Demetrios Poliorketes Handbook

[Gyrosmeister]

This thread is aimed to break down all campaign mechanics. It is aimed for newer players that may want to try out this mod, as it aims to offers a deeper experience compared to vanilla, but it can still be useful for more experienced players as well.

RECRUITMENT

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

First off, let's start with recruitment. After all, you are playing Total War to fight battles and wars, not to pretend to be Switzerland in WW1/WW2. Or maybe you do, in that case let me know how that play-style works out


Recruitment follows a general pattern, that is true for almost all factions(Looking at you, Sparta and Ptolemy). First, we have the well-known Light and Heavy chains from vanilla. In vanilla you can also recruit cavalry from them, in Demetrios Poliorketes however, this is not possible. You will only be getting infantry from that chain.

Now, there is a new stable chain and (surprise surprise) this is from where you will be getting that all-important cavalry. It also consists of Light and Heavy sub-chains from building level 2 onward. The Level 1 Building will provide the good old Citizen cavalry. The Light sub-chain stops at level 2 and it will over, as the name suggests, light and other auxiliary cavalry, where as the Heavy sub-chain goes all the way to Level 3 and will offer heavier and elite cavalry. You will however need later technology to unlock the sub-chain, so you might as well resort to mercenaries to fill the gaps. (Thessaly might be a good place to pick them up, as it was the case historically ). The Ptolemies, despite me mentioning that they have a unique system do adhere to this stable system, however they do not have the Light sub-chain, instead they will get access to the tanks of antiquity. This is however balanced with high construction and maintenance costs, so you won't become like the USSR in WW2, sending waves of T-34s to the enemy


Let us now come to Sparta. Sparta does not build stables, they get their cavalry from their two recruitment chains. Their two chains are the Spartan and the Perioikoi chains. The Spartan chain is, as you would have guessed, the way you will get those Hoplites you really want. Compared to vanilla (where I found it a bit silly that you can't get Spartan Hoplites right from the level 1 building) you can get Spartan Hoplites right from the level 1 building (since it is Sparta, there isn't much of a tier seperation, so you only have two levels), the Royal Spartans however will have to wait for the sake of balance. You will also get a Spartan Cavalry unit from that chain, as historically the Spartans were putting soldiers that were deemed unfit to fight in the phalanx on the horses. The Perioikoi chain will offer you the Perioikoi units, a cavalry unit is also unlocked from this chain.



The Ptolemies have -as the Spartans- two seperate chains to unlock their units (also including the stables). The first is a Klerouchia chain. It is unique compared to other military chains since it produces some food, it costs however gold to maintain. This unique feature comes from the fact that the Ptolemies offered plots of lands to Greek settlers in exchange for their military service. The traditional Greek units like those good-old-trusty Pikemen are unlocked through that chain.
The second chain is the Native chain. You will unlock all non-Greek units the Ptolemies have to offer, plus one Greek, the Royal Peltasts, as the Ptolemies before they started offering the aforementioned Klerouchies had just enough Greeks to fill out the ranks of the Royal Guards.

BANDITRY/PLAGUES & GOVERNMENT ACTIONS

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Banditry and Plagues from Empire Divided are also included. In case you are not aware of that system, here is a quick explanation. Banditry is a value that gets bigger as you get bigger. Higher banditry may trigger certain events like "Missing Food" or "Stolen Taxes". It can also rise with for example commerce buildings. The main way to combat banditry is to build certain buildings. The highlighted chain below is the main way of combating banditry.

Squalor is a settlement-based value that when it reaches a negative value, there is a chance of a plague starting, which will obviously mess up your provincial growth, public order etc. Generally, all main settlement, industrial and food buildings will produce squalor so you will have to balance out the settlements by mainly building temples and sanitation buildings. This adds a further layer into your settlement planning, you will need bigger provinces to support the smaller ones if you don't want to have plagues everywhere.
Additionally, certain technologies can help combat squalor and banditry.


Government actions from Rise of the Republic are also available for all 8 playable factions. Once you meet their requirements (usually they are monetary, apart from Athens, they will also need a General that has a certain rank) you can activate the government action and get various bonuses (and maluses) for a couple of turns, after that they are on a cooldown before you can activate them again.

FOREIGN CULTURAL INFLUENCES

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Despite the fact that almost every single faction in the game follows Hellenic Paganism (looking at you, Bithynia), culture is not completely redundant. The reason for it is that in provinces that border the edges of the map, foreign cultures will spread. (Paionian, Illyrian, Balkan and Eastern)





In order to prevent the foreign cultures spreading too much, build temples and use dignitaries to keep the pressure of your own culture as high as possible. Sounds simple, but if ignored it can cause some public order issues.

GALLIC INVASION

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The Gallic Invasion of Brennus of 279 B.C. is also included in this mod. It will occur earlier however. Before they enter Greece, there will be a warning message so that you have the chance to set up a few defences, in case they will enter at your lands (since there is a bit of randomness depending on when and where they will spawn, so every playthrough will have the Celts spawning at different places)


Diplomacy with the Celts is possible, so with some extra cash you may be able to get them to do your bidding

EMERGING/REBEL FACTIONS & REGION BUYOUT

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There are 10 emerging factions and 10 new rebel factions scattered across the map. All emerging factions (with the exception of the Thracian Kingdom) can be liberated. The rebel factions cannot be liberated, you can however buy regions from them, more on that later. So why are some factions emergent and why did certain regions got grouped together as a "rebel" faction? Some emerging factions became emergent because of the importance of the city, like Miletos or Argos, or it was a faction that was conquered not that far behind the starting date of 294. (Achaian and Akarnanian League). Other factions simply became emergent because it was not possible to group them suitably to some rebel region. Regions that are not emergent became rebels mainly because there was not a reasonably significant faction occupying those regions before the 294 start date.

Emerging Factions


Rebel factions

Note that Diplomacy with the rebel factions is possible, so for example you won't have a never ending war with some rebels in the Northern Aegean when playing as Sparta for example.


Now let us come to region trading. You can only buy regions from the 10 rebel factions shown above. In order to do that, you will need a dignitary and quite a bit of cash. Deploy him in the region of the rebels you want to buy, click on him and you will get this message:

Keep the dignitary there and eventually if you get lucky you will get this message from the advisor, shall you select the dignitary


If you bought the last region of a rebel faction, the rebels will disband, otherwise a peace agreement will be brokered between the two