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Thread: Koinon Hellenon tactics?

  1. #1

    Default Koinon Hellenon tactics?

    Hi guys this is my first post here. I am new to eb and I' am now playing the Koinon Hellenon faction. Usually I play as factions with a strong cavalry force(like Carthage, Macedonia and even some steppe factions) because my battle style relies on a strong cavalry force. However even though Koinon Hellenon has a pretty strong infantry(both melee and missile) their cavalries are weak. I am having trouble winning battles--yesterday I just had a full stack army destroyed by Epirus.
    Can any one please help me out and give me some advice for tactics? Thank you!

  2. #2

    Default Re: Koinon Hellenon tactics?

    Cavalry is nerfed on EB. Unless you mass 4 or 5 units of Baktrian/Armenian/Parthian/Sarmatian/Saka general's bodyguard in a single army, I find that cavalry is not useful for much more than running down broken units. They lack staying power in combat, aside from the super-heavy general's bodyguards from the factions I listed, and they're very expensive to upkeep, so I generally don't invest in cavalry as genuine soldiers. Your infantry are your soldiers in this game, they're the ones who do the fighting and the dying. The cavalry just come in to mop up and finish the job.

    Generally, what you should do regardless of which faction it is you're playing as, is recruit some line infantry, put your slingers behind them and have the slingers snipe the enemy general. Then rush the enemy army with your infantry and swing the cavalry around the back to break them. Battles are pretty straightforward, even on hard difficulty, which is my personal choice. I'm not quite skilled enough or masochistic enough to go up to very hard battle difficulty. I've seen Legend of Total War's EB playthrough on VH/VH and he does the exact same basic battle deployment: line infantry up front, slingers in behind shooting the enemy general, and cavalry further back; rush with infantry once he's dead and flank the enemy with cavalry to break them. He throws in scythed chariots and elephants to further pile on the morale penalties on the enemy, but in my experience on hard difficulty you can do without those special units.

    In regards to campaign strategy, I'm not entirely sure about your starting position as the Greeks (do you get Chersonesos to begin with or is it rebel?), but if possible you ought to rush towards Kallatis first thing. Securing a Scythian city anywhere around the Black Sea early on is crucial, the sooner you do it the easier the game gets. This is because those cities allow all factions to recruit Scythian horse-archers, which are for my money the best unit in the game (excluding aforementioned general's bodyguard) for cost-effectiveness. If you get 18 Scythian horse-archers into one army, that becomes an essentially unstoppable force. Even if you go up against a massive enemy army full of elite troops (which the AI never does, they always have some weak units mixed in with elites), you'll win the war with the Scythians if not the battle - just shoot off all your ammunition and withdraw once you run out, minimizing your casualty losses and maximizing theirs. So, get Kallatis early on because it's your closest settlement that allows recruiting those units, and then just pump out the Scythians. They have a really low upkeep as well at 272 per turn, so they're affordable in the early game.

  3. #3

    Default Re: Koinon Hellenon tactics?

    Quote Originally Posted by 6494650 View Post
    Hi guys this is my first post here. I am new to eb and I' am now playing the Koinon Hellenon faction. Usually I play as factions with a strong cavalry force(like Carthage, Macedonia and even some steppe factions) because my battle style relies on a strong cavalry force. However even though Koinon Hellenon has a pretty strong infantry(both melee and missile) their cavalries are weak. I am having trouble winning battles--yesterday I just had a full stack army destroyed by Epirus.
    Can any one please help me out and give me some advice for tactics? Thank you!
    Hello, and welcome to EB!

    KH is fairly different from standard Hellenistic factions. Usually, as your narration demonstrates, you're accustomed to have your cavalry do the work with charges and whatnot. On the other hand, the Koinon has to rely more on infantry, especially early on: Hoplitai, and their different flavours that come with the "I'm from Athenai" starter pack, are your bread and butter. To do this, you have to adjust your tactics accordingly. Surprisingly, the Koinon battles play very much like the Sweboz.

    You're mostly forced to stick around with spear dudes, but you have no access to pike dudes in the first phase of the campaign. So, first rule: never fight a phalanx head-on. Your Hoplitai won't stand a chance against a phalanx, that's for sure.
    However, not everything is bad about the Koinon. Your levies, the Hoplitai Haploi, are much stronger than the phalanx levies, the Phalangitai Deuteroi, in one on one fights, but only if you manage to engage the phalanx on the flanks or the rear. To win phalanx-based armies, use pincushions: units of Haploi in guard mode stretched in front of the enemy phalanx are capable to hold for a long time, while you move your stronger units to attack the flanks. One strong online player, antisocialmunky, used to take on phalanx-based armies with a tactic he called "the triangle of death". One side of the triangle pins the phalanx, another runs for one flank, the third one protects the rear of the pincushions.

    Speaking of stronger units, your most important units that you absolutely can't afford to lose are your generals. Those are the best infantry fighters you're going to see for a looooong time, so make good use of them. Think of your generals like a cavalry unit: use his bodyguards not only to close gaps or scare off cavalry, but also to run in the back of the enemy line, charge, envelop, sandwich. And, of course, don't lose your named characters.

    As you may already know, spear dudes are rather slow to kill, and to be killed. This means that most of your battles will be a grind fest. We don't like grind fests, because you tend to lose a lot of men that you need to replace: so you should speed things up. Since cavalry is not an option, you should go for Peltastai. Really, I don't know why people never complained about massed Peltastai: it's broken, it's incredibly OP. Make sure you run them around the flanks and shoot their javelins in the backs of engaged enemies. 4-6 units of Peltastai should be able to crumble an entire battleline (I did it with 6 multiple times, but I think 4 can be enough if you're not facing a fullstack).

    Since we love to try out the whole Greek menu, don't forget long-ranged missiles. Toxotai Kretikoi are insane archers, closer to machineguns to be honest. Regular Toxotai are much inferior, but they're good to soak up damage. Slingers are obviously strong, but more than 2 units is abusing them IMHO, and abuse is really lame and you should avoid it.

