BI For Spartan campaign.

**swhunter** · August 04, 2011, 03:51 PM

I played a few rounds with the Fans released RS2/ patches
And as Sparta i wasn't very impressed with the a1 attacking Olympia right away by sea & troops on land. This is on 0 turn basis. We know Sparta has to attack to survive. But fighting on all fronts will destroy them.
I'm not new playing this faction for the last 3 years i have played over 52 campaigns.
And 1 turn, or o turn Spartan is better i feel on RTW. So you can have time to expand. Instead of having these invasions by sea right after you signed an agreement with Rome for peace.
I don't know what you can do to hold these off. But it's something to think about for the player.
Plus i been reading the threads by our fans on this.
The Spartans shield wall doesn't hold back the enemy as it should.
Also it seems their movements are kinda strange. See the reports on this by the fans.

**TTRouble** · August 05, 2011, 02:16 PM

SW

Yep .. seen the posts from the fans... haven;t played a spartan campaign in quite some time. In the Selecuids campaign whether its BI or ALX, Sparta takes over Greece very quickly and then really takes it to whats left of Macedon. For the naval invasions, if theyre kicking off at the start of the game then thats really tough.. my own tactics once for most factions is usually to build a large fleet and try to dominate the sea lanes asap. That works for the Seleucids but when I played Massila controlling the sea was ok and pinned back Rome for a while upto 30 years but it ultimately it fails for a small faction and you get over whelmed by land and sea. My 3rd attempt at Massila was different - land armies only as Rome attacks within two years. I need to check the saved games, but I quickly recruited 4 full stacks (mainly lots of archers, slngers, peltasts, heavy cavalry and a number of heavy infantry per stack). I couldn;t stop the naval invasions but was able to defeat every army sent by Rome, whether by sea or land and until the CTD at 538 I'd pushed Rome back ino Caspain gaul. So I'd assume that for Sparta you'd need a similar strategy against the free Greeks first and Macedon.

The sloppy shield wall.. havent seen it that bad in any of the other camp's but the movements I have seen.

TTRouble

**TTRouble** · August 05, 2011, 07:06 PM

Hi SW

Kicked off a Sparta BI campaign (0 turn, H/H) with the same strategy that I used for Massila against Rome. First few years was just to build up the 4 stacks.. which comprised of 4-5 slingers, 2-3 archers, 3-4 peltasts, 2 x throkatai, a number of yellow hoplites (sorry cant remember the name), and other heavy Infantry each. I let the Greeks take Argos, and sent 2 stacks to attack and take Olympia while positioning 1 full stack north of Sparta. After taking Olympia, sent those units that needed re-training back to Sparta and then moved 2 stacks close to Kornith pinning the 2 x 3/4 greek stacks outside the city while I sent the 3rd stack via ship and take the lightly defended Argos. From there Athen's was easy via ship as well. Once you take Athen's then I do what I normally do and thats recruit a large number of ships approx 10 (not the best but the a mix of trimeres and the next one up) and station them in 2 groups off the coast of Olympia. In my case Rome had already landed a 3/4 stack outside Olympia which I defeated and that forced the remaining units back onto their ships and then later sunk! Right now its 10 years into the campaign and I've taken control of all Greece up to Thermos and Thebes. I've stationed 3 x 5 ship fleets off the west coast and they're job is to attack any Roman, free Greek, Macedonian ship that gets close. I'm going to do the same east of Athens to blockade Macedon and Pergamon.
With BI, due to the naval invasion you have to garrison your cities, so I usually have 3 archers, 4 peltasts and 3 slingers per settlement and a full stack with heavy Infantry near by. Once you control the seas and start sinking every ship and blockading every port, the Ai after a while will give up and for Rome at least start to attack over land. Your likely to have sunk a large number of enemy ships and killed lots of their units without heavy losses.

Its a tough faction to play esp due to the cavalry being so appallingly bad (so lots of respect for going thro 52 camps!), as I always have up to 6 cavalry units for each army and they are the units that I usually use to break the enemy but I've made rapid progress already. I'm not used to my generals being infantry commanders... usually I have them and the calvary units in the first line whether in attack or defending.

