Is Pontos impossible? Success stories wanted.

[LostINN]

When u play with Pontus u can get a ceasefire with Ptolemaio and they gonna pay u 12.5k Mnari ! But remind dont take Mazakaa in the first round ( works if u get the spy inside the town) because u need it as a border between u and Ptolemaio otherwhise they dont gonna accept ! If u attack and capture Mazaka the next rounds u can also get ceasefire again with AS and they gonna pay 7.5 Mnari ( maybe not in the same round but 2 rounds later) sometimes also in the same round If u attack AS some rounds later again for example in Antiocheia to make some quick money from looting and destroying the city ! u have the chance that the AS gonna ask u for a ceasefire again ! If u offer them Antiocheia as a gift and ask for 5k they offer an alliance! From looting Antiocheia and destroying the builldings u gonna get another 18k boost but dont destroy the blacksmith in the first round because u can upgrade your army there ! In the beginning i allways dispand some troops and i have just the 6 phalanx men left ! U still have some Mnari left now so build some foreign barracks in Mazaka to get some caucasian archers and a mine that gonna give u some income ! Now move your 6 phalanx men back to your capital an retrain them and train about 6 caucasian archers if u stay with the goverment thats is in Mazakaa the gonna have 2 valour allready ! Now u have an army consits of 6phalanx pikemen and 6 archers leave 2 phalanx men and 2 archers in Mazakaa the AS gonna attack there soon and move the rest (4 phalanx men and 4 archers ) to attack Sinope or directly to Pergamon (there is a mine allready ) but take care of the rebbell army near Pergamon !!!


The army consits of 4 Phalanx men and 4 archers is good enough to get all rebell citys near to you!

If u feel secure in Mazaka move the army out and attack with all your troops the 2 AS cities in theWest (Ipsos and Sardis)to get rid of the danger and there are also mines inside !

If u dispand some troops and u just stay with your Phalanx men u gonna have a positive income after u took Antiocheia . Maybe stay there2-3 rounds to get some more money but i allways gave Antiocheia back to the AS because the citiy was burned down and i thought it would be the best to get out of the Sandwich between Ptolemaio and AS ! After u upgradet your Phalax men in Antiocheia also destroy the blacksmith

[kaptainplanet]

I have played 3 campaings with pontus, ause i love them and my pc always crashes sooner or later with EB (grrrrrrrrrrr), but it lasts long enought to conquer all asia minor and move beyond. In my last one i had conquered asia minor, hayasdan and syria, and i had 3 full stacks: one going at babylonia, one attaking israel, and the other at the north, falling on the AS like a beast from that big lake i cant remember its name, the one on the right of the hayasdans.
i was surprised to read that AS attacks pontus, it has never attacked me!!!!!! in 3 games!!!
well, how i do it, is i start by reqruiting and conquering the eleftheroi towns at the northern asia minor, then i wait and mnai by mnai i buid a few roads and markets to boost trade, i wai and i wait more and more and then i build a few mines, then i make a small army and retrain and go for byzandium and the rest free towns at the coast of Mikra Asia, and then i make 2 armies of Hoplites, and i blietz the AP, and after i do that i retrain them , put my initian Pontus army guarding my eastern front, and with 3 Hoplite armies i blitz the Ptolemies. Then, I am the monarch of all asia minor, plus Mytiline so i can go at summer and subathe nude :DDD, and i concentrate on economy, mines, et. Mines are crucial and my then u have like 5 towns with mines, so i build them before i move further. Then it is time to easily crash the Armenians, make my chariots and ride to slash everyone in my path:DDD
at first i am sweaty and at the verge of heart attack in fear of an AS attack, but it never happens at my games, so if u play it patiently and nice, u quicklu become an economical miracle!!
i cant wait to go home, upgrade my pc so it doesnt crash, and play as Pontus again!!!

[FriendlyFire]

How to have an (unintentionally) slow game as Pontos, based on my current campaign :)

1. Don't find this thread until you're several years into your campaign, and it's too late to blitz Arche Seleukia (oops)
2. Sell into slavery the inhabitants of the first towns that you capture, in a desperate attempt to pay off your debts (double oops - see later!)

Note that this is on M/M, using the fix for BI.exe and its updated historical targets for the AI. I have the force-diplomacy mod installed and was prepared to use it in the early game if the AI did something stupid (like declaring war because one of their admirals decided to blockade a port), but didn't need to.

The three cities that my first army took were Sinope, Trapezous, and Ankyra. That left me with a nice compact empire and just two cities bordering the AS (Amaseia and Ankyra), each of which I garrisoned with two battered phalangites, skirmishers, and a family member. Those garrisons seemed to act as an effective deterrent, and after I starved out the last city in 264 BC I started making ~1,000 a turn and could begin to pay off my ~17,000 debt. I then hunkered down for the next ten years to build my economy. I also stayed allied with the AS when Pahlava, Baktria, and the Hayasdan split from them, which might have kept me in their good books.