    However, always remember that the Koinon, despite having no access to absolute monsters like Hetairoi or their even scarier counterparts from the East (I'm dead serious, be careful when meeting those galloping tin cans), can field absolutely respectable cavalry. Some examples of my favourites:

    - Hippakontistai: while these guys look fairly unimpressive, don't get fooled by their simple equipment. They are fast and carry many javelins, meaning they're the bane of slow cavalry; they also perform surprisingly well in melee, due to their secondary swords (Kopides).
    - Hetairoi Aspidophoroi: strong skirmisher cavalry: the beefed up version of the Hippakontistai. These guys can punish almost any cavalry unit both at a distance and in melee and have a decent morale to back them up. They don't perform well against heavy and eager infantry, but would you really expect that?
    - Thraikioi Prodromoi / Hippeis Thessalikoi: both are lancer cavalry, the latter heavier and stronger (but slower and more expensive) than the former. Use them as standard charger cavalry, they can walk over most of the infantry of this game if they charge in the back. They are on the expensive side, and they're mercenaries or regionals, so you typically won't have that many units running around.

    Quote Originally Posted by Chutiya View Post
    Cavalry is nerfed on EB.


    Ehm… Uhm… No.

    Refer to here.

    Quote Originally Posted by Chutiya View Post
    Legend of Total War's EB playthrough

    His playthrough can't be really used as an example for battle tactics, as his ability is not that great. As you prove by yourself with that example, he relies on cheesy tactics rather than using smart play. Slingers in the back of your men is also a bad idea, because the arc of the sling bullets is low and you may lose men to friendly fire.

    Spamming horse archers is another super cheesy way to abuse the AI inability to deal with some tactics…
    Last edited by mephiston; September 04, 2019 at 05:32 PM.

  4. #4

    Default Re: Koinon Hellenon tactics?

    Quote Originally Posted by mephiston View Post

    Ehm… Uhm… No.

    Refer to here.


    His playthrough can't be really used as an example for battle tactics, as his ability is not that great. As you prove by yourself with that example, he relies on cheesy tactics rather than using smart play. Slingers in the back of your men is also a bad idea, because the arc of the sling bullets is low and you may lose men to friendly fire.

    Spamming horse archers is another super cheesy way to abuse the AI inability to deal with some tactics…
    Your video shows absolutely nothing to support your claim. In fact it vindicates all my points. Let me restate my position:

    Cavalry is nerfed on EB. Unless you mass 4 or 5 units of Baktrian/Armenian/Parthian/Sarmatian/Saka general's bodyguard in a single army, I find that cavalry is not useful for much more than running down broken units. They lack staying power in combat, aside from the super-heavy general's bodyguards from the factions I listed, and they're very expensive to upkeep, so I generally don't invest in cavalry as genuine soldiers. Your infantry are your soldiers in this game, they're the ones who do the fighting and the dying. The cavalry just come in to mop up and finish the job.
    Now let me break it down having watched your video, which you believe somehow debunks the above.

    Cavalry is nerfed on EB.
    First of all, all your clips in the video are sourced from multiplayer, which is hard-coded to be played on Medium battle difficulty (i.e. neither yourself nor your opponent receive any bonuses or buffs to your stats). Multiplayer is completely unrelated to the topic here, which is campaign, single-player, against the AI. I personally never play on Medium difficulty because I think the mod is ridiculously easy on Medium. Hard battle difficulty balances it out nicely, and gives the AI a fighting chance. I've now completed three campaigns on Hard battle difficulty and sunk enough hours into the game that my next campaign will be on Very Hard battle difficulty.

    This is my frame of reference:

    1. Very Hard campaign difficulty, Hard or Very Hard battle difficulty
    2. Huge unit scale
    3. Campaign, single-player, against the AI

    My claim that cavalry is nerfed on EB is subject to these prerequisites. This should have been plainly obvious to you, given that:

    1. Both the OP and myself are clearly talking about single-player, campaign mode, against the AI, and not multiplayer against a human
    2. I clearly stated that I play on Hard battle difficulty
    3. You recognised no. 1 based on your later comments to me accusing me of abusing and exploiting the AI, so you knew that I am not talking about multiplayer

    Therefore, your video is totally disingenuous because the entirety of it has literally nothing to do with the topic at hand, and all of it is totally irrelevant. It categorically does not show that cavalry on campaign is not nerfed. Let us make this clear for all readers, you have deliberately chosen to be misleading with that video, because you have not misinterpreted the nature of the thread or of my comment. You know the frame of reference, and yet you've used a totally different frame of reference for your video. A classic straw man argument. I could stop here as I've already said enough, but I'll tell you what, I've got the afternoon off, so I'm going to go through your comment and explode every myth in it, line by line.

    Unless you mass 4 or 5 units of Baktrian/Armenian/Parthian/Sarmatian/Saka general's bodyguard in a single army, I find that cavalry is not useful
    In your video, you make use of, in order:

    1. Armenian Armoured Horse Archers
    2. Armenian Armoured Horse Archers
    3. Belgae Heavy Cavalry
    4. Lusontannan Elite Medium Cavalry (used as javelin throwers and not in melee, i.e. not applicable to the present discussion - their inclusion in the video is yet another straw man)
    5. Sarmatian General's Bodyguard

    I concede that I may have misidentified the final unit used, but it's hardly my fault given the video is in potato quality. Max resolution of 480p? It's 2019 not 2006.

