With what faction and which campaign have you started to play DM?

[DARTH VADER]

I was wondering what faction did you pick and what campaign to begin your game with new DarthMod?

I could guarantee Brutii (H-H) on imperial campaign for a quick lose

[nivla]

hey Darth

I'm going to start a campaing with the gauls because i've just started to get into the whole barbaric thing on h/m and hopefully i wont loose!

[Zendjir]

I started a H/H imperial Brutii campaign on DM 8.0 a while ago. It was pretty easy. Once you capture some major greek cities the money flows in so fast that you can buy anything you want and still have a surplus. Winning battles was easy aswell, just use the manipula (sp?) formation well and the greek falanx armies melt away. I upped the number of archers in my army to 4 when facing thracians and dacians, they went down like flies aswell. At the end I was capturing 2 settlements a turn on average while fighting the julii and seleucid empire. I could literally swamp the enemy with armies because I had so much money. A very critical element in my succes were my high-star generals. I don't know the exact formula but I believe that a high command rating gives enormous bonuses to the army. I think that it might be a good idea to lower the speed at which generals earn stars. This will make the game more difficult for the player.

I have just started a VH/VH Saxon campaign. for this campaign I have lowered the likelyhood that generals will quickly rise in command rating by upping the treshold required for command bonuses and decreasing the chance of gaining command bonus ancillaries. Even though I have only started this campaign yesterday (8.1 beta) It seems to work quite well, my units seem to fight less well because they are commanded by a 2-star general. Battles are more tense that way. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

[Inhuman One]

I am personly playing the game on easy after I installed darth mod. I started like this with vanilla rtw too and started harder campaigns later. This gave me a good chance to study the AI and come up with ways how to fight them that can be of use on higher difficulties.

Anyways, I started with the greeks first and they did rather well. I like their new looks and I managed to get a firm foothold on the mainland of Greece quickly. At the time that the traitorous Macedonians broke their alliance my forces there where strong enough to withstand them, and after a few tense battles most of the Macedonian army was defeated. I was trying to make them a protectorate but I never managed to pull this off with any civilization, no matter what I do. They only got two cities left, one under siege and the other one has but a small army and I have a big army with catapults near that city. still they refuse to become a protectorate.

I couldnt wait to try out the other civs so I started some more campaigns, I choose civs that differed a lot in position and armies to get the most out of it.

Carthage is a campaign that I like a lot so far, Their mix of units is just superb. I havent been able to conquer much land yet since I respected the alliances. I got the scippii away from messana quickly but the Brutii took over Messana a few turns later and killed Hanno (no! revenge!) Around that time the greek thought it would be fun to attack me from Syracuse and they even transported a lot of soldiers from their other provinces to Sicilia. Because of attacks from both the Greeks and the Brutii it took a while before I finally could take over Messana. I managed to drive the Scipii back whenever they tried to attack and they lost a lot of generals that way and since they only had one city they couldnt raise enough troops for a decent attack. I recently took the fight to Italy since the Spanish are too busy conquering gaul and the numidians are getting beaten by the egyptians which on their turn are getting pushed further towards numidian lands by Parthia and the Seleucid Empire.

I raised a large army and at this time Carthage was already at the highest city level. I send an army consisting of a general, 2 catapults, 2 sacred band cavalry, 2 archer units, 1 armoured elephant unit, 8 armored scutarii, 2 powerfull spearman units (new units, dont know the name) and 2 units of cavalry thats rather strong and fast (also a new unit which I cant recall the name of)

I managed to take over Capua in one turn because of the catapults and it went easy since the Scippii were greatly weakened already. half of their forces were killed by my archers. Right now I am building a stone wall and hope it will be finished before I face roman wrath. The Julii are having trouble with macedon and gaul so they cant spare the troops to fight me but the senate will certainly attack soon with a large army and the brutii might find me as well. I know there is a good chance that I dont defeat them there, but either way I will cripple the roman factions greatly which will result in their defeat in the long term. I have started training reinforcements but I seriously need more land to be able to afford a bigger army. I think I will take a few lands from the Numidians since they are not very strong. I am besieging Syracuse as well and am holding back any possible reinforcements with my navy.
Oh, I put the Carthage campaign difficulty on hardest and the combat difficulty on easy.

