oh no... is it really this easy?

[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???

[Kraxis]

I thought my ERE campaign was winding down, now well past 400. I had broken the back of the Sassanids by taking Ctesiphon. I actually suffered a defection of one of my best generals (and governors), one day he simply didn't return to the settlement after an anti-rebel campaign, taking with him the entire army. Now I can see him and a single unit of mercenaries trot by the now weak city of Hatra as a rebel himself. I would kill the lousy traitor if I could!

I was planning to invade the WRE, concentrating an army near Sirmium of forces collected from Dacia, Salona and Sirmium, plus a few from Constantinople (general coming from there).
But as fate would have it, I don't think the invasion will happen for the next ten years, if at all.
The Huns had settled down and become peaceful in Campus Iazyges, but they were then thrown out by a revolt. For some reason they took their hordes and began a mighty trek westwards, and just as they were leaving, the Burgundii ousted the Franks from their last city, far to the east. They then popped out near Campus Iazyges, and teh next turn the Lombardii were also kicked out by the Burgundii (they are becoming rather strong and has a fairly large empire). They are also heading for Campus Iazyges, but a few of their stacks are heading for the Sarmatian city (which was passed over when the Vandals and Huns went by), so now I can expect another horde on my doorstep.

I guess it was my luck that I was planning to invade the WRE and have a strong army ready, but I fear it will never be enough if they don't fight over Campus Iazyges and march on me.

[Captain Fishpants]

<snip>

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

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.

Here's a thing. We had hoped that people would find it interesting to have different experiences when playing the game. *sigh* With RTW we were beaten with sticks because it was all too static, now we're in danger of being beaten with sticks because things are unpredictable.

Hordes generally go for the richest and least defended nearby target - quite reasonable behaviour, if you think about it. However, the AI does know which regions are on its 'victory conditions' list and will aim towards those areas, given a chance.

There's more randomness in the campaign because the horde factions may 'cascade' across the map with a domino effect - one horde triggers another and so on. Taking an attractive settlement may well trigger the appearance of a new horde, which will head off *away* from the aggressor. However, it's equally possible that the AI might decide that a settlement is just a bit too well defended and bypass it in search of richer pickings. In this second case, the first domino never falls.

On the other hand - as people are starting to realise - BI does not repay a passive strategy, either with a victory or as a gaming experience. Then again - strategy games aren't really supposed to do that, are they? You need to get out there and take the sword and fire to your enemies!

[Zatoichi]

Hey Cap'n! I'm loving the 'randomness' - like Kraxis I thought I'd got my ERE campaign settled and was gearing up for a push on Rome, when a combination of Hordes, Eastern Roman Rebels and religious unrest conspired to whack me back on all fronts. I think that's great, and a vast improvement on the RTW dynamic!

Kudos to you and the rest of the team!

[Jambo]

Here's a thing. We had hoped that people would find it interesting to have different experiences when playing the game. *sigh* With RTW we were beaten with sticks because it was all too static, now we're in danger of being beaten with sticks because things are unpredictable.

Well, I for one, absolutely love the increased randomness of the campaign! I've lost my first two campaigns which to my knowledge has never happened to me before with any other TW title. I've also been playing on only H/H instead of my standard VH/H just to allow me some space to get to grips with the intricacies of the new campaign. So, kudos to CA for BI.

However, it would have been even more excellent had some of the fantastic BI features been backward-compatible with the original Imperial Campaign. I would loved to have experienced the randomness of hordes, rebellions and atmospheric night battles in 1.3... alas.

[Doug-Thompson]

Capt'n;

We've had our disagreements before, but this is not one of them.

The hordes do inject a very much needed dose of danger and impredictibility in the game. In fact, I'll gladly find the quote from before BI came out where I said that, hopefully, hordes will put back the "creative chaos" that Crusades brought to M:TW.

They have. With a vengence. I'm about to win the most interesting campaign I've ever waged in the Total War series, where I'll emerge victorious after being soundly beaten in every battle but one, and can thank my victory to the vital role of the ERE navy.

Also, the quote from me has an omitted word. That was corrected after Grifman caught it and pointed it out. It should read:

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

This corrected quote and the reply from Tincow was also in froggies "So ..." thread, where I put:

To clarify, I'm not complaining about inpredictability per se.

The game would have a lot of replay value if you never know when a horde will hit. The trick is to have hordes hit often enough that no faction can safely ignore them.

[SpencerH]

Here's a thing. We had hoped that people would find it interesting to have different experiences when playing the game. *sigh* With RTW we were beaten with sticks because it was all too static, now we're in danger of being beaten with sticks because things are unpredictable.