    Then at the end you throw in some units that were not shown on camera:

    1. Armenian General's Bodyguard (late), Armenian Noble Cataphracts
    2. Carthaginian General's Bodyguard, Sacred Band Cavalry, Numidian Nobles
    3. Ptolemaic General's Bodyguard, Ptolemaic Heavy Cavalry

    The first thing that strikes me about those is, look at the ratio of kill to death, it is horrendous. You've thrown away entire units, very expensive to recruit at that, for some 100 or 200 kills. Not even managing to wipe out a full enemy unit on huge unit scale, in exchange for throwing away some of the best and most expensive units in the game. On medium difficulty at that. It has all the hallmarks of a wholly incompetent performance, certainly not something worth shouting about as though it debunks the claim that cavalry is nerfed on this mod.

    You cannot do that on a campaign. You will destroy your economy and undermine all your efforts on the battlefield with such terrible campaign strategy. On campaign, the commander's foremost duty is to keep as many of his men as possible alive, for as long as possible. It's not like multiplayer where you fight one battle, shake hands and go home afterwards. You've got hundreds and hundreds of battles to fight over the course of a campaign. The AI is unrelenting. They will send full stack after full stack at you. One army of yours has to be able to defeat four or five of theirs if you are to stand a chance. Throwing away your best units like that is a surefire way to lose a campaign.

    They lack staying power in combat... Your infantry are your soldiers in this game, they're the ones who do the fighting and the dying. The cavalry just come in to mop up and finish the job.
    Now, secondly, I already conceded that certain elite cavalry units are exceptions to the rule that cavalry is nerfed on EB. I even called them out by name. And you made use of several of them in your video. Sarmatian General's Bodyguard, Armenian General's Bodyguard (late)... these are the strongest units in the whole game, they can even take down Armoured Indian Elephants when massed. Your video simply vindicates my point. Why aren't you using ordinary medium or light cavalry? Why are you using the heaviest, the best, and the most expensive cavalry? Because cavalry is nerfed on EB. In vanilla Rome Total War, you can take garbage light cavalry and as long as you have enough of them you can break any unit. I've beaten Urban Cohort on Very Hard difficulty with a few Barbarian Cavalry mercenaries on vanilla before. I've crushed elite Macedonian phalanx and Spartan hoplites with Numidian javelin cavalry on vanilla before. Without flanking them or anything like that, just charging head on into them, and I repeat, on Very Hard difficulty. Which gives AI units a +7 bonus to attack, +7 bonus to defence, +7 bonus to missile attack, and +7 bonus to morale. As any RTW player knows, Barbarian Cavalry mercenaries and Numidian javelin cavalry are among the weakest horsemen in the game. And yet, as long as they outnumber the enemy by four to one and don't break (therefore needing a good general and/or experience), they can defeat even the finest of infantry units, without even needing to resort to tactics in any shape or form, just blobbing up and charging head on.

    You cannot do this on EB. You must bring elite cavalry to the fight, and you must use tactics; you must use an infantry unit as a fixing force and charge the enemy from the rear or flank with your elite cavalry. They do not have staying power in combat; they cannot overpower a decent infantry unit one-on-one, head on. As for the poor to average quality cavalry, they cannot overpower a decent infantry unit even if outnumbering them three or four to one and if attacking from all sides. This is exactly what you did on your video. Infantry was used as a fixing force on all but one occasion and cavalry was brought in to strike from the flanks or rear. Using a fixing force is totally unnecessary on vanilla Rome Total War. Compared to how invincible cavalry is on vanilla Rome Total War, all cavalry units are nerfed on EB, particularly the lower quality cavalry units. My focus on quality here leads to the next point.

    they're very expensive to upkeep, so I generally don't invest in cavalry as genuine soldiers.
    In EB, having sound campaign strategy is the most important part of the game, more so than battlefield tactics. A player can secure one heroic victory after another, and it will all be for nothing if you fail to address the challenges of the campaign. What this means is that players must carefully manage their economy so that they can afford to, after having paid all their troops, construct a building in every settlement they control. Maintaining public order is often difficult, especially in mid-game when the player starts taking settlements that come with the -80% public order penalty for distance to capital. In addition to this, they will come with -50% or -40% for culture penalty, and up to -50% for unrest. It is therefore essential to be constantly building in all settlements, to maintain public order, reduce culture penalty, set up recruitment centres, regulate population growth, and finally, increase revenue. You cannot construct the necessary buildings in every settlement if your economic management is poor.

    This in turn necessitates recruiting and maintaining armies that are as efficient and cost-effective as possible. Minimal cost of recruitment, minimal cost of upkeep. As a side note, this is why general's bodyguards are the best units - they are free to recruit and cost only 200 per turn to upkeep, they recover their casualties over time and do not need to be retrained, and on top of it all they have outstanding combat ability. Army compositions such as those shown in your video, featuring multiple elite cavalry units that aren't generals, is simply unaffordable on Very Hard campaign difficulty and ultimately counter-productive and self-defeating. What is the purpose of having an amazing army if it cannot conquer any territory for you? Whatever settlements are captured will revolt straight back into the enemy's hands if you cannot build in them to maintain the public order.

    Let's look at the costs of the units you displayed in the video:

    Armenian Armoured Horse Archers - recruitment 4165, upkeep 1041 per turn
    Belgae Heavy Cavalry - recruitment 4034, upkeep 1009/turn
    Lusontannan Elite Medium Cavalry - recruitment 3804, upkeep 951/turn
    Armenian Noble Cataphracts - recruitment 4457, upkeep 1114/turn
    Sacred Band Cavalry - recruitment 4432, upkeep 1108/turn
    Numidian Nobles - recruitment 2932, upkeep 733/turn
    Ptolemaic Heavy Cavalry - recruitment 3088, upkeep 772/turn

    These costs are astronomical. No faction in the game has the economy to sustain armies featuring units of such expense until late in the game. For instance, in my current campaign as Armenia (Very Hard campaign difficulty, Hard battle difficulty), I am currently in the year 202 BCE. I have conquered 181 settlements, only 17 remain in the game. I estimate I will have 100% completion of the game by 197 BCE at latest. So I am not just in late game, I'm actually in end-game right now. I have not recruited a single unit of Armenian Noble Cataphracts or Armenian Armoured Horse Archers. Apart from general's bodyguard, the only cavalry units I have recruited in the entirety of the game are:

