Macedonians

[Arkaeyn]

I've started playing a few games, and noticed that there are money issues, quickly, with most smaller factions (Illyria, Rome, and Macedon). Macedon has the Greek juggernaut to contend with immediately, so I think they're the toughest to start with.

I've been most successful (barely, but most) with building a port and roads in Larissa quickly, and besieging Thessalonica. But it's basically hoping that the Greeks don't besiege all my cities and totally cut off my money.

I've tried attacking Athens immediately, but my decent army immediately was countered by a Greek superstack. No go there.

How can I build the infrastructure to keep an army up while also keeping an army in the field?

[lelouchx99]

The macedonians are one of the easiest factions to play with even on VH / VH. As long as you know what you are doing

[Quinn Inuit]

Welcome to the boards, Arkaeyn!

First, don't go near Athens! I haven't disabled its protective script yet, which is a relic of when the Macs were as Lelouchx99 describes them (his info is a little out of date).

Second, the garrisons in Macedonia proper are fairly weak, and the relevant Auxilia buildings are already in place there. Make that your priority, just like it was Antigonus's.

Third, get Thessalonika A.S.A.P. It's a great source of funds. Pella is, too.

btw, Lelouchx99, this isn't the first time you've been dismissive of another poster's concerns. Please try to be more constructive in your comments.

[lelouchx99]

Welcome to the boards, Arkaeyn!

First, don't go near Athens! I haven't disabled its protective script yet, which is a relic of when the Macs were as Lelouchx99 describes them (his info is a little out of date).

Second, the garrisons in Macedonia proper are fairly weak, and the relevant Auxilia buildings are already in place there. Make that your priority, just like it was Antigonus's.

Third, get Thessalonika A.S.A.P. It's a great source of funds. Pella is, too.

btw, Lelouchx99, this isn't the first time you've been dismissive of another poster's concerns. Please try to be more constructive in your comments.

Oh wait, we are not talking about PE right?

I was playing as Macedon in PE so got confused

Sorry about that Quinn

[Quinn Inuit]

Ah, I'd wondered where that superstack came from.

Should I just be letting Corinth and Chalcida go? It seems unlikely that I'll able to effectively conquer Macedon and stop the Greeks from taking them.

I've started another game as a bigger empire (Carthage) and had the same problem. The first 10 years are a desperate scramble to conquer as many cities as possible and get infrastructure up. They're very different from the rest of the game.

Nah, I think you can hang onto those two. Especially Corinth--it's valuable real estate. Are the Greek armies too much early on?

I think most mods with high upkeep have an extremely difficult opening section. It's pretty much unavoidable, I think. Do you think spreading that challenge out is more desirable, or would that be less fun?

Oh wait, we are not talking about PE right?

I was playing as Macedon in PE so got confused

Sorry about that Quinn

It's cool. Yeah, we're definitely not talking PE. Macedon in PE is freaking unstoppable. Heck, they were unstoppable in early versions of the ExRM, and that's after I viciously nerfed the whole area. It wasn't until 3.3 or so that I kind of got them under control. Now they're probably underpowered--I think they should get more starting troops.

[AnthoniusII]

Third, get Thessalonika A.S.A.P. It's a great source of funds. Pella is, too.

Can you explain to me the reason why Thessalonike(a)is not part of the Macedonian Kingdom this era?
Is there a historical basis?
I can not recall any historical evidence that there was a time that this city was out of that kingdom's rule!

[Arkaeyn]

Ah, I'd wondered where that superstack came from.

Should I just be letting Corinth and Chalcida go? It seems unlikely that I'll able to effectively conquer Macedon and stop the Greeks from taking them.

I've started another game as a bigger empire (Carthage) and had the same problem. The first 10 years are a desperate scramble to conquer as many cities as possible and get infrastructure up. They're very different from the rest of the game.

[Arkaeyn]

Yes, the Greeks come at me within a year or two. I'm playing on Hard for the Campaign. The main army I have in the field gets damaged by the strong rebels, who usually come from Pella to force a battle when I'm besieging Thessalonica. At this point I have a third of a stack and no money.


I'm reading the thread about slowing the expansion and learning about how this game works. I'm also coming over from a Civ4 binge, which seems to deal with expansion and upkeep in a quite different way, so maybe I can help with some ideas.

It seems to me that since one of the big problems, both historically and with gameplay, is that cities which have supposedly existed for hundreds of years are missing infrastructure. The high upkeep costs aren't that big of a deal with the infrastructure. It's just that those 10 years are bad.

