Sand wars

[Oleo]

I am not sure if there have already been things implemented to try and stop the Kart Hadast - Ptolemy sand wars. If you have, they dont seem to work in my campaign. Kart Hadast is about to overrun Egypt (probably partly because of Ptolemy kicking seleucid butt), does anyone else experience this as well:






p.s. I am casse

[iberus_generalis]

i love sand wars.... personally i start financing the losing party... to make the contenders grow weak and then easier for me to conquer...=)

[Tiberius Nero]

Many people had the same complaint in RTR and there was a landblock add-on introduced which created an impassable land barrier in Libya. Perhaps something similar might be in order, more complex perhaps, since the EB map extends much more south into Africa than RTR's.

[BozosLiveHere]

I would consider the sand wars a problem if in most games carthage and ptolemies spent all the time fighting meaningless battles in the middle of the sahara. What seems to be happening in your campaign is a large scale invasion by carthage. Can't see how that's a bad thing, especially if it's not happening in all games.

[olly]

I think the problem would be, as I have encounterd in RTR, that if you are playing Carthage and trying to expand into Italy or Iberia you do not want the Ptolemies sending stack after stack accross land that is realistically impassable. As it seems it is only the other way round in EB it should be no worries for me when I give Carthage a go.

I would imagine it would be the same worry for a Ptolemy player though.

Just also re-read the thread and if it is not happening every game it is even less of a problem.

[Reverend Joe]

The Carthaginians actually appear to be a major power in your campaign; given the circumstances, a war like the one you are seeing would not be historically inaccurate.

The "sand wars" problem was the endless battles in the middle of the Sahara, which was extremely unrealistic.

[cdbavg400]

In other news, look at Macedon go! Talk about superpowers.

Okay, off to my Latin final. (I hate Livy.)

[Zaknafien]

Well Cyrenacia is hardly the Sahara..

[GiantMonkeyMan]

in my samartia campaign i've also noticed carthage and ptolmy fighting over Kyrene... its not as bad as 0.7x and its been much longer before i considered it stupid

GMM

[Oleo]

Well Cyrenacia is hardly the Sahara..

then again, Cyrenacia is not the only place filled with stacks

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

I like what EB has done to the sahara, mostly the consolidation of territories and future removal of one. I am a fan of illiminating the possiblity of crossing the desert totally. Ancient Egypt didn't remain autonomous for so long and avoid things like the rise of the 'seapeople' just because they were advanced. They had a nation that could not be invaded. They didn't have to place defenders in the west, they could concentrate power in one area (Sinai and sometimes Upper Egypt), something you can't do in RTW. Though I like that I can defend Kyrene or Lepki and be mostly safe elsewhere.

[Samurai Waki]

Perhaps if you could add a trait for Armies crossing the Desert, making your supply lines rediculously low, that by the time you enter a Neighboring Region, Your Moral would take such a huge negative effect you simply couldn't win. Only by following the Mediterranean Coast could you avoid such a conflict. But then you'd have to take Kyrene...which isn't a very easy task.

[Kull]

I am not sure if there have already been things implemented to try and stop the Kart Hadast - Ptolemy sand wars. If you have, they dont seem to work in my campaign. Kart Hadast is about to overrun Egypt (probably partly because of Ptolemy kicking seleucid butt), does anyone else experience this as well

The team spent a lot of time on this issue, as should be apparent from a comparison with the v.74 map. After much discussion, we decided that the real objective was to eliminate the true Sand Wars, i.e the battles deep within the desert in the second and third tier provinces. We could have gone one step futher and physically separated Carthage from the Ptolemies, but decided that EB is about historical "might-have-beens", and we didn't want to remove the possibility of ANY war between them. Personally I'm not totally thrillled about the Rommel-esque coastal road battles, but it's a huge improvement over v.74 and we'll monitor your reports to see if anything additional is necessary.

[Gazius]

I'm curious, (and sick of this Junior member thing), is there a script that forces one to attack the other if one attacks Kyrene?

[LorDBulA]

Yes, Kyrnae is a protected city related to both Ptolemies and Seleukids. If its attacked by Tsorim Ptolemies will intervene. If its attacked by Ptolemies Seleukids will intervenes.

