ExRM Campaign Status Reports

[Jamey]

These got all jumbled in the omnibus thread. I'm going to start a thread here for screenshots and status reports on our ExRM campaigns.

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I have a slower paced campaign than my usual. I'm playing Rome at a more leisurely pace. At the outset of each decade, I'm setting limited objectives for myself and not holding any other territory. I made one change to the game start conditions, upgrading all German Towns with 2000+ population to Large Towns in descr_strat.txt (including upgrading the palaces as well).

My objectives to date:
280-270: Conquer all of Italy from Bononia to Rhegium.
270-260: Conquer Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, and Melite
260-250 (current): Conquer Cisalpine Gaul, Illyria, and Apollonia

I'm allowed to intervene elsewhere. For example, the Numidians paid nicely to be my allies and the Carthaginians are annoying pests who invaded the Roman homeland. Thus, when my Numidian allies were getting beaten badly by Carthage, I liberated Capsca and Nepte for them. The Greeks are ascendant in Greece (and they keep invading Melite) and Big Blue is getting scary, so each of them are probably in for a punitive raid.

270 BC:


260 BC:



Germany is growing nicely. It is comparable to Gaul in its progress.


The area around the strait of Bosphorus is pretty interesting. I've never seen Seleucia jump across like this. As you can see in the 270 minimap, they did it early, before they pounded the remnants of Galatia.


It's a bit of a shame that Rome needs more gold (I mean the freshly minted variety, not the kind you get from trade). Thrace has been doing so nicely at building itself into a power. It's working on growing into Illyria to control the mines.

I haven't allied with anyone except Numidia; my only diplomacy has been acquiring trade rights and map information. I've used the force diplomacy option to get ceasefire and trade rights with various factions after brief wars. Carthage sued for peace after I took their various holdings near Italy. I may have to help Carthage because Numidia has been on a tear since I liberated its lost settlements. I can't have another Punic war without Carthage to fight against!

[Vae victis]

Hi. I finally got ExRM to work on Vista. (had to do some copying and pasting because the rar files wouldnt overwrite.)

Anyway, I've been having a nice campaign with Numidia. Tried to turtle with them but Carthage sent some nasty stacks at me. My next campaign, I struck at Carthage right away, and drove them out of Africa. I fought a few large battles, but the sieges where too easy because the stupid AI doesn't defend its settlements.

I played a slower paced game because it takes like 100 turns to be able to build your national units in conquerd provinces. The real challenge of this game is keeping armies supplied with reinforcements, paying their upkeep, and balancing your budget. I could only afford 1 main army stack so my WC progress was slow.

With Numidia, I eventually conqured Northern Africa east of the Ptolomies. I took Carthages settlement in Spain and I am in the process of eliminating the Iberians. 100+ turns into the game and the AI has expanded nicley. Macedon, Illyrians, Galations, Gauls, and Pontus have been eliminated. Rome has secured Italy and taken Sicily. I am pretty impressed at how the map changes colors at the hands of the AI. However with ~toggle_fow, I see few large stacks, and almost no garrisons in settlements. The AI can expand and defend well against itself but the human can steamroll the AI easily.

Have you modders of ExRM considered adding a garrison script similar to the one that Deus Lo Vult for MTW2 uses? The script spawns an army to defend a settlement whenever it is attacked by the player. This prevents steamrolling and adds more fun and challange to the game.:hmmm:

[Tom..]

I started a game as Rome this evening, but only played an hour. Managed to defeat Pyrrhus but lost a general and about 20% of my army. Even with this though, the costs were huge and I went down to -120000 in debt before I started making money! I like how hard it is to raise and keep armies in the field, but the ai is very good at it, they make small stacks of levies to throw at me - at least so far. Carthage is also to aggressive, why are they attacking me straight away when theres so many easier opportunities is utterly beyond me!

I also agree with the above poster - the ai refuses to defend its settlements properly. A garrison script might help, or cheap garrison units. Don't know how the AI thinks, so not sure if they will use them properly, or just make armies out of them.

[Jamey]

Pyrrhus can be tough. He's one of the best starting generals in the game because he has a full set of nice ancillaries. In my Roman campaign, I caught him in Corfinium and a lucky javelin from a velite took care of him early in the battle. I had them up near the wall to provide cover for my ram teams and he rode past. I won't depend on that kind of luck, but I'll certainly capitalize on it.

