capitals, invasion preparations and minor things

[suspect_2]

hi guys,

returned to my campaign a few days ago and finally finished taking the whole iberian peninsula. it's more or less stable by now but only because i moved my capital to palma. without that it would probably be ungovernable. now that i'm preparing my invasion in n. africa i wondered if that's a normal move. where did you put your capitals when finally invading N.A. ? and even more important: can you give me some advice for fighting carthage on their own ground?i do know how to handle their armies but i never set foot on the north african shore before. it wasn't neccesary in 6.4

having problems in iberia governing the new provinces another question came up: why is the map so huge, when even those "close" provinces can be quite difficult to govern (at least for me)? i don't see how you could ever get to those countries or even get them under control

a weird thing happened minutes ago: a faction was destroyed. i thought that was impossible with the superfaction fix or is this just unlikely to happen? dont know which one it was but i guess the macedons are history. greece has taken tergeste 2-3 years ago and is invading germania by now. patavium is still in gaul hands, so i (luckily) don't share a border with greece, but they seem to have quite some armies, although i didn't fight them since the beginning of the game. at the moment i'm not doing any fighting or something else that might have triggered this and also play by houserules+GS. so, did something go wrong or is it something that can happen?

one last question: the maximum number of legions allowed for an invasion is 6, right?

thanks guys

[Raglan]

returned to my campaign a few days ago and finally finished taking the whole iberian peninsula. it's more or less stable by now but only because i moved my capital to palma. without that it would probably be ungovernable. now that i'm preparing my invasion in n. africa i wondered if that's a normal move. where did you put your capitals when finally invading N.A. ? and even more important: can you give me some advice for fighting carthage on their own ground?i do know how to handle their armies but i never set foot on the north african shore before. it wasn't neccesary in 6.4

as far as i know its a house rule to keep rome as the capitol, thats certainly what i've done

having problems in iberia governing the new provinces another question came up: why is the map so huge, when even those "close" provinces can be quite difficult to govern (at least for me)? i don't see how you could ever get to those countries or even get them under control

certain areas have been made to be more troublesome than others, thats how LT made it

a weird thing happened minutes ago: a faction was destroyed. i thought that was impossible with the superfaction fix or is this just unlikely to happen? dont know which one it was but i guess the macedons are history. greece has taken tergeste 2-3 years ago and is invading germania by now. patavium is still in gaul hands, so i (luckily) don't share a border with greece, but they seem to have quite some armies, although i didn't fight them since the beginning of the game. at the moment i'm not doing any fighting or something else that might have triggered this and also play by houserules+GS. so, did something go wrong or is it something that can happen?

the fix doesn't apply to a cpuple of factions (so that someone will at least attack you) Greece is one of these factions. However have you had the destroyed factoin message? because Macedon owns Asia Minor as well, so might not be as destroyed as you think, but you should still try and take a city or two, and then the greeks will leave everyone else alone and focus on retaking that city

one last question: the maximum number of legions allowed for an invasion is 6, right?

no idea, but i know that auxilary legions can be taken

[suspect_2]

can't find a houserule like that. wasn't sure though, because i didn't play a couple of months but i can't find anything saying this. I also don't have rome yet. so the western part of iberia is not meant to be owned by the player? I sent my best familymembers to take care of the area but with the "distance to capital" penalty I wouldn't be able to hold them. shall i leave them for good? I just wanted to get those backstabbing gauls out of there because they were swarming through my territory all the time and those villages on the western shore have some nice little mines. of course rome would be the obvious choice but since I don't have it I thought it would be unimportant where the capital is.

it was actually dacia that was destroyed. i mixed up those 2. I never had anything to do with them and also didn't see them since the first few turns but would have loved to fight them at least once.

i remember hesus or lt saying that you should not take more than 6 complete legions starting an invasion, reinforcements not counted. I guess it's something historical but i'm not sure either.

thanks so far for clearing things up

but it begs the question: should i take rome first or better is it meant to be taken before going to north africa? i never tried to attack them so i'm not really sure whether I could win that or not. i read it is possible to do it with premarian legions but I thought it's safer to do it after you have your own "real" legions to take care of rome. or is having rome required for marius reforms to happen? (it's my first campaign, so i really have no idea)

EDIT: found it in the faq, so i don't need rome but I need gades. gades has 2.5% population growth at 30.000 citizens. i thought this would be the hardest city to hold but without the capital on palma it's next to impossible. gades is actually the biggest problem. any suggestions?

