EB difficulty question

**King Agis** · July 05, 2018, 08:27 PM

Hello EB players

,

Which (if any possible) campaign difficulty allows most/all factions to somewhat survive?
I've just abandoned my Makedonian/Antigonid campaign (on Hard) because in just under a 60 years the Ptolemies and Carthaginians have already destroyed most factions. The campaign soon became stale and dull since I was forced to fight the same enemies turn after turn with extremely unrealistic unrelenting stacks of armies.

I suppose what i'm really asking is which difficulty prevents/slows this rapid monopolisation of 'superpowers', and preserves an entertaining variety of enemies/factions to interact with?

Thanks!

**mephiston** · July 06, 2018, 03:23 AM

Hi King Agis,

That sound very strange. I'm fact I noticed that some "underdog" factions (Pontos, Hayasdan) are much more proactive in Hard difficulty than in Medium, and end up eating a sizeable chunk of the Seleukids. I agree with you that the Ptolemaioi are way too strong, though.
Another thing I noticed is that the geographical configuration of the Eastern Greek world depends strongly on the battles fought in Syria and Palestine in the first 5-10 years of the campaign. One heroic victory for the Seleukids over the Ptolemaioi or vice versa usually determines who will be steamrolling the other superpower, and as a consequence the rest of the East.

All in all, medium difficulty means a very slow advance, especially in faction wars since AI reactions are slowed down. On hard the situation is a bit more dynamic, as I already told you. Very hard is just ridiculous and you shouldn't play it.

By the way, which faction(/s) are you playing as in those campaigns?

**Pafciu** · July 07, 2018, 02:53 PM

How to install mod EB v1.31c on NON-STEAM version Rome: Total War ???? Please HELP !! I have NON-STEAM version, but original, not pirate !!

**King Agis** · July 12, 2018, 11:35 AM

Hi mephiston,

Well I was playing a Makedonian Campaign I was really enjoying. Essentially I was busy fighting Rome/Koinon/Epirus/Dacia and forcing various factions to cede cities or give tribute. This meant that I would only destroy a faction after they had repeatedly provoked me etc. All the while however, between them in east and west Carthage and the Ptolemies had effectively destroyed the: Aedui/Arverni/Lusotannan/Hayasdan/Baktria/Seleucids/Saba in about under 60 years. Therefore, because I didn't want to fight endless stacks of the same enemies for the rest of the playthrough I ended it.

I'm thinking of doing a Koinon campaign next on medium - hopefully should go better?

**mephiston** · July 12, 2018, 06:30 PM

That sounds horrific, to be honest - never encountered such a bad situation.

What I used to do is giving a lot of money every turn to the Eleutheroi, so that they can actually train units in their cities and beef up against the attacks of every faction (mine included: I like to have memorable battles and not boring one-sided sieges). This usually slows down AI expansion by quite a lot, but you need to do it from the very beginning of the campaign, otherwise the Eleutheroi accumulate a huge amount of debt every turn and you won't be able to get them over it.
In case you don't know, the above is done with the console command

Code:

add_money [faction name], [desired amount, up to 40000]

So, in my case,

Code:

add_money slave, 40000

repeated at least 15 times. With the up arrow you can recall the previous command. Remember that at the start of every turn it shows something like "season summer" (or whatever is the current season), because that's the last command called by the campaign script - not the ones you called at the end of the previous turn. Internal faction names can be found in the descr_names.txt file, or in this thread.

I also tried to add money to some of the aforementioned underdogs, like Pontos or Hayasdan. Most of the time they don't know what to do with the money, though: that's AI fault, obviously. Pretty much the same as giving a monkey your credit card...

What you can do is sneakily park one spy (for vision through the fog of war) and one diplomat in key areas, and try to bribe armies belonging to superpowers. Add a huge amount of money on your treasury, take care of all your bribing and then remove the excess money to return to the original value. This is an indirect way of helping small landowners to survive for longer, and maybe counterattack. Don't expect gratitude, of course.

If you play on Medium, things are more relaxed. However, in that case you should also work your way to the world domination at a slower pace too: house rules usually help, otherwise it's plain easy to beat the helpless AI. The Koinon do start in a difficult position, but once you've secured Korinthos and successfully defended Athenai then Greece is usually in your bag, and you can slow down by a lot.

I'm sorry I couldn't reveal you any easy workaround for your issues… I hope I helped at least a bit!