Carthage attacks the way it does because it is set to like naval invasions. Unfortunately, we're stuck with silly naval assaults or no Punic aggression. I had a half stack of Carthaginians arrive around 275 near Capua. It was my only major battle against Carthage.

I saw an Illyrian general (one of 5 between the two forces they deployed in this battle) make the worst mistake of his life. He decided to charge a unit of my Triarii. The silly barbarian died upon first contact with the Triarii. The remainder of his bodyguard died when my other unit of Triarii came in from behind.

[Quinn Inuit]

I like the script idea, but I'm not sure it will work. The AI makes armies out of anything it can get its hands on and sends them to fight people...learned this the hard way while trying to balance Rome and Macedon/Greece. It might be a recipe for stack spamming.

A triarii sandwich? Excellent. That must have hurt.

[Jamey]

A triarii sandwich? Excellent. That must have hurt.

It didn't hurt me any.

By the way, I'm loving the Samnite Light Infantry. I use it as a heavy skirmisher. In most battles, they only volley off their javelins. In a pinch, however, they are perfectly acceptable as a flanking unit. I also like the artwork on them; they just look good.

[Finn]

Here's the latest on my Germania campaign.

I've pretty much subdued Italy at this point in my game, atm the Romans aren't up to much and it's only a matter of time before the Barbarians overrun the entire Peninsula
Thrace has just attacked my Eastern most towns, it's a first for me to see the Thracian's so strong this late in the game.

I also have the Iberian's launching forays into my western settlements, which so far I've been able to repel with the help of a few Gallic mercs.
I'm still waiting for my barracks to upgrade to level three so I can recruit some of my own troops in these Gallic towns.

All in all a very fun and challenging campaign, which has plenty of life left in it after some 60 or so turns.

[Jamey]

Here's the latest on my Germania campaign.

Excellent.

I like to use Emporaie and two forts to defend the Iberian frontier. Because of the mountains, you can interdict all traffic that way. I wound up defending Emporaie with some of the colonial levy hoplites you can recruit there but never doing much with them other than that. Plus, it has a gold mine as well as a superb commercial port.

Best of luck on dealing with the Thracian problem. The good news is that their key feature (Armor Piercing) is pretty well useless on your troops. The bad news is that you have an unarmored horde of barbarians! Or is that good news as well?

I've seen Thrace become a substantial power. I believe that the tipping point for it is securing Tylis and the two Greek colonies on the Black Sea coast there. When it succeeds at that, it has enough of an economy to go toe to toe with many factions. In my current on and off Roman campaign (posted above), Thrace wound up conquering the two provinces inland of Illyria. Had it gotten mines up in those, it would have also been a substantial power. Though, I expect it would have fallen before the Greek stack spam that I've been slaughtering.

[Finn]

I haven't taken Emporaie yet, mainly because I don't have the troops to do so, but it's on my list.
Also, I built a watch tower in the pass above Emporaie, which unfortunately resulted in me being unable to build a fort there( I suppose they cant be too close on the map)

[Jingles]

I started a Galatian campaign. Its serious fun, whupping all those phalanx nancys with good old-fashioned celtic iron! The seleucids (although I allied with them initially, but they betrayed me) aren't putting up much of a fight, but my main problem is my lack of money. I'm thousands in debt, and even constant conquests aren't putting it right. I'll post some pics soon.

[Jamey]

I started a Galatian campaign. Its serious fun, whupping all those phalanx nancys with good old-fashioned celtic iron! The seleucids (although I allied with them initially, but they betrayed me) aren't putting up much of a fight, but my main problem is my lack of money. I'm thousands in debt, and even constant conquests aren't putting it right. I'll post some pics soon.

If you haven't yet, sack Pergamon. That was the tipping point for cash in my aborted Galatian campaign. Then try to get all the mines built that you can.

I don't know what you've done, but I think it's a mistake for Galatia to not go after the weakly defended Seleucid settlements in the area. Defeating one Seleucid stack pretty well gets you the run of western Asia Minor for a couple of years. Once you capture some coastal settlements and get the mines built, your economy should stabilize. I queued up 8 or so Galatian warbands on turn 1 so that I'd have garrison units when I needed them, even if I went into debt.

I captured NW Asia Minor plus Byzantion, then headed east to take Cyprus. It's weakly defended and massively lucrative between the gold mines and the ports. Around that point I started hitting CTDs because I was using an experimental add on which gave Galatia the priests it's supposed to get from temples (but doesn't at the moment). I'll probably give Galatia a good run in the next release once the temple and priest fixes are in for the new factions.