In 253 BC the AS finally attacked, sending a half-stack (with scythed chariots!) from Ipsos towards Ankyra. Thankfully I had just started recruiting again and could move my own half-stack across to block them after an initial skirmish. Then I sent my influence-8 diplomat to negotiate a ceasefire. They accepted, and this bought me enough time to swing my army around and besiege and capture Mazaka from them. The AI isn't the only one allowed to break a ceasefire :). I finally challenged and beat their chariot army in 250 BC, with the help of Caucasian archers from Trapezous. After a couple more field battles to destroy the rest of their strength in the area, I moved down and took Tarsos (which they had previously captured from the Ptolemaioi), and then hopped over to Antiocheia.

So, it's now 247 BC and I have seven regions, anchored on Ankyra in the west and Antiocheia in the southeast. The other factions have just started colliding, so the situation around me is getting very interesting indeed:

• Arche Seleukia (enemies) have two cities left in Asia Minor, Ipsos and Sardis. They recently sent most of their troops from these cities to besiege rebel Nikaia and wipe out its garrison, only to stand dumbly outside the empty city for a season, which allowed...
• Epeiros (allies) to swoop over from Byzantion and capture Nikaia from under the noses of the AS. Yup, after being kicked out of Italy the Epeirotes marched east through Makedonian territory, and made it to Asia Minor! Nikaia just rebelled out from under them, so we'll see what happens next.
• Ptolemaioi (allies) are busy carving their way up the coast through AS cities. I had felt a little bad about taking Tarsos and then Antiocheia so quickly, until I saw that the Ptolemaioi had already captured Sidon and Damaskos to the south! One more year and they'd have been in Antiocheia. In Asia Minor, a Ptolemaioi army also just moved out of Side to besiege Sardis.
• Makedonia (neutral) is trying to stage a desperate comeback. They had been reduced to just Demetrias in the west and Mytilene in Asia Minor, but they've recently captured Athens and their Mytilene stack is making a second attempt at conquering rebel Pergamon.
• Hayasdan (allies) seem content to try endless sieges against rebel towns in the mountains to the east.
• As'Sab'yn wal'Jau (neutral) have Palmyra, just to the southeast of Antiocheia. Edit: I understand this can be because of a rebellion?

In the far east, the Pahlavans and AS are grinding away at each other. The AS also had a province that was cut off inside Baktrian territory, which always makes the AI go nuts recruiting a huge army to defend the isolated city. Wasn't enough, because that city just rebelled, so maybe now the Arche Seleukeia can concentrate their resources elsewhere.

Not quite sure if my next move should be east or west. To the east I could grab Edessa from the AS, but that would be just to stop the Ptolemaioi or As'Sab'yn wal'Jau from taking it. Karkathiokerta in the mountains is also tempting, but it has a half-stack of axemen and Kinsmen Heavy Cavalry inside! And I really want the AS to survive in some form for a while longer to keep the eastern hordes at bay, so I'm tempted to leave them with the riches of Babylon and Seleukeia. To the west I could aim at rebel Nikaia (risking an attack from Epeiros), rebel Pergamon (risking an attack from the Makedonians) or AS Ipsos (risking an attack from the Ptolemaioi).

I also need a new army. My last one ended up as the faction leader, four Pantodapoi Phalangitai, two Thureophoroi guarding their sides, two Caucasian archers, and Galatian Shortswordsmen from Ankyra to flank, but most of those will stay in Antiocheia as a garrison. And as a result of selling those initial cities into slavery, and pumping out Pantodapoi Phalangitai from my capital, I have only just reached 6,000 population in one city - my troops were amazed at the size of Antiocheia when they captured it :) I'm also starting to see other factions fielding elite units like Chaonian Agema and Hypaspistai, so I have some catching up to do. Just to complicate things I have a house rule not to recruit mercenaries until/unless I see the AI doing it (unlikely on M/M), and that any town with a population of <2000 is not allowed to send troops on campaigns (they can recruit them as local garrisons in emergencies, which Ankyra did once in the early game).

Anyway, tons of fun. Those years of hunkering down got quite stressful with AS armies sniffing around, but now I'm earning ~5,000 a turn and seem (relatively) secure in the short term. I just have to choose my next enemy!

[gamegeek2]

Consolidate your empire - take Sinope, Trapezous, and . Then rush Ipsos and Sardis - take them as quickly as you can. AFAIK one of these two, if not both of them, have mines, an invaluable bonus in your struggle against the Grey Death.

After that, take Antiocheia at all costs and blow up their MIC there. That'll stop their flow of guys and if you can hang on to it, all the better. Be warned, the Ptollies will often ceasefire with the Seleukids and declare war on you if you take Antiocheia, so don't be afraid to give it to the Hai - meaning either the Seleukids declare war on the Hai or Antiocheia stays out of their hands. You'll be going after the Hai later anyways.

[athanaric]

After that, take Antiocheia at all costs and blow up their MIC there. That'll stop their flow of guys and if you can hang on to it, all the better. Be warned, the Ptollies will often ceasefire with the Seleukids and declare war on you if you take Antiocheia, so don't be afraid to give it to the Hai - meaning either the Seleukids declare war on the Hai or Antiocheia stays out of their hands. You'll be going after the Hai later anyways.

