Interesting factions to play? / How long do your campaigns run?

[myarta]

Out of curiosity, how many turns do people (excluding the dev team who obviously has to restart a lot for testing) tend to play their campaigns? I find myself getting a little bored around the 200-300 marker, which is a significant investment of time.
My play style usually goes like this:

1) Play Rome, expand slowly and historically using a map of the Roman conquests and the calendar as rough guides.
2) Finish constructing tier 3 military colonies in the relevant cities in Italy and upgrade them to IusLat's
3) Eventually start to get bored with waiting for 500 to be able to get troops from provinces directly and play with those sweet, sweet legions for my Wish Fulfillment Vehicle.
4) Start over with a new update but edit it so you can hit the Marian reforms early, still start to get bored around 300 as it's much of the same improve provinces, take new ones, develop political careers of my leaders
5) Try a different faction. Read all the descriptions and love learning about their history / reform requirements etc / province descs
6) Get to 150-200 and get bored with not being able to develop roads and civic architecture as much, and not having the carrot dangling of sweet reform troops coming like the legions.
7) Try Hellenic faction because of their advanced architecture and two tiers of reform
8) Burn out fast because managing your Hellenic culture %'s and colony points is the same kind of spreadsheet play that I was just doing for 300 turns with Roman Cursus Honororum management (I LOVE the system and don't want to change it! But eventually it gets a little repetitive over every 4 turns shuffling some of your generals as I have people at all stages of the 5 year timer, over and over for hundreds of them).

So mostly in posting looking for two things:

1) Some sense of how long other people play their campaigns before they get bored and move to a fresh start to gauge where I'm at compared to them
2) Suggestions for factions that are interesting to play as far as having long term things you can work towards without being too repetitive, or having poor civic architecture or troop reform options such that you feel you've maxed out too quickly.

And definitely not intended as a criticism of anything.

[Hummer]

I'm very similar to you... With some Carthage thrown in.

[moisesjns]

honestly, i tend to RP heavily. Maybe you get bored because it is to easy for you. even on H or VH battle dif. i still win easily. What i do now, is i make big armies, that i specifically make to fail. to simulate a loss or set back. I than wait a couple years to spawn another one. And i adapt it according to the army i lost to. i Also RP bad generals who make terrible decisions. Maybe try the celtic factions.

[Colos1987]

I usually try to play as long as my empire grows so big that managing it will become too tedious, and when conquering and keeping new settlements becomes ALMOST impossible due to public order issues generated by culture and distance from capital. We are talking about 80-100 provinces taken. Longest campaign I had lasted for 880 beautiful turns, as Romani, with version 2.2b.

That said, there are other factors which will make me start over. I played Nabatea for 550 turns under 2.2f, and I only stopped becouse of the anti-trait bug. Several family members kept recieving public order and growth bonuses indefinetely, which made their governed provinces into 100k+ monster cities - just so when they died eventually, the city rebelled instantly. It seems like a nuance when your realm is small, but at 70 provinces, you are facing this situation in every other turn...

Another stopping factor is gameplay. I just stopped a Pritanoi campaign, 200 turns in, 2.2g, simply becouse I foud out that Pritanoi cannot build Large Cities. They are the only faction disabled from this upgrade, and I simply love city managing too much - but that's just me

As for advice, try Nabatu. They are extremely challenging and fun, and have two reforms, with the latter surely not happening before turn 203.

Colos

[f0ndiE^]

My longest campaign is currently as Bospo, 520 turns, VH/VH, 2.2f. I came to realise that this is actually also fun if u take it as a next stage of game. There is an early stage 0 - 200 turns, mid stage 201 - 300, late stage 301 - 500, extra late stage - 500+. I am currently in tha last stage and it is very hard to maintain so large empire. I am in war with Rome and it costs a lot, but soon I will make them my vassals and my income per turn will be like 80 000 so my infrastructure will be great...I would like to play new version, but I also wanna take as much as I can in this campaign....so I am likely to play 200 more turns .

[delra]

Baktria makes for a really fun long campaign, with the distances involved and lack of ability to reinforce through fleet you really get delayed a lot. Everything is more strategic than with Greeks where all your cities are within fleets move range.