I played a bit with gaul, the Jullii and Parthia as well but not that much.

So far I really like it that every faction has a chance at winning now. Carthage and the Seleucid Empire are factions I like a lot but they always were defeated easily. now they really are strong as they should be.

[viramur]

im doing the Unified Rome provincial campaign on M/M because not played RTW for a while. ive not done too much so far just took italy back and defending from a constant greek attack that started immediately from the pyrus stack that starts there. its been a good campaign so far the hardest that i have played for battles.
seem to be being assaulted all the time by the greeks and carthage which i have never seen before and now Gaul has just started to move down to attack. good so far and waitin for final patch to download then ill carry on.

[maclock]

I started with Brutii.

The battle with Macedon was a major shock. I didn't use Triariis and the Macedon calvary really owned me. They repeatedly charge from the side and rear which is very very annoying. I tried to use my own calvary to kill their calvary, but the only usable one is my general, and what a mistake, one on one my general wasn't a match for their general and two of my starting generals died in battle. I was about to quit coz my family tree is reduced to a single branch and I have no good generals left.

Later I ditched my old velites, hastati, princeples formation. Instead I made 8 triariis in a box guarding the calvaries from all sides. all other units, the general, the velites, hastatis etc will be in the middle of the box. And I'll wait till I killed all the calvaries, then the velites, hastatis etc will move out of the box and move and pilum charge the hoplites from behind.

That worked well and I took most of Macedon and Greece. I was a bit corky when my silver star triarii EASILY handled spartan hoplites 1-on-1 on the stone wall of spartan. I thought I was invicible. Then came thrace, WOW, what a change ! Unlike the hoplites, the thracian infantry simply charged straight into my formation head on in massive numbers. At first I thought that was a good thing, but VERY quickly my three triariis in the front got ANNILLATED !!! I couldn't believe my eyes, then the velites etc in the middle of the box got exposed and were killed in turn. I ordered the rest to retreat because I was completely shocked !

Then I re-bulit that army and to counter the enermy army I devised an ambush. (btw after the previous battle that Thracian general developed a trait: despise roman ways damn) The ambush was another mistake as I charged all my infantry into the enermy from all directions. Very quickly I lost control of the battle as everything was tangled together and I don't know what's going on. In a matter of seconds all my infantry routed and was later killed. I had to order my general and a couple of my balistas to retreat ASAP.

Later I would never face that kind of challenge. I fought Eygpt and Selecuid. I used to fear the Eygptian chariots but they seem to be useless compared to vanilla. Selecuid had LOTS of elephants but the AI doesn't seem to know how to use it.

[DARTH VADER]

@nivla:

How is it going?

@Zendjir:

Seems you are a good player...would challenge you for multiplayer DarthMod battle!
Do not play open beta 8.1 or 8.0...8.1 is out! things have changed....


@Inhuman One:
Good report! But....try not to play at easy....you should try M/M or H/H

@viramur:
You will get the challenge you want.....what final version....this IS 8.1 final version!

@maclock:
The Macedonian cavalry in DarthMod is ....powerful! Hopefully the greek_cities counter attack them and weaken Macedon enough or Brutii have no hope.
The thracians are semi-barbaric...their falxmen and bastarnae are cutting down everything in their way. Triarii can hold them but need help from javelineers or pilum fighters.

Chariots are realistically represented in DarthMod.
Elephants are also realistic but AI uses them variantly according to faction. The carthaginians use them better than all.

[Fridericus Rex]

Darth Vader:

My grandson and I enjoy your MOD very much; however, we have a question on fairness.

In "Punic War" the Scipii are disadvantaged when comparing to the other two families:

Julii - has it's army close by and can immediatly conquer a city; thus increasing income.

Brutti - the same here. Their army is strong and placed right to conquer the Greek city on Sicily.

Scippii - their army is split and placed at two very distant locations. Their small army in Spain is surely in trouble with two strong factions attacking immediatly. Their only city is not producing half of the income the other two faction's cities in Italy producing. If you only had placed the Scipii fleet close to Spain, the game would be hard but more balanced.

