The most fun, the least fun and the most frustrating gaming experiences...

[noosh]

Alright. Last post from me on this.

I must say, that I've never seen Rome conquer Gaul in 2 years (8 turns? somehow I find that hard to believe - winters alone should slow you down). What I've regularly seen is probably more accurate, namely Rome taking control of southern Italy, and then going north to conquer Gaul. And they take much more than 7 years to do that. That's roughly how long the final Gallic wars lasted, btw.

Are we talking about Ai or humans? I was referring to my experience as a human... This is how it went: Turn one. 2 Armies arrive outside of two biggest Gaul cities. Turn 2, 2 more armies arrive at that big Gaul city by Germany. Turn 3, first big Gaul cities done. Turn 4, the distant Gault city is done. Turn 5, walking towards the west coast of France and the two northern big gaul cities. Turn 6 still walking. Turn seven, siege. Turn 8. All goth cities are dead. Its true, the rebels in what is belgium and in what is southern france are also technically in Gaul but I was reffering to the Gaul empires...and this example is here to, of course, point out that in the wider sense certain nations are able to easily break historical reality of this game and others, like my experience as Carthage in Spain, only do so with an investment of 20 turns or more...which I think is both frustrating and flawed.

Not even the AS consume all the factions you mentioned in 50 years.

Lets see. Game as Geitei, turn 58 AS is occupying all of Middle East till the Suez straights and only Baktria is still somewhat independent. Game as Rome, while I conquer Greece/Gaul/Balkans the AS controls everything in the middle east - the Arabs who control Saudi Arabia plus Lebanon. Turn is bout 54.

And to your information, they did come close to taking Egypt a few times, and on at least one occasion the Ptolemies reached Mesopotamia.

Right. Good to know.

Why you complain about something that's accurate, and then go on to argue that certain things are widely inaccurate (things I don't agree entirely, especially on a non-final version), is completely beyond me.

My compliant was that conquering the Lustatanians is frustrating. Your response is that "Lusatanians were conquered only after 200 years of Roman occupation and therefor complaining about the difficulty of conquering as Carthage is bad because of this fact." My response is, not everything is 100% accurate in the game because decisions were made between historical accuracy and enjoyment of the game and I felt that creating unconquerable Spain, only for Carthage by the way because the Romans can afford to throw legions after legions in there while the Gaul capitals are near by so they dont get a crazy rebellion penalty based on capital distance, seems to embrace the orthodoxy of historical accuracy so strongly that it makes game play suffer because of it. Indeed, since as Carthage the only alternative to conquering Spain and making the game somewhat enjoyable is a quick rush into Italy which means that the Romans are done and gone and after that, as Carthage anyway, it seems kind of pointless to play on...

Further proof that this game embraces "playability" over historical accuracy could be found in the countries I named. Thus, certain nations, like the Romans or the Germans (who in 2 out of very 3 games seem to conquer almost all of the rebels/slaves if you dont attack them) are acting the way they are acting because of game balance rather than strict adherence to historical accuracy and for the most part its viewed as a "good" move.

Conversely, AS, gifted with its historical provinces and its historical troops is a mighty superpower that matches only the Mongols or the Turks in the size of its middle eastern conquests and although conquering such a titanic power is most rewarding, purely because the other Ais dont have the reserves to recover from the 3-4 defeats a human can inflict on them within a 10 turn period also leads to widely a-historical results like the end of the Pahlavi, Armenians, Pontos, Baktria and Egypt at the hands of AS...

On mercs: the village you see on the map does not represent the entire population of the area. And to think that is just plain stupid.

well I agree. However this game doesnt have the option of slaughtering everyone in the province. And with the way cities respond after rebelling, by being filled with 10 or so units of various troops, including heavy infantry, it makes cities that are highly rebellious, like those of Spain, kind of stupid. Surely, when a village of a couple thousand Portuguese's rebelled against the Romans and drove of the local garrison they didnt immediately find and dove heavy armor hidden about and march forth to whippe out every other roman legion in the province. Or maybe they did indeed do that, as I am not an expert on this subject.

All in all I'm still somewhat confused by your heavy sarcasm and use of personal insults but I guess since you seem so deeply involved with the Lustatanians I must have a struck a nerve. Or maybe you were just having a bad day. Either way, cheerio.

