Hi, I'm new here and I wanted to ask advice and complain a it ;-p
I'm playing the original game (patched to 1.5) with the Britains and after dozens and dozens of hours playing, I had captured 100 regions. The only regions left to conquer were Rhodos, Cyprus and Cilicia. All three were in the hands of the Brutii while all the other factions were dead (most of them by my hands).
The year is 145 BC btw.
Everything went quite okay till now, but now I start to get some real big problems I can't solve.
For one, these Brutii are all of a sudden amazingly strong. They got those Urban Cohorts, Praetorian Cohorts etc. etc. and they have pretty amazing stats. The best units I can field are Chosen Swordsmen and in this example they have 16 stats for Attack and 20 for defence while the Brutii's forces had an average of 21 attack and 30 defence. They were in posession of Antioch (Syria) with 400 guys including a 6 stars general and I wanted to defeat them with 1500 Chosen Swordsmen including a 3 stars general. No offence, but I didn't expect a "Crushing Defeat" (I never do the battles myself, cos I don't have the time, the patience and the brains imo). And so it is with all my battles against the Brutii these days. Even with an army that's 3 times their seize I loose more battles than I win. Anyway how I can solve this? :-D
My second problem is overcrowding in cities. I have my taxes as high as possible (faces are always green/yellow), I have mostly a Full garisson in my cities and in most of them I have a Family Member as well. I've built everything except for the Communal Farms (as I've read they only increase your population). Well, when I used to have a city where the population kept growing unhappier every turn no matter how low my taxes were and no matter how many soldiers I had, I deserted the city and I recaptured and exterminated it 2 turns afterwards.
But now I can't do this anymore. When I desert a city they automatically have also a full garisson, and what's worse they all got suddenly every armor upgrade and every experience point there is to get. So I have to fight 1600 peasants with 14-16 (while the original is like 3-4) and some 200 Rebel General units with amazing stats (21-25 or something). Even when I attack with an army of 4500 men (mixed Warband, Peasants and Chosen Swordsmen; the Peasants being considerably weaker, the Warband being a bit weaker and the CS being stronger) I still get some Crushing Defeats and it really starts to piss me off !
My third and last problem is money. For some reason I yet have to find out I loose 20.000 denarii every turn. How is this possible, nothing changed compared to 20 turns ago. I got a couple more cities, my garissons in those cities grew but my armies on the field were all massacred by the Brutii so I guess that evens up. Furthermore my taxes are also the same etc. And when my cities in Italy and Greece make me 25.000 denarii, I can hardly believe that all my other cities would loose 40.000 denarii, I checked it and according to my lists scroll I should be making money and not loosing tons of them !
So now I need your advice. You got 96 settlements with average happyness, you have -57.000 denarii, you have only some 3.000 battle troops in the Middle-East and Turkey left (that's without he garissons in the cities), you seem to win only when you are 4-1, and 3 cities who just revolted against you have a full garisson with amazing stats while you have no realy response to it (yet?).
What would you advice me? Personally I was thinking about quitting cos I really doubt I can still win this now.
Thanks in advance.
Bookmarks