Never exterminate? Ever?

**Tyrac** · 11-28-2005, 15:04

So I decided to up the challenge a bit because really only the first 20-50 turns were ever any fun. Those turns where things are really hanging in the balance, a horde turning the wrong way will spell disaster, a bad move and losing your one stack sets you back years and years. After a certain point in all TW games you just get so rich and big the setting VH/VH does not matter. You just roll out full stacks of armies and crush the simplistic A.I. We all know this.
Personally I have always tried to add more to the challenge by doing many things to handicap myself. Playing the Hardest faction I could unlock, never pauseing in combat, not using any of the simple "cheese" things you can do to the AI, never using peasants as garrisons etc. Still just steam rolled the AI.
I always have used extermination of cities to dig myself out of the early financial hole. Exterminate the larger cities so that they can be garrisoned and controled. The cash from the extermination funding massive buildings prjects in the Core of the empire and new full stacks of armies to go take and exterminate new cities.

Then I tried not exterminating cities..... ever.

on VH/VH this changes everything. It FORCES you to use all sorts of strategy, long term planing and tactics when taking cities and when holding your own.

I could not win VH/VH as the Berbers using this rule. Before I was able too achieve the simple victory conditions of 2 "target" provinces and 10 others time ran out. It was SOOO hard not to click that exterminate button when it popped up.
The A.I. does not look NEARLY so stupid when you cannot afford to build your "ideal" armies to fight it and you actually HAVE to choose between building ONE new building some place in the empire or retraining your army so you can stop the stack coming at you.

Really has revived the challenge and fun of BI for me again. You should try it.

**Kekvit Irae** · 11-28-2005, 16:46

Never exterminating also presents another challenge: squalor, and building lots of garrisons to deal with unrest.

**Puzz3D** · 11-29-2005, 17:56

Originally Posted by Tyrac

Then I tried not exterminating cities..... ever.

Nice idea. A while back I started a new RTW v1.3 campaign as Scippi to avoid the dormant Scippi issue, and turned fatigue off to avoid the AI running its units into exhaustion issue. I don't retrain units, but I was looking for a way to increase the difficulty even more without resorting to the H or VH settings, and this idea would be a way to do that.

**econ21** · 11-30-2005, 08:23

Yes, I try not to exterminate - it makes the game harder by slowing your advance, as you have to use your armies to pacify a city rather than move straight on to the next battle. However, in a recent ERE PBM, I found it surprisingly easy to hold large occupied cities with governors with high influence. I guess this was partly because there was no culture penalty (I was invading WRE). But one good thing about not exterminating is that it makes you care about your governors a bit more.

**A.Saturnus** · 11-30-2005, 22:19

I usually don´t exterminate except if I have a RPG-reason for it (for example the general who lost two sons to the saxons and captored a saxon city).

**Come Together** · 11-30-2005, 22:56

Honestly, i've never exterminated a city before. It takes some skill, and sometimes a full stack in a city to keep it from rebelling.

**Tyrac** · 12-01-2005, 05:18

I am currently playing a game as the roxil....whatever. Blue horse people. :) I think going at the sassonids<sp> first for the "challenge" was a bit of a mistake. Horses COVERED IN ARMOR! and LOTS of them! Ouch!
Losing rocks! It looks like I am not going to achieve victory by the last turn. I have been obsessing over my next turns at work etc like it was my first game of Shogun TW again. Very fun when you make the game really hard!

What year is the "official" BI final turn btw? Spent the last few min searching and failed to find it. :( Should have wrote it down last game I played.

**Celt Centurion** · 12-07-2005, 00:29

Originally Posted by Come Together

Honestly, i've never exterminated a city before. It takes some skill, and sometimes a full stack in a city to keep it from rebelling.

I do not know how many times I had a full stack in a city, built all the buildings I could, set taxes to low, had spies in there looking for enemy spys, and still got thrown out on my buttocks.

I took a city last night, and never saw the face before the occupy/enslave/exterminate slide came up. I decided to be humane, and occupied.

Big mistake.

I presently have my retrained army laying siege to it. Again.

Strength and Honor

Celt Centurion

**CountMRVHS** · 12-07-2005, 12:55

Playing as certain factions, I don't see how you can get away *without* exterminating.

I'm currently playing BI on H/H as the Sassanids. That makes me the only Zoroastrian kid on the block, which means that it's virtually impossible to take & hold a city in the initial phase of conquering without losing it at least once -- even with exterminating.

The first ERE city I took was Sinope, up on the Black Sea coast in northern Turkey. Exterminated when I saw the city had a red face, and it still had a red face after that. I think public order was around 50%, so I took a chance and tried to hold it for another turn. My only Night Fighter paid the ultimate price for that one, and I pulled out after smashing the church and putting up a shrine for my eventual return.

I'm not being a dunce about this; at least I think not. As I took Antioch, Sidon, and Tarsus (exterminating every city) I really paid attention to how I could convert the populace. I knew that, when the "Breakdown of Belief" bar is almost fully Christian it would be suicide to tear down the cathedral. I knew I needed to first try to convert by using a general with good conversion traits, and spies/diplomats with the same. The problem is, once I started to get up to 5-10% Zoroastrianism I would start to get unrest DUE to Zoroastrianism. Meanwhile I"d be building in the city like mad, trying to get rid of the culture penalty and get any quick happiness/law buildings in place. But inevitably I would be kicked out by an ERE army, and have to take the city AGAIN, which would still have a red face, forcing me to exterminate a *second* time. Usually this was enough to let me replace the church with a shrine.

I guess we can discuss the subtleties of religious conversion in BI in a different thread; my point here is just that I don't see how you could get away without exterminating in a Sassanid BI campaign. Even with exterminating, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you'll need to conquer several cities twice in order to hold them. After a while, sieges get a little old for me, so I can't imagine getting kicked out of Antioch a third or fourth time and having that be much fun.... But I guess we all like different challenges.

CountMRVHS

**Tyrac** · 12-07-2005, 14:44

Aye it can make things very very difficult. I have not won a game since I completely stopped extermination. I am sort of tempted to go back and play one of the factions listed as "easy".