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I was under the impression that Koinon Hellenon represented a weak coalition of GREEKS...But why is it so Spartan oriented? Why would the Level 1 system of government for Athens be the Spartan Agoge Klerouchy?

I love EB, and I appreciate the countless hours the modders have worked to bring it to us, so I hope I do not sound like a jerk.

yea let's make the greeks totally gimp, get wiped out in 2 turns, and ignore the fact that sparta always took hegemony during alliances with athens historically against exterior foes, then u can enjoy your greeks better!

As I understand it, Brightblade, some people have a problem with the Koinon Hellenon being too ahistorically strong in EB...Perhaps you've found the solution?

But my main question was: Why would the level 1 system of government of Athens be the Spartan Agoge Klerouchy? Did the Athenians adopt the Spartan agoge system?

for the KH, there is quite little diference between goverment 1 and 2,
1- is the spartan tipe, 2- is the "athenian" tipe

I don't think the type 1 government is supposed to be the "standard" govt. type for the KH. It's just meant to enable the recruiting of certain unique units and represent areas with some Spartan influence(Crete can build one, for instance, although I don't think they get any unique units out of it yet).

I think that Type 2 govts actually enable more units in most provinces where you have a choice, and offer better bonuses as well.

KH has Sparta as capital not Athens.
I believe it represents a historically short lasting, Sparta led confederation that included Athens so Sparta is capital & you can use the Spartan Agoge government.

With the Type 2 government, you can shift the dominant political type to Athenian & move capital there but the faction is intended to at least start out Sparta dominated.

Just as Zim45 said. For most other factions G1 is "homeland" while G2 "expansion, but this is NOT like this for KH.
For greeks G1 and G2 are equal and are just 2 alternatives greek city can follow.

I asked this question myself and the answer was quite simple and rather understandable. The gov1 for KH is the spartan agoge because of the way our gov system works. gov1 allows for the highest factional MIC level, which, given the militaristic history of the spartans, seemed most appropriate for them. In fact, the spartans in the koine are less influential than the other cities, as the gov2 rtepresents their style of government.

Basically it was a conceptual decision.

As for the strength, if the KH had stayed together it probably would have been quite strong, but internal bickering pushed it apart. We cannot represent that in RTW, so they stay together and continue to be powerful.

Foot

Thanks for responding, I understand now. I just thought system 1 was the standard government for your entire faction.

Yes, it's important to remember that the Greeks were pretty strong.
Even the Romans weren't fool enought to fight all Greeks at a time...

The problem for the greeks was that for them, the best and greatest opponent was alweys the neighoubouring Greek cities...

The Chremonidan League was quite a power, it takes 10 years to the Makedon to beat them, by the siege of Athen, and with the backup of the Seleukids.
And...some Greeks leagues sided with the Makedonians.

I like Koinon Hellenon as they are in EB !

Yeah. I was thinking this morning that whilst the Greeks (i.e. pagan greek-speaking peoples) were pretty respectable in war and commerce, and leaders in culture, they were dumb as rocks when it came to geopolitics. In all those hundreds of years from the beginnning of polis civilization to the Roman/Sassanid takeovers, they got together effectively for about ten years around Marathon/Salamis/Plataea and another dozen under Alexander. The rest of the time, they were more interested in fighting each other than their common enemies.

They were never united under Alexander ^^
In 333, the Spartan king engage a fight against Alexander's regent.
And then, Sparta fought against a huge Makedon army + Greeks league, and was barely defeated.

And after all, Alexander was a Makedonian, not a Greek ( in the mind of this guys at this time...)

And during the Persian invasion, nearly half of the cities were on Xerxes side...

The greatest Greek unity achieved was, I think, the Chremonidan League, with Sparta, Athens and Rhodos in the same team...but such a power was too dangerous for the other Hellens, so they sided with Antigonos against them...

Far be it from me to pass up a golden opportunity to shamelessly plug my AAR. It deals with the KH and the bickering and so on, so I think it makes sense to bring it up here. Relive what it would have been like had the Chremonidean League stayed in tact..... or will it? You'll only know if you tune in.

The link is in my sig, but hey, I'm a nice guy. I'll provide it locally as well. https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...60#post1487260



Now that that's done, I'll just say that it's good to know that's how the government system is designed as I can apply it appropriately to my story and continuing game as the Koinon Hellenon.

On a separate note, I just now finished watching "This Film Is Not Yet Rated", which is all about the secretive nature of the MPAA (film ratings board in America) and all this conspiracy type stuff, which isn't to say it's not real, just the overall vibe. And reading that Psycho V post just gave me this weird feeling about the secret EB stuff backstage. Erie.