[Imperial Pudding Head]

My longest campaign is 300-400ish as pahlava, normally wouldn't get to 100s due to irl stuff, general laziness and the need to constantly update the game as soon as a new release pops out.
It's maybe because of my addiction to new releases, that I sometimes regret having to update and lose all my progress that I found myself hard to attach myself to a certain faction all over again

I think you're bored because you try to play too historically? It can be boring to try maxing things over and over but my suggestion would be try what-ifs and migration campaign

For factions I would definitely recommend nabatu, try to stay as a small kingdom and do raids every now and then keeping AS and ptolies in check. They got a decent roster, interesting starting position, and their reforms turn them into a pseudo-hellenic faction so it would keep things fresh as far as building and unit goes.
My other suggestion would be saka and play semi-historically as they lose their nomadic province and had to push deeper into india but I haven't tried it yet

[Genghis Skahn]

Arevaci has a ton of new traits and new govs. Highly recommend trying them out, especially since we need the feedback...

[QuintusSertorius]

Arevaci has a ton of new traits and new govs. Highly recommend trying them out, especially since we need the feedback...

Their new governments (and reform) aren't in; though the traits are.

[Genghis Skahn]

Their new governments (and reform) aren't in; though the traits are.

That's extremely problematic...

Arevaci has a ton of new traits and new govs. Highly recommend trying them out, especially since we need the feedback...

NOTE: DO NOT YET TRY OUT A NEW AREVACI CAMPAIGN...Without the new govs in the test build, you will most likely experience many a crash IMO. I was not aware of this, otherwise I wouldn't ask for other people to test for these.

[myarta]

Thanks for the tips, guys. Baktria are another fun one of mine: you also have you manage your colonies thing, but it's not as extensive as the Roman offices. I might have to try them again and see what's up. I've done some Nabatu: the only downside I found there was preferring the philhellenic governments but not having control over where in Egypt there are helcols that make them possible. So it became sort of a try to use spies and wait and wait for them to finish getting them placed over Egypt so that when I move in, I can philhel all of them. But that's a perfectionist trait of mine that can sometimes get in the way of enjoyment. I haven't played Nabatu in a while though, so they're definitely worth a look again.

Migration is also something I hadn't considered. I'll have to take a look to see what factions are amenable to it, as most have their best governments and pools only in their local area, but I know some are migration-happy.

Colos: I would probably play a Pritanoi again, but I'l have to check their government options. I haven't played them in a year, and I think I was bummed to find out that they can't really expand very much outside of Britain itself. Also that the M2TW engine doesn't seem to let you block straits with ships. I got all geared up to take that province in Denmark that's situated on the islands east of Jutland from the Sweboz using my superior navy to block them in and deny them access across the straight to re-claim it. Sadly this engine doesn't support that, so they just marched right past my fleet that was on the straits icon with their doomstacks. Also I couldn't build much in that province.

Re: Arevaci: I've only done a little as them. I'll take a look at them when they're ready. Thanks!

[QuintusSertorius]

Colos: I would probably play a Pritanoi again, but I'l have to check their government options. I haven't played them in a year, and I think I was bummed to find out that they can't really expand very much outside of Britain itself. Also that the M2TW engine doesn't seem to let you block straits with ships. I got all geared up to take that province in Denmark that's situated on the islands east of Jutland from the Sweboz using my superior navy to block them in and deny them access across the straight to re-claim it. Sadly this engine doesn't support that, so they just marched right past my fleet that was on the straits icon with their doomstacks. Also I couldn't build much in that province.

Pritanoi aren't solely British Isles-focused any more; after their kingship reform, they can build factional governments (Allied States) in Germania, Gaul and Lusitania.

[Cryoshakespeare]

Very similar to you. The only exception, and a campaign I'd honestly recommend, is Nubia - their government reform is really satisfying, building roads across the desert, and it's fun to have to use largely skirmisher based armies, quite different from the typical Roman or Hellenic rosters.

[QWE_asd]

I had a ~500 turn rome campaign long ago, now ~200 turn is my limit. After 200 turns, all in-game numbers grown out of proportion. After 400 turns, all of the accumulated small bugs start to make the game unstable.

I don't think the game is designed to last beyond 500 turns. Consider the many interesting reforms (shiny armors) after 700 turns, some day there needs to be a late campaign start date (or 2 more:272 bc;172bc;72bc).

