The madness of the Ptolemies

[Charging_Knight]

The Ptolemies just overrun the whole Seleucid empire from Ionia to Bactria in my game and the Seleucids crumble so easily, the main reason is the Galatian swordsmen whom the Ptolemies mass produce + their phalanxes, I have a gripe with these swordsmen who tear even my triarii in both polybian and camilan eras apart so easily and stacks keep attacking my empire in asia minor when i eventually ventured there...How do I tone down these maniacal hordes?

[Arutima]

you call this madness? this is madness





in the last version, it was the silver death. in 1.0, it is the golden death.

The best way to deal with them is assaulting asia minor and their egyptian homelands, at the same time. three legions (two legions+ one auxilia legion/legion to remplished troops for your other two legions) each fronts would do the trick.

[gaius valerius]

yeah its true, the ptolies are insanely imperialistic and the seleucids just dont seem to cut it. i think theirs a balancing issue with these 2


just hold'm pinned in one place and sack their main territories (using invasion armies), raise every building and give the territory away to another faction (preferably not at war with them) then build up for a main strike they'll be toast

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

It is a very difficult balance issue. In old versions, Baktria was overpowered and would wipe out the Seleukids. Then Baktria was weakened and the Seleukids were over powered. Now, without much work the Ptolemaioi seem to always win the war. Balancing the issue isn't very easy, as all new content adds more parts to the equation.

[gaius valerius]

well nobody is accussing you that you cant balance we all know it must be friggin hard. all we can do is point it out. hopefully something can be done about it.

one of the major improvements with 1.0 was how you more or less balanced out northern europe. cuz in the previous version the germans were always to expansive in all directions that it wasn't funny anymore. the adding of those strong garrisons along the rhine and donau is a real sweet extra.

that 10000 gold per turn is that only on VH or also on H? i always get the impression the AI cheats cuz they raise large merc armies when i downright beat the crap out of them with my army that was so costly to raise.

[Ludens]

that 10000 gold per turn is that only on VH or also on H? i always get the impression the AI cheats cuz they raise large merc armies when i downright beat the crap out of them with my army that was so costly to raise.

VH only I think. However, the EB script gives the A.I. a financial advantage at any difficulty level.

[konny]

The Ptolemies just overrun the whole Seleucid empire from Ionia to Bactria in my game and the Seleucids crumble so easily, the main reason is the Galatian swordsmen whom the Ptolemies mass produce + their phalanxes, I have a gripe with these swordsmen who tear even my triarii in both polybian and camilan eras apart so easily and stacks keep attacking my empire in asia minor when i eventually ventured there...How do I tone down these maniacal hordes?

Yes, the Galatian Swordmen are somewhat overpowered. Their stats are not extreme one by one, but the combination of stats together with strong phalanx does the job. In my Karthago campaign I am facing the same problem. The only solution I have is useing a lot of cavalry against them, because those guys don't have spears.


With the Romans I would use Neitos, Pedites Extraordinarii or Samnitici Milites against them; Triarii doesn't seem to be the best choice because their spears means a disadvantage against these longsword men. You could also try Polybian Principes, even though their shortswords are not the best weapon against these guys too.

[gaius valerius]

i think the main problem here is that its sooo exhausting. i mean when your army is well balanced with enough cavalry you can basically outclass the AI time and time again. but i personally find it to tiring to do it all yourselve. if you dont wanna suffer heavy losses time and time again you have to command your battles yourself. that is sometimes fun, but in time it gets annoying, and more annoying, and yet more annoying. the long load times and when facing an enemy like the ptolies, the same phalanx/galatian stacked armies over and over again. the neitos are my favorite autobattle unit. they gain experience quickly and are basically just raging killing machines. but otherwise the romans dont have much to autobattle effectively.


for example i'm facing about 4 fully stacked ptolie armies in the byzantine region. i'm roman, got marian reforms and got a full stacked marian army in the field. defeating one army is fun. the 2nd is fun but not that much; the 3rd is just tiresome. the 4th omg i wanna kill myself. when i finally beat them, then after 2 turns 2 other armies show up...

main problem is if you wanna autobattle a succesor faction, you're basically screwed.

[Arutima]

basicly, galatian swordsmen are almost as strong as the neitos (statewise) and can be basicly recruited almost anywhere in the east.

It reminds me of my Saba game, where i conquered ethiopia up to alexandria with ethiopians. Then made regionnal barrack lvl 4, just to get galatian swordsmen. Let's say that the game got easy, after that

[Charging_Knight]

Someone has got to make the recruitment of the galatians toned down or make them more expensive.period..thanks

[Arutima]

The thing is, they already cost almost 600 mnai (sp?) of upkeep.