Anyhoo.... I love you guys!... and erm, uh... Hellenes rock!.....

I dont want to get in this whole dreadful debate I would just suggest you to read some Isocrates and less Demosphenes....

But the fact remains that the Spartans shouldn't really wield any influence in EB's time frame, they were a provincial back water. They played little / no part other than a handful of battles in a futile attempt to defend themselves....before being relegated to a Roman fun / theme park.

It's unfortunate that EB's Hellenophiles couldn't resist including 'Spartan' material that harked back to the 'glory days' hundreds of years prior. It’s just ahistorical bias. eg. The glorified Spatan mercenary that is one of the mod's most richly decorated and elite units. Cool yes... clever / accurate..no.

my2bob

To my understanding, that glorified Spartan mercenary unit is a model/texture only and is not included in the actual game, other than in a minimod. I'm not sure why anyone would complain about that. Besides, Sparta has the same premise as Epirus. If they had avoided complete downfall, who knows what might have happened. Maybe they would've risen again.

One thing that might lessen the confusion (or possibly cause some) would be to have instead of I and II have Ia and Ib for the KH. Of course then people might just probably ask, where is II, I have I (a & b), III and IV but no II?

The team members who specialize on the Greeks felt that as a unit who now primarily works as mercenaries, from Syracuase to southern Italy to Crete to Egypt, we felt the way the Spartans are depicted is accurate. I'm here telling everyone that we in no way are trying to recreate classical spartans with the unit. They are hellenistic spartans (they exist in 272 in Sparta and fighting on Crete, and specifically perform well in the siege of Sparta, the year our mod starts) who spend most of their time as mercenaries (they are doing it in 272 alongside Areus on Crete) or fighting for Sparta. They can only be created in one province, by one faction, at their highest MIC level, and they cost a lot to field, and they have 100 men less than even the simplest pike unit - in other words they are not some sort of crazy elite unit. I just used one unit of decent pike (pezhetairoi - nothing special) on flat terrain with no bonuses or upgrades and shredded a unit of them (I lost 13 men, they lost all). And the pez were 50% cheaper to recruit. Actually, I just tried this out and defeated them with a single unit of levy phalanx (the crappiest pike unit in the game) on a flat battlefield (just barely won it though). They stink actually.

I doubt anyone who has ever played outside of Makedonian or Epeirote factions have ever fought against the unit on a battlefield even - that's how rare they are in the game usually. Again, the Greek historians and unit people on the team were and are in support of the unit without exception. They have a little sculpting on their cuirass and a different colored (but no pattern) trim on their cloak, but what else is so special about them? Their pilos helmet is incredibly simple. Their greaves are simple. They have pteryges and a shield with a lambda. Big deal. The regular hoplites are just about as nice. That's them on my sig banner, but without the design on their cuirass.

Personally I'd have preferred to see the Greek Cities represented as strong rebels, considering their fractured nature and the fact that there is no really decent way of realistically representing the precarious coalition.

But then you wouldn't have been able to play them, would you?

It's difficult, but within five years of the mod's start we have very clear evidence of the signing an alliance with each other and with the direct help of the Ptolemaic kingdom - trying to unite to drive out the Macedonians and liberate Greece from their presence for the last fifty years. Who knows if any of these smaller factions could have held together over a long period of success though - it doesn't seem likely from our start date. Pontos is just barely being "born" (an assassin's knife could have ended that faction), and the pahlava are nomads in 272 mostly, and baktria is a semiautonomous (or for the most part autonomous) satrapy in 272. Epeiros won't last a few more decades, and takes its biggest blow before the starting year is out. There are some arguments that Armenia should just be a satrapy of the seleukids also. Why not just reduce it to one roman faction, one carthie faction, the seleukid empire, the ptolemaic kingdom, a small mak kingdom (honestly in early 272 the maks didn't look like they'd be the ones coming out on top in Greece either), and whatever in the way of celts people would want. Why include the too fractured sarmatians, the too quarrelsome greeks, the too young pontics, the unindependent armenians or baktrians, the too distant sakae, an unimportant british isles tribe, the small nomad bunch of pahlava, a second celtic tribe in gaul, an arabian tribe no one needs?

The man makes quite a point...

BTW, how did you guys pick an exact start date? Was the current one particularly eventful, or the start of something?

You know that’s not true. There were several of us not happy with the inclusion of this unit / as depicted (albeit altered to tone down the ornateness for the realists).


From the sublime to the ridiculous. This only belies positional bias.


