Few days ago downloaded this mod. First impressions seems very nice to me, made around 10 turns, so far had only one random crash, so results are pretty nice. Thanx a lot Riothamus for working on this mod. First choice was of course to play western roman empire. Difficulty level as usually VH/VH for ultimate challenge and huge units for ultimate fun.
So... WRE is in dire situation.. or isnt it? The economy is a total disaster exept the capital Ravenna, which is makeing half or empire's income. The army... well.. I can barely have one full army, which is composed of not the best troops, only 1/4 of the first legion is reliable heavy infantry. This means my offensive operations are limited to one theatre of war, rest directions will be on defensive.
The main task is improve economy, and do that very fast. This means every city must build something every turn. The second task is to defend the cities I have, since there are units that can be recruited in 0 turns (means that army can be raised anywhere at a very short time), it is quite easily done task with quite low expenses if you can afford to have a good network of spies and blocking forts on the main paths of enemy army. The third task is increase number of cities without expanding the war theatre, since I can have only one average legion.
Where to send this one legion? Obviously not to the north - any posessions I will acquire there will be difficult to defend. Also I do not want to get into turmoil of nations in the north - roman army is too weak to deal with it. So north will be defensive. Invasion into the greece would be nice, but it is also potential turmoil of nations, spain - very tempting direction which is easy to defend, but then I will have to be on defensive versus vandals too, and for some reason I believe they will not be peacefull with me and sooner or later strike me in my homeland when I will be fighting in spain, so the wisest decision seems to me fighting vandals. This means invasion into corsica, then sardinia, or then again I can invade sicily. Then - naval assault on africa. I hope the coast of africa is rich
After some spying I chose to invade Corsica only later Sicily. There were 3 vandal cities there, means they can build up good army quite fast on that direction and I did not want that. And vandals have only one city in Sicily, so it is unlikely they will get big army there.
So... my First legion which was actually made of forces which were acquired by stripping all the garrisons from the middle cities of italy, commanded by the best general invaded corsica. The quality of troops meant that I will not risk to assault the cities, instead I chose to starve them out one by one. It is VH after all. And vandal garrisons seem quite strong - usually at least 6 units. Means I will loose around 1000-2000 men in frontal assault of total 3200, including the best heavy infantry which would be time consuming to reinforce. And I do not want that.
Corsica was taken quite easily, after all starved out garrison was not a match for my first legion, and relieve army did not come at all.
Before invding Sardinia, I noticed that vandals had a general with half of stack of good troops there, I reinforced it with one unit of mercenary cavalry in order to get the punching power versus enemy heavy infantry. Hammer and anvil tactics never failed me before. Still I had one full legion so invasion proceeded as planned. The first major land battle was fought near the nothern city of sardinia. I was sieging it, vandals came to relieve. It was around the same amount of troops with slight advantage in numers on my side - 3200 versus 2800, they had better quality units, but they were divided into 2 armies. So the battle was easy, lost only 600 men, majority of them foederati infantry and instantly took the city. Takeing the last southern city of Sardinia was easy task. A long siege and the city surrendered without a fight.
The gradual increase of economy and gains in corsica and sardinia allowed me to train 2nd legion (only 4 lanciarii are elite troops there, rest limitanei and exculatores and even some militia) which was responsible for pacifying sicily. Rebel held town surrendered very fast after relief force came to them. And the vandal city in sicilia became besieged.
Now I am scouting africa. Carthage is a tempting target. But it is well defended, allmost full barbarian horde sitting there plus one more is coming to it. Other cities are much less defendend. I believe I should go for them. And for some time it will be impossible to get decent reinforcements, exept the mercenaries in northern africa. I cannot afford loosing a battle. Loosing a battle means time, so far it is peaceful in the north, but I believe it is the silence before storm. I will have to fight on multiple fronts some day.
Re: Post your empires/ kingdoms here!
Originally Posted by rasputin753
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