passive Carthage

**Incontinentia Buttocks** · November 05, 2011, 10:13 PM

This is the first time for me to try EB. I am playing the SPQR, on H/H. So far I have liked it very much, but...

Perhaps it's still too early to judge, but I am a bit surprized at the apparent passivity of the Carthaginians. I have taken all Italy now, including Sicily (kicking the Carthaginians out of the island). According to the graphs on military strength, population etc, Carthage is one of the top factions, outperforming the Romans on almost all points. Yet, they didn't seem to offer any resistance...

Next, I found the presence of Carthage on "Korsim" and "Sardin" too close to Rome for my liking, so I took them. Again, no real resistance. I could still understand this, as these are not very important regions for Carthage, I guess...

After that I invaded their territories in the north of Africa, taking their 2 major cities there. To my surprize, these cities had almost no defending forces. One had only 1 set of cavalry. The other one, 1 set of cavalry and 3 units of light infantry. Also, I had thought that Carthage would have a relatively strong fleet, but my own fleet (which is not strong at all) did encounter no resistance either. I think I have seen only 1 unit of naval forces of Carthage so far.

So, I am wondering what is going on here. Is H/H "too easy"? Is the AI very passive in general? Or is it only for Carthage? Is it in some way scripted to make things more realistic (after all, Rome did destroy the Carthaginians)? Or is Carthage busy fighting battles with some other faction and did they have no time to prepare any defenses? It's possible, but I doubt it...

On a possitive note: while most of my armies were in Sicily and North Africa, the Aedui broke our peace treaty and attacked me in the north of Italy. There is still hope.

**kingman1337** · November 05, 2011, 11:46 PM

I play Medium/Medium difficulty, and Carthage just loves to steamroll all the way to Kyrene.

I will try a campaign on Hard/Hard and see what happens.

**Killzone_040** · November 06, 2011, 04:51 AM

I've noticed that Carthage tends to focus on the Iberian peninsula on hard campaign difficulty, but it might be wrong. This is just judging from 1 game.

**XSamatan** · November 06, 2011, 07:00 AM

Sometimes an Ai-faction goes braindead. RTW's Ai is hardcoded, so nothing the modding community can do about. Changing the exe to BI or ALEX (check the sub-mod forum on how to) improves this situation.
Sometimes a declaration of war, the bordering with the human player or the movement of some troops (Guide: How to use 'move_character' in EB) helps too.

XSamatan

**delra** · November 06, 2011, 06:13 PM

Sometimes they will wake up on reload or after being attacked.

**Incontinentia Buttocks** · November 06, 2011, 08:05 PM

Thank you for the replies, everyone!

Unfortunately, it does not seem that Cartage has been busy taking Kyrene or the Iberian peninsula in this game. In fact, it seems that in the first 40 "seasons" (turns) they had no change in territory at all. The other factions seem to be doing fine though. It's really strange.

It is possible they had their armies destroyed early in the game by some other faction though (they are at war with a number of them). Still, they should have been able to recover from that, I think. Or perhaps they are having financial difficulties? Let's hope one of these is the reason.

Now, after taking a 3rd province, they are finally starting to fight back. Still, with 3 major provinces gone I wonder what they can do...

**RedGuard** · November 06, 2011, 09:10 PM

i've had this problem with Carthage before playing as the Romani just like you and it was using the ALEX EB mod so the engine has very little to do with it(actually ALEX EB accentuates the problem as the full stacks of rebels slow them down even more.) I am tempted to see how it is on the alex exe.

in my game Carthage didn't expand at all and after several declarations of war and peace treatys all initiated by me Carthage still did nothing. they didn't even build roads or anything in their home provinces because when i took them i had to start from scratch.

it would be my guess that because the ai is crippled by naval invasions except on BI where they are very fond of it, Carthage is crippled by all the islands and fronts it has to deal with.

**FriendlyFire** · November 11, 2011, 01:20 PM

If a faction is bankrupt it will often go totally passive - so check Carthage's treasury and if necessary start pumping funds into it.

**Spike** · November 11, 2011, 05:40 PM

better try offering an alliance with them and looks if they want to backstab you afterwards

use reverse logic with the AI!

**Boriak** · November 12, 2011, 07:00 AM

Carthage is passive in most of my games too. The most aggressive nations are usually Sweboz, Romani, Makedonia and Seleucids or Ptolemies, whichever gobbles up the other one.

The most frustrating one is Pahlava. I would like to fight a strong Pahlava in my Roman campaign but I don't think I ever will. I even went so far as to take all the eastern provinces from Ptolemies and grant them to Pahlava, topped it up with 50k mnai. Didn't really work.

**Incontinentia Buttocks** · November 12, 2011, 09:11 PM

Since my last post I have taken 2 more provinces from the Cartaginians. At no point have there been any counter attacks. Carthage is playing 100% defensive. Then I noticed that Carthage has a large army (more than a full stack) in the dessert further to the south. And, there are huge rebel armies there too.

So, is it possible that Carthage has been busy fighting rebel armies all the time? Hence, no territorial expansion, and a very passive attitude towards the invading Romani?

Is it possible that those strong rebel factions are put there on purpose to keep Carthage weak, so that they would lose against an invading Roman army? Is it possible that this mod makes use of the rebels in such a way in order to get a more "historically correct" game? I think I remember reading somewhere that the rebel provinces in the north of Italy are made relatively strong for this purpose too: historically the Roman faction should go after Carthage BEFORE expanding to the north.

I might be completely wrong on this though... If it is true it would be a bit of a shame though. I would prefer much more resistance from Carthage at the moment, even if it leads a game flow that is not historically correct.

**Nerouin** · November 13, 2011, 05:43 PM

Originally Posted by Incontinentia Buttocks

So, is it possible that Carthage has been busy fighting rebel armies all the time? Hence, no territorial expansion, and a very passive attitude towards the invading Romani?

It's possible but unlikely. A better explanation is probably the dumb AI. Are you playing on RTW, on BI or on Alex?

Is it possible that those strong rebel factions are put there on purpose to keep Carthage weak, so that they would lose against an invading Roman army?

No.

Is it possible that this mod makes use of the rebels in such a way in order to get a more "historically correct" game?

No, because Carthage was infinitely more powerful than a few random desert tribes.