Can Macedon survive?

[Kraut and Tea]

I really dont know much about ancient greek history, but the little that I know gives me a certain image of the Macedonians. A Kingdome which conquered Greece, Anatolia,Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Persia only to have this empire splitt up by rival generals. Yet still a powerfull kingdom that kept the barbarian Thracians at bay in the East and the Dacians from the North and which constantly tried to regain it`s past glory, for example through a alliance with the Seleucids to splitt up a ptolemaic kingdom weakend by civil war between them.

So by now means a nation in decline, but a powerfull nation of the ancient world. The decline started when the Romans made a foothold in Greece and werent to happyabout the idea of another greek world power.

Now look at Macedons situation on the campain map:



After the next DLC Macedon is sandwitched between 6 major playable factions, with 4 of whom it will share borders. The only non-major faction it shares a border with are the Celtic Triballi, a direction into which they cant expand due to an alliance both factions have. Addint to that, Macedon has the disadvantage of controling 2 major cities with no smaller settlements, a starting situation which frequently ends up in famine.

How will the AI survive as Macedon in the future?

I have frequently seen Athens simply march through the regions controlled by Epirus and being able to launch a defeating attack against Macedon with the newly gained power.

Now Macedon will be surrounded by 6 major factions, 4 of which are hostile to Macedon and of all of which of course have the major faction bonuses.

The campain map is nice, it extends into region into which Rome 1 didn`t. But all in all I have the feeling that certain places like North Africa, Iberia and Greece feel somewhat weirdly clusterd together. Places which you can completly conquered within a few rounds and where the addition of 1-2 more provinces could have created enought space for longer and more balanced conflict to take place.


I cant wait to get the tools I need to edit the campain map.

[ABH2]

Well, from my experience in vanilla, Macedon is almost always overrun. Sparta typically dominates Greece because they take Epirus pretty early. Typically, of course. Athens. I don't know if adding an extra few regions would help all that much unless they are given directly to Macedon.

With mods, Macedon is capable of doing very well. Of course, these cheat for them. I use Mitch's Large Empire mod, and I just had Macedon expand in all of Greece and up to the Baltic (the Getae had conquered it first, Macedon went to war and steamrolled them).

The biggest difference between real life and the game is demographics. Macedon could still field large armies. The Athenians and Spartans simply didn't have the resources to muster the same sort of forces. Macedon was starting to hit the same problem, but still remained the dominant power in Greece. In game, Athens and Sparta and field more forces and they start friendly to one another.

If Sparta and Athens weren't so friendly, I think that alone would benefit Macedon greatly. I'm not even sure what the historical basis of that is in the game's time frame. Sparta sort of did its own thing and had conflict with the other Greek states.

[AnthoniusII]

No it can not! Actually in 9/10 campaigns Sparta qonquers the entire eastern hemisphear!!!!
Spartans should be proud with CA!

[Pheidippides]

I think that Macedon is now in the same boat as Carthage and Rome, surrounded by a lot of hostile one-region factions that can field two stacks because of the income bonus. A human player will still be able to hold off the other factions because of the horrendous walled siege AI, but AI Macedon is going to get steamrolled before it can get higher level barracks and take advantage of its better units. It's negative diplo bonus with Hellenic factions doesn't help matters.

It was either on this forum or the official forums that someone came up with the idea of dividing the playable factions in major and minor factions, the major factions (Rome, Seleucid, Egpyt, Carthage, Parthia) are those that would have been able to form large empires during the time period had a couple of major events turned out differently. Those factions would get higher income bonus than even their local rivals, so Macedon might get 1.5x as much income as Sparta/Athens.

In my most recent Egypt campaign, Sparta conquered all of Greece, Macedon, and most of Asia Minor. Athens holds its home city and a couple of Illyrian provinces. Macedon was IIRC gone within thirty turns.

[ABH2]

I've been a proponent of simply starting off the major factions on a slightly more advanced level. It really doesn't make sense for Macedon and Rome to not be able to recruit the full range of their units. Doesn't really for any faction, but at least it would give the bigs a bit of an advantage.

Mitch's mod also works for those interested. It gives a simple autoresolve bonus to factions you pick.

But in vanilla, the answer is no because CA struck a poor balance between major and minor factions. I love that every territory is a faction you can interact with instead of just rebels like in R1. I just wish they had thought the mechanics out more.

[IlluminatiRex]

In my current campaign, the Macedonians were overrun by the Romans of all people. Rome had taken Apollonia from Epirus, and they ran with it from there.

[Darios]

This is a major concern to me. In every game that I have played, Sparta and Athens both tend to quickly wipe out Epeiros and Makedon then start advancing into Illyria and Thracia. I have no idea how this is going to work now that the people of the northern Balkans will be able to pack a better punch but ultimately I believe that factions such as Rome, Carthage, Makedon, etc should be able field more armies than city states such as Athens or Sparta. Perhaps the imperium system should be revamped so that if you only rule one region then you should be able to only field one army. The jump to 3 armies should not occur until you rule 2 regions. Doing that would keep Makedon and Epeiros as regional powers (with the ability to field 3 armies) at the start of the game while the Greek city states and Balkans tribes would be able to only field one army unless they somehow manage to conquer one of their neighbors -> putting them on the path towards one day becoming a superpower.

