Announcement: Europa Barbarorum II 2.3 released!

[Gordianus]

at last christmas comes early this year

[QuintusSertorius]

So, there's no chance of Gonatas being on the offensive in the south, helping drive Pyrrhus to his fate in Argos?
He sits in Pella and hopes Pyrrhus doesn't come for him?
Just as I imagined. How surprising.

That's the AI. When he takes the settlement, he moves out of our reach. You can't script anything for a character inside a settlement.

[Iaius Statius Laurentius]

From a roster perspective, KH is more complete. Plus it puts you right in the middle of the new Greek "mosh pit". Trust me, campaigns here are a COMPLETELY different animal in v2.3. On the other hand, Parthia has the new voice mod, portraits, all-new eastern ancillaries, plugs you right into the new Pastoral Settlement system, and has some interesting new traits and other features. Much more complete than in the past. Meanwhile Rome is mature but has a lot of interesting fixes and improvements (see the changelog for details)and has great game play (as always).

Whichever choice you make, it won't be the wrong one!

Wonderful, thanks. Between this post and QS's detailed breakdown, it sounds like my answer is "try all three." Roma for the gameplay and changes, KH for the dynamism and complete roster, and Parthia for the eastern improvements (and I plan to settle as soon as I can, so QS's point about the Iranian settled units being more complete than the steppe units works for me).

And in the future I have more cool
Italic units to look forward to in the early game.

Thanks so much, Kull and Quintus Sertorius!

[neo_deus]

You can increase AI aggresion with campaign difficulty, but they still need at least some advantage over besieging army to attack. I tested same siege with same army on hard and very hard and they attacked my army on very hard, but I had to remove two units from my army to lure them out on hard. On very hard they are quite aggressive if that is what you want. But it wont be good for campaign in my opinion, if they leave city without having good advantage they will be slaughtered, giving provinces too fast, too easy and too cheap. It is better to stay on hard as recommended.

Yes, I think so too. To be honest I am rather pleased with the overall agressiveness. The eleutheroi armies up north try to engage everytime they think they have an advantage. In the battlefield, the AI was pretty agressive too, even ambushing my General when I was hunting down broken men. It cost me a whole company of Equites Romani. They died to save the proconsul.
I really thought by now the AI would have sieged Bononia, but they haven't so far. Maybe I have too many troops close by. We'll see as the campaign progresses.

By the way, I love the Roman Offices Script. It's amazing for role playing, wich I really love to do.

[myarta]

As Malkuta Nabatu:

I'm on turn 70 right now, and I'm still fairly small (only 5 provinces). Baktria is at war with Saka Rauka and Arche Seleukia. After I end turn, it cycles through to Baktria, and then the game crashes. So far I really dig the pastoral provinces, so I'm rather disappointed in this right now. Hopefully there's a way I can make this campaign work, because Malkuta Nabatu are one of my favorite factions and I haven't even gotten their first reform yet. Here's the error message that's been popping up.

Just to confirm, if you close the game, load your save, and end turn again, does this happen each and every time?
Second, you'll want to switch your log into trace mode and then upload it so the team can see what's happening. Details on that are in the main post (editing ebii.cfg)

[parthian8]

That's the AI. When he takes the settlement, he moves out of our reach. You can't script anything for a character inside a settlement.

I really do struggle to follow the logic of this. I always have. Because you have, again, drawn your premisses from your conclusion. I wouldn't mind but for the pseudo-intellectual garbage that gets erected around these fundamentally fan-boy decisions. It's junk.

I am a middle-aged European.
I find this recidivist obsession with “Pyrrhus - Lust For Glory” all tiresomely Trumpian and, speak it softly, jejune.

[QuintusSertorius]

I really do struggle to follow the logic of this. I always have.
[FONT="]I am a middle-aged European.[/FONT]
I find this recidivist obsession with “Pyrrhus - Lust For Glory” all tiresomely Trumpian and, speak it softly, jejune.

I struggle to understand why you feel the need to attribute ulterior motives to the team that don't exist. There is no obsession with Pyrrhos.