    Armenian Medium Cavalry - recruitment 2798, upkeep 700/turn (I couldn't afford to get them until I had 60 settlements, i.e. entered mid to late game)
    Scythian Horse Archers - recruitment 1089, upkeep 272/turn
    Arabian Light Cavalry - recruitment 1998, upkeep 500/turn
    Eastern Light Cavalry - recruitment 1964, upkeep 491/turn
    Numidian Cavalry - recruitment 2076, upkeep 519/turn (were not recruited until late game as I had to conquer Numidia first before I could recruit any of them)

    These units are half the cost and half the quality of those you used in the video. They are also the best you can get if you play the campaign with anything resembling a sound strategy, with the intention of not bankrupting yourself and losing all your settlements to revolts. Cavalry is nerfed on EB because you cannot recruit good quality cavalry without bankrupting yourself, and if you bankrupt yourself you will certainly lose the campaign. Infantry is much much cheaper, and therefore more cost-effective. What is the point of having an army? To conquer settlements, to hold settlements and consolidate your empire, and to prevent enemies from capturing your settlements. You cannot achieve these objectives without regulating the composition of your armies very strictly.

    Of course none of this would be apparent to you on multiplayer. As I said, you have one battle, and after it's done you shake hands and you go home, that's it, all done. There is no conception of a bigger picture in multiplayer. There is no such thing as strategy in multiplayer, only battle tactics. Multiplayer is simply EB on easy mode. There are no buildings to construct, there is no public order to maintain, there is no economic management to worry about. There is also, as I noted, no need to minimize casualties, because you will not be swarmed by army after army; you do not need to worry about transporting your damaged units halfway across the world taking more than 20 turns to reach Armenia for retraining and then rejoin your army on the front line. That's right, there's area of recruitment on the campaign mode. You can't retrain your elite Armenian cataphracts or whatever on the front line, be it in Europe, Asia, or Africa. You have to send them all the way back to Armenia. They can only be recruited and retrained in two settlements out of the 198 in the game.

    The stronger and more specialized a unit, the less useful it is on the campaign, due to the costs associated with having such units and due to the area of recruitment restrictions. I have 181 settlements right now. My economy is stronger than the US and Chinese economies combined. My treasury is worth half a million and it is growing with each turn. I make 143,000 per turn in profits. That's a GDP growth rate of 116% per annum. At this point I could easily sustain half a dozen armies entirely made up of elite heavy cavalry units. But what's the point of recruiting them? I can only get them from Armenia, and my wars now are in France and Britain. They'll never reach the front line in time to join the fight. Moreover, it wasn't always so sunny financially. For the vast majority of the game, I struggled and scraped for every last coin. It was impossible to recruit the expensive elite cavalry units. I had to make do with whatever I could afford - mostly, as I mentioned, Scythian Horse Archers, general's bodyguards, slingers, archers, and the lowest tier of phalanx units.

    Is there a single person on this forum, who, as Armenia, on Very Hard campaign and Hard battle difficulty, conquered 181 settlements by 202 BCE, without using any cheats or exploits? I doubt it. Frankly, my achievements speak for themselves - I'm one of the best campaign players going around. I've seen other people's AAR's and Let's Plays, they don't even have empires half the size of mine after 70 years in-game, and they all play on Medium difficulty. So, when I say something like 'cavalry is nerfed on EB,' I speak from a position of authority and a position of excellence. I've come here with research to back up my points. They stand undented.

    In your next reply to me, I would appreciate an intelligent response that befits the standard of discourse set on this excellent forum, instead of the ad hominems and the straw man video which had absolutely no applicability to the present discussion that characterised this troll comment of yours.

  5. #5

    Default Re: Koinon Hellenon tactics?

    Quote Originally Posted by mephiston View Post
    His playthrough can't be really used as an example for battle tactics, as his ability is not that great.
    Legend of Total War is the best campaign player this entire franchise has ever seen, and perhaps will ever see. He is the most authoritative source on campaign strategy and battle tactics against the AI in campaign mode. He completed an EB campaign on Very Hard campaign difficulty and Very Hard battle difficulty in 74 in-game years, capturing all 198 settlements as the Seleucid Empire, using no exploits or cheats. If I am not mistaken, that is effectively the record for EB 100% completion under those settings. It may not be the blitz record, but he didn't play it as a blitz campaign, just as a regular Let's Play - no exploits, no save-scumming.

    You on the other hand do not have any such achievements against your name in campaign mode, be it on EB or any other game in the franchise. Who are you to claim that his ability "is not that great?" It's very easy to sit behind a keyboard and make accusations against another person's ability and credibility, much harder to demonstrate your own authority on the subject. All of us here can benefit enormously by watching his Let's Play of that campaign, because he set the standard for how to play EB brilliantly and offered a guide for how to do it yourself.

    Slingers in the back of your men is also a bad idea, because the arc of the sling bullets is low and you may lose men to friendly fire.
    This is absolutely correct. I forgot to specify that slingers go behind infantry only when the terrain is favourable for that deployment. This occurs when you set up your lines on a high ground. Slingers placed behind infantry on higher ground will not inflict friendly-fire kills on your infantry, unless they are targeting enemy units that are very close to your line.

    If the terrain is not favourable for that deployment, I agree that the slingers should stand ahead of the infantry. This requires some micro-management on the player's part as you will have to retreat the slingers behind your line when the enemy moves forward to attack your slingers.

