RSIII pictures and postive comments....

[Alavaria]

Athenian campaign is indeed among the hardest. Right now I am decisively fighting Macedonians and winning battle after battle, however their stacks have no end, I am limited at funds and things are starting to look ugly.

Oh, sounds interesting...

[LoGaL]

about the assassin, you were way unlucky ahah

[Quintillius]

My goodness I was checking this subboard for weeks and missed the thread until today.
Can't believe it. My patience - all waiting is rewarded. It's true! It's out! RS III! Roma Aeterna!

I was playing Rome II for couple of days, but I am gonna say goodbye to that game and play this instead.

-13. Removed large and epic stone walls. They don't look good with the new cities, and the Epic walls were buggy anyway

Wait. Does that mean we no longer have large and epic stone walls in both strategic and terrain map?

-20. Added new loading screens and new UI elements made by 'Quintillius'.

Yay! Thanks.


Thanks a lot dvk901 & RS team & contributors for all epic work. They must grant you the triumphus.

[Alavaria]

I am limited at funds and things are starting to look ugly. They declared war on me as soon as I was able to get rid of "common" Greeks. I had no time to restore my economy

Interesting choice of campaign/faction set up.

Athens does not have any treasury aid at all, meaning you start your campaign at -8000+ a turn. Definitely need to (unhistorically accurate, I'm sure) blitz all the greek areas and then (even more unhistorically accurate?) slam right into Macedon in order to convert their populations (Sparte, Pella, Thessalonike, etc) into liquid cash.

The quoted poster seems to have taken quite a while (20+turns) to beat up the non-Macedonians in Athens starting area. Obviously I shall try to do so much faster and then beat up the world with levy pikemen, theureophoroi and rhodian slingers.

[Ragimund Von Wallat]

hahaha classic! you are the king of the blitzer! ....i like to use theuropoi heavy peltast and levy pikemen =)

[Alavaria]

hahaha classic! you are the king of the blitzer! ....i like to use theuropoi heavy peltast and levy pikemen =)

Hah... in any case, Athens starts with an army burning all its cash and a number of settlements close by with no walls...

Sparte should be one of the new special settlements so that will be interesting, watch this space for screenshots.

[Ostrogoth]

Interesting choice of campaign/faction set up.

Athens does not have any treasury aid at all, meaning you start your campaign at -8000+ a turn. Definitely need to (unhistorically accurate, I'm sure) blitz all the greek areas and then (even more unhistorically accurate?) slam right into Macedon in order to convert their populations (Sparte, Pella, Thessalonike, etc) into liquid cash.

The quoted poster seems to have taken quite a while (20+turns) to beat up the non-Macedonians in Athens starting area. Obviously I shall try to do so much faster and then beat up the world with levy pikemen, theureophoroi and rhodian slingers.

I have defeated non_Macedonians fairly quickly, the war with Macedon was the slow part of my campaign. All these turns I was fighting Macedonian stacks over and over. I should have captured Pella as soon as possible. Macedonians were getting 80k income per turn from Pella. After I captured Pella Macedonians faded away, bot now I am facing Rome.

I have just returned to old total war games. All these hours spent playing new dumbed-down total war games left its mark on me Looking forward to see your campaign.

[Alavaria]

I have just returned to old total war games. All these hours spent playing new dumbed-down total war games left its mark on me Looking forward to see your campaign.

Taking it slow myself and enjoying it. It's always amusing to start off with peltasts (and in this case some archers). For the first turn that's what I have to work with until turn 2 when slingers come out.

It's always amazing how good the peltasts are for their low-ish attack rating (and no AP) but then they run out of ammo and you remember how advantaged slingers are.



Haha, good thing the Theurophoroi I plan to spam all come with javelins (an option I don't use as often as I can, due to usually having slingers, which are much better)

[Ostrogoth]

I prefer to use repeated cavalry charges. With infantry I hold enemy troops and then charge with cavalry from behind over and over, even the most expensive and elite troops quickly route after several "backstabs".

[Alavaria]

Doesn't work well on enemy heavy spearmen on Very Hard battles, for whatever reason the game mechanics frequently cause mounted units to have heartattacks around spearmen. Even worse when it's a faction that spams (heavy) pikemen like there's no tomorrow.

Also it doesn't work in many other cases like odd terrain and especially (the biggest point) in settlements. The missile units are really the way to go when you have to kill stack-in-settlement after stack-in-settlement.

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Heavy cavalry (ie: my Greek General's Bodyguard units) are good at killing enemy horse, especially if your spearmen have the tendency to take out their swords when fighting enemy horse (one reason hoplites are a little annoying to use). With the AI (and you, but especially for the AI) having these massive Generals Bodyguard units... a number of factions (like Greek Cities, Macedonia, successor states etc) don't have shields. Meaning your long range AP slingers can just wipe them from extreme range. Which happened in one important battle I was just fighting (for Sparta).

