Sweboz help

[Tantum eruditi sunt liberi]

I've tried the Sweboz campaign a couple times 2.04. It's broken in my opinion. The devastation incurred by large rebel stacks completely annihilates the Sweboz economy. I am forced to blitz as many settlements as I can to get enough of an economy going to survive and chase the large rebel armies around my borders. The trouble lies in having enough of an army to defeat the full stack in the west after blitzing.

The battles are really fun. Being 20k in debt after 20 turns is not. If I disband my army early, I have no shot with the devastation.

Any tips? Any idea to make a viable Sweboz campaign?

[delra]

What version are you playing, what difficulty? I don't recall any rebel stacks inside Sweboz land at start? Their early campaign mostly rides on overusing their heavily powerful (15 attack?) bodyguard infantry. They are like self-regenerating Spartans. If you played TATW, you can relate to Elrond's bodyguards when you think of them.

Early debt is common to all factions on the map, don't disband a thing, recruit more infantry if you can, you just need to trade your starting troops for enough conquered cities to get out of it. Scout, go where stacks are smaller. Play battles yourself.

Or you could wait another couple weeks for the autumn release. It'll add a boatload of units to Sweboz, like pikes for example, make it a little easier.

[Tantum eruditi sunt liberi]

2.04a, H/M. There are rebel stacks all around the borders of the starting province that cause devastation. Yes, the bodyguard infantry are very powerful, but the time it takes to conquer enough cities and destroy rebel stacks is too long to get out of it. The Sweboz economy is completely based upon farming and taxes (obviously, the taxes are stuck at normal), thus devastation sucks all of the little income you do get.

I guess I'll just sadly stay away from the Sweboz. Even the idea of blitzing cities early counters the fun of the battles, I think.

[delra]

It's not that bad, really.

The point of the early game is to:
1. Completely ignore your treasury. So what you're in debt, you'll be swimming in money soon enough. DO NOT disband a thing.
2. Take as many cities as you can while losing as few troops as possible.
3. Time is not of the essence at all. In this mod AI does very little against you until turn 100. AI cities are much less defended than rebel cities as well. So you just keep your army alive, take some cities and let AI deal with larger rebels if it's possible. Then you just jump that AI and take the same cities nearly for free, as they will mostly be undefended.

To that effect: Don't storm cities, wait out sieges, conserve your resources and generally just keep doing your thing at a slow pace. If you can siege AI with a small enough force to provoke them to rush out of a city, and then still defeat them, all the better. I tried a couple starts before writing this and ended up splitting the starting army in half, where all my heavy troops, cavalry and generals would siege a city with a seemingly small force, and provoke defenders to rush at them, then beat the out of them in combat. Then I'd reinforce and garrison that city from the "reserve" force (where all the ranged and light troops were) and move on to another city.

In battle I do what I do with Koinon: Use a wedge formation where my generals are the tip of the wedge and behind them are lines of other troops: more elite at first, then lighter and cheaper in each following line. This breaks AI's little brain so much that in the end you are pretty much guaranteed to at least envelop if not completely surround them. Meanwhile your tip of the wedge is a bunch of nearly immortal guys who regenerate after each battle. It works on the offence too.

Oh and a pro tip: Use the starting assassin, every enemy general you can whack saves a lot of trouble later in battle. Remember Krum the Bulgar. :-D

Oh and another pro tip, keep your starting spy near your capital so you know if/when rebels are headed to siege it. So you don't get conquered by a random rebel stack yourself.

And last thing that I forgot, if you want to rush at Boii, remember they'll go horde on you. Better leave them their last city.

[Boogie Knight]

The Sweboz stumped me too, first time I tried to play them. The trick is to take out those stacks first. If you're playing H/M, they should merge into two mega stacks, one in the west and one in the north. Before moving on to take any cities, they should be your priority. IIRC the devastation they cause maxes at 1200, and takes a long time to heal. So you need to knock them out as early as possible - there's nothing you can do about it reaching 1200, unless you've found some way to smash them before it reaches that stage. But while they're standing there the devastation will not get any better.

Take them out, try to ensure taking as few casualties as possible, THEN expand. The AI will be way behind you in the expansion stakes, particularly your closest four neighbours. The thing to remember about this mod is that you can take your time. You mentioned you didn't want to blitz, which is great, because blitzing is the absolute worst thing you can do with the Sweboz, partly because of those starting rebels and also because, as mentioned, your neighbours will horde on you. Also as mentioned, don't disband anything. Use those units to take settlements - as you lose soldiers and thus pay less upkeep, you'll be spending those lives to gain new forms of tax and trade revenue from your conquests. I find going north first to be the best idea, taking first Denmark and then the rest of Scandinavia.

