First campaigne

[caledonius]

Thought i would give you a run down on how my first game went
>
After 17 years fighting Epirus was removed from Southern Italy.
Tarentium and Croton are now part of the roman state.
Carthage has in this time had sporatic wars but is at peace with Roman.
In the year 263 after a
succefull attack on the rebel town of arentium ,the Gauls attack!
The year 252bc saw an un provoked attack from the greeks,
in the North the Gauls had taken and lost arentium.
Three massive gaulish armies were repeled by a much smaller Roman army!
Wave after wave of gauls came and
The Gauls sacked Rome in the year 250bc and again 229bc.
After some hard battles in the south the greeks were repeled and syracus,fell to the might of Rome.
219 was the year the gauls were pushed beyond bonnonia which was now a roman settlement.
197 and the gauls have been expelled from italy,forts built in the passes to hold the gauls back and give Rome time to built its infrastructure.
The next 12 years where spent weakening Carthage,destroying their infrastructur and their 5 main citys.
Carthage although still a large state has not troubled rome for a number of years.
The larger picture shows Egypt now having conquered macedonia,greece and thrace at war with the illyrians and britons to the east of italy.
Rome if it is to lock horns with Egypt which i fear it will must consolidate its position and have enough wealth to send legions to fight this future enemy
The end came rapidly as massive stacks of Egyptian armies streaked across the continent.
.

[TheAlchemist]

Holy crap!! That's a TON of full stacks! I've never seen anything even remotely like that before. Egypt sure did a lot of conquering between 252 and 214! Sorry to see that rather painful-looking end

[Finn]

Great screens! I've never seen the Ptolemies dominate the whole map like that...in fact, I've never seen an AI controlled Egyptian faction in Italy ever!!

[Quinn Inuit]

!!!

Ideally, it shouldn't be possible for any AI faction to do that by 197 in the ExRM. Did you do anything to assist Egyptian expansion, like attack their enemies? If not, do you have any suggestions as to how we can prevent such overrunning from occurring?

[caledonius]

!!!

Ideally, it shouldn't be possible for any AI faction to do that by 197 in the ExRM. Did you do anything to assist Egyptian expansion, like attack their enemies? If not, do you have any suggestions as to how we can prevent such overrunning from occurring?

[Jingles]

!!!

Ideally, it shouldn't be possible for any AI faction to do that by 197 in the ExRM. Did you do anything to assist Egyptian expansion, like attack their enemies? If not, do you have any suggestions as to how we can prevent such overrunning from occurring?

Garrison scripts might be a good idea to slow the AI down a bit.

[caledonius]

I am playing H/H and am now going to mod the script to see if it gives me a bit of a chance.I will reduce the Roman built times.
I was think each stage to 3 turns which would seems fair and the barracks to 6 turns.I would like to give myself some extra money at the start but for some reason even after i change the amount from 11,000 to 110000 it still loads as 11,000?:hmmm:
Here is where i end this game as i am on a hiding to nothing from the macs

[horatius]

That is insane. I've never seen anything like it. It's like the Midas touch. Everything is turning to gold.

[ZealotsACH]

Macedon is on its way to that type of conquering in my campaign. ill try to post a pic later. i've noticed that with ExRM, the AI is completely able to over run the map. they expand very quickly, much quicker then i could hope to. not really complaining it adds a lot of strategy to the game.

[Delvecchio1975]

hahahaha, great story man! that last picture is truly awesome - i felt for you! just when you started expanding out of italy, you get half of humanity rolling in!

PS: i did see this before with Macedonia when i was playing bactria: as soon as i conquered the rebels in india, after around 240BC, the macedonians show up at my doorstep with MASSIVE armies ....

[caledonius]

That was my first game and never modded anything.As i said in my story the only factions i fought was epirus,gauls,Carthage and nearer the end the Britons.Then Egypt arrived.
I started a new game but had to restart as Macedonia had already taken bononia by 261bc and i was still struggling to get rid of epirus?
I was going to change the amount of money Rome gets initially from 11,000 to 110000 denari but after i change the final in ExRM dis.strat it still loads only giving rome 11,000>
Why will it not let me change the money for rome?
Only thing i can think of to stop such quick expansion by other factions is to give them a very small amount of money to start,change their win conditions so they don't immediately always attack rome and perhaps change the way the factions react to each other EG macodinia sit still with greece next to them and fight the thracian but wont sit still if a roman town is next to them?

[caledonius]

Heres my latest,as you can see macedonia is already streaking across the country? The built time slow Roman down which is good but other factions still seem able to produce troops and quickly advance.
It is 20 years into the game and i am trying to take all of scicilly and havent evmn the strength to look at arentium ,yet macedonia has defeated the illyrians and is at war with the gauls
I am assuming in another 20 years they will be all over germany,gaul and zooming up italy with very little i can do to stop them

[Domitan]

What difficulty setting you using?

[Delvecchio1975]

i think your progress by 260 is not bad at all! the AI definitely is on a rampage ...

[Delvecchio1975]

wow. just: wow. you're getting caned again! where's your army man? with italy and sicily in the pocket you should be able to maintain at least a stack an a half of quality footfolk, no?

[caledonius]

I could have had a stack as you say,but as the build up is slow i was trying to built an infrastructure.The other factions somehow seem to have loads of money and can produce troops quickly thereby advancing a rate of knots
It wouldn't be so bad if they also had to stop for a while to get there economy sorted

[Jingles]

Well, playing it on anything higher than medium means the AI gets cash injections... so they probably don't have an economy problem.

[Delvecchio1975]

you can't only focus on your economy. in the beginning you need to maintain small armies (a bit under halfstacks, like 4 hastati, 4 velites and 4 funditores plus a general or so) that can deal with the rebel cities around you. at the same time you focus on building ports, roads and marketplaces (in that order); don't waste money on any other buildings until you have spare cash, or until the city smiley turns red.
like this you'll be able to grow while maintaining an army fit for your size. you'll notice when your empire grows bigger, and you get more ports and roads, that you'll be able to maintain larger stacks, you can include principes (i find triarii a waste of my hard earned cash), and by the time the macedonians come a-knocking around patavium, you'll have two stacks ready: one to keep em in illyria, another to invade them in greece/albania. once you have two fronts open, you'll be able to hurt them, as you're the better strategian.
in my current campaign i shot myself slightly in the foot, as i only have one front open in albania, (i own the illyrian coast) and it's difficult to open a second one because the thracians are in the way in illyria (why macedon doesn't invade them is a mystery), and greece is still well alive, so i'd have to sail around greece to open a front in macedonia proper, which would make my lines of communication unviably long. two fronts is key, my friend!

[Jamey]

In ExRM, I normally ignore building anything but high income buildings (especially mines) in the first year or two. Instead, I concentrate on capturing territory around me to solidify my economic base. Early on, a new settlement is worth several times more to your economy than a gold mine or most ports. I tend to invest in garrison units and key missing pieces to my attack forces early in the game. Once I'm stabilized with a positive cash flow, I'll get serious about constructing buildings.

Playing as Rome, my goal was to control Italy (I like Bononia for the northern border both as a choke point and because it gives access to two separate AORs with the same barracks) in the first decade. That gave me a very solid economic base to build from. After that, the world has been my oyster as I can always concentrate enough military strength to win any war.

[Delvecchio1975]

another tactic that works well (especially if you're pressed for time), is unite the two starting armies and attack Pyrrhus frontally - take out the biggest threat first. Kick his arse, and occupy tarentum and croton. do that, and you have five rebel settlements (2 north, 3 south) for the picking.