inevitably going to be a certain bit, indeed, perhaps major bit of randomness. Who do the Huns attack first? How well does that attack go? Where does that tribe go next? Do they attack another tribe or invade the empire? Which of your cities will revolt due to various circumstances - I've had different ones each game. That's not scripted I'm certain, there's randomness in all that.

I thought things were going well, I was making 5,000+ per turn as the WRE, then I get the Vandals, Goths and Huns all heading for Illyricum/Pannonia/N Italy. That was a bitch.

[Doug-Thompson]

Well, Grifman, all I can say is "Oops. Good catch."

Obviously, that sentence ought to read: "I don't see any other way to account for the very wide variety of experiences people are reporting with the strategy game."

[Grifman]

Well, Grifman, all I can say is "Oops. Good catch."

Obviously, that sentence ought to read: "I don't see any other way to account for the very wide variety of experiences people are reporting with the strategy game."

Ah, I thought you were too smart for your own good there :)

That said, I love the unpredictability ao far, though I wish there was more action on the Rhine frontier. That seemed to be a pretty big problem for the Romans, but that area seems quiet compared with the Danube. But that may just be this game - but it seems like the impact of the Huns is rather limited in the NE of the empire.

[Grimmy]

I saw it happen. With my very own newbie eyeballs. I was playin ERE on med/med (yep, I'm weak that way) and not long into the game I saw the hunn get the wood layed to em good by those folk just north of my northern Greek-land cities (old northern macedonia area I believe).

The Hunn popped up with mass stacks and got me all in a tizzy but they went for the other guy's town first and I watched 4 of their stacks reduced to not much left at all. They didnt manage to take the city but did start a siege... then who shows up? but the Vandals also in hord mode. The Hunn and the Vandels go roundy round for a couple turns till both were bascially cut down to approx 1/3 of their original strengths. The Hunn never got that city btw.

[Orda Khan]

Yes it does appear that the Huns are less of a threat than expected. They remind me of the weak Golden Horde of MTW

.....Orda

[Puzz3D]

There's inevitably going to be a certain bit, indeed, perhaps major bit of randomness.

Well it's no surprise. MikeB already said the BI campaign had a lot of randomness designed into it.

[parcelt]

Ok, I just edited the title to reflect the fact that I now seem to be appropriately crushed - as it should be - after starting a new WRE campaign. The financial problems faced by that faction are not as bad as they seem: consolidate your holdings and disband most of those 300+/turn upkeep garrison troops, and your boats. Build some peasants instead (As a sidenote: a good Ironman rule would be not to allow that. Greatly increases WRE's difficulty as you get hammered between a need for garrisons to quell unrests, yet cannot afford them. I am currently restricting myself to 1 peasant unit per city).

But even if that makes your financial problems go away (I made 1k-2k after turn 4), it leaves you weakened. And unlike in my previous campaign, now the hordes hit in full force. It was the Gothes that killed my best remaining troops (remaining after the purging of turn 1, reminded me a bit of what Stalin did right before WWII.... but I'm digressing), after I was so stupid to meet them in the field instead of hiding behind my walls. There is now almost nothing left between them and Rome itself.... great!

I think all this is further proof of the point made above - that BI contains a very high degree of randomness. I am not sure yet whether this in the end will be a good or bad thing: may improve longevity of the game, but can also sometimes lead to boring campaigns. Time (and playing a hell of a lot of campaigns!) will tell.

[Malcolm Big Head]

Randomness

Perhaps I should try the sarmatians again to see If I can hold my initial homeland. Last time the huns sent me packing and when I settled in a rebel territory I realized that I should have scouted the area better because the vandals wanted to stop in for a drink.

[TinCow]

The best way I've found to deal with the Horde stacks is to engage them in night battles in the field. Letting them siege you is dangerous if you can't beat them in a sally, since their multiple stacks can renew the siege before you can repair and refit even if you do beat them. Engaging them in the field without night battles is dangerous since they usually cluster so closely that you have to fight at least two stacks at a time. Thus, attack a night and eliminate on stack at a time.

[Geoffrey S]

An awful lot of people seem to be having easy first campaigns; is there a chance CA built in some kind of difficulty increase after, say, two started campaigns? It just strikes me a lot of people say their first campaigns are walkovers, then start a new one and get thrashed.

Of course, it could just as easily be the random nature of the hordes.

[Kraxis]

An awful lot of people seem to be having easy first campaigns; is there a chance CA built in some kind of difficulty increase after, say, two started campaigns? It just strikes me a lot of people say their first campaigns are walkovers, then start a new one and get thrashed.

Of course, it could just as easily be the random nature of the hordes.

Most people that have a nice campaign don't say much, they just love to play it. Those that experiences a bad one will of course come here to vent their sadness. I believe it is the random factor playing in.

[GFX707]

Randomness

Perhaps I should try the sarmatians again to see If I can hold my initial homeland. Last time the huns sent me packing and when I settled in a rebel territory I realized that I should have scouted the area better because the vandals wanted to stop in for a drink.

