My own modded campaign

[Stoneface]

I was a bit disappointed at my xgm campaign as gcs because I mainly fought armies of thureophoroi and levy pikeman. The AI simply did not build hight level baracks and if it did only one or two good units were in one stack. I decided to experiment a little and on my next campaign I reduced the building time for all buildings to one turn.

Campaign Discription:
XGM 3.6.11-13 (I think)
Faction:Seleucid Empire
MM and BI-XGM installed
Hard campaign difficulty and normal Battle difficulty (I am not a big fan of higher difficulty level but with so many thinks to build the AI needed some economic boost)
Cheats : toggle_fow and toggle_perfect_spy
Permanent unrest and bandits/pirates modded out
All phalangites/pikekeman units can be recruited in non hellenic provinces at a barrack one level higher. Levy Pikeman need city barracks in non hellenic provinces (Intersting on MM). In hellenic provinces with royal barracks all phalangites/pikeman get one extra chevron.

After the first few turns my economy was stable and I used automanage for construction. Since you have time to build (almost) everything you want your cities and your econony to grow fast and the formerly useless farm upgrades are very useful now. In the early wars against pontus, armenia, parthia and the ptolomies I did not see as many higher level troops as I hoped for but it was an improvement. I regulary came across heavy spearman and saw some agema axeman, persian cavalery and cataphract archers. A far bigger problem was the lack of levy pikeman in my large towns in my brder regions. A few levy pikeman can eat up stacks of hillman an sparabara but without these overly effective garrision I lost a few towns on the northern front.
Later in the campaign after I conqured the east dispatched parthia, pontus and the armenians and was finishing off what had been egypt once I saw some cartheginian stacks coming my way. (I thought we were buddies! I paid them 200k for an alliance and an attack on the romans and another 200k for attacking the romans again as soon as I saw them comming.) They attacked reinforcement stack with two agyraspid legionaries and four agyraspid pikemen an they way to garrision the border town of augila. The first attack were about twelve units mainly late poeni infantry some lybian spearman probably some skirmishers and desert infantry. After gaining a heroic victory they attacked the again with two lybians, poenis and armored elefants each. I managed to win this one two but received some heavy casualties. Still in the same turn three stacks laid siege to augila guarded by my most experianced army. Have a look at the sally that followed. http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/663...hbattle7ep.jpg
There are still many cartheginians armys heading east some consisting mostly of desert infantry, scutari, levy pikeman and even militias some made of poeni infantry. Many armies have one or more units of elephants. Two new armies have been recruited and send to the desert front and to invade sicily. The army that defended Augila so valiantly is on crete for retraining and soon ready to attack the heart of the cartheginian empire. A fourth army coming back from the upper nile will after sime retreinig and reequipment on crete be ready to attack the cartheginian even further in the west. This still leaves out the roman empire which is even greater than the catheginian one and has even more powerful armies. I own half the provinces on the map and the campaign is far from over!

[DimeBagHo]

I think on Mundus Magnus especially I might need to re-think the recruitment for the Seleucids and Ptolemies. As it is they have a lot of territory where they can't recruit good phalanx units, and the Seleucids don't get good non-phalanx units until after the Marius reforms.

[Zarax]

The seleucid needs a good cavalry recruitment zone imho, media is a bit too small to allow them to cover that need...
Militia pikemen should be allowed everywhere though...

[Stoneface]

I don't think the recruitment zones are a big problem for the player. I had no problems conquering rebel cities with thorakitai or sending an armies I buil in Seleucia and Susa against the parthians. The army management capabilities of the AI are however limited. XGM introduced a lot of those one-region-units which is nice in the case of spartan phalangites who are a little different but not much better than the armored ones but I doubt I will ever see picked cretans in an AI army.

[Zarax]

That could be helped by tweaking the starting script to give better infrastructure to AI...

[Stoneface]

I decided to give this campaign some sort of after action report also the campaign is not exactly over. This took a while because I am not playing regulary and the campaign got pretty slow. I think on some turns I had eight full scale battles with at least a full stack on each side.

