Living with the Yellow Death (Ptolemies)

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

As we all know, the AI Ptolemies faction is unbalanced at the moment in EB 1.0 due to a couple of their units being near-invincible in auto-calc battles, and they take over the eastern half of the world unless the human player stops them.

I was wondering how other people are managing to live with this.

For myself, for long campaigns, I've resorted to playing factions who almost never have to fight the Ptolemies throughout the campaign - the northern and western barbarian factions like the Casse, Aedui, Arveni, Sweboz and Lusotanns.

And usually, these barbarian factions are fighting enemies who themselves aren't too greatly affected by the Ptolemies, so I'm not fighting enemies who the Ptolemies have 'unrealistically' over-weakened.

Or I'll play short campaigns with the other factions (except for the Seleucids) that end once the Ptolemies start taking over.

What do you do?

[Megas Pyrrhos]

I accept the inevitable, and go from there.

If I can't accept the inevitable, I destroy the inevitable.

[Obelics]

the first time it was funny, i remember in a KH campaign EB0.74, i destroyed the Ptolemaics, but a second time it become boring, so a Chartaginian campaign in 0.81 and another in 1.0, just ended as Ptolems started to send stack after stack of armies.

[anubis88]

Well if you play with the Seleucids or Carthage you can keep them at bay. You just have to try to stop them before they become unstopable.
When i play with the Seleucid i Conquer all of their provinces in Asia Minor and the Levant, keep a strong army near Jerusalem, to fight any possible invasion.
If i play with Carthage i conquer cyrene and give it to KH to whom the Ptolies are allied. It helps to create such a buffer state.
But if you play with Pontus or Hayasdan you pretty much can't stop them from attacking you relentesly

[Visitor13]

If Carthage goes to war with the Ptolemies, the latter will eventually be crushed, even if they've got as far as Seleukia.

At least that's what happened in one of my campaigns.

[Moosemanmoo]

If I'm not the AS then I'll sometimes create_unit decent armies in Seleukid cities, I know it's cheating but sending armies over simply to give back land to those that lost it gets tiring

[Digby Tatham Warter]

The Ptolemies or any faction which become to dominant, in the interest of variety and fairplay in my campaigns, recieve a military/skulldugery rebuke.

In my present Rome campaign I am giving the Seleukids their cities back, and holding off the Ptolemies armies at Jerusalem, in an attempt to redress the balance somewhat.