My first campaign was as the Sarmatians....after thinking it was going to be just like RTW Vanilla I started building up my initial city, ignoring the warnings about the Hun hordes (couldn't see anything on my map after all) and before I knew it there were 6 stacks sieging my city! With only a wooden stockade I managed to hold out for around 10 turns and with my half-stack that was defending the city I must have taken out 2 full stacks....I will tell you though I was pretty impressed with the sheer amount of troops they sent (my first battle was a night battle with 3 full Hun stacks on the map!!!!) and soon I was overwhelmed....uh oh, I thought, game over....but then I got my own horde! Foolishly I used it to fight the Huns in the field (although I eventually beat them) and on bridges and wasted a lot of troops instead of heading West....and I ended up with 2 settlements, one stone walled city (Sirmium) and that other Sarmatae one (Campus Sarmatae I think it was called) and I couldn't get out of debt and had full ERE stacks sieging me every turn....

My second campaign (as Sarmatia again) has gone much more smoothly....I simply uprooted first turn and went straight for Constantinople which I took, then lost, then took again and now (in a cunningly synchronised "settling" maneouvre with which I used 3 horde stacks to take 3 cities at once) I have added a few walled cities to my fledgling nation.....I suppose hindsight like that is cheating though :(

[Garvanko]

I tried posting this on the Franks Guide thread, but the thread doesn't work for some reason. Mods?

Wow! My franks campaign has turned into a real dogfight. The Saxons have been throwing stack after stack at me with no end in sight, and all their armies have units full of 6xp infantry and sea raiders. Battles have been fun, but the balance has been tipped by my newly acquired noble cavalry and heerben infantry.

The Lombardi have broken alliance and attacked Vikus Franki. Full stack. My garrison is full of 3xp peasants, so I hope it can hold in case they attack next turn before my big army can arrive to support.

toggle_fow has revealed a roman empire crumbling in the face of huge vandal and hunnic hordes. The ERE has been kicked off Greece, and are heavily involved in a murder-death-kill scrap with the Sassanids. The WRE can't seem to stop the tide of Berbers, Vandals and just about everyone else. Indeed, all the barbarian factions seem to be doing well and expanding, which should make the later game very interesting. The Vandals look like they'll be passing my way in about ten years. Unfortunately, Im piss-poor, and in no proper shape to take them on alongside the Saxons, WRE and the Lombardi.

Bring it on.

[Garvanko]

That was three hours ago..

Bring it on indeed.

Im a horde now. Lost everything in a sea of rioting, assassinations, multiple attacks on my eastern frontier, and sheer bloody-mindedness. The WRE are back, the Huns and Vandals are rampant, the Lombardi are a growing menace...

And me?

Dear oh dear.

Some said this was easy???

[frogbeastegg]

A question for any kindly CA person passing through, who can spare the time to answer, please.

Is there anything the player can do to ...encourage the AI to take an aggressive line towards the player, as opposed to a more passive one?

For example (many more details, if you want them, can be found here, starting from post number 65) I've started two games as the Saxons, both very hard/medium. The first I was practically ignored; no armies, diplomats, anything came my way, and I was able to expand without opposition. The second, oh how I love my second attempt at the Saxons! The WRE attacked me on turn 4, and has been sending sizeable, well-composed armies my way frequently. My barbarian neighbours are fighting each other and eying my lands in a way which leaves me no doubt they intend to invade. I am very literally fighting for survival with everything I have, and I fear I might be defeated, something I have not felt before in RTW. The odd thing is that I did virtually nothing different in either campaign, until the AI forced me to.

In fact the two campaigns are so different I can hardly believe it's exactly the same game.

So, while I can see myself appreciating the random factor of BI when I've played enough to really see it in action, I would also like to have many more campaigns like my second Saxon one. Is there anything I can do to make that more likely? This second game is ... hmm, it's pretty well everything I want from the game: challenge, unpredictability, a need to work hard, needing to react instead of simply act, a real need to plan carefully and then plan again as my old plans get scuppered by the AI. The thought of not finding another campaign like it really worries me. That first game was almost everything I don't want: easy, boring, challengeless, pervaded by the feeling I was the only faction actually 'present' in the game.

As I play I have this feeling I might not get another game like it, but will instead end up with more like my first one, and that's the only damper on my second Saxon campaign. Well, that and a complete lack of time to play, gah!

I'm really very anxious; I hate the thought of losing the game I'm currently loving.

Amphibian conscience demands I add that the first game might have improved if given another 20ish turns, making 40 turns total. But I only get to play for a few hours each week, often a turn at a time, so those 40ish turns before things get interesting last for a very long time. At which point I lose interest; I’d rather write, read, something, anything, than putter about in that boring, isolated world, night after night, week after week. The lively world of my second game, however, now that has me eating my porridge in front of the PC, and has left me rushing to get to work on time two mornings in a row now. The only reason it won’t be three mornings in a row is that I have tomorrow off.

Or as I find myself posting on a rather frequent basis while relating my second Saxon game: Weeee!