[mlp071]

Well, EB team never said that they are after historical accuracy of the factions expansions or demises.If they were, we would have only one winner , Romani.What they said and they are keep saying is that are trying to recreate world at beggining of the game , in 272. After that it's all open.

As for Carthage having problems in Iberia, i played Carthage several times and didn't have more than what you would expect for unrest.You do need time to kill cultural penalty by building your factions structures.In the end i had 1-3 units per province garrisoning it.

After all, that's what EB is about.Playing it for lenghty time.

And i must add conquering and stabilizing Iberia as Carthage was one of my most enjoying times in EB.It took me close to 60+ years .Took me less then 10 years to do the same with Italy.

If you think that's hard, try conquering and stabilizing India with Sauromatae.

Regarding conquering Gauls in 2 years, if you plan for it and have money and enough army , you can conquer anything fast. That's why alot of people have their own "house rules" to compensate for AI dumbness.One of them being "no blitzing".

If you don't like AS being too powerfull(not saying that i like it) , there are plenty of sub-mods that you can use and that helps with that

I agree that Sweboz overexpands , but that's something that you can blame CA for.Their limiting number of factions leaves huge open space in some areas.If it wasn't Sweboz , would be someone else.

Again , there are sub-mods that deal with that somewhat.

[Foot]

Are we talking about Ai or humans? I was referring to my experience as a human... This is how it went: Turn one. 2 Armies arrive outside of two biggest Gaul cities. Turn 2, 2 more armies arrive at that big Gaul city by Germany. Turn 3, first big Gaul cities done. Turn 4, the distant Gault city is done. Turn 5, walking towards the west coast of France and the two northern big gaul cities. Turn 6 still walking. Turn seven, siege. Turn 8. All goth cities are dead. Its true, the rebels in what is belgium and in what is southern france are also technically in Gaul but I was reffering to the Gaul empires...and this example is here to, of course, point out that in the wider sense certain nations are able to easily break historical reality of this game and others, like my experience as Carthage in Spain, only do so with an investment of 20 turns or more...which I think is both frustrating and flawed.

Lets see. Game as Geitei, turn 58 AS is occupying all of Middle East till the Suez straights and only Baktria is still somewhat independent. Game as Rome, while I conquer Greece/Gaul/Balkans the AS controls everything in the middle east - the Arabs who control Saudi Arabia plus Lebanon. Turn is bout 54.

We are talking about RTW AI, I mean what the hell do you expect from us. We are trying to balance the factions as best we can. Rome taking Gaul by turn 8 seems a tad implausible, but we can't stop everything from happening. Personally I've never seen anything like this in any of my campaigns.

Also, firstly, what you find as frustrating others will find interesting. What you find flawed, others will find accurate. Iberia should be difficult to take, regardless of who you play. If you want to throw stacks and stacks at it, then be my guest but that isn't necessarily the best way to go about it

My compliant was that conquering the Lustatanians is frustrating. Your response is that "Lusatanians were conquered only after 200 years of Roman occupation and therefor complaining about the difficulty of conquering as Carthage is bad because of this fact." My response is, not everything is 100% accurate in the game because decisions were made between historical accuracy and enjoyment of the game and I felt that creating unconquerable Spain, only for Carthage by the way because the Romans can afford to throw legions after legions in there while the Gaul capitals are near by so they dont get a crazy rebellion penalty based on capital distance, seems to embrace the orthodoxy of historical accuracy so strongly that it makes game play suffer because of it. Indeed, since as Carthage the only alternative to conquering Spain and making the game somewhat enjoyable is a quick rush into Italy which means that the Romans are done and gone and after that, as Carthage anyway, it seems kind of pointless to play on...

Wrong game, I'm afraid. We are all about the historical accuracy, as far as we can get it. But we are dealing with a game, whose AI has a hard time saying "no" to war, whose AI can't manage an economy, and whose AI thinks that the player is Public Enemy No.1. It is our philosophy that, just as history is not improved by fantasy (the real world is far more interesting than a fake one, there is just less escapism), a gameplay defined by history beats a history defined by gameplay. Whats more interesting, having to historically go out and find cavalry for your post-marian roman armies, or get ahistorical roman cav in the penisular after the marian reforms. Whats more interesting, having trouble with the unruly natives of the iberian penisular, or having a flat unresponsive map on which to carve out a digital empire. We ain't a game, we're a history.