The Sweboz are a great faction to play. Just remember that pretty much every faction (I've not heard of an exception yet) starts by sustaining crushing debt and THEN starts to improve.

[adun12345]

The current Sweboz situation is pretty bonkers, though. They get their entire starting income devastated on turn 2. That's far worse than any of the other factions I've played as. As Tantum said, it's very easy to go 20-30k into the red within ten turns, even if the player is very aggressive. Given how poor most of Germany is to start (and how few options there are in terms of revenue/taxes/trade), it can easily be 20-30 turns before the player is able to recoup those losses and begin building/training anything. It's one thing for a faction to begin by going into debt for a few turns to establish a starting position. Remaining in debt for the first forty turns is a pretty steep barrier to entry.

Of course, having the Sweboz be a very challenging campaign is fine by me, as long as that is what the team intended. However, my recollection is that the many starting rebel stacks in Germany were intended primarily to block the expansion of the AI Sweboz earlier in the game, not to drain the player's entire treasury. At the very least, at some point the difficulty warnings in the faction selection screen will need to be updated. From some recent play-testing, I can attest that, for example, Hayasdan's starting position is pretty easy ("Challenging" at best, not the "Nigh-Impossible" it is currently rated), while Sweboz's starting position should be rated as "Nigh-Impossible."

[nvm]

Indeed, so far the rebel stacks seem way too adventurous and not very balanced. Honestly I think I'd prefer the endlessly respawning gold-chevroned fullstack with immortal god-general that the first EB had to the madness which Rome has on their northern border nowadays. Apparently it doesn't even stop curtail AI Rome expansion!

[adun12345]

A Roman player, though, at least has some easier expansion opportunities to the south, as well as two provinces that are not totally devastated by rebel forces. Sweboz starts with one province, and gets devastated from all sides.

I'm totally on board with having large stacks of rebels everywhere at the start - the first several turns of my Sweboz play-through had some epic battles. The devastation is killer, though, when you're a single-province faction that loses your entire income on turn 2.

But if the current difficulty of Sweboz for the player is a design choice by the team, then I'm all for it; it's good to have a variety of starting difficulties, and Germany was definitely a rough neighborhood in those days. I just want to make sure that the design team is aware of how challenging the Sweboz opening currently is.

[Walleyeking]

Tried Sweboz, had more losses due to corruption then my entire income every turn. Stack devestation and army upkeep on that. Playing on H/M and you will quickly reach a -5000/turn, with no way of turning it around. And since you are broke, you cant build anything to reduce the corruption, so you kep losing more and more money... EB2 not like other some mods economies where your income can be supplemented by very profitable sacking...

[QuintusSertorius]

I've turned down the corruption modifier for camps in 2.04b, I may turn down the modifier for devastation as well. I won't change the cap, though.

[adun12345]

Will the EB Team be re-considering the difficulties listed on the faction selection screen for 2.1 (or for a later release)? I've found that the current markers are a pretty poor indicator of how difficult a campaign will actually be.

[Hummer]

Will the EB Team be re-considering the difficulties listed on the faction selection screen for 2.1 (or for a later release)? I've found that the current markers are a pretty poor indicator of how difficult a campaign will actually be.

Too easy or too hard?

[adun12345]

Too easy or too hard?

Varies by faction, imo.

Aedui was pretty challenging, so they're probably okay. Saka was also really difficult, so I doubt that one needs to change.

But Baktria is quite easy, as is Hayasdan; if those campaigns remain as they are, I would recommend lowering their faction screen difficulty rating.

And Sweboz is very difficult as it stands, about as difficult as (if not a little more difficult than) Saka. I would recommend a bump to "Nigh-Impossible." Once a faction is rated as "Nigh-Impossible," almost any balance complaint can be written off with a, "Well, you were warned"

My experience with this factions may indicate that there are others that could use adjustments in their stated difficulty rating, given the changes that have occurred since 2.01. Obviously, I can't provide specifics without having played them all!

[Kdssow]

Am I the only one not having difficulty with Sweboz?
The Sweboz in EB1 was harder IMO.

Hey, about the boatload of units in the autumn release, is there any chance we get to see back the units from EB1 such as the Chatii Spearmen or the Cheruski Swordsmen?
Or will there be more of these unique regional units?

[Sylon]

Regional Germanic units are not planned for the second release. The Germanic Pikemen will be in, however.

[Kdssow]

Regional Germanic units are not planned for the second release. The Germanic Pikemen will be in, however.

Not planned for the second? So that means they eventually will in the future?
The Germanic Pikemen are a familiar face though

[QuintusSertorius]

Not planned for the second? So that means they eventually will in the future?
The Germanic Pikemen are a familiar face though

There are still a whole host of planned Germanic units, along with Celto-Germanic and Lugi-Baltic ones.