The Cyrenaica AAR in this thread has been discontinued. A new Cyrenaica AAR will begin in new thread on Monday.

[htismaqe]

*** DECEMBER 6TH UPDATE ***

This AAR is not dead. I am going to start it back up again in the morning. I tried again this morning, but lost my faction leader in turn 5 when one of my cities revolted and killed him. I had to quit before I completely ruined my enjoyment of the game. I started a Pergamon Campaign and it is EXTREMELY easy, so it's going very well. It has got my spirit back up enough to give Cyrene another go. If I fail again, I have everything I need to do an AAR for the Pergamon campaign.

I sincerely hope this fiasco hasn't turned you all off from reading my AAR's.

GAME SETTINGS
XGM 5.8.4 with Alexander EXE, Large Units, Hard/Hard Difficulty
Fatigue OFF, Faster Movement OFF, Land Bridges ON, Minimal Borders ON
No Red Line ON, Prometheus Cities ON, Reduce AI Bonuses ON, Enable Loyalty ON

[Scutarii]

Nice. I definitely hope you survive longer than your other AAR did. But I have confidence you will.

[Legio]

Great start.

[htismaqe]

Nice. I definitely hope you survive longer than your other AAR did. But I have confidence you will.

Well, I had to quit the other AAR due to CTD problems. I remembered to turn off Autosave after that and haven't had a single CTD since. I'm more worried about just getting my butt kicked in this one!

[htismaqe]

I have a question for you guys - what temples are best for Greek? I don't quite understand the XGM system of temple upgrades yet.

[htismaqe]

Also, I'm open to suggestions on formatting. I like the mix of text and pictures, but the pictures are so large they overwhelm the text. Maybe I should use thumbnails instead?

[Scutarii]

No! Definitely not thumbnails. I don't know about you, but I don't even bother clicking the tumbnails in AAR's that use them. The large pictures are far better.

I actually didn't mind the many pictures and maybe only 1-2 text lines in between. A picture says 1000 words, after all.

[Mathais]

Temples for greeks I go with Artismis for wepons and armour upgrads, Posidion for naval ships with it you can build better ships and Apollo for trade for a start but it also dosent hurt to have Nike as well

[Lord Dakier]

I like this AAR much +Rep good sir.

[Stilgar CG]

Great start, htismaqe. Nice pics and good battle reporting.

P.S. Hope you will not use thumbnails. Your pics are large cause you play on a high resolution. You could always compress pics to a bit lower resolution (e.g. 1024x768) using same humble Microsoft Office Picture Manager or whatever software you prefer.

[RedFox]

This campaign needs some balancing...

[htismaqe]

I was considering using thumbnails more because I felt the text was getting lost between the large pics. I'm not worried about the file sizes at all - even the massive battle pics aren't more than 500K or so.

[htismaqe]

This campaign needs some balancing...

Can you elaborate on that please? All input is appreciated.

[RedFox]

Capturing of Alexandria right in the start was way too easy. Didn't really reflect any power that the Ptolemies should have. They should start with very well garrisoned settlements and a spawn army script to protect Alexandria wouldn't hurt either.
Would make things more exciting, don't you think?

[htismaqe]

Capturing of Alexandria right in the start was way too easy. Didn't really reflect any power that the Ptolemies should have. They should start with very well garrisoned settlements and a spawn army script to protect Alexandria wouldn't hurt either.
Would make things more exciting, don't you think?

I agree it was too easy. Unfortunately, it's really the only way the Cyrenaica provinicial campaign is viable. The AI is stupid and single-minded. As soon as they see that single human-controlled city on their western border, they abandon fighting the Seleucids and send everything they have against Cyrene. So in that sense, the game engine itself isn't realistic (the AI attacks human players no matter what).

It would be nice if the player could take a few rebel cities and build up before striking like I did, but it's just not possible. The game mechanics don't allow it.

FWIW, Alexandria does have a garrison script but since my spy opened the gates (he only had a 32% chance by the way) it never fired.

[htismaqe]

I think I'm going to remove the captions from the pictures and just work what's there into the text. Let me know what you guys think.

[Scutarii]

Alexandria has a garrison script, htismaqe just chose to ignore it, methinks. So that he could capture it easier.

[htismaqe]

Alexandria has a garrison script, htismaqe just chose to ignore it, methinks. So that he could capture it easier.

My understanding is that the script fires on the first turn after the initiation of the siege. So in the case where you employ spies or onagers to attack instantly, the script doesn't fire.

[htismaqe]

Ok, the edits are done. Let me know what you think. It's definitely easier on MY eyes now.

[Scutarii]

My bad. I forgot a spy opened the gates.

I like the edits, the bolded text makes it easier to read, and more noticeable.