The money script is helping the ptolemaoi a little bit too well .

[konny]

Someone has got to make the recruitment of the galatians toned down or make them more expensive.period..thanks

Yes that is a problem. Their zone of recruitement is stretching through half of the Seleucid Expansion Zone. Because both share MICs, after conquest Ptolemaioi will be able to spit out Galatians from former Seleucid towns the very next day.

Easiest sollution would be to tie them to a level 5 MIC. In this case they would only be available from the two Egyptian homeland provinces.

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

Isn't the best solution to make the Galatians only recruitable from the province of Galatia?

If they are such an elite unit I think that would be best.

[konny]

Isn't the best solution to make the Galatians only recruitable from the province of Galatia?

If they are such an elite unit I think that would be best.

They were Celts that were settled by the Ptolemaioi on their (Egypt) lands. They should be available in Egypt, that's ok; but not instantly on half of the Seleukid lands too.

[gaius valerius]

their so well spread since they were so wide used. so i dont think they should reduce the availability. i do think mainly the seleucids need some type of unit to deal with it. or make more phalanxes. the seleucids get overrun to easily for an empire their size, mainly since their recruitment center is in upper mesopotamia. they get bashed so easily by the ptolies.

if you play as seleucids i can quickly own the ptolies but the AI cant do that and in the long run they cant seem to effectively resist the ptolies. (though i've seen them make a comeback around the year 200 BCE driving through palestine). in 90% of the cases the seleucids get owned.

you can always send some fleet to egypt, sack the cities and give them to the seleucids though it would be better the seleucids got stronger; this is a balancing issue i suppose. if i think about it dont the seleucids always get owned? in the previous versions it was bactria, now its the ptolies.

its kinda a shame since they have such possibilities.

[Doom Power]

I'm having a similar problem. The Ptolemaions in my Saba campaign are now targeting my provinces and their armies consists of almost all Galatians, Phalanxes and Native infantry. So far I've managed to hold them off at great cost but my money is decreasing and my troops are starting to lose morale. Some solution about the Galatian problem has to come up quick.

EDIT: It's okay for me now. I've just won three battles against them and now they're retreating. I've captured a couple of their cities.

[gaius valerius]

i think its time we stopped with this 'the madness of the ptolies is due to galatians'. there are enough units that outmatch it. a medium phalanx for example will always beat a galatian unit. for the AI the problem is they just dont put enough money in good units. while the ptolies can march north with a steady economy the seleucids are military overpowered because their economy generally sucks. galatians aren't that über , each succesor state has powerful infantry, phalanxes outmatch etc..; do i need to say more?

to counter the yellow madness the seleucids should be powered up in the west though thats not rly due to the effectiveness of galatians. if only they build more medium phalanxes in antioch they'd manage to sit it out longer.



when your saba i dont think you should complain about galatians being to strong. you might as well remove each ptoly unit since almost every unit beats the crap out of sabaean units, not just the galatian.

in fact its good they spawn so much galatians. if they spawned only phalanxes it would be a lot harder.

[Dominatrixx]

So what's the reason Ptolemaios so owerpowered? When i played vanilla EB 1 both Ptolemaoi an AS were quite tied in power, better to say AS was a bit stronger. But after i switched to Alex.exe Ptolemaoi started to kick AS again and again (only in 1 of my campaigns this didn't happen). How is it possible to make Ptolemaoi and AS equal again (because i miss their endless and resultless fights near Jerusalem in vanilla EB 1, it was great to watch)...

[Peccavi]

I'm having the exact same problem my KArthadast force is getting massacred by those Galatian swordsmen..I've used like sacred band infantry to defend my walls and they get demolished completely by galatian swordsmen...i think i've thrown every possible Carthaginian units on walls and the galatian swordsmen are literally unstoppable, they're easy to rout when you flank them on the ground but they're a huge pain to deal with.

[Solar]

Ptolies were not much to look at in my own 1.0 game... sure, they did get a few of AS's possessions in the early game, but then they began to get trounced by both carthage and Baktria later on. I took out Carthage myself, and now Baktria is THE one huge blob of death in my game... now it's 153bC, they have most of AS's lands, plus India and most of the other eastern provinces, and a lot of ptolies' land, and they're making waaaayy too much money through the game script..

I'm probably going to use the script mod that only gives a faction money if it's in the red, when I decide to continue my campaign. That should balance out things a lil bit (wish I had decided to go with that one before I had to face a full stack of elite african pikemen every other turn when I was fighting the carthies...).