Stop playing for a few months and look what happens...

[Excalibur Bane]

I get my ass handed to me on Easy/Easy basically. Wow. That's sad. I must be getting old.

I was actually trying the barbarian factions for a change, I otherwise play the Eastern Romans. As far as I'm concerned, they simply have the best units. Don't care for the purple though, wise I could make it a nice blue. Anyway, I have my unit sizes set to large and I just can't seem to make a profit and field a decent army at the same time. Is unit size tied to how much it costs to maintain armies? I certainly hope not. It should be noted in the options screen where you set it, if it indeed does increase upkeep.

I'm not really liking the barbarians much so far. The lack of proper roads is irritating to get family members around to govern my cities, even more so for troop movement. No decent defenses for cities is also annoying, since I tend to be a defensive player. I wish I could mod this stuff, but sadly, my disability with numbers makes that impossible. I'd probably just increase unit movement for all barbarian factions, and reduce the damn squalor since there is little in the way of sanitation buildings for most of the barbarians.

I like the unit variety though. Especially the Sarmatians (Gee, I wonder why?) and those crazy Beserkers. Those guys are wrecking machines. Still have a few factions to try out. I've tried the Huns, Sarmatians, Vandals, and Alemanni so far I believe. Anyone have any recommendations for a balanced barbarian faction that has a good balance of infantry and cavalry units? I don't really care about siege units particularly. Far too useless on the common battlefield, more useful for carnage during a city siege.

Anyway, my thoughts for today. My strategy and battle skills have definately atrophied. One of the many disadvantages of being a gamer of all trades. :(

[Garvanko]

The Franks are by far the best Barbarian faction.

[professorspatula]

Best way to learn: put the difficulty level up!

For battles at least.

As soon as you get back into the swing of things, you'll regret being stuck on easy/easy level. And if you are going to get a butt-kicking, you might as well get it against a 'tougher' AI.

[Excalibur Bane]

Best way to learn: put the difficulty level up!

For battles at least.

As soon as you get back into the swing of things, you'll regret being stuck on easy/easy level. And if you are going to get a butt-kicking, you might as well get it against a 'tougher' AI.

I tried that actually, my first game, played it at medium/medium. I played the Sarmatians. Two turns in, the Huns come along and steam roll my capital. The horde thing activates, I steamroll some of them, get my capital back, their hordes activate, they take my capital again and so forth. Rather nasty little cycle. It would have ended eventually, but I was too annoyed to keep going just to see who was going to win. ;)

Anyway, yeah, I'm going to bump it back up. I'm more or less just playing around until I find a faction that has agreeable units.

[antisocialmunky]

If you like those beserkers, send them onto a wall in a siege. Then it gets ridiculous.

[Kekvit Irae]

Personally, I always play Easy/Easy. I dont want a challenge, I just want a fun game that will help me relax after a hard day at work. The last thing I need is to get anxiety attacks because I'm getting overrun by elite troops that I have no defenses against them

[Watchman]

My Frankish peasants butchered a fair few attacking Lombardi berserkers on some city walls. Mind you, the archer support prolly helped a fair bit...

[Cras]

I had a full army of roman heavy infanterie butchered by the berserkers.

It was incredible, they would scope them off the wall, 3-4 at a time.....

I know what you mean about the hordes, I played the hunnes in one of the one fight game option thingie... I got hammered... they killied my light infantery guys....

[Cras]

oops... light cavelary

[Bob the Insane]

What with BF2 and X3 and Christmas a such I have not played much in a while.

Well now I have finally downloaded the latest patch for BI and fired up a new Western Empire game. While I have not forgotten how to fight I had forgotten what a series of diasters the Western Empire was. First some revolts (just three) and then lossing money and going into debt while trying to streamline the empire's military. Then when you have stablised to loss of money and public unrest and start to recover you find your governors are a corrupt old bunch of wasters. Next as you are trying to organize your forces into something resembling an army rebels and bandits start popping up all over the place. As you are dealing with them the Alemanni and the Berbers start getting shirty and harassing your cities.

You defend yourself and take back a city (sacking it) and finally get into the black again with stacks resembling legions starting to form and boom the Hordes (Sarmatians or Huns) turn up) plus the Eastern Empire starts getting all expansionist. Iberia is a pain in the @#$# simply because it is so far away and has public order issues. But because it is far from the front lines sending money there feels like a waste.

Finally trying to spread a little Christainity about, at the same time. Well that is the one thing that is good pretty well so far (if you ignore the occasional riot)...

I had forgotten how much more work there was in a BI campaign...