Best Campaign

[Quirinus]

^ It is now 260BC.

I am now playing a very interesting campaign with the Greek Cities-- at the start of the game (270BC), I began evacuating everyone from my initial starting territories to Gaul. There were some hiccups along the way: the former governer of Pergamum, Eumenes, got waylaid by a Julii navy, but by 265BC, most of the soldiers and family members have landed in Gaul. One of the armies also took Caralis along the way, because I anticipated that the trade would be crucial.

Massilia was under siege by a small Gallic force, which I defeated easily. I then laid siege to and captured Massilia within the year. My initial territories, which had been hanging on to loyalty, rebelled the turn after I set Massilia to be my capital.

I had been offering my cities to relevant factions: those in mainland Greece to Macedon, Syracuse to the Scipii and the Carthagenians, Pergamum and Rhodes to the Seleucids. Idiots that they are, all of them rejected the gifts except for the Seleucid Empire, which accepted Pergamum but not Rhodes. The turn after the Scipii rejected my gift of Syracuse, they sent an army down to attack Syracuse, though by then I had already evacuated the city. Where's the logic in that? The Romans, especially, I had been keen to keep as trade partners, but.....

As a result, I was losing money very turn after setting up a Greek republic in Massilia and Narbo Martius. It wasn't until I had less than 50 denarii left that I finally made a net profit, after taking Lugdunum. To cement my income, I took Osca, with its mines, from the Spanish.

The first ten years were challenging, to say the least-- with a rapidly dwindling treasury, lousy infrastructure (all the towns had only 1000+ population), and all four of my neighbouring factions at war with me (Spain, Gaul, Germania, Julii). I had to beat back a lot of Gallic armies using mostly lousy militia hoplites, though the single unit of Spartan hoplites helped a lot.

Now, with all my barbarian towns becoming Greek large towns, I don't anticipate any financial trouble anytime soon, but militarily, it is another matter. As of 260BC, toggle_fow tells me that the Spanish have a few medium-sized armies around Carthago Nova. The Gauls have a few good generals and big armies, though I spotted a Briton full stack cross over to Condate Redonum, which might help a little. The Germans, too, are a major problem, with it dominating central and eastern Europe as usual. Hopefully a war with Britannia will break out. But the biggest bogey of them all are the Julii. They haven't expanded past Segesta, but I spotted an almost-full-stack sitting idle in Etruria. I don't think it will decide to target me anytime soon-- I think they will go for Mediolanum first, but after that......

As previously mentioned, diplomacy isn't going very well at all. I repeatedly tried and failed to make peace with any of the factions at war with me-- the Gauls and the Spanish in particular seem to think very highly of themselves-- they have approached me a few times with demands for becoming their protectorate. I, of course, told them where to shove their demands. I did consider accepting-- it would end the wars and provide temporary respite, but in the interests of role-playing, I didn't.

The world map as a whole seems pretty interesting. The Gauls seem to have a firm footing in Illyria, and, with me acting a buffer between them and the Julii, it remains to be seen how Gaul -and the Julii- will fare. The Germans are up to their usual stuff, dominating central and eastern Europe and such.

In Macedon, it's the usual farce-- the Brutii haven't taken any Macedonian settlements yet, but it will, soon. I had hoped that abandoning my Greek settlements might yield a Macedon powerful enough to resist the Brutii, but the Macedonians seem to be a little lame in this campaign. They have repeatedly failed to take Athens, and no move at all has been made to take rebel, wall-less Sparta.

The situation in the East seems curiously static. The Egyptians are just sitting there, and so are the Armenians. Pontus has not been as successful in fighting the Seleucids, either. The Seleucids are doing fairly well-- their cities are relatively well-garrisoned, and none of them save Tarsus is under siege. Did my gifting of Pergamum to them make them stronger? It seems unlikely, but I don't think I've seen a game in which the AI Seleucids are still not reduced at all after ten years.


All in all, one of the most fascinating and unique campaigns I've started in a while.