Further proof that this game embraces "playability" over historical accuracy could be found in the countries I named. Thus, certain nations, like the Romans or the Germans (who in 2 out of very 3 games seem to conquer almost all of the rebels/slaves if you dont attack them) are acting the way they are acting because of game balance rather than strict adherence to historical accuracy and for the most part its viewed as a "good" move.

Conversely, AS, gifted with its historical provinces and its historical troops is a mighty superpower that matches only the Mongols or the Turks in the size of its middle eastern conquests and although conquering such a titanic power is most rewarding, purely because the other Ais dont have the reserves to recover from the 3-4 defeats a human can inflict on them within a 10 turn period also leads to widely a-historical results like the end of the Pahlavi, Armenians, Pontos, Baktria and Egypt at the hands of AS...

We are constantly balancing the game to make the above things not happen. We have never wanted the game to run on historical rails, without deviation from the past, but we certainly don't cheer when AS conquers the west with a strong east, or when the sweboz unite the tribes without even a proper fight, or when the romans head north instead of south. No, we don't cheer, we get back to work and find ways of making that not happen. We want the east provinces of AS to rebel, to be difficult to hold, for both the player and the AI. We want the romans to have a tough time against carthage and to have trouble making headway through gaul. We want iberia to be a tough nut to crack. But to do that we need help from you guys. How you yourself play is incredibly important. If you steamroller everyone, then no matter what we do it won't change a thing. But if you take your time, role-play your progress and focus on playing the game not as a game but as a piece of historical theatre then EB can truly appear, as how we have always wished it to.

If that isn't the type of game you want to play, we have no problem. Many EB fans like racking up the difficulty level and try to take on the AI head-to-head. Fair enough, but never ever say that we embrace gameplay over historical accuracy, its not fair, its not true ... and the EB ninja deathsquad with get you.

well I agree. However this game doesnt have the option of slaughtering everyone in the province. And with the way cities respond after rebelling, by being filled with 10 or so units of various troops, including heavy infantry, it makes cities that are highly rebellious, like those of Spain, kind of stupid. Surely, when a village of a couple thousand Portuguese's rebelled against the Romans and drove of the local garrison they didnt immediately find and dove heavy armor hidden about and march forth to whippe out every other roman legion in the province. Or maybe they did indeed do that, as I am not an expert on this subject.

We can't affect what units appear in a rebellion. I mean, I've seen cities in vanilla rebel with a load of elephants or with nothing but onagers. Its stupid, but its RTW. Secondly, as Sarcasm has already said, the village of a thousand people, does not represent the entire population of a province. Carthage had a pop. of 250,000 around our time, and that is just the city, but you could never get the population that high. So, yeah, they did rebel and they could get heavy infantry, or do you think that every revolution is made by a bunch of plebs with no army, peasant armies a myth. You want a revolution you get militia, backed with a professional wing, or you die.

Foot

[Shylence]

Im playing as the Lusitanians now and the first part of getting Iberia under my Firm grip was fun a nice challenge fighting the Carthaginians but now. rome has southern gaul just the southern bits...The field stack after stack of mercenaries against me so far ive fought them away but i only have one army to defend my border on the Ebro (the river just south of the pyrennese) so the keep siegeing numantia velika and mastia turn after turn while i fight them back...I can this turning inot a never ending struggle as a try to keep my cites cash flow up but my govenors are starting to get old..

[Tellos Athenaios]

Now then you need to think of your stengths as a faction. Very simple really: just about all troops you can recruit are most adept at hiding, so what would be the natural thing to do?

[Shylence]

OH i do that, ive been utilising my armies ambushing skills but i only have ONE army to defend the ebro river if i take it north to Emporion and capture that they will have one go round from the atlantic side and take velika then i would have to go back and sacrifice the gains i have.


its like this



R. A 1 R.A 2 R.A 3



My single army


I can only get rid of one stack at a time and then the other too will siege either numantia or Velika so then i have to relive that because the town defender wont survive against the hardcore roman troops and mecenaries. so i relive that and all and then a new set of armies appears so i get time to retrain (spenidn extra cash) and then the process repeats itself.

Im at work at the mo so when im at home tonight i will spend what will pribaly be all night making a small step forward....I hate games like this yet i love it im so gonna love destroying Rome