[neoptolemos]

Well i have seen both scenarios Macedon wiped out and Macedon become a regional power of the Balkans
Thus I can say the outcome is unpredictable and interesting.

[doyce7]

This is a major concern to me. In every game that I have played, Sparta and Athens both tend to quickly wipe out Epeiros and Makedon then start advancing into Illyria and Thracia. I have no idea how this is going to work now that the people of the northern Balkans will be able to pack a better punch but ultimately I believe that factions such as Rome, Carthage, Makedon, etc should be able field more armies than city states such as Athens or Sparta. Perhaps the imperium system should be revamped so that if you only rule one region then you should be able to only field one army. The jump to 3 armies should not occur until you rule 2 regions. Doing that would keep Makedon and Epeiros as regional powers (with the ability to field 3 armies) at the start of the game while the Greek city states and Balkans tribes would be able to only field one army unless they somehow manage to conquer one of their neighbors -> putting them on the path towards one day becoming a superpower.

Love this idea. Like it would make R2 much more enjoyable. Macedon is my favorite faction so I'd like to see them as a power.

[|Sith|Galvanized Iron]

Well the playable factions are often beaten by the non-playable factions on the campaign map, so not sure how making those factions playable would really change anything.

[AK47]

I really dont know much about ancient greek history, but the little that I know gives me a certain image of the Macedonians. A Kingdome which conquered Greece, Anatolia,Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Persia only to have this empire splitt up by rival generals. Yet still a powerfull kingdom that kept the barbarian Thracians at bay in the East and the Dacians from the North and which constantly tried to regain it`s past glory, for example through a alliance with the Seleucids to splitt up a ptolemaic kingdom weakend by civil war between them.

So by now means a nation in decline, but a powerfull nation of the ancient world. The decline started when the Romans made a foothold in Greece and werent to happyabout the idea of another greek world power.

Now look at Macedons situation on the campain map:



After the next DLC Macedon is sandwitched between 6 major playable factions, with 4 of whom it will share borders. The only non-major faction it shares a border with are the Celtic Triballi, a direction into which they cant expand due to an alliance both factions have. Addint to that, Macedon has the disadvantage of controling 2 major cities with no smaller settlements, a starting situation which frequently ends up in famine.

How will the AI survive as Macedon in the future?

I have frequently seen Athens simply march through the regions controlled by Epirus and being able to launch a defeating attack against Macedon with the newly gained power.

Now Macedon will be surrounded by 6 major factions, 4 of which are hostile to Macedon and of all of which of course have the major faction bonuses.

The campain map is nice, it extends into region into which Rome 1 didn`t. But all in all I have the feeling that certain places like North Africa, Iberia and Greece feel somewhat weirdly clusterd together. Places which you can completly conquered within a few rounds and where the addition of 1-2 more provinces could have created enought space for longer and more balanced conflict to take place.


I cant wait to get the tools I need to edit the campain map.

In my mod I did a few things to make Macedon survive better & expand a better empire than Athens.
1st I started with their elite units, I made Foot Companions have nearly same stats as the Royal Guard Epirus has except with +1 extra melee defense so they barely slightly better than Royal Guard Pikemen.
I gave them a hidden income bonus so they have more money per turn at the start. I boosted their faction bonus to give them +18% instead of +10% to that economic bonus they have. They now have +12% morale vs barbarians which helps them conquer Thracian Tribes.
I gave them access to Hellenic Cataphracts.

I boosted things to other factions as well to make the major factions have more power to expand.

[Darios]

I am really liking this thread and I find our arguments to be very constructive. These are the kind of things that CA is capable of fixing with patches and would go a long way towards improving the game. I just really hope that we can keep this thread going and that it will not be hijacked by "fix politics!", "DLC sucks", or "siege AI". I agree that something needs to be done in order to make Rome, Makedon, Carthage, Egypt, the Seleucid Empire, and Parthia into more powerful factions. There is no way that after conquering the world that by 270 BC the best units Makedon can recruit are hoplites and be at the mercy of Athens and Sparta.

I stand by stating that a faction with only one region should not have access to three armies. When Athens goes to war with Makedon, it should be at the risk that they are taking on a regional superpower and that if the battle goes wrong then it is all over.

[Dunadd]

Historically, Athens was irrelevant as a military power in 272BC and Sparta on its own was nowhere, though there were some leagues of Greek cities which were rivals of the Macedonians and of one another - and the Spartans were allied to some of these against others and provided good phalangites who performed well in battle. The Thracians were pretty tough individually, but divided into too many tribes to be much of a threat most of the time (though some of the northern Thracian tribes would later be unified in the Dacian kingdom which held off the Romans for a little while). The Romans and their Greek allies who feared Macedon never had much trouble beating the Macedonians in field battles, but let Macedon survive for a while mostly as a buffer against barbarian invaders from the north.

[Templar Knight]

No it can not! Actually in 9/10 campaigns Sparta qonquers the entire eastern hemisphear!!!!
Spartans should be proud with CA!

ditto on this. In my experience, both in vanilla and mods, Sparta is the most likely AI faction to turn into a super power.

In regards to Macedonia surviving, well from my experiences it has never really survived in the first place. I've never seen them develop into any form of regional power.

[Pheidippides]

Definitely like the Imperium idea. Would force smaller factions to seek out alliances with larger powers or leagues of small states.