Entertaining Factions

[Barry]

There is a fine line between having it all and having nothing, Western factions have massive income through trade with slight improvements to your infastructres, Barbarian factions however dont have this. Also I was surprised that Parthia also don't have much trade.

Any Western faction around the Med are mind-numbingly easy due to your wealth. I played as the Epirotes recently and after a slow start I seized a few weak Macedon settlements, gained a ceasefire with Rome and immediately started earning 11k per turn. I put this into three full stack armies consisting of elite pikemen, sword hoplites, medium cavalry and mercenary archers. Macedon fell, they didn't stand a chance. Greeks declared war on me, they didn't stand a chance. Quit campaign.

Similar story with the Romans just if possible it was easier and the only hard thing was keeping under 50k.

But playing as Parthia I was earning 3/4k a turn with ~4 settlements and I was only making ~2/4k a turn on trade/ farming. Couple this with every battle being similar I was bored very quickly.

My question is; (honestly this is not a rant) Are there any factions which are not overly rich and have a diverse unit roster? I don't want to spam the same armies turn after turn just to reduce my money for the sake of it.

[AqD]

Hmm I'm sure all factions will have very diverse unit rosters in RS2

.... continue my waiting ........

[ReD_OcToBeR]

If you quit after that, you shouldn't have, the map is large and once you start getting into the mid/late game, the armies are everywhere and it can get very difficult. Once you start expanding and getting huge cities the rebellions will begin and navel invasions will happen. You have to let the world take hold. It's easy to hold a homeland, well for some factions, but like i said, once you span out things get dicey. I almost quit my Seleucid campaign because I was almost defeated after 4 factions wanted me dead, with armies everywhere. The fun was sticking to it, even if you start out slow or rich.

[cnaeus]

also when you expand you'll find diferent units available in different parts of the world, making your armies very different.

cnaeus,

[Aristedes]

Yeah, holding over 70 regions can be quite a pain in the *** cause you have to manage all of them. Very time consuming if you want to manage them good without all too much rebellions. That + defending/expanding...Yeah, quite interesting if you stick to it.

-Aristedes

[Leeham991]

You should never quit.

When I started as Rome I used Eperios and Syracuse as toilet paper and massacred the best part of the Macedonian empire, but later on I found that people could stop me.
The war with Gaul was tough... So tough that at quite a few parts throughout the war I was in very real danger of being driven back to Italy.

My current situation is not one that I would have expected after my easy start. The Empire of Macedon stands with it's HUGE army at the brink of tipping the uneasy ceasefire in the north-east. The Egyptians are holding off to the east, holding massive territory and threatening a full scale invasion of Greece. The Greeks are steadily allied to me, but should their loyalty break, they have 20,000 Athenian soldiers ready to push through my south. The Germans threaten my northern border, crossing into my lands, then back to their own as though mocking my lack of military power in Gaul. The Carthaginians are my main enemy, they constantly raid my empire, damaging towns and attacking small forces before running back to Africa. While I have now achieved naval superiority over Carthage, their shipping is a major threat and their ground forces cannot be ignored.

I have a hell of a fight on my hands.

My advice is NEVER quit a campaign. Yes right now my empire is at an income of 40,000 a turn... But just 5,000 less would mean a total collapse of Rome. Never quit because it gets bloody hard bloody quick.

[Maximus_96]

in my roman campaign, i had control of italy, part of gaul and greece when my economy started to go south, but i stuck with it and this is my current empire.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Thorn777]

The Seleucids are a real challenge from the very start. Again surprisingly empty treasury and loads of different enemys. Not to mention a diverse unit-roster(i dont like their phalanxes though, to much vanilla looking).

[ReD_OcToBeR]

The Seleucids are a real challenge from the very start. Again surprisingly empty treasury and loads of different enemys. Not to mention a diverse unit-roster(i dont like their phalanxes though, to much vanilla looking).

Agreed I'm playing them on Hard/Hard right now and the beginning was a huge challenge, rebellions, everyone wanting you dead..etc etc.. lol. I almost quit but stuck to it, now im kicking ass, but not steamrolling. I think it's also because you are surrounded by many different cultures therefore their towns are hard to keep under control: ie. Egyptian, Eastern, Greek..etc. Also the distance to travel around makes your decisions more profound. Best fun though I've had in a long time.

[Aristedes]

I do have some questions for Maximus. Why Don't you take control of Crete, Mytilene, the 2 regions in Africa and the one in northern Gaul? Or are you besieging them at the moment? Just asking

-Aristedes.

