All Hail the victorious Pritanoi!!

[Nightsh4de]

Hello all,

Just completed a long campaign with Pritanoi, EB2.1, H/H, CAI3.0. BAI 1.0 in 160 turns

Initial expansion was not too hard, though rebels kept threatening my capital while my army was away I completed the takeover of the islands in just under 50 turns, so there was some work to do before I turned my conquering gaze upon the shores of Europe.

A few things I saw right away is that chariots are useless. Without the skirmish button, they stand around and get trounced by whatever walks into them. Cavalry and Infantry. Their fear factor though was useful, just parked them behind my infantry lines, and the enemy would just run away after a while. Still though, not exciting stuff. Same goes for other skirmish capable cavalry that don't skirmish. Too much micro management. Anyway, chariots couldn't get on boats so I never again used them the whole campaign, which was a shame.

I abandoned all Pritanoi cavalry options as soon as I got my hands on Noble cavalry in france. My they are superb. Hardcore who just never break. Just relatively inexpensive to maintain, they´re about equal to run of the mill light skirmish cavalry, so this is unbalanced, they should be much more rare (I had about 10 units of them in various armies by the end, no one could handle them on the field, OP but only because they are cheap to field)

Infantrywise, your stock British Tribesmen are just superb. The Batoroi (Auedui infantry), look cooler on the card but they don´t stand up to a fight with the tribesmen. 241 men, just steamroll anything. They seemed to take greater casualties as the game wore on but, they were just cheap and effective!

Unfortunately, as soon as I got off the isles, I found myself having only the option of reinforcing with tribesmen, skirmishers and spear archers. Not bad, but I just could not recruit anything else from the isles!! unless they were mercs of course. shame because I liked the british swordsmen a lot.

Anyhow, I stomped on the Auedui hard after dominating Britain. Freeing their people all the way to Bibracte, leaving them only 1 province for the rest of the game, somewhere near the Sweboz. It was not too hard, though I did plan it well, using winter to slow their reinforcements down completely while using the mastery of the sea to land where and when I wanted. The Arverni just stood back and watched. They could do nothing else as they found themselves repelling an aggressive aurekakoi invasion from Spain. Money started to roll in big time. With slow city growth rate (ie nothing to build), I had big money. So I bought up a couple of provinces from the arverni, to help finance their war (they were losing, and I'm a helpful guy). At the same time, I bought Bordeaux from the Iberians, to help out of course.

Then they made peace, but I encouraged the lusotannan to attack the Aurekakoi (as punishment for their offences to the international community naturally). This time I bought Toulouse from the Aurekakoi (sorry I cant remember the names of the towns, am quite drunk at the moment!), to help finance their defense of course and create a buffer with the Arverni. So helpful we, the Pritanoi, the true peacekeepers of Europe.

The Arverni, concerned at my taking over most of Gaul, decided to attack, but so I had so much money!! My defences were too well organized, and I don´t know why but they left gergovia completely undefended, with my armies 1 march away. It was a steal. A few decisive battles later, they were down to 1 province north of the Alps, Uesontio. Massilia was taken by Rome, who I paid off with an alliance in exchange for the city.

The Lusotannan, did well in their campaign, taking Tole. So seeing the Aurekakoi in desperate need of money, I took Barcelona off their hands. Unfortunately for the Lusotannan, they made the mistake of attacking me (someone paid them off I am sure), so I teamed up with the Auerkakoi and invaded from the sea, took northern spain and Portugal from them, vassalized them and that was pretty much it on the Iberian Front. I did detect a massive spike in funding of the lusotannan, something like 100k!! someone paid them off, but 50k ended up in my coffers after they kissed my feet in submission muahahaha

All the while, the Sweboz were being weakened. I paid the Lugiones to war with them, they did badly. So I paid the romans (who never declared war! I think this may have been me mixing things up in the negotiations, I think I may have pledged to war against the sweboz by mistake! but no matter). The Auedui were warred upon the sweboz after awhile, thinking them an easy prey (they were not). Aghast at this obvious violation of Aedui sovereignty I immediately embargoed the Sweboz in protest.

So eventually the Arverni warred on Rome, successfully. Kicked them back over the Alps. Frustrated at their lawlessness, I decided to fund the Lugiones, and the Romans, and prepare to invade myself (what choice did I have after all, were we to tolerate such a violation of international law??? no, not the Pritanoi, defenders of Europe!). First Copenhagen then the rest of Denmark. Using my fleets most wisely to dance around enemy armies. All the while feinting the centre but never committing to a decisive battle, waiting while my northern seaborn armies completed their objectives. Suddenly the Lugiones started to have some success. The Sweboz pulled stacks from the front and.... I rushed their center. The collapse was immediate. Only distant Ak-Ink remained under Sweboz hands. Lugiones tried once to take it. Failed. So I gave them more money. they tried again and the Sweboz were no more.

The Romans, needed help. so I steamrolled the Arverni. The attack was a complete surprise, but we saw their citizens weep with joy as we took their cities, we are after all, their Pritanoi liberators.

Noting the Auedui had fallen to bad government, and complete lack of willingness to conform to the newly established international laws, I decided to liberate them and end the tyranny of their warmongering King, for the good of Europe of course

So we conquered. so we laid low our enemies.

In all, it was quite fun. The diplomatic influence on the game was very much present, making for an exciting and interesting game. Money made all the difference, though I can never bribe anything or anyone. Buying cities first 100 turns is not too expensive (12-15k), but after that, it becomes really hard. Noreia I bought last turn for about 60k to get 40 provinces. Inciting others to war is not that hard either, around 15k and you´ll get a goon to do your dirty work.