It wasnt being too static that caused the 'beatings' it was the direction the game had taken away from the previous TW games.

I havent bought or played BI yet, but from my reading here the unpredictability of the gameplay has been seen as a very welcome addition. The problems have come from experienced TW players who are looking for more difficulty but are 'unlucky' enough to have easy campaign starts.

[Grifman]

Here's a thing. We had hoped that people would find it interesting to have different experiences when playing the game. *sigh* With RTW we were beaten with sticks because it was all too static, now we're in danger of being beaten with sticks because things are unpredictable.

Captain, I just want to say that this is a great "expansion", IMO the equivalent of a whole new game with the same engine. And more on point, the unpredictability of the hordes is great. Just when you think you may have things under control, a horde is thrown across your borders due to one tribe pushing another out. I can only imagine how hard this was to pull off effectively, but it appears CA has done it. Great game so far, so much more than the usual buildup and conquer mode of most 4X games.

[Havard]

Here's a thing. We had hoped that people would find it interesting to have different experiences when playing the game. *sigh* With RTW we were beaten with sticks because it was all too static, now we're in danger of being beaten with sticks because things are unpredictable.

I, for one, love the randomness and unpredictability.

[Prodigal]

The unpredicability factors a hoot, I keep on trying to work out a strategy based on my last defeat, put it into action in a new game, then something goes horribly wrong...They weren't supposed to do that!

[TinCow]

I just had the most intense and critical battle of any TW campaign I've ever played.

After finally taking back Burdigala after a long campaign, the Vandals horded again and went south into Iberia. They beseiged a WRE Rebel city, which went gray Rebel after several turns. The Vandals then turned right around and marched back to Burdigala with their four remaining stacks.

I had since built stone walls and the city was garrisoned by my reconstituted frontier legion which was a medium-size, high quality force. I sent three heavy Sarmation cavalry units and a very good general to help in whatever way they could. These units came from a northern Gaul town I had conquered several turns before and they left that town with only a weak defensive force. The turn after my cavalry reinforcements left the town, the Franks declared war and beseiged it. At the same time, my allies the Goths turned on me and attacked my cavalry force in the field. I withdrew, but they pursued and slaughtered all four units to the last man. I now had three enemies with a total of seven strong stacks in Gaul, and the only sizable military force I had in the area was the one being beseiged by the Vandals. With attacks in Africa by the Berbers and around the Danube by the Allemani (they moved east) it would have been impossible to rebuild a new Gaulic Legion and send reinforcements to these two other fronts as well. Losing Burdigala would probably mean losing all four of my cities in Gaul, which would essentially have erased 2/3 of my gains since the start of the game.

The assault came after two turns of siege, and once again I faced four stacks at once. It was my force of 1834 Romans against 7473 Vandals and I was playing a campaign with no time limit in battles.



When the battle started, I saw to my horror that the Vandals had been busy while they were in camp. They came with two rams, two towers and worst of all, four unburnable ladders. The arrangement was, ram in on the door, two ladders on each side of the ram, one tower on each side after the ladders and the second ram preparing to make a dash for a second gate Notice where all four armies entered from on the minimap.



I positioned my three archer units so that one could target the main ram, one could target the east tower and one could target the west tower. I placed ALL of my infantry in front of the four ladders. I didn't feel that I had enough units to cover six wall entry points, so I gambled on the archers being able to burn the towers. I had three generals and a light cavalry unit available to defend the door in the unlikely chance the ram did not burn. However, this would be a suicide force, since a breach of the door would allow all 22 enemy cavalry units to storm the city, a force that I could never have countered. I had to stop the enemy on the walls or the army, the city, and all of Gaul was lost. I hope you see now why it was an intense battle.

It started predictably enough, both rams went up in flames quickly, but to my dismay the towers closed on the wall without igniting. All the infantry units on the entire map now closed on the ladder area. The ones that had to run around the walls took about 1/4 to 1/3 casualties from towers, but most of the other three armies were cavalry heavy anyway, so this didn't help much. The 22 cavalry remained stationary waiting for the gates to open.