Civ4 works oppositely in that troop costs, unless you have a MASSIVE army, aren't that big of a deal, whereas having too many cities without enough infrastructure causes more problems. That limits expansion until markets and trade routes are built. Rome, or at least this mod, seems to push the player into a mad dash for cities, as that's a much faster and better way to increase income. I really like Civ4's system, frustrating as it might be sometimes.

Using that model for ExRM would lead me to say that upkeep could be decreased somewhat, but city profits decreased significantly, or perhaps corruption increased until certain buildings are built.


EDIT:

A simpler way to put that is that increasing upkeep penalizes the effects of expansion, which is annoying at the start of the game, and doesn't really change the expansion mindset - it's like slightly raising the taxes on the rich. By penalizing the causes of expansion (the income itself), it makes it more difficult for the empires to expand.

[despot_of_rhodes]

Arkaeyn: Though i haven´t played Macs in the newer version of ExRM yet, the issue with the Carthaginians is not of the same difficulty. They start with quite a lot of troops, spreaded out all through the empire, especially the cavalry upkeep is bad for your finances ( oh, and the one unit Elefants in Sicily with over 2k upkeep! ). Get rid of them, disband all the cavalry units you don´t really need. Don´t attack Aggrigento with the starting army, but instead pick up your troops ( esp. the 2 Sacred Band units from Carthgage ) with your fleets and assault Agrigento after 2-3 turns. Even if you autoresolve on "hard" ( campaign diff. ), you are going to win and Hanno, if he´s still alive at this point, is a really good administrator, so the road to counquer Sicily in no time is opened to you.
Playing Carthage you are not threatened by anyone in the beginning. Let the Numidians argue with the rebells and concentrate your whole military power on one conquest at a time.

One more thing about carthaginian units: the numidian cavalry ( not the mercenaries ) is, after playing a campaign now for a while, is your ultimative weapon. Just an example: two of them, with silver shevrons and foundry upgrades could easyly take out any roman general bodyguards - their missile attack was about 17! and they have a charge of 20! counting 96! riders ( on huge settings ).
They are very cost effective to recruit and in upkeep ( about 450/450 denari ) and can be trained almoust everywhere in Africa and don´t require faction barracks ( iirc auxilla 2 or 3? doen´t really matter )

I hope this helps a bit

Oh, btw. Quinn: In vanilla there used to be a Baal temple in Cordoba and since this province has 15% unrest + 60% corruption, i would suggest to replace the current Melquart temple in Gades by the originall Baal´s temple ( i allways have to raise down the trade temple manually to become the corruption and public order under control, to be able to get some profit out of the province ).

[Wien1938]

Macedonia was divided between two or three contenders for the throne. As Antigonos Gonatos is the historically successful candidate he has the best chance of success but he only controlled a handful of cities and Thessaly. Ptolemy Kerenos controlled Macedonia proper and had defeated Gonatos the previous year but he was killed in 280 BC by the Galatians, while the other pretender (whose name escapes me at present) had no real support and was swiftly put to death once Antigonos claimed the throne in 277 BC.
Basically Macedonia is a mess in 280 BC. The Galatians have overrun the countryside (but note, none of the cities), the royal line has been extinct since Lysandros put Alexander IV and his mother to death and the only thing preventing Macedonia from being carved up by ambitious neighbours is:
1. Pyrrhus is stuck in Italy fighting the Romans.
2. The Thracians continue to fight among themselves.
3. The last Illyrian king was killed by the Macedonians a few years ago.
4. The Greeks (despite RTW) are not united and prefer to fight each other.
5. The Seleucids have just lost Seleukos and Antiochus is fighting to reassert control over the empire.

So the aim for any Macedonian faction player will be to regain control of Macedonia ASAP before other other powers wake up.

[Caligula Caesar]

BTW, I have tested, and a bigger starting army doesn't actually help the AI... they just don't use it. I even placed it just a little south of Thessalonica, and they brought it back to Thessaly. They also become bankrupt just about straight away like that.

[AnthoniusII]

Guys i think you have done a mistake...Macedonia as a state was NEVER divided...Even when the "Diadohi" were just the protectors of the Alexander IV,even later the "land" of Macedonia was NEVER devided!
Ruller changed often but the state only sufaired the Gauls invasion ONLY before Romans come to balkans!!!
The STATE was NEVER devided!
So...Thessalonike has to be in the state no matter is the ruller or his contestor!