Since you do not want to change anything anymore - can you kindly tell us how to place the fleet closer to the army in Spain?

Thank you very much for all your help.

[Stormlord]

I just gave up my Briton campaign cuz the game always froze when I played battles in Scotland. Now I started a Thrace campaign on H/H instead. Going to be fun test the new thracian units =)

[Angel]

Im playing as Roman Brutii. I wanted somee different taste than barbs. Greeks seem very complicated with there whole phalanx options. Also macedonias seem an challenge as well. I noticed hastis own phalanx men quickly. If you know how to flank and manuever and use velites. Well say good bye to pike men. Macedonian cavalry isnt that hard i might add. I just seend my equites at them in groups of 2 and 1 macedoneian cavalrymen down. Good job Darth for this new patch. I love how you change so many things, make things very interesting. I of coursed mod things to what I like. I hope that everyone is enjoying the Darth Advisor. LOL all we need is new text for the advisor to say. Romans are fun and carthage as well. h/h is very easy in my eyes. I will try vh/vh or h/vh. Than my Roman armies will be slauther haha.

[DARTH VADER]

@seven:

I tried to take Patavium first but was stopped over and over by the gauls every time I got close enough to initiate a siege. The battles themselves, all the major ones anyway were fairly even between me and the AI. Whoever won had taken so many casualties that their remaining army was almost useless and had to be replenished. I remember at least 10 great battles where both sides inflicted roughly 1500 casualties and the battle itself was decided by several exhausted units on both sides that had recovered from routing at least once. Just about every time I advanced, my armies were turned back to the point that I was almost afraid all my cities wouldn't be able to recruit more units due to population exhaustion!

Good to know this! I tried to implement the difficulty (Also Wipeout helped) of decisive battling and population interaction. In fact in many (Imperial Campaign) territories you will see that you can only raise your armies from the center/capital and in your borders the small cities would only serve as outposts.

I did notice the enemy general charging weak points that developed in my line and then withdrawing before I could bring in an anti-cavalry reserve unit which was nice! Killing the enemy general usually begins a rapid loss for the AI and seeing him actually try to stay alive was great!

I think it is all solved now (The mystery of CA suicidal General) . My formations and this http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=61739 have concluded into an AI general worth to fight with.

One thing I did notice though, is that once you capture Patavium you're unstoppable. This ONE city matches the income for three of my four other cities in northern italy combined. Make it your capital and put a high-management governor in charge and the income and sheer population growth (even with maxed taxes) is astounding. ALL my armies are trained in this city.... it puts out a unity of hastati or principes every turn and STILL grows. I think THIS is where all those damned gauls were coming from!

You are right! Patavium is a horde spawner...I kept vanilla settings in this...the territory needed manpower or else the Gauls would fall easily in early turns. But with this city they fight like maniacs.

@Narakir:

I've started one with the britons, not so easy if you don't make the choice to wait to build your economy. I'm trying to invade france and belgium but I'm always between gauls and germans trying to play the opportunist with a small army as in britain there's not much population growt and I whant to develop my cities it force me to play the viking attacking where they not except me with the army transported by ship. So it's battles are better and more difficult too.

I rebalanced the Briton territories (Also Wipeout helped) for AI expanding..they are not overpowered now..in fact they have handicaps...but they own the island!

About chariots how sould they be played in DM ? did you made some changes for them Darth ? because now I just lost them quite easly without doing much dammages.

Yes I rebalanced this also. There were reports of overpowered chariots especially in autocalc...in campaign AI expands due to autocalc so had to balance this.

@Stormlord:

I just gave up my Briton campaign cuz the game always froze when I played battles in Scotland. Now I started a Thrace campaign on H/H instead. Going to be fun test the new thracian units =)

Try the imperial campaign Britons..it will not happen as I know. And also if there is a problem in the map in the region of scotland then autocalc it...I mean...so many territories to fight for them in the map.