[Delvecchio1975]

i started as the seleucids recently. for once i didn't concentrate on money from the beginning, but on steel, and not on the ptolemies, but on pontus, armenia and the parthians. marched off the initial armies from mesopotamia to the parthians, the one from near antioch to pontus. replaced all armies of cities (goldshields and asiatic archers) with cheap peltasts and spearmen, and marched those in the direction of armenia. Like this Seleucia becomes an unstoppable avalanche of death. parthians and galatians fell be 270, pontus by 268 and armenia by 263.
Now i'm using the ptolemies for archer practice. they have only alexandria and cyprus left. i'm beefing up pergamon and the surrounding cities because the macedonians are starting to harrass maronia, after capturing byzantion. have about 25K rolling in every turn, just short of keeping all my building queues going ...

[Jamey]

Here's a continuation of my Roman Campaign from above. I've come to the conclusion that playing on H/M in a campaign where I intend to take my time is a mistake. The extra income (5000 per turn, I believe) allows Greece to support an extra half to full stack of troops depending on the quality they are building.

My interventions in the 260-250 time period were interesting. I took Sveaby using the move_character cheat and immediately gave it to Germania. That unblocked the two stacks that were stuck next to Vicus Cimbri for a couple of years.

I also marched across the Peloponnese and exterminated Athens, Elis, and Corinth (fighting only one real battle along the way). I destroyed the military infrastructure in Elis and Corinth, but left Athens intact because Athenian Hoplites are fun to fight against. Doing this has slowed down Greek unit production. It also convinced the AI to actually build and send against me a couple of units of Spartan Hoplites. After that, the force headed to Crimea. I took Olbia from the Greeks and two of the other Crimean settlements from the rebels. I gave each to Sarmatia. I then crushed a Pontic army that was heading towards Campus Alanni before heading back to Italia for retraining. Tiberius Iunius Brutus, the Praetor commanding that expedition leveraged the glory of it to become the first non-starting Consul I've had. He has since retired from active military services to govern and command the defenses of Apollonia. This is no sinecure, as it has been besieged twice since he took charge.

My army composition:
I've now standardized the Roman core of all of my armies. Each contains 2 generals (one commander and one assistant, hopefully a younger protégé, but sometimes a complete loser who needs a job). It also contains 2 each of Triarii, Principes, and Hastati.

Beyond that, the armies are all auxilia. I've chosen not to build the Italic units so far. I'll probably upgrade a barracks or two to build those at some point so that I can play with them some. In general terms, the rest of the army tends to be mostly heavy infantry, with 0-4 skirmishers, 4 missile units and 0-2 cavalry.

I'm currently fielding major forces with these Auxilia:

• 6 Etrurian Hoplites, 4 Gallic Slingers, 2 Gallic Noble Cavalry
• 4 Picene Hoplites, 4 Light Samnites, 4 Cretan Archers
• 2 Marsi Heavy Spears, 2 Heavy Samnites, 4 Light Samnites, 4 Balearic Slingers
• 2 Marsi Heavy Spears, 2 Heavy Samnites, 2 Light Samnites, 4 Cretan Archers, 2 Numidian Cavalry
• 6 Libyan Spearmen, 4 Balearic Slingers, 2 Numidian Cavalry (currently being retrained with level 2 equipment in Roma)
• 4 Picene Hoplites, 2 Cretan Archers, 2 Tarentine Cavalry (defending Apollonia)

Most of my other Marsi units have now become garrison or defensive troops. I found I like the Samnites better. The Light Samnite is a great heavy skirmisher. They have 4 AP javelins. Man to man, the fight roughly like a sword warband, which makes them a very solid flank attack unit. You don't want them to meet anything head-on for long, but they will rip up the flank or rear of a phalanx or hoplite formation very quickly.

My objectives to date:

• 280-270: Conquer all of Italy from Bononia to Rhegium.
• 270-260: Conquer Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, and Melite
• 260-250: Conquer Cisalpine Gaul, Illyria, and Apollonia
• 250-240 (current): Conquer Carthage's starting position, Carthago Nova, and (optionally) the rest of the North African coast. The last is optional depending on whether I think I can hold it in the face of Numidian aggression along with my other fronts.

The map progression:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

270 BC:


260 BC:


250 BC:

Some comments:

I decided to end Carthage because it is just too stupid to let live. I propped up Carthage with vast sums of money, both in direct payment and in bribing an army besieging Carthago. Now, with two of its home settlements besieged and Carthago herself threatened, Carthage sent 8 units to try to retake Melite.

