Job: Readme and Faction Guides

[DimeBagHo]

I have re-organised the XGM readme with the aim of making it more useful to new players. As you can see, some of the Faction Guides are quite skimpy, so this is your chance to write up a guide for your favourite faction. You can use the GCS guide as a template, with the sections looking something like this:

-Brief description of the faction.
-Sections on any significant features of the faction, like loyalty, rebels, etc.
-Discussion of the unit roster.
-List of units.
-Discussion of early strategy.

Suggestions for things to add to the General Guide are also welcome, but actual contributions would be even better.

[Zarax]

I'll try my hand with Carthage later, it shouldn't be a problem as it's usually my test faction...

[Kara Kolyo]

I could give a try on Thrace and Parthia, but it might not happen right away since i have to paint some walls first

[Zarax]

Let's start with a Carthaginian stump, I'll edit this post to expand it...

Brief description of the faction:

Carthage has been deeply changed from vanilla gameplay style and it's a pretty unique faction in XGM.
While in vanilla they had a varied but weak infantry roster, excellent cavalry and good elites usually they were just destroyed by the romans and egyptians.

XGM changed this by giving them a new, more balanced roster and made harder for AI to start desert wars, making the phoenicians one of the most interesting factions to play, powerful but more reliant on local units than anyone else.

-Sections on any significant features of the faction, like loyalty, rebels, etc:

Carthage also features loyalty and its own rebel faction based in numidia at the start of the game, making the conquest of Africa more challenging as well as late game.

-Discussion of the unit roster:
Carthage has one of the most varied unit rosters in the game.
It sports a mix of hellenistic, roman and barbarian tactics, mostly depending where the faction will fight as recruitment varies wildly.
The unique carthaginian feature is the civic unit line.
Civic units can be recruited anywhere with the right barracks and colony but they start weaker than the equivalent AOR units, this emulates the fact that the carthaginian citizens were not really trained for war but fought only when the situation was dire.
Carthage also can train a better variety of AOR than most factions, meaning more tactical flexibility when recruiting outside their homelands.

At game start you have 3 main recruitment zones:
- Africa, where you can recruit excellent skirmish cavalry, heavy peltasts and hoplite style infantry plus elephants-
- Iberia, where you can recruit excellent skirmishers, medium cavalry and medium/heavy infantry
- Sicily, where you can recruit greek units.

-List of units

(GVT) Milita, cheap spearmen useful mostly for garrison purposes, can do schiltrom

Factional Barracks:
Civic light infantry, poor quality heavy peltast, useful mostly to boost wall defenses until gets some experience
Civic heavy infantry, lower quality hoplite-style infantry, still useful as they are well armoured and can make shield wall
Civic cavalry, quite useful medium cavalry
Sacred Band Cavalry, excellent elite cavalry
Sacred Band Infantry, elite hoplite-style infantry, can do shield wall.
Elephants, you know them.

Auxiliary Barracks, this is where Carthage shines:

Africa:
Numidian Peltasts, pretty standard skirmishers
Lybian light infantry, heavy skirmishers, useful as ranged infantry and to cover slower units
Numidian Cavalry, excellent skirmish cavalry, with some experience those guys becomes killing machines
Lybian Spearmen, hoplite style infantry good for defensive purposes, can make shield wall
Numidian Archers, average bowmen

Iberia:
Iberian skirmishers, excellent light infantry good for skirmishing and decent flankers
Scutarii, medium swordsmen, pretty much the equivalent of hastati
Heavy Scutarii, heavy infantry, pretty much the equivalent of principes
Iberian Cavalry, good medium/heavy cavalry
Balearic slingers, excellent ranged inf that is lethal with a few chevrons

Other:
Gaesatae, barbarian fanatic infantry that slaughters lighter units in droves


-Discussion of early strategy:

Carthaginian early moves requires you to make a clear choices.
You will have to fight on three fronts (Africa, Iberia and Sicily) and can afford to hold two at best.
You can either put all your strength in fighting the romans or conquer Iberia.

Taking on the romans is harder but will prevent the marian reforms and the arrival of those nasty legionaries, while if you choose to let Sicily go you can create a solid base of operations in Iberia, meaning that you will be well equipped when the clash against the legions will come.

Either way, make sure that those nasty rebels in Africa won't stab you in the back or you won't be able to hold out in any other front without having to play every battle.
Once you have western Africa and Iberia or Italy in your hands you will be rich enough to afford one or two stacks of elite and professional troops, especially if you invested in colonizing the place.
With the troop mix at your disposal you can play both hellenistic and roman style of warfare, you can beat any enemy as long as you don't try taking them head on in close combat.

My personal general purpose mix:

1 general
5 militia phalanx (decent anvil, just don't try to use them for anything else)
4 light infantry (to shower whatever comes close to your phalanx, can be more early in game)
4 heavy infantry (to protect those vulnerable flanks)
2 numidian cavalry (4 early in game, to tire and lure out enemy heavy units)
2 heavy cavalry (your anvil)
1 elephant (good both to mop up those legionaries or scare off cavalry)
1 balearic slingers (to keep bombarding enemy inf, once it reaches silver it will be a pretty good killer, at gold they will be like artillery)

[LucretiusTC]

I´ve got some random comments about the General Guide.

I was wondering if there´s a need to give any hints for the new players how to use and deal with certain special units like Elephants, Chariots or Horse Archers and situations like bridge battles and siege warfare. Or maybe it is better to learn it in the hard way and watch how the units are running away...or perhaps those hints could be included to those Faction Guides.

Otherwise there were some minor misspellings with those Roman cognomen "Africanus" and "Britannicus".

