How do we solve the mid-game blues problem?

[Yomamashouse]

Hi everyone, I'm back after a long break, lab work and writing a Masters thesis can really drain the life out of you. I went back to one of my old EB games as the Greeks and after about 2 rounds realized why I had abandoned it. Here are some of the things I noticed:

1 - The tech tree reaches an abrupt stop. From this point on you are playing with the same units forever after.

2 - The enemy and you both have huge fullstack armies. Fullstack vs fullstack battles typically involve very little tactics, as those break down within seconds.

3 - The enemies you face become too few in number because one steamrolls the other (Think Seleucids vs Egyptians). You go from facing several enemies to facing one or two supremely powerful enemies with a bottomless wallet.

4 - Family memebers and generals are so numerous you can't reasonably take time to roleplay them and become attached to one, they become as expendable as any other unit (Imagine trying to send FMs to Ynys Duwall or some other important site when you have 60 of them).

5 - You become so powerful that the AI cannot contest you without cheating (extra money/stats)

I have mulled this over in my head but can't really find a way to solve it. Make no mistake, EB is miles ahead of the vanillla game, but it still suffers from these fundamental flaws in gameplay, I have started at least 30 EB games but have yet to make it to BCE 100. Maybe someone more creative than me has the answer, and I'd be curious to know what options could be available

[QuintusSertorius]

I've found one of the best "solutions" is to delay the arrival of the mid-game. You do that by expanding slower, and using the console to help the Eleutheroi, which stops any of the other AI factions growing too powerful, too quickly. Don't let any AI factions die, because once that starts to happen, you get a snowball effect to a handful of unstoppable superpowers. I add money to the Eleutheroi via the console a lot at the beginning (you can tell if you've overdone it, because they start making huge pirate fleets), and I also add troops to the garrisons of significant places. If someone starts steamrollering their local rivals, I'll use Force Diplomacy to take settlements off them and give them to the weaker faction. Or create new migrated areas like Galatia or Bastarndolandam to add extra chaos in a region.

Now there is a hurdle in all of this; after about 230BC the Eleutheroi FMs who are governors start to die off, making them much easier targets (given the way autocalc works). That means you need a fairly active monitoring of what's going on, but it doesn't add much overhead really.

For the results, look at the minimap in 239BC in my Epeiros-as-the-Bosporan-Kingdom game:



Every faction is still in existence, there's still lots of rebel territory, the Romans aren't already in Gallia.

[Yomamashouse]

I've found one of the best "solutions" is to delay the arrival of the mid-game. You do that by expanding slower, and using the console to help the Eleutheroi, which stops any of the other AI factions growing too powerful, too quickly. Don't let any AI factions die, because once that starts to happen, you get a snowball effect to a handful of unstoppable superpowers. I add money to the Eleutheroi via the console a lot at the beginning (you can tell if you've overdone it, because they start making huge pirate fleets), and I also add troops to the garrisons of significant places. If someone starts steamrollering their local rivals, I'll use Force Diplomacy to take settlements off them and give them to the weaker faction. Or create new migrated areas like Galatia or Bastarndolandam to add extra chaos in a region.

Now there is a hurdle in all of this; after about 230BC the Eleutheroi FMs who are governors start to die off, making them much easier targets (given the way autocalc works). That means you need a fairly active monitoring of what's going on, but it doesn't add much overhead really.

For the results, look at the minimap in 239BC in my Epeiros-as-the-Bosporan-Kingdom game:



Every faction is still in existence, there's still lots of rebel territory, the Romans aren't already in Gallia.

I had never thought of tampering that directly with AI interactions, I'm amazed at you minimap though, I'll have to find their console name and just juice them up with money, how much do you give them yearly?

[QuintusSertorius]

I had never thought of tampering that directly with AI interactions, I'm amazed at you minimap though, I'll have to find their console name and just juice them up with money, how much do you give them yearly?

Most of the time I only give money to the Eleutheroi ("add_money slave, 20000" - I do that about ten times a turn for the first 20 or so turns, ie 200,000 extra a turn, then periodically). Very occasionally if a faction seems to be doing badly, I'll give it 20,000 once, and if one is growing too fast I'll give them -20,000 once and see how they do the next few turns.

That's only half of the action, though, I also add units to garrisons in critical places to make them harder to take. Like Segesta, Bononia and Patavium to keep the Romans bottled up in Italy until they've taken Sicily.

[Sint]

"2 - The enemy and you both have huge fullstack armies. Fullstack vs fullstack battles typically involve very little tactics, as those break down within seconds."

Hmm not really it invloves just as much tactic as other battles ,sometimes less sometimes more.I usually watch the map and position my troops in the best possible postion to attack or to defend ,then I usually try to lure the enemy cavalry away or into meele with my infantry so I can use my own cavalry for other purposes ,etc.

[Perdiccas]

do you have to be specific to which rebel faction you give it to? or can you just say....... add_money slave 40000

[QuintusSertorius]

do you have to be specific to which rebel faction you give it to? or can you just say....... add_money slave 40000

There is only one rebel faction, to which every "independent" city belongs. Internally, it's called "slave".

20000 is the maximum you can add with a single command, you have to repeat it (by pressing the up cursor to repeat the line) to add more. There are a lot of cities which need a lot of money at the start in order for them to get active with building and recruiting.