The AI behaves in particular ways, if it takes a settlement with a character, it tends to leave them there as governor. The best chance we can give AI-Makedonia to retake its capital is to have Gonatas in charge of the army doing the attacking, due to the way autocalc works (and Command stars mattering above all else). Makedonia has other characters who can act, so there is no problem.

[parthian8]

Yes.
And so does Epirus.
So why not script Pyrrhus to hide in Ambrakia?

[Marius The Great]

Thank you guys so much for making this mod. i have been playing EB on and off for almost 10 years now.

I have a question and a problem though.

Why is H/H or H/M the preferred difficulty?

On all my saves in EB 2.3 the Numidians (I can never remember their name) always destroys Carthage from behind and seem obsessed with capturing Syracuse, even if Carthage still hold Lyllabeum and even provinces in mainland Afrika. Has this been amended somehow?

[myarta]

???

Pyrrhus isn't scripted to hide anywhere. If the base game AI doesn't want to move him anywhere, there isn't much the EB2 team can do to get him to move around, short of ahistorically putting someone else in charge of the army recapturing Pella so that Pyrrhus goes and takes another settlement instead (potentially getting stuck there also).

[Marius The Great]

Thank you guys so much for making this mod. i have been playing EB on and off for almost 10 years now.

I have a question and a problem though.

Why is H/H or H/M the preferred difficulty?

On all my saves in EB 2.3 the Numidians (I can never remember their name) always destroys Carthage from behind and seem obsessed with capturing Syracuse, even if Carthage still hold Lyllabeum and even provinces in mainland Afrika. Has this been amended somehow?

Sorry. That was supposed to be EB 2.2

[MrKhazar]

Don't underestimate the power of Raiding. With enough FMs, you can easily generate more income from Raiding than you can from conquest. It may not be a sustainable long term strategy (although no one has ever tried), but it's more than enough to prevent your faction from falling into a deep pit of debt in the early game. Not a strategy for "settled" factions, of course, but they usually have other options.

Only nomadic factions can make money from raiding enemy tiles, right?

[Kull]

Only nomadic factions can make money from raiding enemy tiles, right?

And "barbarians".

[myarta]

Thank you guys so much for making this mod. i have been playing EB on and off for almost 10 years now.

I have a question and a problem though.

Why is H/H or H/M the preferred difficulty?

On all my saves in EB 2.3 the Numidians (I can never remember their name) always destroys Carthage from behind and seem obsessed with capturing Syracuse, even if Carthage still hold Lyllabeum and even provinces in mainland Afrika. Has this been amended somehow?

For Campaign: At medium and lower, the AI doesn't hire mercenaries, and it can get a little easy when your opponents aren't using those good quality reinforcements, especially if the entire panoply of the fully stocked merc pool is available for you in all provinces you visit all game. Also, the rebels don't tend to siege cities. Therefore it should at least be at Hard. I'm less clear on what happens at VH vs H for campaign. Income penalties, I know. Maybe the reason we don't recommend VH is that it's not TOO beginner friendly. But try it if you don't feel challenged.

For Battle: At M, the AI appears to get no bonuses to their units. At H and above, they get increasing bonuses and it can be a little silly watching a levy unit go toe to toe with a professional despite taking over 50% casualties, still gritting it out. Therefore at Medium the units actually compete as statted instead of being somewhat awkwardly buffed on the enemy side. However, some people find that the human player's tendency to use their best generals overcomes the AI's built in generals skills, and that they can do the whole hammer and anvil technique too easily and rout enemies. I will say that one of the fixes in 2.3 was that rebel AI generals didn't get that AI general buff, so they were routing extra early (general skills can contribute to increased morale for their units), just faction AI generals. So go on H if you think the AI needs combat and morale bonuses to offset its lesser intelligence compared to you, or stick with M if you want units to play out more realistically and don't find it frustratingly easy.

EDIT: Forgot a section. Yes, Numidia is a little more reasonable now. Same with Nabatu. Effort has been made to keep the AI from going for the jugular of its neighbor too early. I haven't seen Numidia landing stacks in Sicily just for fun anymore like I used to see in 2.2

[QuintusSertorius]

Only nomadic factions can make money from raiding enemy tiles, right?