[Maximus_96]

I do have some questions for Maximus. Why Don't you take control of Crete, Mytilene, the 2 regions in Africa and the one in northern Gaul? Or are you besieging them at the moment? Just asking

-Aristedes.

i am not at war with those free people and i am devoting my rescources to the selucid empire. i do have an army heading towards the egyptian city

[Aristedes]

i am not at war with those free people and i am devoting my rescources to the selucid empire. i do have an army heading towards the egyptian city

That explains everything

[Leeham991]

I'm thinking maybe a huge amount of rebels?

I'm putting off taking Delphi and the west half of Crete because it would take a huge amount of man power to get the rebels out.

[dvk901]

Nearly every mod I have ever played was either too easy at the beginning and pathetically easy as the Campaign progressed....OR....quite challenging at the beginning, but way too easy as things progressed. This is sort of the 'nature' of RTW because the more regions you own, the more resources, the more trade, the more money you have, the more troops you can recruit...and pretty soon no one can oppose you anymore. THAT, too me, is boring.

RS1.5 was a 'first attempt' to create a mod with a different 'flavor'. It IS relatively easy to start out, sitting in your own homelands, and gearing up your economy. The money flows nicely, and it 'lulls' you into thinking this isn't going to be much of a challenge. But as soon as you step out of your homelands, the situation changes dramatically. Income drops thru the floor. You own more territory, but you aren't getting the income you would 'expect' from it. I have seen a treasury of millions drop to mere pennies in only a few years...especially if you don't constantly work at building up the economies of cities OUTSIDE your own homelands.

All of this was to increase the mid and late game challenge and make it harder to keep expanding with no concern about building and building to keep your military ramped up. But there is another more important reason. Making a faction's homeland more productive...no matter what faction it is....means that if they lose territories outside their home regions, it doesn't hurt them as much. (Whereas in a normal RTW scenario, taking regions from a faction hurts them a LOT economically.) So what happens is that you take regions they owned and make them mad....and they still have a robust economy with which to show you just how mad you made them. In a very long, drawn out campaign I played in RS1.5 to test the Legion AOR and make sure it worked as designed, I found that I basically 'stalled' at the historical boundries of the Roman Empire because I could just 'barely' maintain what I had. The Germans, Sarmatians and Parthians could be beaten....but I could never wipe them out just because I couldn't afford the armies necessary to do it.

I was pretty pleased with this...because I had never stalled in any other campaign playing RTW or it's mods.

[Leeham991]

Nearly every mod I have ever played was either too easy at the beginning and pathetically easy as the Campaign progressed....OR....quite challenging at the beginning, but way too easy as things progressed. This is sort of the 'nature' of RTW because the more regions you own, the more resources, the more trade, the more money you have, the more troops you can recruit...and pretty soon no one can oppose you anymore. THAT, too me, is boring.

RS1.5 was a 'first attempt' to create a mod with a different 'flavor'. It IS relatively easy to start out, sitting in your own homelands, and gearing up your economy. The money flows nicely, and it 'lulls' you into thinking this isn't going to be much of a challenge. But as soon as you step out of your homelands, the situation changes dramatically. Income drops thru the floor. You own more territory, but you aren't getting the income you would 'expect' from it. I have seen a treasury of millions drop to mere pennies in only a few years...especially if you don't constantly work at building up the economies of cities OUTSIDE your own homelands.

All of this was to increase the mid and late game challenge and make it harder to keep expanding with no concern about building and building to keep your military ramped up. But there is another more important reason. Making a faction's homeland more productive...no matter what faction it is....means that if they lose territories outside their home regions, it doesn't hurt them as much. (Whereas in a normal RTW scenario, taking regions from a faction hurts them a LOT economically.) So what happens is that you take regions they owned and make them mad....and they still have a robust economy with which to show you just how mad you made them. In a very long, drawn out campaign I played in RS1.5 to test the Legion AOR and make sure it worked as designed, I found that I basically 'stalled' at the historical boundries of the Roman Empire because I could just 'barely' maintain what I had. The Germans, Sarmatians and Parthians could be beaten....but I could never wipe them out just because I couldn't afford the armies necessary to do it.

I was pretty pleased with this...because I had never stalled in any other campaign playing RTW or it's mods.

+rep

I found that the system is the best feature of the mod. In fact it was the main reason why I downloaded in the 1st place. Just makes the game more realistic. I even found that some nations can't break from their home lands at all without a hell of a lot of hard work.

[Aristedes]

Yeah, it all pleased me a lot in RS, too. The fact that your economy gets hurt bad when you start to expand a lot. It made me play RTW in a very other way, and I luved it =D