Foreword
After 3 years away from the game, I've started playing the Europa Barbarorum mod once again and have decided to continue my previous AARs about the seleucid empire here. I've lost my old account details so I am back as seleukid empire instead of seleucid empire.
My old AARs 'Empire: Song of Peace and War' and 'Empire: The Divine King' were intended to be a single AAR. The former was to be a story regarding war and rebellion in the middle years of Antiochus II Theos reign (In-game Theodoros Syriakos) and served to show the strength of the reborn empire at 252BC (The earliest I can reach Arche Seleukeia victory conditions with realistic movement mod while maintaining a somewhat stable empire & Borders) as well as some of the laws and some fantasy elements that shape the world of my AAR. The second AAR was to be the reign of Antiochus III Megas and would have followed the campaign more closely as he conquered the rest of the map.
Unfortunately, I got distracted and started the second AAR without completing the first, before I lost interest in writing altogether. This time around, I plan to remain more focused on ending each separate "Volume", and hopefully, completing at 2 of the 3 volumes I intended . I did have a third AAR planned in the series putting the seleucid empire in medieval times, but thankfully, I didn't start.
I have started a new seleucid campaign on VH/M and have played up to 252BC. The reason I use realistic movement mod is so my characters can stay alive throughout a large campaign. It is not realistic for a King with overwhelming forces to take 15+ years to conquer 2 regions when in reality, entire regions could be lost or won with a single decisive battles in antiquity. This mod causes another problem however, as Realistic movement mod does tend to make the late game tedious and difficult as you are facing 1-2 superpowers and endless levy spam from Rome (Vigiles anyone?), Elite Pike Spam from carthage or Brown Death from the Lusotani. However, for the sake of storywriting, I will not follow the campaign movements too closely and may condense a few battles into a single decisive battle when writing, especially if it is levy spam.
Old posts will be copied, edited and updated here, and put into a single thread. I will not focus too much on re-creating the pictures I had in my previous AARs, except for the maps of the world, so you can get an idea of the scope of the conflicts and the power of the empire and her enemies.
I look forward to continuing this story, that has been in my mind for a long time, a story about the greatest empire that was never forged...