I gave some serious thought to the chokepoint suggestions that people were giving earlier in the thread and found them useful, but something tells me I would not have followed them through as carefully as I should. I probably would have gone too gung-ho into it to truly play it safe.
I'm most annoyed at myself for this because one of my two initial invasion plans I posted was all chokepoint-centric. If you look at the screenshot for Operation: Zeus' Hammer, all the landing spots in the northwest are exactly the areas where the enemy is now moving up through. They would have already been blocked, maybe even seen some battles if they decided to attack. All were chosen due to not allowing enemy forces to be able to attack with more than 2 maybe 3 armies at a time. I think I must have just gotten impatient or I really don't know what I was thinking when I decided to land as I did... all this planning and effort, possibly blown with the stroke of a key...
You are in like-minded company. I fill notebooks documenting the history of my realm. Important battles and their outcomes, strategic concerns, major role-playing decisions, and the like. Pretty insane by someone's standards, no doubt, but to me it enhances the immersion and gratification in the game and helps out when I need to get back into business after a longer pause in playing. A person past his youth who is working for a living cannot necessarily allocate time for a single game every night or even every week, as it is in my case.
I love it. I would be interested to see some of what you have, if you have any posts detailing such things. And far as helping getting back into the swing of things, that's the biggest reason I think this campaign has been in progress going on three years now. Usually, after long pauses (months), I forgot too much and am not as motivated to keep going, and that's been a major factor in moving onto a new campaign in the past. This time, since I had so many screenshots and notes of every major (and most minor) development, I would take a few days just to go through them, sort of like faux-history lesson, and would be more amped to go right back into than ever, picking up right where I left off. It's been the most gratifying total war experience for me to date, so thanks again for that EB2 team.
Speaking of which, nothing in your writing suggests that you are particularly young. Still, as a person in his 40s, I seize the opportunity to express my opinion that spending time in something that interests you, makes you exercise your wit and imagination and fuels your interest in history and understanding of our world is most emphatically NOT wasting your life. Provided you have some kind of balance in between enjoying historical simulations and work or caring for people around you. You need your down time, and this is not the worst way to get that. Family and acquaintances in my parents' generation have been quite hostile towards gaming and even more so as I have grown older. They shake their heads if I mention playing computer games yet themselves spend hours each evening watching whatever useless crap just happens to be on TV. Looking back now, I am happy for all the free time I spent staging battles and managing a state in an imaginary world instead of watching some nitwits and bimbos in "reality" shows.
I'm 30's myself, and appreciate your comments. The problem is, I have not been exercising good judgment and balance and in fact have been spending unhealthy amounts of time on distractions, to my personal detriment. I didn't mean to imply that all gaming by any adult is a waste of life, just meant how I've been going about it has been for me. I have no shame or qualms about my love of gaming itself, as opposed to watching tv or whatever, only in how I've used it to distract myself from real life and the things that actually matter (beyond leisure time and enjoying how I spend it).
It is curious to read of that kind of management for someone who has worked hard to keep every settlement green and happy, invest everything in infrastructure and struggling to raise armies. Maybe it has to do with your advanced stage of campaing and losing any other incentive to go on with the campaign. Nevertheless, one of the attractive qualities of this mod seems to be that one can play successfully in so many different ways.
Getting the economy to this point has been 150 years coming. For most of the campaign, I was much the same. Lowest taxes, priority on growing settlements and happiness. But as the empire grows, so do the evils of man. Is part of the roleplay rationale. The other part, the practical part, is that I had grown my core cities, and quite a few outer-core ones to Huge status, and had no reason to keep their population growing. In fact, I had reason to keep them stable because of disease outbreaks when they got to huge, and the possible spread of the contagion and all those concerns. On top of that, I initially had about 10 or so "outer-core" settlements that were Supervised Hellenic Administrations, which allowed me to build everything available as they got to Huge status, which in turn helped economy and public order.
Relatively recently, as part of this huge roleplay/gameplay revolution that happened, where my first non-father-son lineage King came to power (I was at first distraught, then I noticed all his traits and ancillaries were about what a great liar he is, with actors and orators at his side, so I went with the story that he conned and defrauded his way into power), I had massive reforms. These included military, where I now allowed myself to retrain units and keep standing armies after finally building higher level colony buildings in my main areas enfranchising citizens, and also turning the outer-core settlements into allied territories which allowed me to disband many of the garrisoned units, saving thousands and tens-of-thousands on upkeep per turn. The economic benefit of that move was huge. I suddenly went from barely breaking even, to a massive surplus. This all happened just before the war with Carthage, so pretty recent developments.
And at that point, the evil empire was in full swing. I bumped taxes as high as they would go all throughout, including all the allied territories. Nobody outside my core and outer-core regions are happy. And the Emperor don't care. We have wars to run, militaries to feed (Makedonia is now a fully fledged military culture and empire, everyone goes into training at 16 and all men from 20 are conscripted into the armies, but given land in return as part of the great land reforms which reverted ownership from tiny percentage of the superwealthy, to everyone who fights). The main place my money goes, other than military, has been when I save up for other periods of great reforms, for things like education or roads or military/land reforms. Meaning, I don't build, say, the Academy in allied territories soon as I can. I save them up, until a bunch of settlements in a given region can now build it, then in one fell swoop I build it in all of them. Depending on the level of building in question, these can get very, very expensive. I remember construction costs of I think almost or around/above 200k for one project across the empire...
I appreciate all your trouble in describing the grande finale of your campaign. If you find the time to finish it, we are here to listen!
And I certainly appreciate your comments and understanding and support.