And you can use all Hai MICs, should they bother to build any of these at Antiocheia.

[FriendlyFire]

I continued on to take Ipsos and Sardis from the AS, then planned to take a short breather to consolidate and build up my strength again. No such luck! The Ptolemaioi and Arche Seleukeia negotiated a ceasefire, and then they both started sending stacks against Antiocheia as you'd predicted, with some AS stacks continuing on to besiege Tarsos, or coming through the eastern mountains to threaten my heartland. Luckily I had gone for the fastest possible government in Antiocheia, which meant that by the time the first big Ptolemaioi stack arrived it had just started churning out Hoplitai Haploi and Cappadoccian Hillmen. My client ruler has been fighting heroic battles with these poor troops, throwing them into breaches in the walls, headlong countercharges against Kinsmen Heavy Cavalry, going toe-to-toe to against Thorakitai, the lot.

Meanwhile Makedonia and Epeiros have divided up the west coast of Asia Minor between them, and are squabbling over each other's conquests. I'm praying that they continue fighting each other instead of turning on me as well. I guess the only "good" news is that I have one more AS stack to defeat, and then their nearby cities to the east are depleted and ripe for conquest. The Ptolemaioi to the south, however, are a different matter. Thanks for the idea of the gift-Antiocheia-to-the-Hai trick -- I'll use it if things get *really* desperate :)

One question -- where in the #!&*%# are the Ptolemaioi training Klerouchoi Phalangitai with three silver chevrons of experience? Those guys are just nasty.

[Ludens]

One question -- where in the #!&*%# are the Ptolemaioi training Klerouchoi Phalangitai with three silver chevrons of experience? Those guys are just nasty.

The problem is that when retraining a unit the new soldiers get the same exp level as the old ones. A unit that has been decimated often has high experience levels, so when retraining it you get a monster unit. And the A.I. uses autocalc, which seems to units more experience and often results in decimated units, so the end result is high experience levels.

Experience does not protect against missiles, though. Myabe you could try pinning them and setting a slinger unit in their rear. Slingers have AP projectiles to overcome the phalangite's armour, and by firing into the rear or unshielded side you can avoid the extreme phalanx-shieldvalues.

[Tanit]

Am just starting a Pontus game on VH/VH using the BI exe. Wish me luck! Its only 270 BC and I have already captured Sinope and am besieging Nikaia. With the RTW exe I was previously able to attack the Seleucids right away and dominate Anatolia fast enough to rebuild before they could send big armies after me. But that proved far more difficult on the BI exe, not impossible, but I was getting frustrated so I started over.

[Satyros]

In my Pontos campaign I took a different approach - I blitzed the AS right away. There are three reasons for this:

1. Your armies are perfectly positioned to take their cities immediately. If you send a spy to Mazaka then you can take that city on the first turn.

2. Their other two cities (Ipsos and Sardis) have mines already built in, meaning that you will get out of debt earlier.

3. If you take all their cities in Asia Minor immediately then the AS can only attack you from the east, which is good for bottle-necking.


You are going to find yourself at war with the AS eventually, so you might as well face them on your terms while your armies are at full strength.

This

Satyros

[Olaf The Great]

Thankfully the AI is less antagonistic in m2 and diplomacy actually works so breathing room is possible

[Grouchio]

What if you just migrated from Pontus to the Crimean Bosphorous?

[Satyros]

Slightly off topic question :

Do you think that EB2 will have a less psycho killer CAI , because of the engine ?

Satyros

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

Am just starting a Pontus game on VH/VH using the BI exe. Wish me luck! Its only 270 BC and I have already captured Sinope and am besieging Nikaia. With the RTW exe I was previously able to attack the Seleucids right away and dominate Anatolia fast enough to rebuild before they could send big armies after me. But that proved far more difficult on the BI exe, not impossible, but I was getting frustrated so I started over.

VH/VH? You're dead, Tanit. Your faction leader will be nailed to his own palace door....

[Ludens]

Do you think that EB2 will have a less psycho killer CAI , because of the engine ?

Yes. I haven't played M2:TW much, but I understand the diplomatic A.I. can be modded to become more reasonable. There's also more feedback in the diplomacy screen, so you have a better idea of what's going on. I don't expect a clever diplomatic A.I., but I am pretty sure it will be a lot less rabid.

[Satyros]

Yes. I haven't played M2:TW much, but I understand the diplomatic A.I. can be modded to become more reasonable. There's also more feedback in the diplomacy screen, so you have a better idea of what's going on. I don't expect a clever diplomatic A.I., but I am pretty sure it will be a lot less rabid.

Thank you for answering .

I have enough experience with MTW2 , I was not thrilled , but I don't know the extend of the possible CAI modifications in MTW2 , as I am not a modder , nor have I played many MTW2 mods .

So , thanks for the good news . A less rabid A.I. will give us a better game .

Satyros