    As you prove by yourself with that example, he relies on cheesy tactics rather than using smart play.
    Tactics in general are the Achilles heel of the AI. It can't even deal with being outflanked properly. Everything you did on your video was tactics - I saw a lot of hammer and anvil, and a lot of outflanking. If you do that to the AI, you are cheesing the AI, because the AI cannot deal with tactics in any shape or form. The only way you can play the game without "cheesing" is to charge head on straight into an AI phalanx. You are not allowed to attempt even flanking with infantry, because that is, unequivocally, cheesing the AI which cannot deal with being outflanked. In fact, the best way to ensure that you are not cheesing the AI is to stand absolutely stock still in your initial deployment and let the AI march slowly up to your line and surround you. The weakness of the AI to tactics is why the difficulty settings correspond to their stats. They get the +7 buff to everything on Very Hard in order to compensate for their total inability to react to even the most basic tactical manoeuvres.

    Spamming horse archers is another super cheesy way to abuse the AI inability to deal with some tactics…
    So basically, you're saying:"Oh, Genghis Khan, he was such a bad general, all he ever did was cheese by spamming horse archers and abuse the human inability to deal with some tactics"

    EB is a game based on creating a historically accurate experience. It is a full conversion mod designed for full player immersion to that end. In order to play the mod in the spirit it was designed, the player should adopt historically accurate tactics and strategies based on the faction that they choose. I'm playing as Armenia and I spammed horse archers, because that's what Armenia did historically. So I'm supposed to use full stacks of their amazing and wonderful infantry? That's not historically accurate whatsoever. If you are suggesting that my use of horse archers is inappropriate, then you simply don't understand the philosophy of this mod, the reason its developers and its playing community love it so much.

    Following on from this, the only reason the Greek city-states did not incorporate horse archers into their armies was because they had no access to them, to the Eurasian steppe. My suggestion to the OP was that he conquers a steppe settlement, thereby enabling his access to horse archers. The entire history of warfare has revolved around one simple concept: it is much, much better to shoot the enemy dead safely from a distance, than it is to engage them in hand-to-hand melee. It's why guns were invented, and it's why every army in the world today uses guns. The modern state of Greece does not refrain from using guns because their traditional way of fighting was in dense heavy infantry formations. Far from it. They saw a manifestly superior system of fighting, abandoned their traditions, and adapted to the new paradigm. My contention is that their ancient forebears would have done exactly the same. Had they known about horse archers, had they known how to develop horse archers of their own, the hoplites and the phalanxes would have been abandoned centuries before they actually were and Greek armies would immediately have switched over to mounted archery as their primary combat specialization. There is no such thing as "cheese" in war. So why should such a concept exist for a game that is called Total War? Not to mention, everything you did in that video was pure cheese if you employ those tactics against the AI anyway. Using tactics of any kind is cheese, so why not pick a tactic that is actually good and historically accurate?

  6. #6
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    Default Re: Koinon Hellenon tactics?

    [QUOTE=Chutiya;15837178]Legend of Total War is the best campaign player this entire franchise has ever seen, and perhaps will ever see. He is the most authoritative source on campaign strategy and battle tactics against the AI in campaign mode. He completed an EB campaign on Very Hard campaign difficulty and Very Hard battle difficulty in 74 in-game years, capturing all 198 settlements as the Seleucid Empire, using no exploits or cheats. If I am not mistaken, that is effectively the record for EB 100% completion under those settings. It may not be the blitz record, but he didn't play it as a blitz campaign, just as a regular Let's Play - no exploits, no save-scumming.

    You on the other hand do not have any such achievements against your name in campaign mode, be it on EB or any other game in the franchise. Who are you to claim that his ability "is not that great?" It's very easy to sit behind a keyboard and make accusations against another person's ability and credibility, much harder to demonstrate your own authority on the subject. All of us here can benefit enormously by watching his Let's Play of that campaign, because he set the standard for how to play EB brilliantly and offered a guide for how to do it yourself.


    He is the "best campaign player" because he posted videos on Youtube and people watched him and praised him for his skills . There are many other people that don't upload videos to youtube and they might be better players than him . Have you ever thought about that ? No, so please change your statement to "best campaign player for Total War in Youtube" . And stop attacking him, he just stated his opinion, he never said he is better than him . Who are you to attack him like that on the other hand ?
    Last edited by crazyroman; September 27, 2019 at 04:01 AM.

  7. #7

    Default Re: Koinon Hellenon tactics?

    First of all, I apologise if my tone was received as snarky or whatnot: I do not mean to insult anyone here, so if you felt attacked I'm sorry about that.

    Now, let's go into the details.







    First of all, all your clips in the video are sourced from multiplayer, which is hard-coded to be played on Medium battle difficulty (i.e. neither yourself nor your opponent receive any bonuses or buffs to your stats). Multiplayer is completely unrelated to the topic here, which is campaign, single-player, against the AI. I personally never play on Medium difficulty because I think the mod is ridiculously easy on Medium. Hard battle difficulty balances it out nicely, and gives the AI a fighting chance.
    Well, your claim was that

    Cavalry is nerfed in EB
    So MP is related to the topic, as you claim that cavalry is nerfed in the game. Also, you don't consider that Medium difficulty against the AI cannot be compared to Medium against a human opponent. Actually, not even Very Hard is comparable to a human opponent. If the enemy army has actually a brain to back it up, things are much much different: you are perfectly aware of this, since you say that Hard nicely balances things up and gives the AI a fighting chance. Why? Because you have a brain.
    Claims that MP are inadequate for talking about unit effectiveness are thus not solidly supported.

    based on your later comments to me accusing me of abusing and exploiting the AI
    I want to make this very clear, I didn't blame you for the exploits I mentioned; I was referring to LoTW playthrough. Regarding the horse archers, we'll get on that later.

    I concede that I may have misidentified the final unit used, but it's hardly my fault given the video is in potato quality. Max resolution of 480p? It's 2019 not 2006.
    You did, those are Roxolani Noble Cavalry. Unfortunately I have a limit on the number of GB I can use every month, so I usually can't upload high quality videos. I am very aware of the lack of quality of that video, thank you very much.