Here's the attack force which is going to take Carthago. It's the Roman I Field Army commanded by Nero Valerius Laevinus. He was the assistant to Tiberius Iunius Brutus on his legendary journey across Greece and up to Sarmatia.


That will serve as my bridgehead while further legions are brought to the African front. A newly formed legion whose auxilia core is Libyan Spearmen and Balearic Slingers is being properly equipped with high grade Roman arms. Another smaller defensive legion has been in Lilybaeum. It will move to Carthago to form the defensive reserve for Africa. There are 3 units of peltasts which stand watch along the coasts of Malta. I couldn't take dealing with the tiny naval invasions every few turns, so I applied some cheese and blocked the landing zones.

The front with Greece has provided a lot of fun defensive battles (note that this shows both the sieging force and the defenders at Apollonia):

The Greek armies have tended to be hoplite heavy, normally 12-15 hoplite units (including generals) and the rest peltasts or skirmisher cavalry, with the occasional Thracian Merc unit mixed in. Tribune Lucius Iunius Silanus blocks the northern pass with the Roman I Legion. Legate (soon to be Praetor) Gnaeus the Victor (he's adopted and I have no clue what his last name was) stands in the southern pass. Former Consul Tiberius Iunius Brutus commands Apollonia and will send the besieging forces to meet Pluto.

Beyond that, the Barbarian powers are growing nicely. Germania controls 9 territories. The Gauls control 7, down from a peak of 8 at the time I invaded Cisalpine Gaul. Iberia controls all of Iberia. The Britons control 3 territories and are besieging Remi. They are likely to succeed as I appear to have all of the Gallic forces tied up futilely assaulting Alpine passes. Thrace controls 8 territories, but would likely be a power to contend with had it finished absorbing the mines of Illyria. Instead, that wealth now flows into Roma. Sarmatia was stalled after it lost Olbia to a rebellion. I rectified that by giving them Crimea, but that was too late for them to hold onto Campus Scythii.

After I returned Nepte and Capsa to Numidian control, Carthage just wilted and died. It refused to defend itself, instead sending futile attack forces at Melite. Gades got sandwiched between Iberia and Numida, who look ready to clash over control of Tingi. Bactria is becoming a majro power by absorbing all of the gold mines in the far east. Parthia got screwed by Petra flipping to it early and has never recovered. Armenia is being devoured by Pontus, another major power in the making and Seleucia's only real ally. Even after losing most of its holdings in Asia Minor, Ptolemy has stayed strong. It has concentrated on the land border with Seleucia in the Levant, resulting in some titanic full stack clashes.

Roma grew to a Huge City relatively recently. I build the palace and then a Forge. Currently building is a Ludus Magna. I had to put the brakes on Capua and Ancona. I stuck net +squalor generals in them to limit their growth to 0.5%. Ancona had hit 20,000 people because it had a FM with several +growth traits.

The Next Generation:
A grandson of Tiberius Iunius Brutus has just come of age. He is currently in Roma learning his craft. He's the most jaw-dropping natural general I have ever seen. I truly cannot believe that the RNG spit him out, but I guess it had to happen eventually given how much I've played the game.

I decided it was worth it to go out of my way and get him some good ancillaries rather than taking the luck of the draw. They were hand delivered to him by some of the old fogeys around Italia. I'm resisting the temptation to deploy him now. As any other faction, he'd immediately replace an existing general. As it is, he'll get the full 4 years of Roman Education in the hopes that he'll pick up some of the good military traits. LogisticalSkill would just be a heavenly addition for him. I haven't decided yet whether he'll take over a veteran army or build his own from scratch.

[Jamey]

i started as the seleucids recently.

I played a brief Seleucid campaign recently. I wound up steamrolling so fast that I gave up on it fairly quickly.

I did really enjoy the catphract elephants. I got the starting unit of those up to silver chevrons. It was nicknamed "Bubba." Once I wiped out the skirmishers with archers and cavalry, Bubba would go on a rampage through the Ptolemaic infantry. The best was one battle he got nearly 600 kills from going lengthwise through the whole ptolemaic pike line (unit size 120 on each pike unit). Bodies were flying everywhere.

[Finn]

Great report Jamey! It's great to see the Greek stacks that the AI are sending against you have such diversity in their units.