[Anubis88]

I usually stop playing when i reach the historicaly plausible conquest of the faction i choose. I had some extra long Romani, Parthian and Pontic campaings for that reason. I once did a Parthian campaign where i kept using force diplomacy to give Rome all the territory it had, so that around 50bc-ish i could have a megawar with them. This was a few years ago though. Fun times.

That being said, probably the most fun campaing i had was with Pontos about a year ago. Trying to follow the historical progress, and having an empire divided around the black sea with an very very interesting and heterogenous army was a blast. And that was at the time where Pontos had like 15 less units in those armies that they can have in the current version once they expand.

[Sarkiss]

yes, Pontus is brilliant, an all time favorite of mine. the factions i usually play have to have a history of expansion and it is for this reason that i'd never give factions that lack it more than a few turns. attempting to recreate a semblance of their historical empires is what makes it interesting for me. though i never play "long campaigns" as it gets dull and then there is the snowball effect... always go for "short" and then carry on playing if campaign remains challenging and there are still faction-specific historical goals to achieve.

[Sayn1911]

I personnaly love to play the Selucids. They have a wide roster right from the start, lots of potential enemies and a huge empire that is falling apart.

I love EB II, but I don't really like turtling if I'm not forced to.

So I increased a bit the population in descr_strat to get (almost) unavoidables revolts in Babylon, Persepolis and Ekbatana at the start, which makes the early game quite an entertaining challenge.
I break all my alliances as soon as possible of course, and in this case, I was attacked by Pergamon and Hayastan before turn 10, while I was still trying to push the Ptolemies out of Anatolia.

I also go with 4 full stacks asap and disband only the units I don't like to use (mostly levies that I don't need for garrisons), so will I lose money for the first 20-30 turns at least.
But sacking Babylon and Persepolis helps repairing the walls and building governments !

I also increased a bit the damage and range of arrows and javelins in expost_descr_units which makes fighting parthia, the saka and the sauromatae a bit harder on vh/vh (more casualites for you).

All of this makes for a very intense campaign, the first 100 turns will not give you much time nor money to rest and build your cities if you play aggressively.

My only regret is that I miss the high upkeep costs from 2.2b, when you started the Seleucid campaign with -12k mnai / turn, which made the first turn very interesting (what do you keep, what do you disband, what do you recruit ? Do you completely abandon the east to focus on the west, etc...)

[Dooz]

My only regret is that I miss the high upkeep costs from 2.2b

Uh oh. I haven't updated past 2.2b myself, have a wonderful 300+ turn campaign. One of my absolute favorite parts of the mod is(was?) the economic balance, where during peacetime I'd disband my offensive armies and make plenty of money to be used for infrastructure and empire building. But when war came and I had to raise an army or two, I'd be in trouble if campaigns lasted too long and definitely couldn't prioritize or even at all do any building because of how much it took to keep the military machine afloat. In this way, I'd have wild vacillations of what I had in my war coffers, from 100k+ in peacetimes, to nothing and less during protracted wars, particularly with a bit of bad luck or mismanagement along the way. I just really loved how I was incentivized to disband armies during peace to make any money, and I'm talking even with a pretty huge empire making lots of money. It was almost like a countermeasure for the snowball effect mid-late game.

Which update did upkeep get reduced? Has it changed the balance of the campaign pretty significantly I would imagine?

[QuintusSertorius]

Upkeep has dropped to 3/16th recruitment, rather than 1/4.

[Dooz]

Upkeep has dropped to 3/16th recruitment, rather than 1/4.

I see, thanks. Have recruitment costs changed on any large scale?

Just did some quick calculations, and my current total upkeep of 59,239 would be reduced to 44,430.
That'd be 14,809 gold per turn extra to work with. Of course, this is assuming the same recruit costs I have in the first place, as well as not taking into account all the other economy based changes since this old version, and who knows how many other things that interact with campaign and gold flow, so only way to know how it feels is to play a game and see for myself.

But it just really did stick out to me how beautifully balanced 2.2b was in terms of all these. Seemed like I was able to field the "right" amount of armies/units, as well as the AI from what I've seen, even well past the recruitment limitation script wearing off. I imagine the lower upkeep will encourage more recruitment and larger armies across the board. Oh well, I put my trust in the team. Onto bigger and better versions! (eventually... can't let go of this memorable save just yet)