I was annoyed with the towers getting to the wall on the flanks of my infantry that was now heavily engaged at every point along the wall with thousands of Vandals pouring up the ladders. I expected everything to be alright though, since I had placed my anti-tower archers so that they could continue to hit the towers while they loaded up. The infantry were barely holding on the wall and in a few points gaps opened in my units. At one point I had three groups of 40+ enemies grouped in different areas of the wall, having split my units apart. I orded all infantry units into the wall battle to push back the ladder climbers, not imagining that my archers could fail against the towers. Yet, volley after volley of fire arrows failed to burn them. Eventually the towers disgorged their troops on both my flanks at once. At this point, the I knew the town was lost. Half of the tower units were now on the walls at my flanks and more were ready to climb and reinforce the flankers once the first units were clear of the tower.

Then, the miracle happened. Both of my archer units were on their very last volleys. I paused the game in despair to watch the western unit loose its last shot, taking all hopes of victory along with it. The arrows flew, hit, and went out. I turned back to look at the front, wondering how long it would take until my men finally failed. When I turned back to the western tower, it was smoking! The last volley had ignited it! It burned quickly and collapsed, killing the 1/3 of the unit that remained inside. I could hardly believe my luck. I paused the game again and looked at my eastern flank. I checked the minimap because I thought I was looking in the wrong place... the eastern tower had burned and collapsed as well! Both archer units had burned their towers ON THEIR VERY LAST VOLLEYS. While I had a 2/3 strength Chosen Swordsmen unit on each of my flanks, the threat of further flanking reinforcements was gone.

All was not safe though, my infantry were making headway on the ladder hordes, but they would need several minutes to secure the area before the outermost units could turn and engage the flankers. I charged my arrowless archers into the flankers, hoping that they would die slowly enough to stall them. At the same time, I took my light cavalry and stormed out the front gate, hoping they could cut down some of the men at the bases of the ladders. This turned out to be pointless, since my unit refused to engage any unit that had at least one man on a ladder. They reacted like the men were inaccessible. The main army cavalry came after this expeditionary unit and destroyed them, though losing a substantial number of their own to the wall towers.

The a couple minutes passed and my archers died quickly, but their fight to the death lasted long enough for me to defeat enough of the ladder climbers to allow me to disengage the units on the ends of my line and turn them on the flankers. Slowly, ever so slowly, the flankers were themselves flanked and eliminated. After a while, the stream of men up the ladders began to dissipate. Eventually I watched in disbelief as the last enemy infantryman climbed to the top of his ladder and was dispatched by the waiting legionary. With this, the 22 enemy cavalry units turned and retreated, having no possible way to enter the city. I had lost half my army, but I had prevailed and my forces would survive to be refitted. I now had a chance to deal with the Goths and Franks and save my Gaulic provinces.

The end results show the absolute carnage that my infantry had to endure on the Wall of Slaughter. I was reminded of the speech line, "tomorrow, our sword arms will ache from overuse!"




Now THAT, ladies and gentlemen, was a battle! I love this game.

[Doug-Thompson]

I see they didn't name the general "Marcus the Gambler" for nothing.

That's incredible. How many stacks did 5,668 men make?

Five units with more than 500 kills apiece. Two more with more than 100 kills.

All I can say is, thank CA that barbarians can't sap.

[a_b_danner]

The problems have come from experienced TW players who are looking for more difficulty but are 'unlucky' enough to have easy campaign starts.

I haven't had an 'easy' campaign yet, and i used to mod the Bouies ROMA mod because it was to easy. Vanilla economy is a real bitch on VH. Battles are reasonably hard (on VH). Hordes are an awesome feature, especially because they are completely modable - some factions can keep a strong army through multiple hordes, and others can be modded to weaken substantially after the first horde. Modders will be able to put this to excellent use for a long time.

[Garvanko]

Very impressive TinCow.

[Kraxis]

I had a similar battle just on a smaller scale against the Slavs. It was brutal... Even a unit of PLumbatarii that sarted out at 16 (and ended with 16) men managed to kill more than 60 enemies.

ButI found a way to counter units coming out of towers, if you have a unit with pila or plumbata, just stand a short distance away and let them chuck spears at them. I had a depleted unit of Plumbatarii suppoed to block a tower full of Chosen Steppe Swordsmen. No chance! So I moved them out of the way so I didn't risk my men getting pushed over the side. When the Chosens rushed out they ran into a hail of plumbata, and my unit managed to deplete them enough to be able to win in the melee. Sure, some Steppe Horde Spearmen also rushed up the tower, but they were no match for my victorious Plumbatarii.

[Husar]

Eliminate a rival faction in the opening moves and they turn into a horde.

Very interesting, in my campaign as the Franks I have already eliminated the Alemanni and the Saxons and they were both just...eliminated, no horde, no nothing. I was actually afraid to attack them at first to not get overrun, but it was way easier than I thought.