Nomads, "barbarians" and the Bosporans.

[QuintusSertorius]

On VH campaign difficulty, autocalc is virtually impossible and the AI is hyper-aggressive in a way that can make it easier to beat, not harder. It's certainly no smarter. Diplomacy is also borked.

[Marius The Great]

For Campaign: At medium and lower, the AI doesn't hire mercenaries, and it can get a little easy when your opponents aren't using those good quality reinforcements, especially if the entire panoply of the fully stocked merc pool is available for you in all provinces you visit all game. Also, the rebels don't tend to siege cities. Therefore it should at least be at Hard. I'm less clear on what happens at VH vs H for campaign. Income penalties, I know. Maybe the reason we don't recommend VH is that it's not TOO beginner friendly. But try it if you don't feel challenged.

For Battle: At M, the AI appears to get no bonuses to their units. At H and above, they get increasing bonuses and it can be a little silly watching a levy unit go toe to toe with a professional despite taking over 50% casualties, still gritting it out. Therefore at Medium the units actually compete as statted instead of being somewhat awkwardly buffed on the enemy side. However, some people find that the human player's tendency to use their best generals overcomes the AI's built in generals skills, and that they can do the whole hammer and anvil technique too easily and rout enemies. I will say that one of the fixes in 2.3 was that rebel AI generals didn't get that AI general buff, so they were routing extra early (general skills can contribute to increased morale for their units), just faction AI generals. So go on H if you think the AI needs combat and morale bonuses to offset its lesser intelligence compared to you, or stick with M if you want units to play out more realistically and don't find it frustratingly easy.

EDIT: Forgot a section. Yes, Numidia is a little more reasonable now. Same with Nabatu. Effort has been made to keep the AI from going for the jugular of its neighbor too early. I haven't seen Numidia landing stacks in Sicily just for fun anymore like I used to see in 2.2

On VH campaign difficulty, autocalc is virtually impossible and the AI is hyper-aggressive in a way that can make it easier to beat, not harder. It's certainly no smarter. Diplomacy is also borked.

Thank you both very much. I have always played Total War games on VH/VH, but I will try Hard Campaign and Medium battle on my next campaign. And instead go over to "General Camera" in the battles. Maybe I'll even stop abusing the pause button.

[Kull]

Yes.
And so does Epirus.
So why not script Pyrrhus to hide in Ambrakia?

The game is in your hands. Please be our guest. Write a script and/or set-up starting armies in descr_strat which achieve your goal of the Gonatas-Pyyrhos death match on T1. We could have done that in half a day and moved on, but the team had more important concerns, like ensuring interesting gameplay that kept all three factions (because yes, inconveniently, there's a third faction present in Greece too) active and engaged in this arena for a very long period. To include when the human player is any one of those three AND when all three are AI-controlled. What you see in Greece on T1 is the result of lessons learned from MANY weeks of testing PURELY this situation, and involving a wide variety of alternate lineups and starting positions and script variations. But I'm sure you can do better.

[TheCataphract]

As Malkuta Nabatu:
snip

I had this problem with a previous version of EBII. Are you using Windows 10? If so, then go back to the first page where the installation instructions are and follow the steps under "[Windows 10] Additional mandatory post installation instructions".

[Krampus]

On VH campaign difficulty, autocalc is virtually impossible and the AI is hyper-aggressive in a way that can make it easier to beat, not harder. It's certainly no smarter. Diplomacy is also borked.

My latest Pontus campaign was on VH and I rather enjoyed it. Felt like the AI were putting up more of a fight on the map than my last campaign on H difficult. I had no problem racking up 11 victories against the Greeks by the time I took the East Pontic Sea.

But I'm really concerned to hear about autocalc bonuses. I always fight my land battles, so I never noticed, but I imagine it ruins naval warfare. Anyone have experience doing ship autocalc on VH?

Do AI have greater income bonuses or more units from the garrison script on VH? If they don't get extra units or money I'll consider just doing H/H