[Raglan]

if they rebel, exterminate, repeat until pacified

[czePowerslave]

And even that not gonna help sometimes

[Ejergard]

You can deport population aswell... Keep recruiting peasants and move them to other cities. you can recruit 9x240 every turn, And keep a good governor. The other cities along the eastcoast in Spain used quite some of these peasantstacks to increase their population in my game!
Once you have gotten the chance to build up your infrastructure with temples, arenas, roads and all other +law and +happiness buildings you're gonna be fine. My current governor in Gades just died, so its ungoverned for the moment until a new one is moved up, I have a full garrison of 20 Town Watches, and still I keep a public order of more than 80%.
Also, don't forget to destroy any carthaginian temples and buildings since they will increase insurrection against your government.

But all in all, deporting peasants is one key move here...
Oh, and Capua is my capital the entire campaign until I take Rome, I'm in 170bc.

[Necrontyr]

Strange i got to 256AD quickly, I think i was going to fast with my turns or something

[czePowerslave]

Strange i got to 256AD quickly, I think i was going to fast with my turns or something

Pure script failure my friend. You have forgot to activate is several times and there you go

I let my generals lead armies until they have 2 loyalty points or less. Ofcourse if I'm planning an overseas invasion which I know will take time, I don't let a general with just 3 loyaltypoints go. I rarely ever lose generals in battle, I can probably count them on one hand for the last 45 years, this makes my generals live pretty long, and most serve for 10-15 years, and some as much as 20-25 years before they retire! Some 180 turns into the game, I absolutely don't have an excess of disloyal generals swarming around in Italy. But I also rotate my legions pretty frequently, so that there isn't just 1 legion that has to take the burden, they all have to earn their living
And I have 15 legions at the moment, another 2 about to be recruited within the next few years.

Just to note, I have checked my killsheet On top of my longest serving generals are --> Marcelius Julius, commander of 2nd auxilia legion, originally deployed against Carthage, he spent 44(!) years as a commander of the legion before dying of old age. Note that this legion never saw combat during his time being mere borderguard.
From combat active legions - there are 3 generals from my Republican times - Herius Classicianus serving for 39 years, Julianus Constantinus serving for 36 years, Kassius Julius serving for 37 years and then for 2 more years before rebelling
Totally, they never lost and held the line against Gallic hordes and were key in my expansion towards Gaul mainland.

[suspect_2]

it's not like i put them on single ships and sent them into hostile waters to die. they serve me now in carthage. in the meantime i didn't have anything to do for them due to low loyalty. i really don't understand how they can be in active service for such a long time. even if they just stand at borders their loyalty goes down after a while. most of my middle-aged generals are pretty much garbage, not good in battle, next to no influence and low loyalty. there are only 2 young generals i consider good at the moment aged 37 and 39. the rest is either old or rubbish. maybe just bad luck or am i doing something wrong?

at least carthago is mine now. unfortunately 2 promising family members died due to a checkbox accident. i always thought it would be nice to see elephants again but now i remember why i hate those elephants and love spqr. the battles were awesome.

one more thing: since i had a little extra money i sent out some spies to take a look at what's going on in the north between gaul, germania and greece. gaul is fighting germania and the other way round. fine so far. but greece is once again insanely powerful. i found 10-20 full stack armies in the middle of nowhere where once dacia was and saw dozens of those stacks on the way. in another thread somebody said i should take a few cities and they will stop and come to their homelands to get those cities back. does that really help and should i try to do that though i'm trying to get both feet on the ground in africa right now?

[Necrontyr]

no its not that, i activated the sript and it happened, its weird.

[Hesus de bodemloze]

I never move my capital. You need generals with a lot of influence to keep cities under control and a lot of town watches will help as well.

You can use as much legions as you wish to invade lands. You only allowed to build 28 numbered legions

[suspect_2]

hmm...i will return it to capua then but i will try to build up as much as possible before to secure those cities.i already moved the bulk of my armies to sicily for the invasion and didn't expect a lot of fighting in the area anymore.i didn't mean to use the capital as some kind of cheat, just thought it didn't matter. i hope moving it doesn't matter concerning marius reforms .destroying foreign buildings is the first thing i do when capturing a city but building peasants is a good idea (i always forget they even exist). the governors of the area are actually my faction leader and the heir, both with maximum influence but still i can hold gades only with monthly games. i will move some of them north i guess. gades was the only city i didn't exterminate in spain and that might have been the problem. guess it's just overcrowded

thanks for your replies

a completely different question: when do you replace a general in field? from the beginning on i always tried to replace them as soon as possible when they had only three rings left. by now it's quite a problem because i already have 15-20 generals in italy that don't gain any loyalty back so they just sit around doing nothing and even new ones often only have 4 rings so they are only usable for a few battles. how do you handle this?