Corruption was out of control though. I mean really out of control. 10% law bonus from culture building is not enough (temples never got large enough to add to this). Cities grew agonizingly slowly and never was there any possibility of creating a more Pritanoi oriented culture (it was all allied kin tribe - Democracy or oligarchy, nothing else, except gergovia who got "closely aligned democracy", but that was it). Pretty much all remained as it was over 100 turns. So city planning was quite boring. Scratch that, very very boring.

Battle AI is just suicidal, too easy to bait cavalry into headlong charges. They´re hard to kill, but still... most battles were pretty much the same all the time, just rinse and repeat. Elite units were ok, not exceptional which was disapointing. The only exception were spear retainers of the Auedui and Arverni. They were just superb. Truly worthy of the name. I once had 3 batoroi wear themselves thin on a wall assault against 1 unit of these amazing infantry, they all broke and ran, and I didn't even throw them in at the same time!. It took my Gallic spear nobles and bodyguard to crush them, and even they were exhausted after the affair. I managed to inflict only 30% casualties before the battle ended (I took the city on timer). They truly were elites. Needless to say, their city was spared a sacking thanks to their bravery.

Skirmisher accuracy has improved but its still weak. They should be very powerful while they have ammo, encouraging the use of more skirmishers by both sides to soak up the damage. At the end, I was pure infantry stacks with maybe 3 cavalry units (nobles!). Not balanced, and not realistic. But since skirmishers cost the same to maintain as regular infantry and are not lethal at all.... I´ll take infantry thank you very much

Buggy behavior, apart from skirmishers? well siege battles in major cities slows down to a crawl. Spoils the fun. Big time. Also, enemy elite cavalry will just sit under my slingers on a wall and get pounded to oblivion. doesn´t make sense.

Lots of CTD on end turn. Every 4 or 5. Much worse than EB2.0. It could happen on any faction turn. Was irritated about this.

Oh, very irritated about the battle HUD. I like it full, but it auto minimizes upon game restart, even if I change the option on the main menu. Very annoying. Please fix.

Spies and other agent cards kept changing, never faces. I had boats, city buildings, infantry unit cards, you name it. always changing even the same agent! Not too terrible but still....

Over all it was a fun game but there is still work to do!! Can´t wait to see the next evolution guys, hope this review helps a little

[QuintusSertorius]

160 turns is not a "long campaign", especially if you blitzed the British Isles in under 50 turns. If you want a challenge, you should be expanding as slowly as possible in the first 50 turns to give the AI factions a chance to consolidate and sort themselves out. Your issues with corruption come from expanding too fast, if you do it slower, with an FM governor in place and focus on settling the place with an Allied Government first, then move over to your native one, it tends to be much more manageable.

Everyone who uses a non-precursor javelin is broken in unaugmented 2.01, because they use an ineffective weapon and have too short a range for the engine to be able to cope with them. Download my unofficial hotfix to get all javelineers (infantry and cavalry) working properly.

All those CTDs (and the card changes) you're experiencing sounds like you may not have removed 2.0 properly before installing 2.01. The HUD changes sounds like you haven't set the config file to read only, so it's being overwritten. I'm guessing you're using the Steam version? Either way, these are all known issues with known fixes, check the technical subforum.

[Nightsh4de]

Thanks Quintus for the tech heads up!

As for expanding rapidly, yes perhaps you are right, its definitely something to keep in mind for a better experience. I did become preoccupied though as I saw the gauls rapidly taking over rebel settlements (only the one in Belgium was still standing by the time I launched my invasion) so I didn´t really have a choice (well, I did but better to strike before they consolidated their conquests, I guess). I watched the ARverni grow tremendously fast in another campaign, so I guess I wanted to forstall any other superpower growth! Which by the way the Aurekakoi seemed to be expanding very quickly as well in this game. Soon after, the Sweboz were doing impressive growth, so I felt like I was being pulled into conquest all the time, trying to nip threats in the bud before development.

In any case, the pace was so slow, perhaps conquest was the only way to keep things interesting!

To be honest the slower integration makes sense but it really was going far too slowly, for example, reaching pop 6000 in my capital took the better part of the campaign, and in continental settlements, those that were at 12000, like Bibracte, gave no option in construction to curb corruption. I much prefer to do lots of building and empire management, but there just wasn´t any of that to do lol

Still, much ground to cover I suppose, its hard to balance things out

[QuintusSertorius]

You're forgetting again than 160 turns is not long at all - it's 40 years. Britain has a very low starting population density, so of course it's going to take a while to grow. By contrast Gaul was much more densely populated, and had a higher level of infrastructure and development, so will grow faster. You're also enjoying the luxury of having a large number of sheltered provinces available to you with no competition from other factions.

There are also, IMO, far too many provinces in the north-west quadrant of the map, which fuels the excessively fast growth of the Celtic and Germanic factions. I believe that's being addressed, though perhaps not with as much stringency as I'd prefer. I suspect you may find this going in the opposite direction you desire, things are skewed too far in favour of the "barbarian" factions at the moment.

Corruption goes down over time. The most important lever you have, though, is the governor, rather than buildings with a law bonus.

[Nightsh4de]

Well to be fair I did mean long rules, not long campaign play, still, you are right, I should aim for a slower development! Good tip on the character law bonus, I think I will use character spawn rate to check my expansions, maybe that will ensure a better game development.

Will try Saka Rauka next (I actually started a campaign already but I will re install and get those side issues fixed up, relaunch and see how it goes, though I can forsee that campaign being very very long!). Take care, thanks for the comments