    The first thing that strikes me about those is, look at the ratio of kill to death, it is horrendous. You've thrown away entire units, very expensive to recruit at that, for some 100 or 200 kills. Not even managing to wipe out a full enemy unit on huge unit scale, in exchange for throwing away some of the best and most expensive units in the game. On medium difficulty at that. It has all the hallmarks of a wholly incompetent performance, certainly not something worth shouting about as though it debunks the claim that cavalry is nerfed on this mod.
    And that's because you don't play MP. That's a really good performance for those units, provided they charged twice or thrice in the whole battle. We can rewrite your statement in a more correct way, such as "if your opponent doesn't have a brain, it's easy to brag about one's performance". You cant' call someone who plays against a human "incompetent" if he gets a worse k/d ratio than in SP, it's just bollocks. As I already said, difficulty means nothing against the AI, you win anyway.

    You cannot do that on a campaign. […] It's not like multiplayer where you fight one battle, shake hands and go home afterwards.
    That's not entirely true. You know, one battle is still quite a commitment. You can't just throw away units (especially cavalry) like you seem to imply: that's one sure way to lose that battle. As a matter of fact, it has been said multiple times that the most important thing in MP is to conserve your resources.

    Now, secondly, I already conceded that certain elite cavalry units are exceptions to the rule that cavalry is nerfed on EB. I even called them out by name. And you made use of several of them in your video. Sarmatian General's Bodyguard, Armenian General's Bodyguard (late)... these are the strongest units in the whole game, they can even take down Armoured Indian Elephants when massed. Your video simply vindicates my point. Why aren't you using ordinary medium or light cavalry? Why are you using the heaviest, the best, and the most expensive cavalry?
    Because cavalry is nerfed on EB.
    I made use of one unit that you mention, the Armenian General's Bodyguard. Also, the other units are hardly the best of the best. Roxolani Nobles? They have the lightest armour among the high-end Eastern cavalry and get stomped by decent medium cavalry in hand to hand. Armenian Armoured Horse Archers? They rout as easily as the Hellenikoi Cataphraktoi, which is saying something as the HellKats have crappy staying power in melee, plus they don't even have a good hand to hand weapon. Ambakaro Epones? They last less than my grandmother against an arrow barrage. Numidian Nobles and Ptolemaic Heavy Cavalry are not even at the top of the food chain in their factional armies.
    Actually that's kinda your fault that light to medium cavalry are ineffective in your games. By that I don't mean that you lack knowledge or skills: maybe you do, maybe you don't, but I don't know that so I won't imply anything (like you, on the other hand, did on me). The reason for this lies in one of your previous statements:
    2. Huge unit scale
    By playing in Huge scale you are artificially bumping the usefulness of elite units, or conversely decreasing the effectiveness of light and medium units. You probably do that because it feels more epic and more entertaining, but Large unit scale is the most balanced for battles. Therefore, some of your later statements such as

    You must bring elite cavalry to the fight, and you must use tactics; you must use an infantry unit as a fixing force and charge the enemy from the rear or flank with your elite cavalry.
    lose validity, because you're playing with a unit scale that by definition favours elite spam. Also, something like

    They do not have staying power in combat; they cannot overpower a decent infantry unit one-on-one, head on.
    is pointless anyway, because that's not what you take cavalry for. If you find in history one case of cavalry unit overpowering a decent infantry unit one-on-one before the Medieval Age, please let me know. Cavalry is used for charging, harassing, provoking, force mistakes or bad plays; not fighting hand to hand. If you ask that to a cavalry unit, you're simply asking too much.
    That's the case with RTW. The examples that you mentioned are misleading because they rely on the charge, not on the following hand to hand fight. Those units would be torn to shreds in a hand to hand, while with the pressure of the charge you can break pretty much everything. Also, should we mention the horrendous casualties that a cavalry unit in RTW would suffer while charging straight at an infantry unit? So your reasoning that you must conserve your forces holds in EB but not in RTW?
    If you want to argue that something is nerfed in EB with respect to RTW, that would be archers and chariots which were OP. Cavalry is still strong, and the way it should be played stays the same. In vanilla cavalry is faster, but that's it really.

    Using a fixing force is totally unnecessary on vanilla Rome Total War.
    Again, that's against the AI: a competent human opponent who sees a full cavalry army would just laugh, taunt you in the chat and then rape you inside and out. If you take a look at high level RTW gameplay, you don't see full cavalry, EVER, because that's just not cost-effective. In tournaments, some factions that rely on cavalry even get a money bonus on top of their budget, because otherwise some battles would be horribly onesided. But you may complain that we're talking about the campaign and the AI, right? But again, "Using a fixing force is totally unnecessary" is true for EB too. I suppose you didn't ever see some of the old threads at the Org, where people were wiping out AI infantry fullstacks using only two or three bodyguards.

    These costs are astronomical. No faction in the game has the economy to sustain armies featuring units of such expense until late in the game. For instance, in my current campaign as Armenia (Very Hard campaign difficulty, Hard battle difficulty), I am currently in the year 202 BCE. I have conquered 181 settlements, only 17 remain in the game. I estimate I will have 100% completion of the game by 197 BCE at latest. So I am not just in late game, I'm actually in end-game right now. I have not recruited a single unit of Armenian Noble Cataphracts or Armenian Armoured Horse Archers.
    Man, now you're just trolling me. Are you really saying that you can't afford 1k upkeep units with 181 settlements? When I used to play campaign, I could afford those with 15-20 settlements. Also, how is that relevant for a standard campaign game? The OP mentioned that Epirus is one of his enemies - you don't run into trouble with supply lines until late in the game, so most of the time you're just fine with some of your elite factional units.

    Infantry is much much cheaper, and therefore more cost-effective.
    Infantry is much cheaper, cavalry is much more decisive. That's why cavalry wins games 95% of the time (in EB, that is). And that's why cavalry is cost-effective as well.

    Multiplayer is simply EB on easy mode.

