How does anybody get past 200BC?

[Redigo]

I'm in a Romani campaign around 209BC after having invested probably 100 hours. I've taken North Africa, Iberia, Sicily, Greece, and southern Gaul (around 50 provinces) and I'm in a holding pattern until the Marian reforms.

Thing is, it's taking forever. By the time you get this far into a campaign, each turn takes a good hour just to polish up the basic administrative tasks like building and shuffling governors.

If anybody's worked through to 172BC manually, I'd like to know how you had the patience to do it!

[Eduorius]

Playing historically and not trying to conquer all the map as fast as I can.

Edit to say that a lot of things happen in EB and I like every turn. What I hate is to wait for the downloads, but there cant be done too much about that.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Play slow, don't conquer too fast. (Of course this is hard, seeing as the AI conquers fast and if you don't you die.)

Eventually you'll get all the buildings in your towns and won't have to worry about that. I usually will do administrative things once a year (spring), such as moving around governors.

I know how you feel though, I moved up the Marian Reforms and ended up getting them in 199-195ish. And the Imperial in 130ish.

[CaesarAugustus]

Play slow, don't conquer too fast.

That is probably the best piece of advice that I could give you, too. Work your way slowly up to 45 provinces by 172 BC and leave yourself about 20 years to gradually change all of your provinces to Type II Governments. I personally stretched myself too thin going for 90 provinces and now my legions are dead and the Germans are systematically wiping out my mercenary armies. If you take it slow and develop your empire than you will find that you will be making more money, have secure borders, and you won't need to manage as many territiories. By the time the Marians take effect your Imperium will be the greatest (maybe not the largest) in the world, and you can unleash your legions on the barbarians. (kill some Sweboz for me ;)

[Xtiaan72]

Make some house rules to make things harder and more interesting. Check out the "Carthage Challenge" thread I started if you need some ideas. I'm trying to get a bunch of players to try a Carthage ironman challenge game.

[Kralizec]

Maybe it would be a good idea to create a thread to share savegame files?

[EoE]

Roleplay it. Let the AI automanage those cities without governors. Don't try to optimize everything.

I'm playing a Roman campaign as well. It's 196 BC and despite my best efforts to play it slow, I'm now fighting all out wars on all frontiers except Africa. The Lusotanians, Sweboz, Epirotes and Macedonians attacked me more or less at once.

Fortunately I had around 500,000 in the coffers, which enables me to strike back. Though I didn't really want to do it, I now control most of Spain and will have wiped out the Lusotanians in the next 5-10 years. The Sweboz are also hard pressed, and the epirotes are losing town after town in Greece. My only real concern if Macedonia; a behemoth that so far has only sent a few stacks against me. Unfortunately they have refused every peace offers so far.

I wonder about one thing though: My faction leader has finally gotten 2 stars in command and management; he is also a populares. Shouldn't that mean the Marian reforms kick in?

rgds/EoE

[CaesarAugustus]

No, the Marians don't kick in until 172BC.

[Fondor_Yards]

I'm in a Romani campaign around 209BC after having invested probably 100 hours. I've taken North Africa, Iberia, Sicily, Greece, and southern Gaul (around 50 provinces) and I'm in a holding pattern until the Marian reforms.

Thing is, it's taking forever. By the time you get this far into a campaign, each turn takes a good hour just to polish up the basic administrative tasks like building and shuffling governors.

If anybody's worked through to 172BC manually, I'd like to know how you had the patience to do it!

Take the whole summer, worked for me

[Redigo]

Well, I've set my settlements to be automanaged and am cheating my way through by forcing peace where appropriate. Also trying to contain the Sweboz and Seleukid monsters by inciting rebellion in the farther reaches of their empires and subsidizing their enemies. Having little success with the Seleukids as they've already knocked off the Ptolemies, clearing one flank, and the Baktrians keep building full-stack armies of pantodapoi -- great for depopulating your cities, but stopping argyraspidai? Not so much.

Went from 206BC to 182BC in only seven hours! (My god, I spent seven hours doing that. Talk about something I can't even begin to explain to my wife....)

[LordCurlyton]

You have the spare time to have a wife? Amazing!

[EoE]

No, the Marians don't kick in until 172BC.

Ok, thanks. It's probably one of the most frequently raised issues on this board, yet I still managed to misunderstand something so basic.

cheers/EoE

[Redigo]

Oookay. It's now 170BC, and I've got a bunch of guys that are just one trigger short.

Is there some way to "encourage" a general to gain the popularis trait or become consul?

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Oookay. It's now 170BC, and I've got a bunch of guys that are just one trigger short.