**King Agis** · July 16, 2018, 08:36 PM

Hi mephiston,

Wow, to be honest I wasn't anticipating such a detailed and thorough reply - thank you so much!

Definitely going to try some of your tips here. I especially like the idea of giving the Eleutheroi heaps of money, since I too like big memorable sieges + they often serve as a nice "buffer zone" between factions.

Moreover thankfully you seem quite prolific on EB threads which is great; which is your favourite faction btw?

**mephiston** · July 17, 2018, 03:10 PM

Thanks! I'm happy you found it helpful.

Yes, I am quite active at the moment: it's a pity that the EB forum is not so populated, so I'm trying to give as much insight as I can when people ask questions about this wonderful game.

Regarding my favourite faction, well, that's a really hard question!

For the SP campaign, I guess Pontos, Hayasdan and Safot Softim biQarthadast, without any particular order. I really enjoyed my campaigns as Pontos and the Karthadastim when I used a lot of house rules and roleplaying, and Hayasdan… Well, they're a nice challenge to face.

For MP battles probably Pontos again, Koinon Hellenon, Aedui/Arverni, Getai and Arche Seleukeia. You can see a trend here - I like mostly factions with diverse and versatile rosters, which need to use combined arms to win. In the ongoing tournament, where the factions were assigned randomly, I got Pontos, so I was definitely lucky there.

**King Agis** · July 17, 2018, 06:12 PM

Funnily enough i've played EB for 100s of hours and yet never tried multiplayer. I'm pretty sure I haven't got the settings right atm for it to work anyway.

As for factions i'm always drawn towards the successors - I just love their aesthetic and system of fighting. I know some people argue the phalanx in EB is overpowered, but honestly on a tactical level correctly done I believe the Macedonian manner of fighting overcomes the maniple system.

Interested to hear your thoughts.

**mephiston** · July 18, 2018, 01:44 PM

Phalanxes are really strong (one can confidently say "OP") in single player. In multiplayer, the EDU has been balanced in order to nerf them and now they're almost historically accurate, and not really overpowered. If there is something overpowered in EB battles, those are guard mode, massed horse archers and massed slingers.

I can't decide whether successor fighting style is superior to the manipular system or not. It depends on a lot of factors - who has the cavalry superiority? who has the missile superiority? who has better flankers? who has access to ap troops? what is the unit scale?
Something always worth remembering is that all phalangitai units cost more per man than a comparable quality unit: they pay for the additional frontal strength, but are much weaker in disorganised melee and especially from the flanks/rear. The fact that the units are big is a big advantage for the wise Diadochos, as he can afford to lose more men compared to a regular 80 or 100 men strong unit while he runs his cavalry and assault infantry on the flanks.

I actually did a commentary of a 2v2 fought between Successor factions and SPQR. Unfortunately the audio quality sucks because I had issues with my microphone, so I need to record it again.

Getting the settings right is super easy, provided you have the instructions. We (the EB1 MP team) are always hiring, so take this into consideration if you are interested (even if holidays are coming and activity is minimal right now).

**Jorlaan** · July 19, 2018, 11:41 AM

I've wondered, if you simply add_money and do not specify a faction, does it give it to everyone or just you?
I have also had many a game where one faction just blobs like crazy fairly early and it can be a bummer. Many of my games are like that actually.

**mephiston** · July 19, 2018, 04:24 PM

It simply adds money to you.

The issue you mention is really common. Once a faction gets a slight advantage on his neighbour(s), snowballing into an unstoppable powerhouse is usually the consequence. Buffing the Eleutheroi is one way (and the easiest by far, imo) to alleviate this problem, especially for the Sweboz who usually push into Gaul and the Alps in the 250s-240s at last.

Of course, there is also the extreme solution. If you can't contain them, join them: play as one of the wannabe blobbers. The Grey Death (AS) and the Yellow Fever (Ptolemaioi) are good choices, because in this way you can limit the expansion of one of the strongest factions in the map by controlling it yourself, and keep at bay the expansion of the other due to proximity / already ongoing war.

**King Agis** · July 20, 2018, 08:32 PM

mephiston i'm now quite a few turns into my campaign now and your solution has worked a treat!

Thank you!

**mephiston** · July 26, 2018, 12:07 PM

Happy to hear that! If you want to, please share your campaign progression (maybe something like a couple of pictures of the campaign map with the corresponding year), so maybe other players can compare their own AI development to yours.