BI and RTW Question

**Rex_Pelasgorum** · 09-04-2006, 12:57

Sieges with stone walls were more fun (although large stone walls have a very annoying bug, whereby men cannot climb some siege towers). When the AI had a decent defending force (ie a lot of good armoured infantry - e.g. Romans), assaulting one would be a daunting proposition and in such a case, I'd prefer to starve the AI out.

Howewer, if you wait for them to sally, they will be extremely vulnerable.... Sally may be decent when you have numericall superiority, or good troops, or some reinforcements, or anything... otherwise, even if you try to get out of your city and kill the enemyes, you will have terrible losses... i think (but i`m not sure) that the forces in the city who attempt to sally, have some moral penalty..

Frankly speaking, any siege can be easy , or extremely hard, depending on the composition of the 2 armyes... But i`ve seen that when the AI has crap units in an army, even if it has huge numbers, it does not attack... while whith good units, they always siege in the second turn or so....

**econ21** · 09-04-2006, 13:09

Originally Posted by Rex_Pelasgorum

Howewer, if you wait for them to sally, they will be extremely vulnerable....

Yes, that's part of what I meant when I said I would rather starve out the AI than assault a well defended stone walled city. I have not worked out what determines whether the AI will sally at the end of a siege - sometimes you get the city without a fight, sometimes they sally; I haven't worked out why.

Sally may be decent when you have numericall superiority, or good troops, or some reinforcements, or anything... otherwise, even if you try to get out of your city and kill the enemyes, you will have terrible losses...

If you go out the front door but are outclassed, the AI may charge you and press you against the city walls before you can deploy. That's nasty (although very characterful). For safety, I tend to go out a side door to get time to deploy. That turns a sally into a regular field battle, albeit with you as the attacker.

**GeneralHankerchief** · 09-07-2006, 04:14

Well, back to the original question BI is just that - Barbarian Invasion.

Almost every barbarian faction in BI requires you to have your guys expand into Roman territory and knock out one of their regions, while avoiding any other barbarians who want that same territory. It's a kind of revenge against the Romans (Julii, especially) for conquering so much land 450 years ago.

Obviously if you're the Romans, this is where it gets interesting. The Eastern Empire doesn't need to worry about money and religion (there are official religions and if the majority of people are a different religion there will be serious Public Order problems), but have the potential of massive armies from the Huns, Vandals, Sarmatians, Goths, Roxolani, and the Sassanids just waiting to destroy you. With the Western Empire you have to deal with all that plus serious religion, money, and loyalty problems.

As a final point, the PBMs that econ21 advertised are a great read - the WRE one inspired me to get BI.

**Conqueror** · 09-07-2006, 12:59

Originally Posted by GeneralHankerchief

The Eastern Empire doesn't need to worry about money and religion

Unless you do like I did, and setup a paganist coup (ie set a pagan family member as the faction heir, have him march to the capital, load the faction leader on a ship and send it on a suicide run against pirates) and burn all the churches and enforce paganism as state religion. You will have a nice civil war in your hands in no time, with some cities revolting and many being on the edge. That makes for a challenging ERE game.

**Mithras** · 09-08-2006, 13:47

Originally Posted by Conqueror

Unless you do like I did, and setup a paganist coup (ie set a pagan family member as the faction heir, have him march to the capital, load the faction leader on a ship and send it on a suicide run against pirates) and burn all the churches and enforce paganism as state religion. You will have a nice civil war in your hands in no time, with some cities revolting and many being on the edge. That makes for a challenging ERE game.

I did that since The eastern empire is such a walk in the park otherwise, I also re-played the Western empire doing the same to make it even harder.

If you do it more gently then theirs a lot less civil wars.

**Mr Durian** · 09-07-2006, 15:07

If I install BI, will I be able to paly night battles in the original RTW campaign?

**symball** · 09-07-2006, 15:35

Originally Posted by Mr Durian

If I install BI, will I be able to paly night battles in the original RTW campaign?

no I'm afraid not- there are some mods that use BI to do this but vanilla R:TW wont use it. Night battles are not that interesting anyway. they have their uses but generally they are just eye candy.