@Angel:

Macedonian cavalry isnt that hard i might add. I just seend my equites at them in groups of 2 and 1 macedoneian cavalrymen down. Good job Darth for this new patch. I love how you change so many things, make things very interesting. I of coursed mod things to what I like.

If you use 2 roman equites for 1 unit of Macedon..then they are ok! But what happens when they have more cavalry for you to counter?

I hope that everyone is enjoying the Darth Advisor. LOL all we need is new text for the advisor to say.

I certainly enjoyed it so much . In fact I was laughing (in a good way) for some minutes when I first saw this gift of you and Marvius!

h/h is very easy in my eyes. I will try vh/vh or h/vh. Than my Roman armies will be slauther haha.

If you play unmodded DM you do not see this as clear....prepare yourself for multiplayer these days.

[AlfonsoVIII]

Well, I changed all the build times for all units to 0 turns, so with that I tried Julii M/M and had to quit because I got frustrated. My archer and velites would not stop engaging the enemy and fall back when I told them to. Also I lost 2 of my generals fighting the Gauls and it was not good. So I decided to play E/E because I am not that good of a player. 20 years into my new campaign, Segesta and Patavium are mine and I am alternating battles between Dacia and the Gauls in Patavium and Medioalium respectively. I am just praying I can hold out until the reforms as I have Dacia, Germans, and the Gauls surrounding my provinces and I cannot get a good strong border without fighting more than 1 of them. Then I am unable to use the manipular formation worth any hoot, so I am relying on my Equites to win the battles.

[maartenfabre]

i played Egypt on DM8.0
the start is hard, seleucids, parthians and nomads attacking you. those pathian HAs are a real PITA
but once you get rid off these you make so much money noone can touch you. and the chariot archers really rock. they might not win the battle, but the inflict so much damage without much losses (except against those parthian HAs) that you can let em fire away untill their ammo is gone and then retreat.
the falanx and great archers are a great combination for city-fighting as well. so i got a chariot army roaming to disable the opponents armies, and a regular army for taking cities. works like a charm. So the start is kinda hard fighting 3 powerfull enemies, but once you got antioch and surroundings secured you are pretty save and raking in the cash

[DARTH VADER]

@AlfonsoVIII:

E/E ? I told you..DarthMod is for experienced players (Joking). It seems that the barbarians have pinned you...good...good.

@maartenfabre:

All well but why dont you play DM_8.1 now...far more different in almost every aspect (Battles).

[Fridericus Rex]

Darth: Thank you for the modding advise for Scipii "Punic" -it worked. I made the changes and balanced the budget and building costs a little bit. It plays much better now. For an old man like me, this is what I call geriatric modding.

Your Question:
My grandson is off to university now. We used the game/ Mods to do something together, playing as a team (discussing strategy and history); just spending time with each other.
Your question probably was, how old are you? Let me give you a hint: I fought the Russians as a 15-year old in Berlin during WW2.

Thank you again for your kind detailed response.

[Ldvs]

I've started as the Julii, my favourite faction, VH (campaign)/M. It began very well by the successful siege of Sagesta. In the next few turns I took over Corsica. I was planning to land in Sardinia but the Gauls decided to send some tourists southwards and I had to repel two waves before I could lay siege to Patavium, which I quickly assaulted. I thought the Gauls wouldn't put much resistance in North Italy after that loss but these hairy freaks took Sagesta by surprise and my releiving army was one turn too late, so my outnumbered garrison was exterminated, along with a hypochondriac family member...
In the meantime I had tried to capture Sardinia as requested by the Senate, but to my sorrow, my small fleet met a much bigger Carthaginian one and they were promptly sunk with four cohorts and a promising son-in-law
I managed to kick these Gauls out of Sagesta but I have to take the Eagle standards back and there are located in Medolanium where a full stack of barbarians, and more inside, awaits for me!
With such a resistance from the Gauls, I eagerly look forward to meeting the fearsome Dacian falxmen, who can cut their way through your whole army if you're careless.

[DARTH VADER]

@Fridericus Rex:

geriatric modding.

Your question probably was, how old are you? Let me give you a hint: I fought the Russians as a 15-year old in Berlin during WW2.