Is there some way to "encourage" a general to gain the popularis trait or become consul?

Take him to war, most of the guys I've seen with "Popularis" are conquering heros. May just be a coincidence, though.

[Kugutsu]

If you are really impatient (like me) edit the script to bring the reforms forward. I changed it so the automatic trigger was only 50 provinces instead of 90. I got it in 200BC.

It breathed new life into my campaign, I am now in 156BC, and going strong. I am expanding in a roughly historical manner, but not at the same pace as the romans. It simply isnt possible to spread campaigns over decades without losing momentum and getting bored. I took gaul with a single general in less than 5 years. My conquest of egypt is going a bit more slowly because there are no decent cavalry auxilia like there are in europe, so Im relying on purely infantry armies.

[Bartix Elite Guard]

The best way to avoid the diminishing returns of a campaign is to choose a weak faction. Then you don't have to micromanage a large Empire. Im playing as Armenia and I'm fighting the Ptolemies and Selucids who are both allied! This means it is a constant challenge but not a tedious one since my Empire isn't that big. I quite like back-to-the-wall defending.

[Redigo]

I actually had a great .72 campaign with AS, because the empire was going to pot and I was broke. Kept me on my toes.

I may try that script trick, thanks.

[Redigo]

Alright, I modified the script to trigger the Marian at 50 provinces, conquered a province or two (after having picked up from an old save so there were more factions left) and now I've got a weird something that I'm not entirely sure is a bug.

All of my factional MICs now require expensive repairs, but when I do repair them they're still damaged the next turn. Weirder still, I can recruit Marian-era troops as though the MIC was fully functional.

I've searched for "marian repair" and come up with nothing. Is this intentional? Do I need to build a new MIC? What if I've already got the top-level MIC in a given city?

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Polybian MICs can't recruit Marian units. (Completely different building tier.)
New MICs should have been placed that contain Marian units. They may need to be upgraded to higher levels.
Just tear down the damaged MICs they are now useless.

[Digby Tatham Warter]

Thing is, it's taking forever. By the time you get this far into a campaign, each turn takes a good hour just to polish up the basic administrative tasks like building and shuffling governors.

If anybody's worked through to 172BC manually, I'd like to know how you had the patience to do it!

1 hour for a turn is nothing, playing the SPQR mod at the height of my 2 month solid(every day) Roman campaign turns could take between 3-6 hours.

My current EB Seleukid endeaver, is becoming epic, finally got the Pltolemies on their knees(they just don't seem ready to die yet).

I think that the EB Roman Imperial reforms(fun) are just too hard to get to?

[Redigo]

Polybian MICs can't recruit Marian units. (Completely different building tier.)
New MICs should have been placed that contain Marian units. They may need to be upgraded to higher levels.
Just tear down the damaged MICs they are now useless.

OK, will do. That explains why I can recruit infantry in most places but cavalry nowhere, even with what I thought were top-level MICs.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

OK, will do. That explains why I can recruit infantry in most places but cavalry nowhere, even with what I thought were top-level MICs.

Romans were never really fond of cavalry. When they could, they had allies as their cavalry support. Later it was the auxilias. In the Marian Era, there is no "Roman Cavalry", but there are new Romanized Cavalry Avxilia to replace them. (Gaul, Germania, Thrace, & Iberia)

[Rilder]

Getting past 200 bc is pretty hard, after 72 years ore so of basicly the same units in my armies, I get bored even with slower expansion and tough foes, Its just oh I really don't feel like going through another battle with the same formation and tactics as all my other battles and what not so I usually go and try out a different faction.

[mAIOR]

Yeah geting to that time is hard... I'm playing as the Romani and controling myself as I want the game to last... Some of my house rules are, 10~11men field armies unless I have a consul in wich case I go to the max if I want to... 14~15 units siege armies. I use the extra units as towns are harder to take. Also, I try to keep an historical accurate roman army constitution. Oh, I always use a cavalry unit in the armies if I have no general available altough, now that I have a lot of generals I usually keep 2 for the armies and the rest in towns. Having your armies limited is the best way to bring that great general inyou... I just fought a battle with a single legion (half stack) against a full stack Gaulish army plus a quarter stack reinforcements army at the same time. I lost the battle but, I killed around 600 of the buggers and they killed 578 of my troops. That battle however, allowed me to prevent them from taking Mellodianum as their army was not full anymore :)
Also, I only attack when I have Casus Bellum or, if I'm ten turns without a war. Exept for rebels that is.
In my previos .8 Romani game I was at 180BC and had already greece, Macedon, Spain, southern France and Turkey.