[Doug-Thompson]

Very interesting, in my campaign as the Franks I have already eliminated the Alemanni and the Saxons and they were both just...eliminated, no horde, no nothing. I was actually afraid to attack them at first to not get overrun, but it was way easier than I thought.

Which factions can horde and which can't?

[Garvanko]

Allemani, Berbers, Celts and Saxons can't Horde.

[Conqueror]

Neither can the Sassanids, nor any of the Romans obviously.

[Husar]

So I just got the right ones.
I was thinking something like this, but didn´t think it would apply to both, Saxons and Alemanni. Thanks for the headsup though.

[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!

[nameless]

I dunno about easy, I'm playing as the WRE on M/M.

The cities that were about to revolt I pulled out the troops and razed the buildings so when they revolted it was easy to smash and loot the money Any general that had a low loyalty rate I sent into suicidal missions.

I pulled out of England, Illyria, Africa and Gaul. I strengthened by position in Spain because of the gold and silver mines there and it is in a good position for a contingency plan if Rome falls. I disbanded most of my elite troops in favor of the liminate spearmen, Foedetira cavalry, and archers and stationed a small force at the bridge leading into the mainland of Italy with 4 generals.

Mediloam, or the city that is above the bridge in Italy is my "throw-away" city in the event a horde runs by.

All islands I am keeping in line easily. For the time being I started to convert my cities into christian except for Syracuse which would need a large garrison to keep them from revolting so I left them as pagans and built sewers and such to keep them happy.

Later on I started to get at least 3-5K thanks to the gold in Spain and keeping Massila and the nearby city to allow trade between the two provinces.

Then the hordes came, 4 stacks of GOTH hordes assaulted my bridge defenders, outnumbered but I was able to defeat them one at a time. I noticed that if I take out the general their morale falls down like mad and their easy pickings. I basically pulled my troops from the bridge so their out of range from their many horse archers and allowed them to cross the bridge enough for me to flank and surround them. I defeated 3 of the stacks and the GOTHS eventually sat down with me and negotiated with me for peace, they had lost at least 5-6 family members Their remaining stack picked up and headed into france by passing through Massila and then assault the WRE rebels and settled there in Gaul.

I was notified of a Vandal horde coming my way so I quickly rebuilt my forces and being short on cavalry I hired a few mercenaries. I also noticed my general had a loyalty of 1 now because of his many victories(I'm beginning to wonder what's the point of having a general if his victories make him less loyal to me) so I sent him to die against 6 vandal hordes. Using the same tactic of pulling back out of their archers range I used a scorpion to cause panic in their ranks and now they are down from 6 to 2 hordes. This may sound good but I'm losing tons of men as a result of this and they just keep coming

Luckily though the tactic preserves most of my cavalry which is crucial in smashing the enemy's flanks.

Even worse now I have 7 Hunnish hordes coming down on me so I'm planning on building a fort to keep them busy while I replenish my forces. Argh. If this was on H/H I would've been dead by now!

[Jambo]

frog, I'd say stick with every campaign, no matter how easy it may appear to be at the start. I thought my Alemanni campaign (VH/H) was a going to be a breeze after I raced to controlling 10+ of the WRE's settlements without much in the way of resistance. The nice thing about BI is a horde faction can really spice things up and the domino effect can cause havoc...

What then happened was a Goth horde moved through my lands and settled in the two WRE settlements on the very West and North of nowadays France. They were at war with the WRE so I thought no bother. However, their Westernmost settlement proceeded to rebel and all of a sudden the Ostrogoths appeared! Hmm, not good news, and so it proved to be... The same settlement rebelled again, this time returning to the WRE, and now I have a huge horde of Ostrogoths on my doorstep. They then proceeded to sack the 1 remaining Goth settlement thereby creating yet another horde!

Now I have 2 hordes in my lands, of which the Ostrogoths have just laid siege to my poorly defended capital. That's where I stand at the moment, with my once proud 10+ settlement empire now looking incredibly fragile...

[frogbeastegg]

Jambo, as I said:

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.

I can't get enough time to read and write - no amount of time will ever be enough. Not to mention I also have a pet boyfriend. Every minute spent being bored in BI is a minute I could be using to far better effect, both in terms of results and enjoyment, and I know it. But my second Saxon game I don't have that feeling of waste because I am enjoying myself, I am doing something, and there is more point to it than passing time and waiting in the hopes something vaguely interesting might possibly happen.

[Bulawayo]

Frog, what you should do is to let your dear friends at the .org supply you with the best saved games they have to offer.