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At the end of turn 1. Sparte is nicely blocked away, and I've cleared all the nearby settlements (wall-less, great stuff). I'm still holding a bunch of elites that I started with (didn't disband anyone) however my economy is fine even without the treasury thing, as...




Yes, taking 4 settlements has allowed me to nearly balance the budget. Excellent. I still have most of all 3 Athenai Epilektoi Hoplite units, and one of them (700/turn) is really expensive compared to say the Theurophoroi (202/turn). But it's ok, I'll disband them or so on when I feel the time is right. And now I am thinking of keeping them to use for the Sparte fight.

[Humanoid293]

Found out about RS only about 18 months ago . Gave up playing 2.6 because I was SO overwhelmed - it is THAT massive I honestly could not get a grip on it XD . Did not play any TW for over a year . Installed RSIII today and am....totally amazed ! It looks wonderfull, plays absolutely smoothly so far ( am at turn 7 of a Sarmatian campaign ) . Am also getting a grip on the building tree, recruitment variations, traits, building effects etc. this time XD .

Am loving it . Thanks a LOT ! Am also starting a Sparta campaign just to see how that plays . And then probably Macedon, which was the one that drove me nuts last time...

[Ragimund Von Wallat]

i am alone or the amount of CTD DRAMATICLY lowered!? ...im bashing battles after battles and no CTD.

[neep]

Just besieged Syracuse and took the city -

lovely animations of the walls being broken down and the remains of the wall form a nice channel into the city, very pretty

Central square is gorgeous, but requires a little extra micromanaging to make sure troops and cavalry get to the right place and attack from the right direction

Whole city itself is very beautiful, really nicely done, especially the harbour - but you have to remember to Pause and look around.

[Ostrogoth]

Doesn't work well on enemy heavy spearmen on Very Hard battles, for whatever reason the game mechanics frequently cause mounted units to have heartattacks around spearmen. Even worse when it's a faction that spams (heavy) pikemen like there's no tomorrow.

Also it doesn't work in many other cases like odd terrain and especially (the biggest point) in settlements. The missile units are really the way to go when you have to kill stack-in-settlement after stack-in-settlement.

===========================================================

Heavy cavalry (ie: my Greek General's Bodyguard units) are good at killing enemy horse, especially if your spearmen have the tendency to take out their swords when fighting enemy horse (one reason hoplites are a little annoying to use). With the AI (and you, but especially for the AI) having these massive Generals Bodyguard units... a number of factions (like Greek Cities, Macedonia, successor states etc) don't have shields. Meaning your long range AP slingers can just wipe them from extreme range. Which happened in one important battle I was just fighting (for Sparta).

===========================================================

You are right but I prefer to play on hard/hard difficulty. This difficulty level allows me to use less efficient army builds without getting punished. When I play as Greek city-state I prefer to use hoplites instead of stoning enemy to death with hordes of slingers. Maybe if I played on very hard difficulty like you I would have adopted the same tactics, but overly difficult battles are not my thing.

Here are some screenshots of my campaign. Macedon was saved by survival script. For now I do not plan to destroy them, I hope they will serve as some sort of meat shield against Dacia and Scythia. Right now my greatest enemy is Rome but I think war with Dacia is inevitable.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Alavaria]

It's pretty easy to hit Pella from the south via Pharsalus. However, getting a boat ready so you can bypass any blocking forces is a good idea.




A palace in Pella. Outside the city walls and set on a raised platform, interesting choices there.




Even though one has taken and liquidated Pella on Turn 6, if I remember right, the other Large Towns (and of course Thessalonike) somehow have barracks which are way too good for a Large Town (it would be City level barracks, I think)

[Ostrogoth]

Nice blitzing there

[Alavaria]

There's a lot of gold around here... without the treasury bonus, getting all that together is quite a sum worth thinking about.

After proposing an alliance to me, two turns later Rome decides to siege a trap fort. My newly modernized army will probably kick them out, and claim another gold-having settlement for myself.




Pikemen are so strong...

[Julius Poliorcetes]

Sounds are intresting and mod is really awesome. I believe mod looks like great in future

[Alavaria]

Nothing says "surprise" like suddenly having your Treasury-Capital city taken and "depopulated" into the nearby sea!




Hey Pergamon, surprise!

[Alavaria]

So I took Halicarnassus (nice tomb there), and I'm trying to find Carthage to trade maps, but instead there's Romans everywhere...




Carthage really got owned.