BI notes

[Rhubarbmisterwellington]

I have been playing BI for a while now (Eastern Rome, Sassenids and Goths), and have a few bits of advice to pass on, and a few queries.

advice:
firstly:
if you have a border defined by a river crossing, and need time to build up a defensive force (e.g. Eastern Rome when faced with the hordes) build a fort on either side of the bridge, and use a single unit of peasants to staff each one. Do this for the 3 northern river crossings. This will get you at least 4 turns grace. (1 where they discover/siege, 1 where they storm x 2) This gave me time to build up and ship in troops, and I only need 2 stacks:

________fort ____________ fort ________________fort____
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
________fort ____________ fort ________________fort____

______________army________________army_______

secondly:
when outnumbered and besieged, don't bother with the walls. The town square provides a perfect defensive redoubt: they can only attack you from at the most 3 points, and probably only 2. If you have archers, they'll massacre huge numbers of stacked up troops, and they can't outnumber you at the point of contact due to the narrowness of the streets. Put the defending units on guard mode so that they don't run off when a unit routs. Particularly as Rome vs the Sassenids, I routinely inflicted casualty ratios of 1:10. If you have a general, send him via the back streets to attack the back of the disorganised mass queuing up to attach your foot.

Thirdly:
As the sassenids - ATTACK! - Really, don't hang around waiting for Rome to get troops built up - go for it! Siege, don't storm settlements and do it for as many as possible at the same time. This will give a huge financial setback to your enemy - also, if you use cav archers, when they sally, you can then spend the whole time running away and peppering them with arrows - boring battles, but then again, it doens't matter if you get the settlement!

fourthly:
As a horde invading roman lands - siege and sack as many settlements as possible. They will then reform as rebels rather than romans - this means a less coordinated opposition, so you'll be able to pick them off in detail later.

fifthly:
I always add a catapult unit to stacks due to be attacked. I put it on fire at will - On several occasions I have managed to knock off a general (!) but at the very least I damage some units causing morale penalties before they get in range of my standard missile troops. As soon as the enemy gets close enough to charge, I withdraw the units - I now have several silver chevron onager units that are very useful, after having done this for a few battles.

sixthly:
When defending a good position, take your archers off skirmish mode - this stops them getting flushed out of your defensive position and harried down by cavalry.

seventhly: (But it should be a lot higher up!)
NEVER EVER combine decimated units if you have cash and need reinforcements quickly. Provided your settlement has enough population, 8 units with a single man left in each one can be retrained to full complment in a single turn. - compare this with the 7 turns necessary to provide the same number of troops if you combine the remnants and try and recruit new units to plug the gaps in your line.

lastly (so far anyway!)
As the goths, co-ordinate your sieges (see 4, above). As, when you settle you loose all your armies, make sure that you time your sieges so that they all finish at the same time. That way, you will face all the sallies in the same turn. and all the battles will be dealt with in the same turn. Occupy the settlements - you will only loose your hordes as settlers once ALL the battles have been resolved. Do this properly, and you can end up with half a dozen settlements all ready to start building and churning out troops - and with a healthy starting treasury from all the sacking that you did earlier!

Now - finally (!) some questions:
When I watch the taking turns screen, I often see a progression of enemy agents appear from nowhere, enter a city and stir up civil unrest. Some cities are maxxed out on happiness/law bonux buildings, have a govenor that isn't too venal, a garrison (not too big of course) and a coterie of all three types of agents, yet are constantly suceptible to enemy agent attack. How do I stop this, and for that matter, how do I do it back?

Why when I take a city and put the population to the sword/ship them off as slaves, do I face unrest and culture penalties? Surely the incoming population is from my own lands and consequently loyal - and of my own culture? Any ideas?

thanks for your patience!

[GrimSta]

I dont have time to read this just now (im at college, but it looks good, ill have a proper read when i get home)

[Dutch_guy]

When I watch the taking turns screen, I often see a progression of enemy agents appear from nowhere, enter a city and stir up civil unrest. Some cities are maxxed out on happiness/law bonux buildings, have a govenor that isn't too venal, a garrison (not too big of course) and a coterie of all three types of agents, yet are constantly suceptible to enemy agent attack. How do I stop this, and for that matter, how do I do it back?

To stop this , simply put one of your own spies in that city, that way each turn you'll have an X % chance at discovering him - and killing him.
Also , if you see the enemy agent, kill it with an assasin, spies are not hard to kill.
Enemy assasins even less hard to kill.

And as far as I can tell, number of troops and or governor also makes it harder for enemy agents to infiltrate ( spies that is )

As for your other Q's.

Come back to those later

[Ludens]

Welcome to the Org, Rhubarbmisterwellington . I hope you will enjoy your stay here.

Now - finally (!) some questions:
When I watch the taking turns screen, I often see a progression of enemy agents appear from nowhere, enter a city and stir up civil unrest. Some cities are maxxed out on happiness/law bonux buildings, have a govenor that isn't too venal, a garrison (not too big of course) and a coterie of all three types of agents, yet are constantly suceptible to enemy agent attack. How do I stop this, and for that matter, how do I do it back?

Placing one ore more spies (preferably with high subterfuge values) is the best way, as Dutch_guy pointed out, but what I think you see is one or more enemy spies being expelled by your spy and then trying to reenter. Your spy is apparently not good enough to catch them, but his presence forces them out each turn. If this is correct, you should get a message each turn that a spy was found, but escaped.

Why when I take a city and put the population to the sword/ship them off as slaves, do I face unrest and culture penalties? Surely the incoming population is from my own lands and consequently loyal - and of my own culture? Any ideas?

Culture penalty is determined by the number of "foreign" and own buildings in a city. IIRC it maxes out at 80%. The most important building is the governor's building. So yes, you do face them, but because the population is small a garrison should be able to supress it easily.

[teja]

Good posts folks, including the initial one! As for me I will not bother to fortify my borders that much. You need a lot of forces to do so and a lot of money to build the forts. However it may suits in some cases. I prefer to set 1-2 units at the bridge and in most times it is enough to keep out maurading small armies. To keep Hordes away, make big armies with numerous men to scare them. Cheap peasants fit as well for it. You may use them later as garrison when their job is done.

[symball]

for defending- use forts on bridges/passes with 4-6 peasant units inside. if you seal off the borders you will find most hordes don't bother to attack the fort and just walk on by

[GrimSta]

When i am playing as the Berbers i head to spain and build forts into the only ways to Spain, its a very strong defensive position is Iberia. and i love it for that :P

[teja]

For me all peninsulas in BI rock da house. Spain and Italy are both easy to defend with good income. Those are the prime locations for setteling down your Horde after your purse starts to burst after all the plundered cities around.

[econ21]

Thoughtful initial post - welcome to the Org Rhubarbmisterwellington. But once you've played the game a fair amount you may start to look for ways to make the game more challenging to give it legs and that would imply NOT doing a lot of what you suggest. For example, never retraining units makes campaigns quite interesting - as you can't magically resurrect your veterans.

In BI (at least, as Romans),I find sieges and rivers seem to become important than in RTW vanilla. But the AI often does not seem to be able to cope with them despite a massive numerical edge with a horde. I'm not sure what houserules would be best to try to offset these AI flaws, as to totally forgo river defences and autoresolve sieges sounds a little extreme.