To be honest when I have played XGM for quite a long time it is difficult to remember what was typical for the vanilla RTW. Maybe the General Guide could mention that the Roman Faction doesn´t include three families and the Senate anymore and that the campaign map is whole lot of different comparing to the vanilla RTW.


Luc.

[Zarax]

Ok, Carthage is pretty much done, let me know what you think...

[Zarax]

What faction would you like to see done next?

[Kara Kolyo]

the yellow nuclear submarine

[Zarax]

The ptolemies?

[Scutarii]

Looking good, I think this is a great idea to prepare new players for what the factions have in store for them.

[Warmaster]

Woah, good work on the Carthage guide Zarax, you've given me a craving to go try them out now!

I think the main factions that will be needing one is Rome, Ptolemies and the Seleucids. Although they're all pretty tough ones to write a guide on (especially the Seleucids...)

[Zarax]

Well, does Rome really need a guide?
They are so overpowered that I don't even fight battles with them and are still pretty much the same as vanilla...

[Kara Kolyo]

But in vanila you don't face that chap Pyhrus....
And yes the ywllow perill is ptolemies

[Kara Kolyo]

Here's my try on Thrace
Compared to vanilla RTW, Thrace in XGM has been sublect to deep changes. In vanilla, Thrace had short, but interesting unit roster, consisting mostly of hellenistic style units.
In XGM Thrace is barbarian faction with unique advantages compared to the other barbarians - it can build paved roads and due to it's long and turbulent at times relations with the neighbouring greeks, Thrace has exclusive access to hellenic units via the auxiliary barracs.

-Discussion on the unit roster. parafrasing Herodotus - The thracians have unit roster second in variety only to the carthaginians. The regular roster includes warband, thracian peltasts, falxmen, thracian torakitai (that's like having praetorians everywhere but much cooler!), archers, thracian light cavalry, heavy and noble cavalry, artilery.
In the provinces south of Danube the thracians can recruit from the three levels of auxiliary barracks - peltasts, thureophoroi, slingers, archers, militia phalahgites, regular phalangites, hoplites, militia and light cavalry.

-Early strategy - immediate neighbours of Thrace are Macedon to the south, independant gauls to the north and independant greeks to southeast and east. Thrace is rather poor and with small army in the early game to wage war on more than one front. In the early years Macedon has significant superiority in quality and quantity of the troops. So early clash with the macedonians is not prefferable. One way to avoid this is not to capture the city of Sardica. Yes it is lightly defended and has mines, but it's the shortest way to pick up a fight with the Antigonids in the first turns. Don't worry they will attack you by the end of the first decade, but by then you will be ready for them.
So the safer ways are going after the gauls or the greeks.
The independant gauls have three cities in the region, of wich only Sarmizegetuza is important for it's iron resource, allowing construction of foundries. the other two towns are just for gaining more land and securing your position so not to be attacked by them when concentrating on Macedon. This is the safest way in the short turn, but it will eventually make you neighbour of the romans and the germans.
The second direction is to attack the independant greeks. The city of Byzantium is rich and it's the gate towards Asia Minor. If you have activated land bridges this is also the gate to the snakepit that Anatolia is. Taking Byzantium is a two bladed sword. If you take after that Nicomedia or Cyzicus, you are inviting Pontus and the Seleucids to attack. So this strategy is mostly for the players who like to take risks.
Soon after capturing the desired cities, the macedonians will attack. If you have build enough economic infrastructure, the fight will not be completely one sided. The massive use of thracian peltasts and light cavalry will allow inflicting heavy damages to the macedonian armies. The first targets in this war are Sardica, Amphipolis and especially Pela. Once the macedonian capital is captured, the future of the new thracian empire is secured at least for a while.
My early army.
1 - 2 generals
4 thracian light cavalry
2-4 thracian peltasts
2 - 4 falxmen
2 warband - to hold some enemy phalanxes while the real killers (peltasts and falxmen) get arround their flanks
As many hoplite mercs as available - their purpose is the same as the warbands, but they have better chances of survival.
2 slingers - the enemy uses missile units that are deadly for the unarmored thracian troops. These guys have the main purpose to fend off enemy skirmishers and archers.

Today or tommorrow will write parthian descr.

[DimeBagHo]

Zarax - Thanks for the Carthage guide. I re-worked it a bit, and added it to the readme.

Kara Kolyo: Thanks for the Thrace guide. I wrote up a short one myself, so I'll work this stuff into it sometime soon.

[Zarax]

Maybe we can bring back unit descriptions as well?

[supeerme]

Let make a fully extensive strategy guide for XGM players to make sure that no-one will die very quickly while playing XGM.

It should be the following things FOR EACH FACTION!

-Units
-Starting location
-first turn problems e.g. Rome has a first turn problem involving The Independent Greeks states.
-what their troops are good at.
-weakness and how to stop/exploit it.

But we need to organize it into this:
who will do each faction?
And how much has been completed?

If you agree then please post.

[Da Erobara]

I totally aggree that this is a splendid idea! These guides perhaps need to be adjusted once a new, important unit is included, but that's just a minor thing. It would really help a lot of people, especially as XGM is no cake-walk.

[Ephialtes The Dog]

It would be pretty cool to do.

P.S. supeerme you and I could work on Saba.

[supeerme]

wow. the two threads merged into one...

On my guide it will need to be the full works.
The list will change as it progress...

Faction list: (and who is doing it)
Rome:
Greek Citys States:
Thrace:
TSE:
Saba:Supeerme +Ephialtes The Dog
and more but can't be bothered to type the rest.