Remove Iberian Landbridge?

[Crymson]

As we all know, the Gallaeci most often destroy the Carthaginian presence in Spain. This is unfortunate, as it is rather unrealistic, but worse is that the landbridge between Iberia and North Africa allows the Gallaeci to follow the Carthaginians into North Africa, whereupon they end up destroying the latter there also.

Is there any way to remove that landbridge? It seems odd that it's there in the first place, as the usual landbridges elsewhere (e.g. Sicily) are absent.

[TTRouble]

Removing the landbridge is a good call and one I think that should be implemented if possible. If the side effect is that it helps Carthage is even better.

On a side note the number of land bridges in R2 seemed to me way over the top so I'm glad there are very few in RTW.

[High Fist]

I agree, there shouldn't be any land bridges at all IMO.

@TTRouble, don't armies automatically get fleets anyway in R2, making land bridges redundant?

[SD_Man]

I dont think it would be accurate to give the carthaginians a fleet, maybe just nerfing the iberians

[dvk901]

There are only two landbridges in RS2 that I am aware of...one at Gibraltar, and one at Byzantion (I think).

At any rate, there are not many. I would however defend the one at Gibraltar because without it, Carthage is almost worthless. It may be that we need to do a bit of balance work on Gallaeci and Carthage, but it's hard, because they share a lot of units. I am, however, working on a better solution to the Gallaeci incursions into North Africa. That is, a consistent spawning of armies in Carthago if the faction does not own all of the North African regions. The emergency levy system we use is not working very well, I believe, and Carthage needs a bit more power to deal with the Gallaeci. They just don't seem smart enough to recruit it themselves. My theory is that Carthage spends too much time and money worrying about Corsica and Sardinia, or Sicily, while it ignores the real danger in the west. It weakens them, and then the Gallacei spill in and overrun them. So what I did in a test campaign was create a script entry where Carthage (the city) would spawn a whole army if they went below a certain number of regions. This works well because they have no enemies of any importance below them, or to the east. So what happens is they lose the region by Gibraltar. That spawns an army every turn thereafter until they regain that region. Sounds drastic, but I have observed that it takes Carthage a long time to push them out, and does stop the Gallaeci in their tracks.

[Aismov]

They just don't seem smart enough to recruit it themselves. My theory is that Carthage spends too much time and money worrying about Corsica and Sardinia, or Sicily, while it ignores the real danger in the west.

100% correct IMHO. I've seen this multiple times not just in RS2, but also in RTR 6. Carthage tends to recruit all their units in/around their capital, and the second they have a stack they load it onto boats to try to capture the Roman islands. Since usually a human is playing as Rome this strategy fails 100% of the time and Carthage ends of doing these futile attacks where they gain nothing all while the Galaecii run hog wild in Iberia.

I think its tough no matter what you do since the RTW campaign AI is so utterly and completely porked for factions that have spread out empires that there isn't very much to do since they simply won't intelligently transport troops by sea.

Most factions seem to have a unitary focus and will follow that until the bitter end no matter what. I think a good case in point is if as Rome you make the commitment to hold onto Dyrrachium early in the game. It pretty much eliminates any and all Macedonian expansion 100% of the time since they won't do anything but attack Rome. But if you decide to abandon Dyrrachium suddenly they expand like a virus all over the Russian steppe.

[CatoTheYounger]

Spawns a freee army every turn until they regain Gadir? Hate that idea. Lol sorry.

[Zydrius]

In my roman 1-turn campaign the situation is opposite. Since I use Alex.exe, Carthage does not do any naval invasions at all. So they conquered the whole Iberia and Gallaeci are holding only one last settlement because of survival script.

I like land bridges as I hate doing stupid ship loading and disembarking everytime I want to move troops between continents .

[Fridericus Rex]

Removing the land bridge may be a good idea - as Spain, I always block that bridge with a fort and a ship, because of the constant re-enforcements from Africa.
In any case, there should be more Carthaginian troops in Spain to deal with the very aggressive Spaniards.

I like dvk's suggestion, when Carthage Nova (Spelling?) is taken, every turn (up to 3-5) a new Carthaginian army will be spawned in Spain. However, do not spawn that army in Africa because the Carthaginians may use it in their fight with the Romans. In this case, the land bridge may be blocked in order to prevent more Carthaginian stacks to invade from Africa (may be to hard to handle when playing as Spain).

Perhaps a change in the troop roster is advisable - there are some redundancies when looking at the Spanish roster. Some units have almost identical stats and criteria at slightly different prices and could be changed to differentiate from the Carthaginians and to allow easier balancing.

[SD_Man]

Perhaps a change in the troop roster is advisable - there are some redundancies when looking at the Spanish roster. Some units have almost identical stats and criteria at slightly different prices and could be changed to differentiate from the Carthaginians and to allow easier balancing.

I dont agree with the landbridge changes or the army spawns, but I do agree with this. If I may suggest, maybe the Iberian settlements themselves can be changed to be a little lower on the tech tree (Level level/no barracks) so the Iberians can't field supermen so often. This would make the campaign easier for the Carthaginians and more challenging for the people who choose to play as the Gallaeci.

[Krumski]

I can confirm that using Alex.exe causes the Gallaeci to rely on the survival script