New modifications:
Agyraspid legionaries are trainable in Italy

What happened since the last post:
Date is Winter 221BC that is only 33 turns from the picture above. I have taken all of Africa, Sicily and nearly half of Spain from the Cartheginians with four full armies similar to the one in the picture. Three armies consisting of 8 agyraspid legionairies, 4 cataphrakt, 4 gastraphetes, 2 cataphrakt elephants, a heavy onager and a general have taken greece from the romans and some provinces from the dacians and thracians. About half the roman military might was destroyed in greece. Another legionary army has taken southern italy up to but not including rome. The romans have driven the germans back to scandinavia. I recruited an all cavalery army with 8 median cavalery ant cataphrakt each, three armored elephants and a general to conquer the scythian lands. This army has lately seen some action against the dacians and romans. Another more traditional army remaing from my campaign against the parthians has marched westward through the russian steppes and conquered some scythian towns and has taken vicus fennicae (domus dulci domus) from the romans. The romans are trying to take it back and unfurtunatly have some good troops in the area. Here is a picure of the roman attack and my desperate defense: http://img506.imageshack.us/img506/9321/ddd9rb.jpg
I got away by closing of the city square with barbarian infantry supporting thinly streched pikeman. Romans can't wait to try again: http://img175.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ddd27px.jpg
All in all I fought a lot of really big battles against the cartheginians and the romans and gained a lot of heroic victories and victor in.. traits. The biggest probably was the "fourth battle of lepsis magna": http://img367.imageshack.us/my.php?i...battle42ne.jpg
Lepsis Magna 1-3 were fought against 30-35 units up to seven of them elephants. I never fought against as many romans probably becaue I am more cautious when fighting them. Their armies usually consist of legionary cohorts of all types and if they gain a 1:3 numerical advantage over my forces I am most likely mourning a heroic death of a general.

Conclusion:
I really like this sort of campaign. I had to do far less micromanagment to keep my cities happy and have some high level barracks. The campaign was still interesting with so many big battles. At higher difficulty it might have been quite challanging. In the later stages of the campaign the AI is really able to put together armies who are more than cannonfodder even for your most elite stacks.

Concerning Gastraphetes:
This guys are overpowered especially once they got some chevrons. Their armor-piercing bolts can kill elephants destroy, siege towers and once an heavy infantry unit makes the mistake of showinf their right or back side to them they are destroyed in a few volleys. This is ahistorical if only for the reasons that these guys would have conquered the world. A short recruiting time, a decent melee attack and decent armor add to their usefullness. They have hight maintanance but later in the game this is unimportant and you do not need to many of them.

Concerning archers and slingers:
In vanilla RTW I found rhodian slingers barely more usefull than standard archers. Same range, no fire arrows, more ammunition, a flatter trajecetory and a small shield add to veriaty and usually i have some cretian archers anyway. I XGM they now have shorter range and attack value that is not even upgradeable. In my last campaign I have not used them at all. I simply could not see their usefullness. Cretian archers have a similar issue with gastraphetes being better at nearly everything at least if you are playing the seleucids.

Concerning my army composition:
I am not happy with my standard armies. They work quite well but I think their is some room for improvement. I would like to hear some opinions and ideas from other players.
Against the cartheginians my army consisted of
1 General
1 Armoured Elephant
6 Agyraspid Pikemen
4 Agyraspid Legionaries
4 Cataphract
4 Gastraphetes
Typical setup is pikemen in the middle, 2 legionares on each wing, gastraphetes a good deal behind the pikemen so they won't shoot in their backs. Cataphracts two on each wing a bit further behind the gastraphetes. General and elephant form the last line, general in the middle elephants to the left. I either stay defensive or advance slowly in formation. The gastraphetes try to take out enemy generals and elephants if possible. After these are gone the rest of the army is targeted. Flanking attemps are greeted with some pila from my legionares. If they persist or pila are out they close to melee and the cataphract chareges in the flank/back of the enemy unit. General and elephants are mainly doing psychological warfare but if an enemy unit moves past my flank they charge.
The problem is that the enemy armies often consist of 15-20 units of infantry who line up in a single line that is much longer than my battle line. This leads to a lot of fighting on the flank and some casualties for my legionares. Unfortunatly the legionares are not retrainable in africa so they suffer from attrition. The only other units to suffer significant cusualties are the cataphracts but they are retrained easily.
Against the romans my army consisted of
1 General
2 Armoured Elephant
8 Agyraspid Legionaries
4 Cataphract
4 Gastraphetes
1 Heavy Onager
Setup and tactics are similar to the other army. The mixed legionares/pikemen battle line is replaced by a pure legionare battle line. The onager is placed in the center directly behind the legionares. The additional elephant is placed to the right of the general. I decided to replace the pikemen because enemy mass legionares means mass pila volleys and probably mass graves full of pikemen. In one of my past vanilla campaigns I had a few battles as seleucids against the romans that were extremly fast paced when I tried to take out the enemies artillery early with cataphracts. The battles went all over the map and my pikeman were unable to catch up and were useless. The main flaw with this armies is that I am not good with elephants I fear to use them in melee because a few volleys of pila and they are dead or worse. For misslile support they are obviously better options, the good morale of roman cohorts make theit fear effect quite ineffective and the onager does a much better job when it comes to break down wooden walls. In one of my armies I have replaced them with cataphracts but I am not sure if this is a perfect solution.