Cheers...

[Redigo]

Romans were never really fond of cavalry. When they could, they had allies as their cavalry support. Later it was the auxilias. In the Marian Era, there is no "Roman Cavalry", but there are new Romanized Cavalry Avxilia to replace them. (Gaul, Germania, Thrace, & Iberia)

That makes sense. Thing is, I tend to build LII governments everywhere for the population growth control and order bonuses, and haven't yet built many local MICs past L3. I've noticed that even with the LII government I can build up greek MICs to where I can recruit hippeis, and African MICs to get skirmisher cavalry, but haven't gotten access to cavalry anywhere else. Do I need to institute lower-level governments in a few provinces so as to get cavalry? How can I tell which provinces will provide which units at which levels?

[LordCurlyton]

That makes sense. Thing is, I tend to build LII governments everywhere for the population growth control and order bonuses, and haven't yet built many local MICs past L3. I've noticed that even with the LII government I can build up greek MICs to where I can recruit hippeis, and African MICs to get skirmisher cavalry, but haven't gotten access to cavalry anywhere else. Do I need to institute lower-level governments in a few provinces so as to get cavalry? How can I tell which provinces will provide which units at which levels?

In the Gallic provinces you need to put an L4 gov in to get MIC 5, which lets you get some awesome Birhentim cav. The Illyrian provinces yield Illyrian Hippeis (and only Illyrian Hippeis) at L3 I believe. Greek provinces need L3 for Hippeis, L2 for Numidian Skirmisher cav, and L1 in some northern Baltic/Balkan areas for Samartian horse archers. I couldn't tell you what you get further east of in the Egyptian provinces since I have not had my legions conquer said areas yet. Same for the Germanic provinces.

[Redigo]

Thanks, that helps a lot. Weirdly I've just noticed that a high enough factional MIC allows somewhat "local" recruitment in at least one area -- namely eastern Gaul, where my first L3 Marian MIC produces Romanized Germanic skirmisher cavalry.

Is there some way I could tell which provinces are capable of producing which units from the EB data files?

[Gazius]

To the original question, I personally think the major fault in EB at this point is the map. We're playing on a vanilla map with a EB timeframe. It should stretch the very limits of every province. By having large distances to traverse to even find the enemy, you are now free to have a roaming army. No longer will you be blockaded except in the truly narrow passages. With this enlargement, you can now allow sailable rivers.

The AI may make use of this in BI, meaning that you are no longer as safe as you once were. This also will serve to bring a greater importance to the use of ships in the game With a full body of water separating you from your enemy, they may no longer hound you, leaving you free to develop an empire for longer periods of time without the ever expanding AI attacking you quite as often. You could proabably also force more realistic peace treaties as well, since you are now divided by this large river.

Arguements against such a proposal I've heard mostly involved trade routes will now no longer function properly. A pity, but this can be compensated with proper naval trade boosts. This will further serve to demonstate the historical importance of controlling the med.

The only problem with doing this is the effort involved. Does EB have a active mapper, or some one offering lessons on how to make a map for the game, as most of what I found when I tried to do this awhile ago was more or less useless.

[Veris]

Auto_win is crucial for maintaining a large empire, since otherwise you will be bored out of your mind when you have to fight 10 battles a turn that you cannot rush and cannot auto-calc without 10:1 odds in your favor.

One main thing I have noticed is that short campaign spurts are much better than a very long, drawn out campaign due to the way the A.I tends to throw easily replaceable, inexhaustible amounts of troops at you. I,e my 5 year war with the Romans was far more interesting than my 30 year long defense against the unrelenting Seleucids which got tedious very quickly. And my current 12 year offensive war against the Seleucids is much better than defeating 2 armies every other turn.

The boring task of keeping your empire in good health is very annoying when you get 75+ provinces. I have over 150 in my almost finished Macedonian campaign and I don't even bother with administrative tasks anymore, just repressing any rebellions that come up.

[LordCurlyton]

Alternatively, try to use local yokels as much as possible. That way you have no need to fight EVERY non-overwhelming battle since they can be swiftly retrained. I'm presuming once you hit the Marians as the Romans (its 178 BC! So close!) that it becomes MUCH easier to use better, Roman troops and thus you get things like the aforementioned Romanized Germanic Skirm Cav. Dunno how much of a use the regionals will be after the Marians, but that is something I eagerly wait to discover.
I have found that even relatively even battles can be auto-calced as long as you have a balanced mix. Always check for uber generals or such, though, as they can and will seriously ruin your auto-calcing day.