[czePowerslave]

Dun mind those, just let them lead the army and switch often. And if they rebel well thats the part of it.

[Hesus de bodemloze]

I made up some house rules of my own, two of them concerns generals. The first one is all members of the julli family will serve in the legions. The second rule is all generals with the trade 10 victories will be moved to a city for 2 years.

[Ejergard]

I let my generals lead armies until they have 2 loyalty points or less. Ofcourse if I'm planning an overseas invasion which I know will take time, I don't let a general with just 3 loyaltypoints go. I rarely ever lose generals in battle, I can probably count them on one hand for the last 45 years, this makes my generals live pretty long, and most serve for 10-15 years, and some as much as 20-25 years before they retire! Some 180 turns into the game, I absolutely don't have an excess of disloyal generals swarming around in Italy. But I also rotate my legions pretty frequently, so that there isn't just 1 legion that has to take the burden, they all have to earn their living
And I have 15 legions at the moment, another 2 about to be recruited within the next few years.

[suspect_2]

especially border-security legions have to be switched often. i also have 4 legions in spain and those lose rings in no time. unfortunately most of the generals created don't have more than 4-5 rings. anyway i sent my best (and oldest) generals to carthage now, most of them with 3 rings. they are gold chevroned veterans and even if they don't survive it they would die anyway in a few years. but those generals in the mid-thirties with only 1-2 rings really annoy me. at least ten of them sit in italy doing nothing. but if three rings is a pretty safe thing I will also handle it like this.

my invasion has started and the first big battle is over. everything fine. and i also moved my capital back to capua. surprisingly those cities in the far west of iberia didn't even care. only valencia,tarraco and so on were "disappointed" but didn't make too much trouble. palma as capital was a weird thing anyway

thanks again guys

[Hesus de bodemloze]

I am dispersing generals with low loyalty lever over all the cities i conquered and even in Italie, this way when civil war would start some of the Italian cities may rebel as well. Would make it more realistic and fun.

[lt1956]

Ok here is a scoop a 2 ring or even a 1 ring general can last a LONG time and maybe never rebel, Your wasting good men and money. Do you think Rome REALLY knew whos loyalty is what? NO I added the loyalty rings but kinda regret it as people use it to remove less loyal generals. This has a 2 fold problem, you dont get the feel of rebellion when a general revolts. Yes its a pain, but its also fun and realistic. Now keep in mind thing will happen LATER in the game where generals with 5 rings may revolt if they think the other side has a better chance. So dont think killing or not using 2 ring generals will save you.

Also House Rules, ALWAYS ALWAYS Have a general or family with a Legion or Auxillia Legion, Plus try to have governor in Every province. This right here will FORCE you to use Lesser rings just to stay afloat. Also if you want SPQR played right you will follow most of the house rules, they add difficulty and fin to the mod since the mod was designed around my style of gameplay. One of the styles is the generals AND using them like they should be used, hence why they are cheaper. All provinces should have family or governors.


Nothing wrong in moving your capital if you need to, everyone is at different skill levels. Do keep in mind that you CAN hold Iberia if you build the proper buildings and have a full Garrison with a Good governor. Iberia was always hard to hold as are other provinces, Rome was always fighting revolts and invaders.

Lt1956

[suspect_2]

i would actually have liked it better without the rings. had a situation in 6.4 with 3 generals revolting in a row and since that i keep an eye on that. i think i will use them in carthage as long as they live then.

and i do have governors in every city except 2 (died and are waiting for another one). those are not even good most of the time but at least loyal. my faction heir just died and my faction leader is theonly one able to take care of the areas in the west of iberia, especially gades. this province really sucks

as mentioned above the moving of the capital was actually pointless except for minor squalor-increases in the east of spain. none of the provinces i actually intended this move for was affected by this. being german having a capital in palma is amusing but just seems weird anyway

[suspect_2]

sorry for double-posting but this isn't worth a new thread...north africa is mine but there was next to no resistance...there were 5-10 full stacks in the beginning, but nothing else came after that...they didn't even try to stop me after taking carthago...there was one army attacking me at magna but nothing else and those were also not complete...is this normal?...i didn't rush or something, just sieged every city for about 2 years but noone came to stop me...i expected a little more...are they bankrupt?
...even taking the south of spain was much bloodier than this

another thing about loyalty...i have 3 familymembers with 0 loyalty and the cities they governed were affected by this i guess...they were suddenly down to 40% public order, so i removed them...is this always the case?...i would like to ignore the rings but with this kind of setup it's pretty hard since i look after every city every turn