most challenging campaign

[metsikhovne]

what was your most challenging 1 turn campaign


EDIT: I forgot greeks have only 0 turn campaign so answer what was Ur most challenging campaign ever

[Riverknight]

I think ROme cause Hanibal is in Italy. Then you have the rebellions and ugh.

[REDrake]

Boii. You lose Bononia fast, either to romans or to Carthage. You also start in an are where you are bound to get in early conflict with Dacians and Cimbrii.

[Everto]

I think, as the graph itself suggests, Seleucid takes the win. You are surrounded by powerful factions whose soul purpose is your utter destruction. It is, by far, the hardest; your Empire is spread out, your Economy early on is in recession, the very fate of the Empire hangs by a thread as you fight hordes of Ptolemaic Armies in a rush to take the Nile so you can jump start your Economy while the Parthians, Armenians, Pontians, Pergamese and Ptolemaics in Anatolia all attack you from the North...

Thats why I only play VH/VH Seleucid, it's simply the hardest and most intense apocalyptic scenario ever haha =P

43 % votes Seleucid, the closest is Rome with 14%...I'd say the commoners agree lol

[Velico]

I think, as the graph itself suggests, Seleucid takes the win. You are surrounded by powerful factions whose soul purpose is your utter destruction. It is, by far, the hardest; your Empire is spread out, your Economy early on is in recession, the very fate of the Empire hangs by a thread as you fight hordes of Ptolemaic Armies in a rush to take the Nile so you can jump start your Economy while the Parthians, Armenians, Pontians, Pergamese and Ptolemaics in Anatolia all attack you from the North...

Thats why I only play VH/VH Seleucid, it's simply the hardest and most intense apocalyptic scenario ever haha =P

43 % votes Seleucid, the closest is Rome with 14%...I'd say the commoners agree lol

VH campaign is bugged and easier than H. It plays more like M. VH battle is just utterly crazy, the mod was designed for H/H and balanced for it so playing VH/VH just makes it easier and more imbalanced. Just sayin'...

[Gylippus]

I've not played every faction in the game. For instance I've not played as the Seleucids as I've never fancied playing a faction with such a strung out empire. I like to start small and build up.

Anyway for me the hardest campaign is the Boii. It's the only time I've given up a campaign because I felt I was doomed to fail. I can hardly see how it is possible to do anything as the Boii. You may make initial gains in Cisalpine Gaul but you do not have time to establish yourself before the Roman war machine rolls into action and once you lose your cities in Northern Italy you cannot afford units that can compete against Romans. Most likely you will have only one major city which can produce decent units. Except at the very top end of the unit tree the Boii cannot hope to fight Romans, they are simply destroyed on the battle field.

Once you lose one or two cities to the Romans you are virtually doomed.

[joker8765]

Out of the few factions I've played so far (only recently got into RS2 ) I would say Rome is the hardest. Carthage are one tough nut to crack and that was with me barely defeating Hannibal in the starting battle.

[NightEye]

Rome with Five Good Emperors takes the cake and all the candles for me. A Free Greek Campaign is also pretty tough particularly when all your neighbors decide to move in on you.

[Pokelover22]

I have to say the seleucids. They start with such a large empire that it's hard to manage. The Ptolmaics, Parthians, and eventually the Pergamonese (???) are all very powerful nations that eventually start to show no mercy. The economy starts out horrible and on the verge of collapse. When I played my first VH/VH seleucid campaign, I thought it was easy in the beginning but then difficulty reared it's ugly head and captured/revolted/generally annhilated my entire eastern empire. I was left with the starting regions that bordered the Mediterranean. Eventually, I built back up (My kind of play - start small and grow gradually).

[Grimbold]

You guys do know that its not advisable to play on VH/VH difficulty?

[saxdude]

It takes a real MAN to rule Seleucids.

[cigar man]

Well from the campaigns i have played, i believe the biggest challenge i have had has been with the Boii. Although my current Roman campaign is, well i assume, going to become very difficult when the second rebellion occurs and plunges the Republic into civil war.

[Pe Ell]

This is something I've given thought to, and I'm sure I share that with many others. Which faction is the hardest? A lot of it comes down to what a person might find challenging. Some people think it's harder to fight with a big empire and bad economy, while others have a tougher time starting small. I was always a macro (RTS term, mostly meaning management of the bigger decisions like unit training, economy etc. Compare it to micro which is the management of individual units in the heat of battle to get most out of them) player, I like big empires and I thrive when I have lots of space to manage. I played the Seleucid, and found it really easy. Your size alone makes you immune to dying early and while your economy is bad, I never found it that hard to get enough money. Once you get rolling it is a no brainer. But I can at the same time see that many find this kind of setup harder, since in most campaign you start small and work up, so you get more practice with that.

I voted for Rome in the poll, and i think that the team has done an excellent job in making it challenging. The biggest reason might be the presence of the Roman rebels, and thusly the lack of free people. No free people makes the AI expand a lot more aggressively, which gives them more land, and a lot more dangerous. Unlike in the other campaigns I found that the AI in the Roman campaign was throwing stuff at me, attacking my stacks with multiple of their own in a way that they never seemed to do in other campaigns. It makes for a more hectic gameplay and for me it was certainly a new kind of challenge. The first turns are also really nasty, with Hannibal and roman rebels knocking on your door. Add that your empire is in a tight spot when it comes to money and sorta big and spread and you have trouble coming.
I have prevailed until I have 60 provinces, fighting massive Cimbri and Dacian empires and really starting to dread the upcoming rebellion. Armenia and Parthia has also grown huge in the east. I think it is one of the few campaigns that is really hard even later on.

I will also give a mention to Boii, which due to their starting position (next to AI rome and smack down between Cimbri and Dacia) and the fact that it is a split start makes for some real headache. I have yet to try them out, but seeing that they get killed first (or second) in every single campaign so far I am a bit wary of taking them on.

[DarthLazy]

Seleucid was not very hard, with elephants I managed to conquer most of egypt fairly quickly, no building was going on, just a spam of levy pikes in frontier parthian cities hiwch held them back, once ptolemy was destroyed, economy boomed and parthia was a piece of cake.

[freakkriek]

just played both Rome and Seleucid....
first i played rome... then i thought no campaign would be harder because EVERY faction at your borders just attacks you and you never get rest. Once you kick some butt in the west you have to defend in the West. When you're winning in one region you just feel there's gonna be a bad surprise somewhere else
Now i'm playing as the seleucides and well ok it's true egypt is pretty quick delt with and so far i managed to keep my alliances and only be at war with parthia, but the problems are different... The city control is just terrible i mean with Roma you have stable money producing cities but here i have at least one Revolt every 5turns it's just killing me, you need to battle those damn horse archers and at the same time keeping a "qwell revolt"-army...

Conclusion: Roma is a little easier since i'm already used to a military-based economy and gameplay
while keeping order is totally new for me.... the "distance to capital" negative order bonus is just killing me.... and i'm dreading the obvious armenian and pontus invasion

[DarthLazy]

I did not have any revolts, low taxes , law buildings, and capital at seleucia, problem solved.

[freakkriek]

kept antioch as capital, so i could get far in egypt

[DarthLazy]

Then you would have un controllable unrest and the east would be lost, keeping Antioch as capital has nothing to do with getting far in egypt.