Casse Rocks! (and so do traits and ancillaries)

[Greek_fire19]

Ok, So I played for about 3 hours as the casse, and holy crap! Not once did I even meet another proper faction, but it was the hardest RTW game I'v ever played. I started off, realised I had too big an army but didnt want to disband anything, so I attacked that town to the north of my home town, took it but lost a lot of men and realised I didnt have enough troops to attack the town further north and I was in debt already. Realising I was in something of a pickle I marched south and attacked that town in devon (icatha maybe?) I had about a hundred men and they had about 200 but I took the town in a clever move where my chariots slipped through the gates and took the town centre while my other men distracted the enemy long enough for me to get a victory. From them on I had enough money to survive and eventualy expand into ynys mon and the midlands. It's slow going though and there were a few CTDs and stuff. Finally in 250 bc A CTD cropped up that happened every single turn I played and I had to abandon my game. Still, The awesomest mod ever by far :)

Anyway, One particular thing I have to mention is the traits and ancillaries, it just adds so much to the game when your generals have as much personality as they do in this game. as casse I started out with the old, wise, loyal but a lil pessimistic older general, and then the young, headstrong, charismatic impetuous king. THe old guy died during a seige however, but my king was alive and still going strong in his middle age when my permanent CTD happened.

I've also had son who clever but disloyal and lacked social skills, something about a dark temperament, but he was an awesome manager. I love all my little personalities, but I think you'd lose some of the closeness of it if you played a big faction like carthage or seleucia.

balancing seems pretty good too, no faction got annihalated through the game and most seemed to be doing pretty well. Even Koinnon Hellenon struggled on and took back corinth and so on.

One final thing is I see a lot of people complaining about the difficulty, but frankly I'v never had such fun. I'v only played one game, but somehow it managed to stay inside that 'sweet spot' that RTW had for about the first 5 turns, where every battle is life or death and every building is a massive cost, right through the 40-50 odd turns of my game. I know everyones different, but personally thats just the way I like it. I was worried that 'increased difficulty' was gonna mean huge hordes of enemy troops, but this is much better.