    Try fighting battles against someone with a brain without pausing. Decision making is the hardest part in this type of game. You have as much time as you want in a turn-based campaign, while on the battlefield you don't.
    By the way, something that got to my mind just now: cavalry is actually stronger in SP (AP lances, horse archers overpowered). Also, in the campaign you get experience: your men get more and more experienced, and thus stronger, for every battle you play. Also, you get armoury upgrades. This is not the case in MP: armoury ups are forbidden, and you can't upgrade the experience of your men beyond one single chevron. This might tell you something about how imbalancing those parameters are, so I actually think a SP player is at an advantage with respect to a MP player when using cavalry. Still, cavalry is what decides most of the MP battles, so...

    The stronger and more specialized a unit, the less useful it is on the campaign
    Hmmmm, not true as a general statement. Would you argue that pikemen are not useful because they're too specialised? Also, most of the cavalry units you mentioned are very specialised:

    Armenian Medium Cavalry - cataphract killers
    Scythian Horse Archers - general purpose unit, fair enough
    Arabian Light Cavalry - harasser
    Eastern Light Cavalry - harasser and cavalry enveloper
    Numidian Cavalry - cavalry killer
    My treasury is worth half a million and it is growing with each turn. I make 143,000 per turn in profits. That's a GDP growth rate of 116% per annum. At this point I could easily sustain half a dozen armies entirely made up of elite heavy cavalry units. But what's the point of recruiting them? I can only get them from Armenia, and my wars now are in France and Britain. […]
    It was impossible to recruit the expensive elite cavalry units.
    Ah, maybe I see your point. Your financial situation allowed you to recruit a lot of elite cavalry, but you chose not to. Why? Because they're horrible and underpowered? No, because the supply lines are too stretched out. Maybe you are maintaining that cavalry is nerfed because you can't provide elite cavalry support to your armies. I'm sorry, but that's not a good reason to extend the statement to every aspect of cavalry usage: the same is true also for your core infantry, supply lines are even more stretched out because infantry moves slower on the campaign map. Also, if you could afford to build the last level of barracks that gives you access to those units, you could also afford to recruit them: it's just your personal choice not to.

    Legend of Total War is the best campaign player this entire franchise has ever seen, and perhaps will ever see. He is the most authoritative source on campaign strategy and battle tactics against the AI in campaign mode. He completed an EB campaign on Very Hard campaign difficultyand Very Hard battle difficulty in 74 in-game years, capturing all 198 settlements as the Seleucid Empire, using no exploits or cheats. If I am not mistaken, that is effectively the record for EB 100% completion under those settings. It may not be the blitz record, but he didn't play it as a blitz campaign, just as a regular Let's Play - no exploits, no save-scumming.


    You on the other hand do not have any such achievements against your name in campaign mode, be it on EB or any other game in the franchise. Who are you to claim that his ability "is not that great?" It's very easy to sit behind a keyboard and make accusations against another person's ability and credibility, much harder to demonstrate your own authority on the subject. All of us here can benefit enormously by watching his Let's Play of that campaign, because he set the standard for how to play EB brilliantly and offered a guide for how to do it yourself.
    Just to prove my point, five minutes ago I picked up one random video of his playthrough, No. 50. There's a battle, roughly 35 mins in. He runs his Somatophylakes Strategou until they're tired, charges one Toxotai unit, the charge does few casualties and he says "That wasn't really a charge".

    If he doesn't even understand how the game and the engine works, to me he's not a good player. Not even mentioning the "best player", or someone who "set the standard for how to play EB brilliantly". The thing is he's experienced with Medieval 2 but not quite with Rome. And talking about battle tactics against the AI roughly equals to not talking about battle tactics at all.

    Legend of Total War is just a guy who did a 100% completion playthrough and uploaded it on YouTube. He is hardly "the best campaign player this entire franchise has ever seen". I mean, he doesn't read the manuals of the games he plays and then he complains about things he could have read in the manual in the first place (EBII reference). You can't really say "he has x million views on YouTube and so he's the best and his opinion counts", you really really can't.

    Who am I? First of all, you don't know: I may be an EB developer, for what you know, so you can't really brag about my personal achievements in campaign mode because you simply don't know.
    I'm just a guy who played a lot of multiplayer and considers himself quite experienced at that. In fact, I'm kind of the dominant player in MP, in the sense that nobody could beat me consistently. You may argue on the never-ending "old expert vs new expert" issue, but suffice to say that some of the old experts were really sloppy.

    I've come here with research to back up my points.
    I've yet to see such a research. You explained your point in a rather accurate way, but I don't see any research.

    Tactics in general are the Achilles heel of the AI. It can't even deal with being outflanked properly. Everything you did on your video was tactics - I saw a lot of hammer and anvil, and a lot of outflanking. If you do that to the AI, you are cheesing the AI, because the AI cannot deal with tactics in any shape or form.
    I completely disagree with this. The AI can deal with outflanking, in fact it tries to go for the flanks almost always as far as my campaigns are concerned. I've never had the AI charge straight into my phalanxes. This may depend on the AI formation mod that I installed, some other players reported that. But you even say that yourself a few lines below:
    let the AI march slowly up to your line and surround you
    "Cheese" = using something that the AI can't deal with. Sniping the general is something the AI can't deal with, because it doesn't understand that the loss of the general has catastrophic effects on morale. Probably killing the AI general means reverting the battle difficulty to Medium, or even Easy. Generals were coded to be artificially stronger than in vanilla because the AI can't protect them correctly.
    Flanking is something the AI can understand, on the other hand, so that's not cheese.

    So basically, you're saying:"
    Oh, Genghis Khan, he was such a bad general, all he ever did was cheese by spamming horse archers and abuse the human inability to deal with some tactics"
    Now you're just fishing for arguments. Genghis Khan had a human opponent, you know, not an AI.