I asked your grandson's age to understand roughly your age ...just to be polite....but what you say is extraordinary!
CA and me as a modder must be really proud that we managed to pull your attention ...respect

@Ldvs:

along with a hypochondriac family member...

These DarthMod barbarians ...quite a challenge ehh

[Angel]

Thats true Darth the What happens when they over power me in cav? well thats what tiarri are for. Always when i Face mace and greeks i pump just a tad more tiarr for cav battles. Cav battles are descive for me. IM playing 8.1 unmodded with added skins. Im sry Darth but wbb skins for romans just dont fit me. IM ust modding legion skins pack, new skins 1.5 And there are extremely well made. You should give an peek. Im surprised of so many units all factions have. You made Greeks very promising *wink * wink*. IM enjoying my brutii fights and playing ur challenge as well. Marvius did 99.9% work. I did the .1% telling him how to open what. Also darth can you add the next text for the advisor? to counter what units and such. Like how you would conduct and DaRTH VADER HIMSELF!?. That would be very promising i might add. I like how you change so many things in the EDU. Im very hummbled of your work and im glad your still working hard. I want to challenge you my friend on multi someday.... Young padawan vs DARTH. lol good battle.

[Persian Horseman]

to the guy who decreased general's stars:

I believe thats a very good idea for making the AI more challenging.but if u do it to ur own generals, would the AI generals also suffer from lack of stars? i remember when i was playing the EB mod, one way they wanted to make the battles harder was by giving u crappy generals (i felt lucky to have a 3 star general) and i had to fight like 8 star generals. it did make things challenging.
What do u think about this darth?
worth doing?

for me personally, i started a thrace campaign with them on H/H. i had never tried them before. im playing the Risk map for a quick campaign. i have to say, it has been very challenging. the most challenging was when facing the macedonians. becuz right off, they attacked me with a full stack, and i gathered up all i could in one stack to meet them.

the problem was that, they have better phalanx units than me, better cavarly than me, better generals, and better ranged units. they had archers while i only had pelstast. also, they were all armed better compared to my half naked units. anyway, i decided to give it my best. the only thing i had going for me was superior numbers. so i put like 1/3 of my units in the forests and hid them. my phalanx units kept them in place (they were killing mine even though i was on hill), their cavarly was fighting mine (also outnumbered here), then at the right moment my falxmen popped out of the forest, slaughtering their archer, and charging their phalanxs from behind and killing a few horses. it was very very challenging. if i had lost that battle, i probably would have had to restart my game.

the other factions have not been as hard, since the greeks seem to lack good cavarly, so i can kill lots of them, even the spartans by just using peltats. they r now silvered chevronned.
the armenians sent me a small force but their infantry simply got slaughtered by my falxmen. the only issue was their HA.
the dacians also have good barbaric units and cavarly, but they seem to over rely on archers. when my 1 stack fought their 1.5 stack, they had at least 8-10 units of archers or hired HAs. they did inflict some damage, but since i was protecting myself in the forest it wasnt so bad. then after their main force was dead, the archers were just there to die.
the romans were more challenging, but still not as much as macedon. my phalanx held them in place. falxmen flanked. that was it pretty much.

but the whole campaign has been challenging. getting attacked or betrayed when i least expect it. having to suddenly hire lots of mercs due to lack of troops nearby.etc. its been a great campaign so far. last night i told myself ill play 1 hr. ended up playing nearly 5hrs. sleeping at 3am. *cries* :tooth:

[Ldvs]

@Ldvs:


These DarthMod barbarians ...quite a challenge ehh

They definitely are. What renders them tougher is the morale boost they don't get in vanilla RTW. You just can't rout them in the blink of an eye, with a good charge from your cavalry, as you could before you altered these settings.

The most scary unit in my opinion is the Dacian falxman. When the Dacians start to mass-produce them, then it's a nightmare for the armoured Roman army. There is just no way you can leave them unwatched. You have to spare every single pilum you can to throw them at the falxmen.
The second most scary unit is the chariot. The chariots tend to chase my cavalry and tear it asunder as soon at them come into come into contact!