[Thaatu]

A little offtopic, but I'd like to see Macedonia try to regain Alexander's empire instead of the "baltic expedition". Has anyone seen them expanding into Asia minor and into the "fertile cresent"?

[orwell]

Yes, Kyrnae is a protected city related to both Ptolemies and Seleukids. If its attacked by Tsorim Ptolemies will intervene. If its attacked by Ptolemies Seleukids will intervenes.

Is there anything for carthage as well? How was Kyrnae a interest of Seleukids? Diplomatic ties between the city and the empire? Or was it just an end of the Alexandrian empire and therefore important?

[LorDBulA]

From what i remeber from discusion there was some family connections with both Ptolemies and Seleukids witch kept Kyrnae in the middle.
So basically if one side would attack it ruler of Kyrnae could always ask his other family for help.

[Oleo]

The team spent a lot of time on this issue, as should be apparent from a comparison with the v.74 map. After much discussion, we decided that the real objective was to eliminate the true Sand Wars, i.e the battles deep within the desert in the second and third tier provinces. We could have gone one step futher and physically separated Carthage from the Ptolemies, but decided that EB is about historical "might-have-beens", and we didn't want to remove the possibility of ANY war between them. Personally I'm not totally thrillled about the Rommel-esque coastal road battles, but it's a huge improvement over v.74 and we'll monitor your reports to see if anything additional is necessary.

wow, now there is the answer I was aiming at.

Thanx a lot, sir!!

[nikolai1962]

We could have gone one step futher and physically separated Carthage from the Ptolemies, but decided that EB is about historical "might-have-beens", and we didn't want to remove the possibility of ANY war between them.

A side-effect of the sand war is it means the Carthage AI doesn't reinforce Iberia/Sicily much from the African cities, so the expansion there depends almost entirely on what can be produced locally. What would be sweet would be land-block and a working naval expansion route from say Syracuse to Cyrene. Carthage getting into a war over Cyrene seems quite plausible historically (if they hadn't been beat up by the romans). Just a shame the naval expansion doesn't work very well in RTW.

A little offtopic, but I'd like to see Macedonia try to regain Alexander's empire instead of the "baltic expedition". Has anyone seen them expanding into Asia minor and into the "fertile cresent"?

You have to rig the starting position a lot to get them to do this regularly. The AI has a strong preference for attacking rebel regions but an even stronger one for attacking adjacent land regions of other AI factions they are at war with. By setting up a chain of weak garrisoned rebel cities along the route to asia minor and starting macedon not at war with any adjacent AI factions *and* those factions having adjacent rebel regions to attack so they don't attack macedon etc etc. Lot of "ifs" involved in it. Plus macedon starts off quite surrounded and the AI can sometimes get very passive when that happens so it might not work anyway. Can be done though.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

If anyone is really really interested in stopping all wars there, all they have to do is open up the regions tga file in the base subfolder and make the Sahara extend all the way to the sea (using photoshop - make sure anti-aliasing is turned off though). It will allow passage, but will really keep the Ptolemies and Carthies away from each other and is an easy change.

[Gazius]

If anyone is really really interested in stopping all wars there, all they have to do is open up the regions tga file in the base subfolder and make the Sahara extend all the way to the sea (using photoshop - make sure anti-aliasing is turned off though). It will allow passage, but will really keep the Ptolemies and Carthies away from each other and is an easy change.

Is that save game compatible? I wouldn't mind if it were epic battles, but when their just wasting troops on it, when Carthage could be doing even more naval invasions (carthage, Seleukia, KH, Epirus, Ptolemy, Rome, I've personally observed, and have even been on the recieving end quite a few times, though I've yet to see the Casse do it) has got to be one of the BEST game improvements so far. I don't know if its related to using BI, but when Italy is no longer completely safe, it makes game play so much more rewarding.

[Gazius]

Oleo, would you mind posting your fix in the unofficial mod forum? Seems a fitting candidate for that forum. I'm restarting my game with it, hopefully the ptolemies won't be distracted this time, because seleukid in all my games so far is a unopposed, very aggressive monster.

[Oleo]

Oleo, would you mind posting your fix in the unofficial mod forum? Seems a fitting candidate for that forum. I'm restarting my game with it, hopefully the ptolemies won't be distracted this time, because seleukid in all my games so far is a unopposed, very aggressive monster.

sure