My thoughts so far is that playing Sparta isn't as hard as I thought it would be and its definitely not as hard as playing Massila apart from Sparta being crippled by having really crap cavalry units. Its very similar to playing Syracuse. You can expand a lot quicker then I normally would do and the Greeks are thankfully not hyper-active like ROme is in the Massila campaign, where once they defeat or push out Hannibal, the following year Rome just sends stack after stack attempting to take the city. With Sparta you have the time to recruit the units, build the cities and then push out from southern Greece as well as then controlling the seas. Massila... all your doing is constantly fighting a war of attrition with Rome after year2 and within a few years all of your generals get to win 5+ heroic victories and all of your units are silver chevron battle hardened nuts but your still always on the back foot and all of your money is draining away fighting the multiheaded beast. I was kind of glad that the campaign CTD'd and I couldn't progress any further !

**swhunter** · August 05, 2011, 07:15 PM

Originally Posted by TTRouble

Hi SW

Kicked off a Sparta BI campaign (0 turn, H/H) with the same strategy that I used for Massila against Rome. First few years was just to build up the 4 stacks.. which comprised of 4-5 slingers, 2-3 archers, 3-4 peltasts, 2 x throkatai, a number of yellow hoplites (sorry cant remember the name), and other heavy Infantry). I let the Greeks take Argos, and sent 2 stacks to attack and take Olympia while positioning 1 full stack north of Sparta. After taking Olympia, sent those units that needed re-training back to Sparta and then moved 2 stacks close to Kornith pinning the 2 x 3/4 greek stacks outside the city while I sent the 3rd stack via ship and take the lightly defended Argos. From there Athen's was easy via ship as well. Once you take Athen's then I do what I normally do and thats recruit a large number of ships approx 10 (not the best but the a mix of trimeres and the next one up) and station them in 2 groups off the coast of Olympia. In my case Rome had already landed a 3/4 stack outside Olympia which I defeated and that forced the remaining units back onto their ships and then later sunk! Right now its 10 years into the campaign and I've taken control of all Greece up to Thermos and Thebes. I've stationed 3 x 5 ship fleets off the west coast and they're job is to attack any Roman, free Greek, Macedonian ship that gets close. I'm going to do the same east of Athens to blockade Macedon and Pergamon. Once I take Apollina, Pellas, Thessalonika and Illyria.. then thats when you recruit more ships.. and blockade Rome.. gather your battle hardened units 3 stacks and ship them to Sciliy and take it....

Its a tough faction to play esp due to the cavalry being so appallingly bad (so lots of respect for going thro 52 camps!), as I always have up to 6 cavalry units for each army and they are the units that I usually use to break the enemy but I've made rapid progress already. I'm not used to my generals being infantry commanders... usually I have them and the calvary units in the first line whether in attack or defending. Playing Sparta isn't as hard as playing Massila apart from Sparta being crippled by having really crap cavalry units, as you can rapidly expand and the greeks aren;t hyper active like ROme is in the Massila campaign so you have the time to recruit the units, build your cities and then push out from southern Greece as well as then controlling the seas. Massila... all your doing is constantly fighting a war of attrition with Rome after year2 and within a few years your generals get to win 5+ heroic victores and all of your units are silver chevron battle hardened nuts but your still always on the back foot. I was kind of glad that the campaign CTD'd and I couldn't progress any further !

Sounds like what i would do. How are the spartan walls doing?
They seem to fall apart as the enemy pushes in.

**TTRouble** · August 05, 2011, 07:40 PM

So far they seem to be holding up .. and doing so fairly well against the Roman legions, although the throkatai seem to be not as strong as the Selecuid/Macedonian/Greeks...I could be mistaken though. I'll take a look at the shield wall and see how well it hold in battle. I'll post some pics later ..