    If you are suggesting that my use of horse archers is inappropriate, then you simply don't understand the philosophy of this mod, the reason its developers and its playing community love it so much. […] Following on from this, the only reason the Greek city-states did not incorporate horse archers into their armies was because they had no access to them, to the Eurasian steppe.
    Hmmm, no. Simply no. The horse archer culture was completely alien from the Greek culture, and their lands could not sustain it. You have to wait until the Byzantines to see consistent horse archer contingents in Greek armies. I agree with a massive use of horse archers in Armenian armies, but not in Greek armies (unless you're roleplaying as Bosphorus). So if your concern was OP's post, then a massive use of horse archers is cheese.
    Don't let me started on the philosophy of the mod.

    Overall, I think we didn't understand each other. Now I believe I got your point. I guess your main concern in the campaign is the speed of completion, so that's why you think cavalry is nerfed in EB: it hinders the speed at which you expand. If this is what you say, okay, I get it. But if you claim that the performance of cavalry in EB is nerfed, then I'm sorry, but I don't agree with you.

  8. #8

    Default Re: Koinon Hellenon tactics?

    [QUOTE=crazyroman;15837247]
    Quote Originally Posted by Chutiya View Post
    Legend of Total War is the best campaign player this entire franchise has ever seen, and perhaps will ever see. He is the most authoritative source on campaign strategy and battle tactics against the AI in campaign mode. He completed an EB campaign on Very Hard campaign difficulty and Very Hard battle difficulty in 74 in-game years, capturing all 198 settlements as the Seleucid Empire, using no exploits or cheats. If I am not mistaken, that is effectively the record for EB 100% completion under those settings. It may not be the blitz record, but he didn't play it as a blitz campaign, just as a regular Let's Play - no exploits, no save-scumming.

    You on the other hand do not have any such achievements against your name in campaign mode, be it on EB or any other game in the franchise. Who are you to claim that his ability "is not that great?" It's very easy to sit behind a keyboard and make accusations against another person's ability and credibility, much harder to demonstrate your own authority on the subject. All of us here can benefit enormously by watching his Let's Play of that campaign, because he set the standard for how to play EB brilliantly and offered a guide for how to do it yourself.


    He is the "best campaign player" because he posted videos on Youtube and people watched him and praised him for his skills . There are many other people that don't upload videos to youtube and they might be better players than him . Have you ever thought about that ? No, so please change your statement to "best campaign player for Total War in Youtube" . And stop attacking him, he just stated his opinion, he never said he is better than him . Who are you to attack him like that on the other hand ?
    LegendTW has demonstrated his skills and plenty of people on this site hate him for his drama with CA so I can see why people are defensive.

    I dunno why you care about this minor detail? He's proven himself good while people who don't record themselves have not. I could claim to be the best speedrunner for a game without evidence and it could be true but who cares?

  9. #9

    Default Re: Koinon Hellenon tactics?

    - Be agressive your first few turns and conquer Thessaloniki and one of the Makedonian cities.
    - Hire Mistophoroi Phalangitai with the spoils of war. Put them in front of the city gates, disband all cav.
    - Fight defensively. Your early lack of decent cavalry either requires defensive gameplay or cheese.
    - Slingers on the wall. Oh my slingers on the wall. Once they level up they might as well be throwing hand grenades.
    - Invest in your economy after you get the money.

    Early KH just sucks balls until you get some development. Using these 5 things is what gets me past that stage. I usually start to roleplay different factions within the KH after that. On the field I just use merc cavalry or fast hoplites to hold my flanks. Theuriophoroi and phalanx in the mid, Cretan archers to skirmish and bait. If you still lose against Epiros, fight more defensively.
    Last edited by Calyptus; October 15, 2019 at 11:44 AM.

  10. #10

    Default Re: Koinon Hellenon tactics?

    [QUOTE=RangerGxi;15843105]
    Quote Originally Posted by crazyroman View Post

    LegendTW has demonstrated his skills and plenty of people on this site hate him for his drama with CA so I can see why people are defensive.

    I dunno why you care about this minor detail? He's proven himself good while people who don't record themselves have not. I could claim to be the best speedrunner for a game without evidence and it could be true but who cares?
    I saw a good amount of Legend videos, and especially enjoy his 5 best or worse videos which are fun to see, but that guy should not be an authority figure at all regarding Rome and Medieval II (in general, I only see his videos about these two games). His tactics basically consist on the same thing over and over, that is, exploiting the AI inability to react to the player tactics. Most of the times, he overwhelms the AI with cavalry and that's it. Even recently I saw some videos of Legend doing a playthrough in Rome with Darthmod and once he hired some mercenary elephants he kept using them to destroy the AI armies, since elephants were too op in that mod, he would get around 700 kills in each battle just with the elephants. Now, is that cheating? Of course not since the game allows it, but is that fair for the AI? Clearly not, they are too op and should not be used at all.

    Moreover, I saw his EBII videos when he wanted to do a review of EBII, which he did later. And his EBII playthrough was indeed a Legend...ary failure. He kept blaming the EBII team for things that were his fault because he hadn't read the manual and because of that he didn't understood the mechanics of the mod at all (like the mines complaint) and he seemed angry all the time because he couldn't do his usual tactics, that is, overwhelm the AI with numbers and wait until they rout and blitz in the campaign.

    Like I said, I enjoy seing some of his videos, but he is not a good example of how to play campaigns, unless you like to blitz the AI and disregard almost all the other aspects of your campaign.

  11. #11
    crazyroman's Avatar Artifex
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    Default Re: Koinon Hellenon tactics?

    [QUOTE=RangerGxi;15843105]
    Quote Originally Posted by crazyroman View Post

    LegendTW has demonstrated his skills and plenty of people on this site hate him for his drama with CA so I can see why people are defensive.

    I dunno why you care about this minor detail? He's proven himself good while people who don't record themselves have not. I could claim to be the best speedrunner for a game without evidence and it could be true but who cares?
    @RangerGxi: Lusitanio pretty much gives you an answer . The same goes for mephiston's comment .

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