Thats all, folks! Hope you have not fallen asleep yet.

[DimeBagHo]

Thanks for the feedback Stoneface.

I've been meaning to convert the Gastraphetes into something more like a mobile balista unit for a while. Will probably do it for the next version.

Personally I would include at least a couple of heavy spear units (Thorakitai or Greek Mercs) in each army to fend off cavalry, but maybe the legionaries do OK against cavalry anyway.

Try using Darth's formations - that will solve the problem with all the AI armies using the long line formation.

[Stoneface]

Thanks DBH, it is really nice to get replies so fast.
I forgot to mention this but enemy cavalery is not a tactical problem, it simply does not exist. Most armies are extrmely infantery heavy. Cartheginian armies recruited in iberia have some cavalry but those recruited in africa only have elephant. The romans are even more extreme. My guess is that there is on average only one non-melee infantery per full stack, mostly light auxilia or a general.
There was only one archer auxilia between all these romans.

I am not sure if the long line is really a bad tactic. A full charge at my pikemen would be worse. A well timed combination of late poeni infantry throwing pila, elephants charging and the poenies following them would be better but I doubt we will see an AI like this in the near future.

[Locky]

Wow, that's out've controll. A massive showdown between Rome, Carthage, and Seleciua. lol.

[Hippias]

Further to what stoneface says about AI Army composition - playing as the Britons I have come up against Rome, Gaul, Germania, Iberia - and had a spy look at a Carthage stack. Practically everything is melee infantry. Rome had 1 velite and one equites in a full stack - seen nothing but warbands and axemen from Germany - Gaul had 1 archer in a full stack.

Also - any chance of delaying Marius? Started seeing Legionary Cohorts at 258BC, which in a full game would mean 20 years of triarii and 260 years of the post Marius units. Much prefer it if it could be scripted not to come before a certain date (200 BC?) or perhaps when the appropriate top level building is built outside the Italian peninsula, rather than inside.

[Kara Kolyo]

i have somewhat different experience. just started game as rome and the gauls send armies with atleast 2 archers and 1-2 skirmishers. will see what happens further in game

[Hippias]

Good to hear - perhaps it varies from game to game.

BTW - the balance of melee units is fine - romans had hastati, princepes and triarii - gauls had spear, ordinary sword & chosen sword - Carthage had poeni, libyan spears, spanish infantry and, nice to see, spanish mercenaries.

Might try testing as the seleucids and see what parthia & scythia use.

[Stoneface]

I checked my current game and reloaded one of my old saved game to look around. I have not found much cavalry in AI stacks. The eastern factions have quite a healthy amount of missile troops but still hardly any cavalry. My theory is that the AI shuns cavalry because of their reduced unit size. In my campaign the AI is also able to recruit top notch heavy infantry in most of its cities. Changing AI personalities might help to a certain extent increasing cavalry strength back to normal might, too. The problem is I like the smaller cavalry units.

About Marius, I think the exact preference is a roman faction building an imperial palace in a province with the hidden resource "italy". The hidden resources is probably the only thing in this that is not hardcoded. Don't know if it works, but might be worth a try.

[DimeBagHo]

I was aiming to reduce the number of missile and cavalry units around, and I think it has worked out about right. I might try to tweak things a little though. A couple of missile and cavalry units per stack would be OK. If anyone has a campaign where the Scythians and Parthians are still alive copuld you take a look and see how much cavalry they are using? They get a significant discount, so they should be using cavalry quite a bit more.

The Marius reforms are hard coded. I can replace them with a scripted rerform system, but that would involve quite a lot of work. As it is now the AI get the reforms quite a lot sooner than human players, so I think it works out OK.

[Stoneface]

I loaded an old save game and did some troop counting:

Parthia
Hillmen 22
Slingers 14
Sparabara 10+2 Merc
Horse Archer 5
General 4
Heavy Spearmen 1

Scythia
Axemen 19
Horse Archer 14 (some Mercs)
Archers 12
Generals 6
Lancers 4
Chosen Archers 4
Barbarian Cavalry 3
Nobles 1
Maidens 1

Please remember that this campaign was started with version 3.6.11 or something.

Scythia is alright probably a few archer to many and lacking in heavy cavalry. Parthia on the other hand never became a real threat even in the poorly defended eastern parts of my empire. I had to fend off a lot of sieges and on a few occasions even failed but once I issued two moderately well equipped armies to the problem the Parthians crumbled. They could need some help from the starting script if faced with human controlled Seleucia and a second starting province would probably nice, too.

[Silent]

how do you mod squalor? what file

[Galactus[-X-]]

In my Greek campaign, the Guals are sending well balanced stacks at me. 1-2 archers, 2-3 skirmishers, the bulk being chosen swordsman with 4-5 cavlary units.