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.

[RandyKapp]

Yeah i like that it doesnt get the point where your indestructable and can just trample anyone in your way, no matter what your size.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Playing to 250 is pretty nice. It would be really nice if folks posted screenshots of their (revealed fog of war) campaign maps after 10 or 15 or 20 or 25 years. In the mod development we've had to restart campaigns so often with our constant changes and testing, that we rarely get very far in. It would be nice (especially for games where the human is the casse - fairlyisolated) to see how the rest of teh AI factions are developing in their expansion.

Thanks for the post GF19!

[the_handsome_viking]

casse is the faction I'm playing, and I must say I enjoy the challenge.

The historically accurate generals are also a very good idea.

I assume that all factions have these historical characters right?

[Ranika]

All the factions that we have any idea who may have been there. I'm sure more will be added later.

As for the Casse; they're potentially the most difficult faction. Little army, poor economy at the outset (but with great growth potential, Britain is very rich). Our guide really does give some good ideas for how to play them out. Economic growth in most cases should be the goal. Armies are best a temporary thing, maintaining only enough in peace time to garrison.

[Red_Russian13]

Yeah, these guys are a lot of fun to play. Unfortunately, I'm having a permanent CTD at around 20 turns in or so. The rebels sally, then CTD everytime. But the taste of the Casse thus far has been impressive. It'll be my first campaign once these fellas finish.

FYI EB modders:

I've played maybe 50 turns with the...shoot, can't remember their name. The Chinese area faction, and 15 or so with the Romani with no significant problems resulting in CTD. Some minor stuff, which I'm sure you all are dealing with.

[Ranika]

The Casse final will have some nice stuff. Right now they have a number of placeholders. They'll be a lot more enjoyable later; the small number of provinces allows us to make each one-two provinces fairly unique in some way. There's not a province in Britain without some value, or, at least, there won't be. Once we get the CTDs ironed out, I'm sure they'll have one of the most rewarding campaigns, if only for the sheer difficulty of it; it's always rewarding to take a little trading power and turn it into an effective kingdom.

[ScionTheWorm]

I played as Casse VH/VH for the fourth time... this time I waited for them (I read the guide) and managed to run them down with three family members of chariots on the flank even though I was vastly outnumbered. however the battle took me about fortyfive minutes. I think winning the first battle makes building up the city easy after that. but it seems to me like expanding will take hell of a lot of time due to lack of resources. challenging enough to keep the homeland clean from intruders. I'm planning getting a foothold in the town to the north, but they're probably too loaded. and unfortunately the archers really are uneffective alone, even though they seems to me like the unit I should mainly rely on if attacking before upgrading my military...

I would rather say that vanilla was way too easy than that eb is difficult. it's a whole new game, as everybody seems to be agreeing with me, and the most most impressive thing (or shock) has been gameplay.

just a question, is that familymember model (both for stratmap and battlemap) a placeholder?