Late Era vs. Early Era

[NinjaWJ]

Which campaign do you enjoy more and why?

[Diablo del Sur]

On small Factions, Late, since I have to face powerfull and developed enemies. Playing large factions, Early, since before doing anything I have to build up my territories in order to expand later on and be able to resist foreing attacks afterwards

[Ichon]

Late is more interesting since you get to experience much wider roster diversity. In the early campaign for more than half the campaign you have mostly peasants, militia, and a few castle units in armies.

[RedGuard]

not half the campaign but i see what you mean, the early era can get boring. wait til about turn 175 and then it starts getting interesting, i try not to expand too much until the heavy mail event.

[buncheesy]

I am playing early and I am enjoying my venice campaign. But I am looking at the next campaign and wondering.....

I really like the idea of starting early and primitive and working you way all the way through to victory but I think I am going to miss out on gunpowder infantry...again! (only got to cannons in the vanilla campaign). Do you still get the feeling on the late campaign of starting with a nascent primitive state that expands and grows in power to become a sophisiticated technologically advanced empire covering 1/4 the map? If so maybe a late campaign could be considered next time round?

[Ichon]

In late most cities don't start out that much more advanced. A 1 higher wall, a couple more buildings, fewer rebels regions. Otherwise you still have to build a huge amount of buildings as more become available not only as cities grow but as the eras change with technology events.

[The Source]

i would say if you'r concerned about the city and castle levels in early/late, wait out for fair prince's map project so there are realisistic settlement levels, such as toledo being a city instead of a castle, barcelona being a city instead of a town and paris being a large city instead of a large town

[Lisbon_67]

Personal i prefer the late campaign. I do however like that in the early campaign you have more options in expanding than the late campaign. I just like that head start you get with settlements and unit rosters in late.

[Ataraxie]

I always play early - I can never quite shake the feeling of having missed something by playing late.

Playing France for example - in Early it can often be a complete pain to put the modern nation together against Aragon, Genoa, the HRE and England,and be good fun with it. In late it's basically done, and if you aren't interested in conquering the entire map, there really isn't an awful lot to do.

[Kaiser Leonidas]

I always play Early era campaigns as I prefer to build up my empire from scratch and also I'm not a big fan of gunpowder in this game so in early era I can play longer before I have to start using it.

[Gogolometro]

Early with teutons in North Africa. Fantastic campaign.

[Fair Prince]

I always play early - I can never quite shake the feeling of having missed something by playing late.

That's the point, gents!

[Ichon]

That's the point, gents!

The time period of 1100 is wonderful for medieval battles but the game mechanics and necessity of growing cities and building certain structures to recruit a varied roster takes alot of the fun away for me. Its not like 1100 was a time when there were a bunch of walls around empty cities just waiting to be built up.

Being able to start where you not only have a chance of recruiting a more varied army on turn 1 but will also face enemies with some representative period units starting turn 1 instead of cruising a few dozen turns expanding your kingdom without facing serious opposition has to be more fun.

[YuriVII]

Depends what faction I am playing as. I usually do whenever that faction is weakest. So late era for Byzantines Kievan Rus'. Mostly late era though because early era I have to wait so long for units rosters. I like playing with musketeers and whatnot.

[NinjaWJ]

hey does late era campaigns and early era campaigns end on the same date? Is the only difference is that early starts at an earlier date with smaller states and different rosters? like will you get the same events as late campaign??

[Carnesaur]

Early. Late is so boring to me.
Cannons defeat the point of walls
Every has armor so there is no race to arms, And cities are already large so theres not really any construction to do.

You play late if you just want a bunch of feudel knight and cannon battles and less campaign map time.

[Ichon]

Early. Late is so boring to me.
Cannons defeat the point of walls
Every has armor so there is no race to arms, And cities are already large so theres not really any construction to do.

You play late if you just want a bunch of feudel knight and cannon battles and less campaign map time.

Late is only 1220 start... there has been only 1 tech event and all the high armor units are still 100 years away.

More cities start as minor cities than large towns but that is only 1 wall difference. Still 2 more walls to build to reach Huge and that is quite difficult in 6.4 with those growth rates. Cannons don't arrive until 1300s which is usually at least 160 turns away but you don't have to spend the first 50 turns with militia armies and using your bodyguards to win all battles like you do in early campaign.

I think people that play early don't realize how large the city building tree is. If you only play until 1300 you haven't even seen half the mod yet.

[vtec.dominion]

Early. Late is so boring to me.
Cannons defeat the point of walls
Every has armor so there is no race to arms, And cities are already large so theres not really any construction to do.

You play late if you just want a bunch of feudel knight and cannon battles and less campaign map time.

LOL. Play late CS, Kievan Rus, Roman Empire or Khwarezmians on Gracul AI with BGR IV and tell me then it's boring Imho, early is damn boring and easy.

[Cathedralsquares]

Late. The Early campaign has early armies being all the same unless you're playing very few distinct factions like the Crusader States or the Byzantines. Once the late era rolls around you get the real faction diversity of units and technologies.

[Liandro]

Early... I'd have way better things and way more things in my cities by the time the Late Campaign rolls around, it's incredible that there's so little in the towns and castles in Late, no farms, or upgraded barracks, WTH did these people do with their towns for the past 120 years/turns? It's aggravating, so I play Early.