[Quinn Inuit]

Definitely. We worked really hard to get the AI to build diverse armies, so it's nice to see that pay off.

And I love that use of cataphract elephants. Lengthwise. Ouch!

[Jamey]

And I love that use of cataphract elephants. Lengthwise. Ouch!

It was a beautiful setup given by the AI. They were attacking and brought their pike line up against mine, giving me a perfect target. I doubt I could duplicated it, and I wish I had thought to get some screenshots.

[Jamey]

While it is certainly apocryphal, it is widely rumored among the men of the II Consular Army that Gnaeus the Orator told the runner from Governor Tiberius Iunius Brutus that the best help he could provide would be to "Send more Greeks!"



EDIT: Sadly, I bagged my entire year's quota of Greeks in that single battle. While it was exhilarating being in a pincer between two larger forces, I won't have any battles on that front for several turns!

EDIT2: I now see why Numidia became such a beast after I took its starting settlements from Carthage and returned them to Numidia. I too Capsa and Moulucha from Numidia, destroyed their military infrastructure, then sued for peace in exchange for returning them (of course, having to use the force diplomacy option to make them accept). Each of those settlements wound up with 12 units, 10 Numidian Javelins and 2 Numidian Cavalry. Each of them is the rebel version, to the maintenance is 5 for the Javelins and 10 for the cavalry. Giving them these settlements in effect gave them a maintenance free stack of troops. I'm expecting the war to restart really soon.

[Jamey]

The 10 year goals to date:

• 280-270: Conquer all of Italy from Bononia to Rhegium.
• 270-260: Conquer Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, and Melite
• 260-250: Conquer Cisalpine Gaul, Illyria, and Apollonia
• 250-240: Conquer Carthage's starting position, Carthago Nova, and the rest of the North African coast. I added Rhodes to the conquest list in 247 to dampen Greece's stack spam.
• 240-230 (current): Capture all of Greece's current holdings, minus Maronia. Capture all of Iberia's current holdings.

The map progression:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

270 BC:


260 BC:


250 BC:


240 BC:

Some comments:

The Fronts:

• I currently have 2 mobile legions near Antigonea defending against the Greeks (plus a strong force in Apollonia). I'm still facing 40+ Greek units per year despite taking Rhodes from them.
• I have 1 legion near Delmatia defending against Thrace. It often roams Thracian territory slaughtering small groups before they can gather.
• I have 2 legions in Iberia in preparation for conquest, including Nero Valerius Laevinus, who is strongly rumored to be favored to be the next Praetor promoted by the Senate. Nero has been defending against Iberia while urgiing the Senate to take aggressive action. With the arrival of a fresh legion, he has finally found the votes to support an offensive.
• Two legions defend Africa against Numidia, one near Icosium and one near Thapsus. The legion near Icosium has a ship stationed nearby to help in Iberia. Africa remains a very quiet front after a raid to destroy unit production in Capsa and Moulucha. Besides, Numidia currently has 3 rebel armies in its territory to keep it busy.
• One legion stands firm against Gaul. Orders for a second legion to help defend against the barbarian hordes have been issued (Germany is getting aggressive on that front, so one legion will not be sufficient), but it will take another year or so to complete training and outfitting. Garrison troops in the area will provide the auxilia to support the Roman core (I've been slowly building up troops in the pass south of Iuvavum, so I just need a Roman core and the command staff).
• Rhodes is generally being defended by Admiral Asinius. His elite fleet last year sent more than 2000 Greeks to a watery grave.

Beyond that, not much is going on - the world has been remarkably static. Pontus has 3 full stacks on the border with Seleucia (and their alliance is broken), so I expect a major war soon.

The Britons seems to be in a wacky loop. They have a full stack near Calleva. It hops on a ship, lands near Remi, wanders a bit in Gallic territory, gets back on the ship, sails to Isca, and then walks back across to Calleva.

Sarmatia is now a protectorate of both Pontus and Germany. Despite that, it still appears to have a negative treasury. I really can't figure out how to get Sarmatia to get its act together.

EDIT: I almost forgot. Greece has recruited Athens down to a population of 541. It really likes the Athenian Hoplitai. I can't disagree with its assessment. I just wish it also liked its Spartans. I'm up to 6 units of Spartans killed now. It's take a few decades, but I'm now ahead of Xerxes I in that regard.

[LeoDowner]

I just wrote out my whole campaign then I mysteriously jumped back a page so now it's gone, you'll have to wait to be enthralled with my tales of valour & victory.