How to exterminate hordes with auto-resolve?

[LordofSunspear]

Hey everyone,

I recently started playing EB2, this is my first campaign. I'm playing with Baktria and I have a rather odd problem:

I went to war with Pahlava after conquering India. Right before I captured the last Pahlavan town, the Saka horde turned up in the Indian part of my empire. I barely had any units there as it was far from the frontline. So, I had to abandon the campaign against Pahlava (made peace), disbanded a full stack there and used the extra money to build units in India and defeat the Saka. I defeated them at least three times and I though everything goes according to plan...

... until I realised that it is impossible to exterminate them using auto-resolve! Now all they have is 4 family member unit in the stack, they lose the battle every time, but each general unit has 1-2 survivor and they are retrained in the next round. I beat them every time but I can't "finish" them.

Now, this would not be an issue if I could command the battles myself but I can't. The game crashes every time I command my own battle. I think it might be one of the units clashing with the enemy that makes the game crash because I was able to command battles elsewhere with different units.

So, is there a way to finish a horde faction with auto-resolve?

[Genava]

So, is there a way to finish a horde faction with auto-resolve?

Open the command box and use the auto_win cheat code against a cheap unit of your army. Maybe it will kill them.

Else try move_character to put them in Britain where there is a lot of rebel armies...

[LordofSunspear]

Open the command box and use the auto_win cheat code against a cheap unit of your army. Maybe it will kill them.

Else try move_character to put them in Britain where there is a lot of rebel armies...

Thank you for the quick answer!

That said, I don't think I'll continue playing this mod or at least I'll abandon this campaign. I just captured the last Pahlavan city and they became a horde as well. They went from a single city with a full stack to 4 full stacks some of which are led by 7-9 star generals. Needless to say, they destroyed the 2 full stacks I used to conquer the city. I understand what the whole horde mode represents but I don't think it works as a game design decision. If I invest a lot of time and resources in defeating a faction, it should stay defeated or at least the horde should go the other way not my territory. At this point I'm worse off by capturing their last city than I was before...

[QuintusSertorius]

auto_win attacker/defender won't work if the odds are ridiculously against you.

[Floren d'Asteneuz]

auto_win attacker/defender won't work if the odds are ridiculously against you.

Last time I checked, it does. Except when you are defending a siege. In every other cases, it does.

I used it extensively for testing scripts and it has never failed me,except, again, when defending sieges.

[Wulfburk]

Yeah i agree completely, if the horde system was out completely for all factions in the autumn release it would be a nice "feature"

[Hummer]

Assassinate the FM's.

[Shadowwalker]

Removing/altering the hordes is a very easy (and not even much time-consuming) task. No need to wait for the autumn release.

@LordofSunspear - if the hordes annoy you to such an extent, just follow V.T. Marvins guide:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...1#post14603806

[Important: make sure to use Notepad++ and be aware that you need to start a new campaign after that since all your saves won't work anymore as soon as you edit files such as the EDB or EDU ]

Following his advice you can either completely remove all (or certain, as it is coded faction-specific) hordes or just significantly lower the amount of troops spawning.
(I tinkered around with both options, but have gone back to the original EB II system after a while. It simply feels wrong to me to have weak (or no) hordes. )


EDIT
@ Hummer: I don't even try to assassinate enemy characters anymore, the chances usually are below 10%. While I appreciate the fact that nowadays most enemy assassination attempts aren't successful, it's a bit sad that I can't use this feature to my own advantage anymore.

I also for some reason never succeed at sabotage attempts (don't even try anymore as well) while the AI assassins keep sabotaging my markets. Doesn't matter much how many troops are in the town, what kind of FM is there and if there is a spy/assassin of my own present or not.

(But well, it's way better than before. I remember previous versions when you couldn't play a Pergamon campaign at all because the Ptolemaioi assassinated all your FMs within 5 turns. Balancing is a hard and tedious task )

[LordofSunspear]

Removing/altering the hordes is a very easy (and not even much time-consuming) task. No need to wait for the autumn release.

@LordofSunspear - if the hordes annoy you to such an extent, just follow V.T. Marvins guide:


EDIT

Great advice, thank you! I will try to do this.

Yes, they do annoy me a lot. I'm a casual player so it pretty much ruined the game for me when I realised that I wasted about a month of playing because Pahlava becomes stronger after complete annihilation than before. It is illogical and annoying. I think hordes should be represented by the doubling/tripling of the population in nearby regions causing unrest. I would be fine with that but I don't know if that would be possible or not.

[LordofSunspear]

Assassinate the FM's.

I tried this, of course, but the chances are so low even with maxed out assassins that it's not really worth trying.

[Floren d'Asteneuz]

I tried this, of course, but the chances are so low even with maxed out assassins that it's not really worth trying.

Last time I tried assassinations in EBII on hordes, it was on sweboz. They managed to finish the turn without any generals and next turn, two generals popped up again. So maybe my game was broken, or maybe EBII scripts prevent that.

I used this extensively on mongols in Broken Crescent and with Khwarezmians I managed to kill the horde in two turns : I had stacked assassins since years and years and trained them hard and it worked. But in EBII, no.

[Moros]

Last time I tried assassinations in EBII on hordes, it was on sweboz. They managed to finish the turn without any generals and next turn, two generals popped up again. So maybe my game was broken, or maybe EBII scripts prevent that.

I used this extensively on mongols in Broken Crescent and with Khwarezmians I managed to kill the horde in two turns : I had stacked assassins since years and years and trained them hard and it worked. But in EBII, no.

This might be due to the sweboz not having a royal family but rather the teutonic leader system.

[delra]

You can always edit game files and remove the horde appearance after their faction loses their last city. Then restart your campaign. I did just that and it saved me a lot of ridiculousness in the campaign that hordes cause.

[Rad]

The whole horde idea... creepsme out, I hate it.
BTW, how many factions horde after defeat? Not all of them, I hope

[Sylon]

Hordable factions are:

Massylii
Nabatu
Boii
Sweboz
Lugiones
Sauromatae
Pahlava
Saka

I can't remember if the Lusitani can become a horde or not.

[Sint]

The problem with hordes is that the Ai will almost never deafeat them before they settle again.And the fact that they just horde again with full strenght after that without any limit just makes it unbalanced.

[Rad]

The problem with hordes is that the Ai will almost never deafeat them before they settle again.And the fact that they just horde again with full strenght after that without any limit just makes it unbalanced.

Give this man a cookie... no wait, I want the cookie!
Also... you've just defeated your worst enemy, and suddenly he has more troops than ever?

[Floren d'Asteneuz]

Give this man a cookie... no wait, I want the cookie!
Also... you've just defeated your worst enemy, and suddenly he has more troops than ever?

Because...

GAMEPLAY !!!

On every single one of my campaigns of the east (saka, partians, baktrians) romans and gallics tribes were defeted by sweboz or boii and those took all Europe and Steppes and harrassed me quite early in the game.

On some of my campaigns, I even tried cheating codes to remove them from the map, kill all their generals and troops but it was impossible. They cannot be defeted EVEN BY CHEAT !!!

This feature is broken.

[Infidel144]

The simplest way to exterminate the stack would be to put a unit in each adjacent tile, then attack the stack. If you win it can't retreat and thus dies.

[_Tartaros_]

defeated the massilyahorde as karthadast regular, never experienced this kind of "problems".
it´s quit the opposite.
with horde you are able to decide, make the last province a vassal (this is actually really working in EB) or conquer and make them flee and later exterminate the factions royalty for ever.