Yup, according to some, when it comes to the ancient world, the Hellenes are all and everything. Without them depicted in glory, everything else is meaningless.




my2bob

That's one way of putting it. The other factions yoyu mentioned either were at the time unified powers in their regions, or became such; the Koinon, as depicted, were neither.
This is not a reason to include them.

TA, I understand that you/ye might be exasperated by now to have always to be explaining your choices and decisions. Still, I have some very serious concerns about the KH that some other people seem to share. EB is a realism mod, and while I would never expect a perfectly accurate model of the world in 272 bc, and would never criticize you for not achieving perfect accuracy, it is still legitimate to ask if the KH is the best, most accurate depiction of the Greeks within the limits of what the RTW game can be modded to do. I am sorry, but I do not necessarily think that that is the case.
I know that you were trying to point out that many of the other factions in EB are in the same boat as the KH, but I think that there is a difference between Baktria and Haydasan on the one hand and EB's KH on the other. That difference is best expressed as applying a thought-experiment: can you reasonably imagine, without too much stretching of historical possibilities, such a faction achieving the goals set out for them under the 'victory' conditions? Could history really have happened that way? I can answer that question positively for Baktria, but not for the Koinon Hellenon. I just can't bring myself to believe that Sparta, Athens and Rhodes, given the conditons in EB, could ever have held together for long, much less pursued an aggressive foreign policy.

I do not expect, and am not asking, you to change anything at this point. Personally, I think that the Greeks should be represented in the game by a non-playable emerging faction of the Achaean League that pops out ca. 252 BC or so (I may have the exact date wrong), or by an Aitolian league faction with only Thermon as their starting point. Maybe an eventual mini-mod? In the meantime, I just don't play the Greeks.

Yup, according to some, when it comes to the ancient world, the Hellenes are all and everything. Without them depicted in glory, everything else is meaningless.


Don't you think you're embellishing the opposition's viewpoint just a teensy-weensy bit? I'd hardly call the Hellenic starting position, with 3 cities, one of which is too far from the mainland to do anything other than fill the coffers, and under serious pressure from the Maks, with piss-poor cavalry and infantry that will get it's ass kicked against phalanxes with without some clever leadership is "glorious". You seem to have the specific goal of insisting that the EB portrayal of the Greeks is utterly idiotic and anyone who disagrees with you in the slightest in a hellenphille moron. At this point, both of us are using tasty, tasty strawmen, so to make things a little clearer - how would you have the Greek factions portrayed?

I have to admit that I'm disappointed in Psycho. I always held the utmost respect for him whilst he worked on the mod (though we never really crossed paths), but this ad hominen/strawman attack on important members of the EB team and EB in general is uncalled for and upsetting. He paints a picture of the EB team that is skewed to some awful angle, and as a worker on the inside I cannot conceive how he could have got that impression.

If we want to talk about a thought experiment, lets go: Hayasdan could certainly not fulfill its goals to reform the Persian Empire in its own image and extend it west to the shores of Anatolia, it was only the charismatic and intelligent form of Tigran II the Great and the combined events of the Seleucids falling, Parthia seiged in the east and the Romans knocking at the door that allowed Tigran to even escape from the Caucasus range. Lets get rid of them, shall we?

If RTW could allow us to reasonably show the strife inside a faction and the possiblity of breaking up, then we would certainly add it in to represent KH more firmly, but as far as we know we cannot (which is a shame).

Foot

First of all, let me congratulate the EB team on reducing the Spartan Hoplites to a believable unit (remember Vanilla's 2 hitpoint monsters in evening gowns?).

Despite TA's protestations, Spartan Hoplites are not "crap". One Spartan may not be able to reliably flank one Pezhetairoi, but I would bet money on winning 2 against 2, or even 2 against 4 (against the AI). Spartiates are also strong on walls.

On reflection I think it was wrong to give KH generals Spartiate bodyguards, they should instead be a buffed-up traditional hoplite.

If the KH ever became a grand alliance uniting all the Greeks, I think it would have become progressively less Spartan (after all, no one was going to volunteer to become a Helot).

I wouldn't worry about that, the spartan bodyguard is only temporary. The proper bodyguard will be in the next build.

Foot

I remember when we were discussing the Spartans, the only complaints were that the armour was too ornate. I don't remember a single member suggesting they shouldn't be in.

As to the historicity of KH, we have to have Athens and Sparta as cities and we can't reasonably leave the Greeks out entirely. This is probably the only era in which the Greeks could be united at all, what with the larger City States having finally absorbed some of the smaller.

To give you some perspective, 30 cities were represented at Platea and two turned up late (so they claimed), that leaves roughly 1,000 that either sided with the Persians or sat the whole thing out.

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