Originally Posted by
parthian8
I don't want to get too hung up on Rome, because it is only one faction. But for me it is no fun playing any of the European or North Africa powers for so long as Rome behaves nothing like Rome. Most of the other factions behave something like their historic counterparts....Carthage targets North Africa and Spain, the Seleucids and Ptolemies fight over the Levant, Syria and Anatolia, the Parthians try to overrun Parthia. Meanwhile, the great Mediterranean power of the age had it's eyes set on the Baltic. I have always believed this is because it is easier for the AI to persuade itself to conquer Cisalpine Gaul rather than take on Epirus early in the game. Once it gets set on that route, it stays on it. I can't help thinking Epirus has such a strong presence in Taras to increase its survivability and that magical "what if" potential rather than because the war of 272 was a damn near run thing. It wasn't. Tarentum was quickly to become yesterday's town anyway, as the Via Appia was shortly to arrive in Brundisium, which is where the action was for the full span of this game, apart from that tiny Pyrrhus bit at the start. In short, Rome gets off on the wrong track and stays on it largely, in my view, because of a sideshow that was in no way some huge turning point in history. That Rome, which had ruthlessly crushed the cities of Italy, should be portrayed as chillaxed about the presence of a foreign KING, with which it is at war, on it's own peninsular, is just plain odd.