Arverni or Aedui anyone?

[Reverend Joe]

One cool thing happened during my first Aedui campaign. Two civil revolts in favor to me.
The first happened before 260bc when Iverness, the most western settlement on Ireland rebelled against their Casse opressors and joined me. The Casse responded and attacked me the very next turn which lead in me almost depleting the entire Caledonian fighting force. The Casse never left the Islands after that ;)

Goddamn, you changed history!

[jerby]

gaesatae really are bringing lfie into this game...one of the first times the AI scared me to death. you really gotta be on your toes.

[PseRamesses]

gaesatae really are bringing lfie into this game...one of the first times the AI scared me to death. you really gotta be on your toes.

Yeah, I do love them although they seem to be a bit well equipped.
Ancyra is infested with them. It´s like when Sigourney Weaver reached the mother-aliens lair, brr... quite intimidating.

[pezhetairoi]

I played as the Arverni. I decided to wipe the Aedui off the map, but first to unite southern Gaul. Hence I attacked Tolosa and Burdigala and took them, then moved on to Massilia and Aventicos. In all these cases my Sotaroas played crucial roles since I'm more of an eastern, archer-heavy player.

I initiated war with the Aedui in the 5/6th year. The pivotal area of the campaign against the Aedui was just south of Bibracte, where the Aedui threw army after army of their starter troops against my sole army, which consisted of all my starter troops. (My towns were all garrisoned with only one unit of Clyddabre since i believe in offensive defence)

When the dust settled the bulk of Aedui fighting power in the region was destroyed, and it was only a matter of walking into Cenabum and Bibracte since the former had only one unit in garrison and the latter was emptied.

Next I turned my attention to the rest of Gaul, and unified it. I left the Belgae as a buffer between me and the Sweboz. I turned southwards to the Alps, and attacked Mediolanum. The Aedui had squandered the fullstack they usually built up there in futile piecemeal attacks on my southern periphery, so I arrived there to find only 6 units behind the walls. I stormed in and took over with ease. On a sidenote, Mediolanum is a low-level settlement, usually only large town at most, but it has the highest-level MIC building (I think) or the Gauls. Interesting.

Anyhow, I pushed further and further south into Italy after that, getting into a terrible bloody war with Roma. It was made even worse by the fact that in the Italian peninsula the Arverni cannot recruit anything more than Lugoae. I.e. my army was getting progresively depleted and supply lines were lengthening.

The climactic battle against Roma came, aptly, at the gates of Rome, at the river ford just next to it. The Roman field army was a fullstack that had five units of triple-bronze chevron triarii, 4 units of equites, 2 generals on 100-man singulares, and an assortment of rorarii, hastati and principes to make up the remaining. I figured I would never be able to beat that on a level playing field with my troops (I never built a single unit of gaesatae) so a chokepoint was my only chance. It worked like a charm, but I lost about a fifth of my strength shattering that. Nevertheless, that was the deathknell of the Romans since they were left with only a smattering of units in Capua and Cannae that were easily dealt with. I ended my Arverni campaign there, because the troop resupply situation was really getting too bad to handle.

[Zero1]

Anyhow, I pushed further and further south into Italy after that, getting into a terrible bloody war with Roma. It was made even worse by the fact that in the Italian peninsula the Arverni cannot recruit anything more than Lugoae. I.e. my army was getting progresively depleted and supply lines were lengthening.

The climactic battle against Roma came, aptly, at the gates of Rome, at the river ford just next to it. The Roman field army was a fullstack that had five units of triple-bronze chevron triarii, 4 units of equites, 2 generals on 100-man singulares, and an assortment of rorarii, hastati and principes to make up the remaining. I figured I would never be able to beat that on a level playing field with my troops (I never built a single unit of gaesatae) so a chokepoint was my only chance. It worked like a charm, but I lost about a fifth of my strength shattering that. Nevertheless, that was the deathknell of the Romans since they were left with only a smattering of units in Capua and Cannae that were easily dealt with. I ended my Arverni campaign there, because the troop resupply situation was really getting too bad to handle.

See, this is the reason Samnites became my beeeeest friends on my conquests into Rome. I exterminated every city I conquered and used to loot to hire samnite mercenaries to bolster my ever waning army...it got to the point where all of my regular troops were garrisoning to prevent rebellions and my main army was made entirely of Samnites!, but by then the war was practically won as the Romans had lost Rome proper.

[pezhetairoi]

Which is precisely why I quit the campaign. Samnites are damnedly expensive, and it became a little weird to be playing the Arverni without a single Arverni unit in my army. It would be nicer if I could recruit some Samnite units that were retrainable.

[PSYCHO V]

Glad to hear you guys are enjoying it. The OB is only the rough guts, if you enjoy this you'll love the next version

It was made even worse by the fact that in the Italian peninsula the Arverni cannot recruit anything more than Lugoae.... Nevertheless, that was the deathknell of the Romans since they were left with only a smattering of units in Capua and Cannae that were easily dealt with. I ended my Arverni campaign there, because the troop resupply situation was really getting too bad to handle.

Arr...this isn't Vanilla or RTR...you can't expect to run across the map and conquer huge areas and build all troop types in the first several turns. Patience
Further, EB is about historical reality, don't expect the Gauls to be able to churn out Praetorians and Triarii in the Italian peninsula.


my2bob

[Ranika]

Everyone can get some Samnites in proper provinces to train, with the appropriate government and such; no region should be a total loss unit wise, though you will find that Celtic factions fare better in recruitment by conquering Celtic regions in Europe, which are plentiful, and will be able to get a fair bit of other, neighboring units (including an alright amount of Greeks, when done, with the proper governments, meaning conquering Greece won't be a total bust).