Is SPQR balanced?

[eldardude]

I dont know how balanced it is, I only revently installed SPQR and all the battles I fought were quite easy and almost always end up in an heroic victory. I'm just deploying my men as the Romans did in the real world and then all I do is just wait until the enemy routs.
For example, I deployed on one ocasion 2500 men. The Gauls had two armies against me, on had 3800 men and the other 1900. I one the battle with 800 loses and 4900 kills!
My question is: Do I need to do something to bump up the difficulty in SPQR,
or is it supposed to be this way?

[ramsesii]

Was this custum battle of campeign?
If this was campeign then just wait jour enemy gets better and better just wait until 190bc and then come again to tell you how you feel.

[eldardude]

It sounds stupid to wait for the AI to gather stronger troops.

[Teodosio]

It sounds stupid to wait for the AI to gather stronger troops.

I concur, you shouldn't wait. Just don't do a blitz attack: expand slowly, by using the garrison script or waiting for the besieged troops to surrender (NEVER STORM the city in short).

Yes, if you are tactically good you can win large battles with numerical inferiority against Gauls and Carthage. The problem is that Gaul sends so many troops to you, that you will need to develop a good logistic system.
Be ready, the challenge will get harder when facing Germans!
I am facing Greeks now an they are hard too, all those hoplites are really difficult to kill unless sourrounded!

Let us know if you are using house rules (for army's composition too) and against which faction are you expanding.

[Alatar]

Greeks are hard, the gauls are easy (If I ever lose a battle to them I feel disgusted, unless they have 2 full stacks and I destroy most of them, but then order a ordily retreat).

The greeks however rely on chosing your battles, retreating into freindly teritory, then hitting them with to legions from the front and rear.
I think I destroy all the spartan units finally!
I hate armoured hoplites though, and militia hoplites are strong aswell.

[eldardude]

Still, Spartan Hoplites are very powerfull and you need an army to defeat a unit.
And what is this Script? I know I should turn it on but what does it do?
House rules? Forgive me for being such blunt, I installed SPQR just a few days ago.

[GaussSoldier]

The script does two things.

First, when activated, it makes any enemy or neutral city that you are near (within two spaces from the city) spawn a garrison of long range and cheap melee units. This garrison usually takes up all of the remaining units spaces. This is meant to make sieges more realistic in demonstrating the citizens coming to defend their city.

Second, it makes every year last four turns instead of two. This makes the campaigns longer.

The House Rules are the personal guidelines that Lt1956 posted in a sticky. He was asked before about how he plays, since he designed this mod for himself, so he posted them for everyone to see and use. Now almost everyone plays according to these rules. They're not required to play, it's just that whenever you say something that doesn't make sense to the other players the first thing they'll ask you is "Do you play with the script?"

Welcome to the mod by the way. Good to have another new face.

[eldardude]

Well, I play both with houserules (excluding the first 3) and the script.

[Teodosio]

Well, I play both with houserules (excluding the first 3) and the script.

I strongly advise you to strictly follow the first 2 house rules, about army's composition!
In fact, doing that will give you a little bonus: if you have a house rules legion, you will be able to use the special formations in battle map! Try them and you'll see what I mean. You need to have a full legion. Select all units and group them (CTRL+0). Then put the units in manipular formation (SHIFT+2) if they are pre-marian, or put them in checkerboard formation (SHIFT+5) if they are marian.
These two formations are not in vanilla, they are special for SPQR and will provide a (almost) true roman formation if you have a house rule legion. Try it, it's really a lot more fun and tactically challenging!

[lt1956]

I designed SPQR to be realistic within reason, there are times that battles are easy, but later in campaign it gets tough, a challenge shouldnt always be my casualties or losing battles but whether I can HOLD on to what i took!

Basically later in the game things get interesting, you will find researching the forum here that many have Blitzed fast and took much land only to lose it later to rebellion. Alot of people think because the battles are so numerous and because they are so long and realistic that this is all there is to SPQR. Really SPQR is about Realistic Empire building and campaigning.

Basically in Ancient times as now you had to have a Good logistics plan down BEFORE you launched your campaigns. RTW's Engine isnt the greatest to simulate this but I have done my best with it. Some of your Best Strategy games are simple games with no Graphics. Maybe one day a game like RTW and those Strategy games will merge to create the ultimate game. Basically I try to adjust logistics using Manpower and money, there is NO food in the game which they should have added, so the only way we can make campaigns more realistic is to adjust Manpower and money.

You'll find later in the game you will NEED those legions to kill off the armies with ease, because after fighting 3-4 of them with no reforcements you will find those 800 losses are a killer when that legion is away from home. Right now you are near Italy, wait until you get away from the mainland into enemy lands, then reinforcements are harder. Pre-marius is EASIER for the player to get started, Post Marius is harder as Legions all come from 1 cities for each legion.

Please read the readme and other stuff on the forum and in the README folder in the RTW directory when you installed the mod.

Lt

[eldardude]

Thanks alot for all the info and the welcome.

[eldardude]

Couldnt I just Manually put the velitles on the front, Hestati behind them following prinicpes and triarii?

[GaussSoldier]

You could, but those shortcuts just make it faster.

[Teodosio]

Couldnt I just Manually put the velitles on the front, Hestati behind them following prinicpes and triarii?

If you are really willing to deploy manually 20 units for each of the MANY battles in SPQR it means you are FAR more hard-working than I am.

[eldardude]

I only deploy 5 lines of troops per battle, not to hard working I suppose.