Strange twist

[Upxl]

I always found it very frustrating that the other Roman factions were also unstopable.
Would love to defend Rome from other (barbarian) Factions.

Does the senate give you missions to recapture those Julii towns?

[spanakoryzo]

There's nothing to worry about! After playing (and wreaking havoc) with the Seleucids and the Egyptians I decidec to try the Dacians. I thought I was a great commander by then. Yeah, right! My directly offensive strategy was met with a triple invasion of Germans (full stack), Scythians (half a stack) and Thracians (about two stacks), all working together in bliss and harmony. I've never seen anything like that in any other TW game. I was dead and gone in 20 turns. It really hurt at the time!

[Grimmy]

I always found it very frustrating that the other Roman factions were also unstopable.
Would love to defend Rome from other (barbarian) Factions.

Does the senate give you missions to recapture those Julii towns?

I dont remember the Senate giving me any missions after I was booted off Italia. It may have, and I might have just ignored them since I was down to one city and one town. The city was Macedonian, Thessalinca? or in that area. My fleet was gone, the city was sieged by a full stack of Mac's with Greeks lining up behind and I had baddly battered units (about half a stack of hastati, with 2 cavs at less than half strenght, no general). I did manage one sally from that city and managed to force the Macs into a temporary retreat but was sieged on the very next turn by a full stack of Greeks. I burned the city and left the defenders to hold out as long as they could before surrendering after that.

The town had my only remaining general, a couple cavs and 4 hastati. This town was latteral to patavium to the east. I could recruit town watch and peasants only in that town. I managed to dance with the gauls for a few turns before I finally got beat down enough to have to fall back into the town and just die from siege starvation and surrender.

I dont think the entire game lasted more than 20 turns lol.

I had played the Brutii many times. Always managed to do well, almost had a "pattern of advance" that would lead me to a good steady win over the greeks and macs, then I could explore around with other ways of teachin other folk the goodness of proper Roman grammar and hygene.
This was the first time I'd gotten hammered like that and it was due to a sudden collaps fo the Julii to a gaul invasion down the Italia peninsula.

I was flummoxed lol.

This was my first game after installing the patch fix. did that fix increase nonplayer faction aggressivness?

[phred]

What difficulty are you playing?

edit: oops, never mind. I see you included that info in your first post.

[Grimmy]

Dont get me wrong. I'm not complaining. I sure as all heck dont take the opening moves for granted anymore in the game. That's renewed the fun in that phase of play.

But my reason for the post is, has anyone else had the game behave so radically different than usual on them? Was this just a wierd "one off" that occurred? or can I look forward to occasional changes in general behaviour in my AI opponents like this?

I've been playin off and on since the game was released. I'm not a game saver, so I play until I cant stand sitting at the computer anymore then quit the game, so have no clue what its like in the end phase of the game.

[Ludens]

Bugfixer does not change the A.I., so I don't think it's responsible for your twist. I myself have never seen the Romans getting trashed (unles I was doing it myself), but I think there was a thread about the subject some months ago in the Colosseum.