[Arkaeyn]

@despot_of_Rhodes -

Yeah, I was just comparing the immediate bankruptcy of different civs. Macedon still has much more external pressure. I managed to use the starting army plus some reinforcements from North Africa to conquer Sicily within 3 or 4 years. The Greeks sent a large army after me, but had nothing to counter my elephants with. I was at -90,000 in funds, but was making a profit of 4,000 per turn once I had Messana and disbanded some troops. So it was around 270 when I was actually able to start playing the game with a profit margin.

The Numidians ended up attacking me and rather pointedly taught me the point you were making about the Numidian Cavalry. Until I started recruiting my own to counter theirs, I couldn't beat them regularly at all.

Of course, it also reminded me that I hate hate hate light missile cavalry in Total War games. They make battles end up with 20 minutes of cavalry chases all over the map. Ugh.

[despot_of_rhodes]

Hm, your post reminds me about the fact, how different people seem to handle the game. I usually expand quite fast, though i hate rushing, but one has to pacify some regions to get stability. I usually never go into debt, i simply disband all useless units and train new ones, when i need them, wich are then allready upgraded and specifically made for the determined foe.

Right now i´m playing Carthaginians. I´m rich...though i´ve got the second large army in the "world" ( after the damn steamrolling Ptoleys ). I never had problems with money, it´s the year 259 bc now and the Roman Republic has just fallen ( posting a screeny for Quinn, since i don´t have any "testing campaign" screens yet to show ).

[Arkaeyn]

Hm, your post reminds me about the fact, how different people seem to handle the game. I usually expand quite fast, though i hate rushing, but one has to pacify some regions to get stability. I usually never go into debt, i simply disband all useless units and train new ones, when i need them, wich are then allready upgraded and specifically made for the determined foe.

Yeah, I understand that - those elephants are a massive drain. It just seems counterintuitive to have to start the game by disbanding units in order to stabilize.

What difficulty level are you on?

[despot_of_rhodes]

I usually play on H/H.
I would like to use elefants, but the cheap aor javeliners have almoust the same effect, if they throw their missiles in the back of any hardboiled heavy infantry. In fact, i think elefants should be somehow more frightening and effective, because with 2 units of cheapest peltasts one can take almoust any of them in short time out ( well, the Seleucids harnished war elefants are, iirc, the only exception ).

[lelouchx99]

I agree elephants should be made more effective in this game. Basically, 1 volley of missiles almost took out all of them. Even the Seleucid elite elephant.

Perhaps we should give elephants more armor? Basically range unit is more useful than elephants, and they're cheap.

[Caligula Caesar]

AnthoniusII, I think you have got it wrong. Before the start of the game, there were quite a lot of contestants. After Cassander died, several of his sons became joint king after one of them died of natural causes. However, the were also deposed...

Okay, so wikipedia isn't the best of sources, but I suggest you read a bit of this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassander), then go to the bottom of the page and hit the next ruler and count the rulers until you get to Antigonos Gonatas. Also count how many were deposed.

Clearly, the Macedonians weren't very powerful during the next thirty or so years, since they were hard-pressed by the Gauls and almost replaced by Epirus. Also, they didn't exactly conquer all of Greece...

[AnthoniusII]

AnthoniusII, I think you have got it wrong. Before the start of the game, there were quite a lot of contestants. After Cassander died, several of his sons became joint king after one of them died of natural causes. However, the were also deposed...

Okay, so wikipedia isn't the best of sources, but I suggest you read a bit of this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassander), then go to the bottom of the page and hit the next ruler and count the rulers until you get to Antigonos Gonatas. Also count how many were deposed.

Clearly, the Macedonians weren't very powerful during the next thirty or so years, since they were hard-pressed by the Gauls and almost replaced by Epirus. Also, they didn't exactly conquer all of Greece...

The mod could have the the throne contenstants with armies in the region but only one should have the cities...That was in real !
The lands were not devided...Those who claimed the kingdoms throne invaded or rebeled but they never created sub kingdoms!NEVER!!

[despot_of_rhodes]

A rebell town doesn´t seem to mee as a "subkingdom". It serves 2 purposes, i think:

1. It symbolises, that those provinces aren´t under controll of the current king ( you say it yourself that they "rebelled" )
2. It weakens the Macs in game, so that they aren´t a superpower also known as "Black Death" any more.