**swhunter** · August 05, 2011, 07:11 PM

Originally Posted by TTRouble

SW

Yep .. seen the posts from the fans... haven;t played a spartan campaign in quite some time. In the Selecuids campaign whether its BI or ALX, Sparta takes over Greece very quickly and then really takes it to whats left of Macedon. For the naval invasions, if theyre kicking off at the start of the game then thats really tough.. my own tactics once for most factions is usually to build a large fleet and try to dominate the sea lanes asap. That works for the Seleucids but when I played Massila controlling the sea was ok and pinned back Rome for a while upto 30 years but it ultimately it fails for a small faction and you get over whelmed by land and sea. My 3rd attempt at Massila was different - land armies only as Rome attacks within two years. I need to check the saved games, but I quickly recruited 4 full stacks (mainly lots of archers, slngers, peltasts, heavy cavalry and a number of heavy infantry per stack). I couldn;t stop the naval invasions but was able to defeat every army sent by Rome, whether by sea or land and until the CTD at 538 I'd pushed Rome back ino Caspain gaul. So I'd assume that for Sparta you'd need a similar strategy against the free Greeks first and Macedon.

The sloppy shield wall.. havent seen it that bad in any of the other camp's but the movements I have seen.

Thanks that's what i figured. If Romes ships comes near that will end the friendship. That's the only problem. Look at the pics from the thread i started on the Spartans. The fans pics on the wall wall. Can that be fixed? Or just a BI thing?

TTRouble

**swhunter** · August 05, 2011, 07:51 PM

Thanks T. I guess my only problem is fighting from all locations in Bi.
Yes it does give more benefits. But creates more enemies.
Have you ever tried for peace after those attacks from Rome? Or will you ever? Here is another question. Let's say in a 100 years later how heavy are those stacks of ships are you going to have tofight? As you are trying to expand and win the game wouldnt that drain the ecom.?
I know before the CDT. Sparta has only 50 states to take. On the fans based mod its 70.
Sounds like a tuff war.

**TTRouble** · August 06, 2011, 06:45 AM

Hi Sw

Well regards the fleets I can only comment from my Seleucid's campaigns.. they are pretty invaluable and in the last full camp where I got the 100 settlements, controlling the sea lanes and making sure nothing hostile gets close to landing an invasion army. In that campaign the greeks wiped out Sparta very early so when I took Crete there was a constant naval invasion from them - without having the largeno of fleets there is simply no way a single stack could have held onto the island. Ship types recruited by the AI is always a bug bear with me, as it always seems to recruit the cheapest ships for its fleets for a long time, by 100 years the AI fleets do improve - top or 2nd ships, usually silver armored at times up to 5 ships per fleet but usually only 2 but you will need to improve your fleet as they can beat my base level fleets easily. So what i do now is add 2-3 of the better ships to each fleet as and when they become available and retire those that have no more than 3 bronze chevrons . My fleets by then were usually 6-8 ships, with the lesser ships being 2 silver chevron or higher. What I did notice is that the AI likes to move troops around with the lowest level ships, so easy pickings but annoying because theres no way you would ever risk sending a full stack in one or two easy to sink ships! Economy wise, they're not a drain as you need to control of the med as that will mean more trade and a better economy... with a large fleet and a very large number of stacks the economy was always making more than enough .. so much so that towards the end I was running out of buildings to build!

Right now, Ive got to year 20 and both Rome and Macedon are constantly asking for peace treaties with both constantly breaking them. That wasn;t the case with the Seleucids where Rome no matter how many ships and men or cities that they had lost simply refuses to accept a ceasefire, even when she had been reduced to a single settlement north of the Alps! Macedon right now is sending some very strong and phalanx based stacks and has me slightly on the back foot , I did take Apollina and Phrallus from them as well as Crete from the Greeks. Economy is generating 60k a turn, and the AI ships are now showing up as the top ships.. so I need to start add better ships to my fleets.

Have noticed some units just sprawling all over the map when you try to reposition them or when theyre marching once or twice they seem to have a mind of their own... esp the cavalry. I've started to replace the Spartan cavalry with Greek Aspodori who are pretty excellent for both missile, can light as heavy cavalry and are defiently better than the spartan light hippes.