How good is EB?!

**ScionTheWorm** · 12-28-2005, 01:45

I've played on Very Hard/Very Hard with Casse and Getai now, and it has only been a world of hurt coming my way.

Massive agressive armies quickly forced me to find another way to play than the rtw/rtr agressive mode (which always worked before).

Reqruiting is so incredibly hard with the factions I've tried to play as. Actually I cannot imagine how to get established with any of these factions since their economy is going down. I just try to block the negative balance from my brain, and hope for a miracle.

and in addition, I feel like the AI is vastly improved. but that's probably just my imagination

awesome

**Dayve** · 12-28-2005, 01:58

Actually i feel that the AI is improved when i play... Especially in battles... Gone are the days (and mods) where you could win any battle and lose only one 7th of your army... If i fight against an enemy of similar numbers to mine then i take considerable casualties, sometimes so high that the army has to be brought back to the nearest capable city of retraining them... It's great fun i tell you, well worth the long wait.

**Teleklos Archelaou** · 12-28-2005, 02:39

I'm wondering when folks will start posting about successful olympic competitors, about successfully breaking away from the Seleukids, about returning Alexandros' body to Pella, about successfully achieving triumphs, about having troubles maintaing good relations in Greece because of multiple factions continually breaking peace over Delphi or something else, about special traits they get for conquering a monument their ancestors had lost, about all these cool things that are hidden in here that folks still aren't even getting to yet!!!

**infierno** · 12-28-2005, 02:58

yes AI is better, imo it looks like BI's AI (for me VERY GOOD)

BI's AI + better ai armys + better stats = perfect :)

anyway the load times are ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz and it were always fine with rtr and rtw...

how can i fix this? buy better PC or wait to the final release?

**Teleklos Archelaou** · 12-28-2005, 03:02

I don't know that the load times will get faster. There are thousands of more lines of text added into various files - the huge amount of new text descriptions for buildings, units, and just about everything else just slows things down. All those new traits and the way they interact; the enormous scripts to get so many extra little things into the game; all of this stuff just slows things down some. It's a little slow for me, but I play with the -nm and -ne tags so I just pop over to mozilla while it's loading. And on the computer I'm currently using it flies by (but it's a pretty fast cpu).

**Dooz** · 12-28-2005, 03:07

Originally Posted by Teleklos Archelaou

I don't know that the load times will get faster. There are thousands of more lines of text added into various files - the huge amount of new text descriptions for buildings, units, and just about everything else just slows things down. All those new traits and the way they interact; the enormous scripts to get so many extra little things into the game; all of this stuff just slows things down some. It's a little slow for me, but I play with the -nm and -ne tags so I just pop over to mozilla while it's loading. And on the computer I'm currently using it flies by (but it's a pretty fast cpu).

What do the -nm and -ne tags do? And by popping over to mozilla, you mean the internet browser while the game loads?

**Teleklos Archelaou** · 12-28-2005, 03:11

Originally Posted by Wonderland

What do the -nm and -ne tags do? And by popping over to mozilla, you mean the internet browser while the game loads?

They cut off the movies (which slows you down a bit) and make it where you can alt-tab over to other windows more easily (I believe). Yeah, I jump over to browse in between turns. makes it harder to catch when CTD's occur though

**Big_John** · 12-28-2005, 03:08

imo, it's pretty awesome so far! i have played a few hours. admittedly, i'm basically just paying for fun and not testing. i haven't run into any crashes yet, though. i saw a bug where unit portraits were not showing (just a white box where they should be) but it disappeared when i went to another city, and i wasn't able to duplicate it.

anyway, i started as the karthadastim. i didn't read the gameplay guide so things were a bit strange to begin with! let's just say that by 270bc i was ~130,000 mnai in debt. read the guide, and after much disbanding i was back in black by 260bc baby!

very early in my game, i beat up on brigands mostly and sieged and took rhegion with relatively little effort. now i'm looking at expanding my african domain.. is this called an 'anti-barcid' approach? hanno was getting bored lepki and i thought i would have him sweep across northern africa and solidify my punic dominance in that region. ran into a little hitch named "eshmunamash" in kirtsan. killed the bastard, but now i have to wait for reinforcements before i continue my march to tingus.

the seige of kirtsan was probably the first "average victory" i've ever had. and i had the superior troops too!

loadtimes aren't that big a deal to me. maybe i don't have a beast pc (amd 2500+, ati 9800pro, 1 gig ram), so maybe i just don't mind these loadtimes. i've been playing a lot of civ4 recently (now that's some serious slowdown!), maybe that's desensitized me to loadtimes. also, i haven't played rtw in a long time.

anyway, it all looks freaking great so far. my generals get bored very quickly and i think they all have the "light sleeper" trait.. i hope they don't get stressed out.