Bactrian Phalangites

[romulus_aeneas]

I would simply use the export_descr_buildings file for that purpose and set the Thorakitai Reforms as the date for allowing such recruitment. In fact, I've already done that in my own version of the mod for Hellenistic factions who take Syracusae in Sicily, Massalia in Gaul, or Emporion in Iberia. I've also pretty much done what Pooploop is suggesting for Italy. It is time consuming work, but fun to tinker around with recruitment and "what if" scenarios like that.



Koinon Hellenon also has decent recruitment options in the West with Supervised Native and Hellenic administration buildings, and even the Allied League factional government building as far west as Massalia. However, they don't have phalangitai unless you mod the game to allow them to have them, only the Deuteroi phalangitai in Greece and western Anatolia. Also, with foreign military garrisons and allied democracies/oligarchies any faction can recruit Camillan and then Polybian Roman units in Italy (minus Triarii).

Yes, you and Shoebopp suggested two great ways to implement the phalangitai recruitment. I guess I just thought of the Saka reforms based on Pooploop’s description of what they wanted.

As for the allied government recruitment of Roman maniples (and I know you are well aware of this but others may not be): the advantage for Epeiros is they can recruit Roman Hastati with a factional government, which improves construction, infrastructure, and recruitment options relative to the allied government building. That gives Epeiros a massive advantage over the other Diadochi and Hellenic factions who can’t.

[Roma_Victrix]

Yes, you and Shoebopp suggested two great ways to implement the phalangitai recruitment. I guess I just thought of the Saka reforms based on Pooploop’s description of what they wanted.

As for the allied government recruitment of Roman maniples (and I know you are well aware of this but others may not be): the advantage for Epeiros is they can recruit Roman Hastati with a factional government, which improves construction, infrastructure, and recruitment options relative to the allied government building. That gives Epeiros a massive advantage over the other Diadochi and Hellenic factions who can’t.

Good point. I guess I forgot about that advantage after changing/editing my own personal export_descr_buildings file so that Makedonia, Koinon Hellenon, and Pergamon can pretty much do the same in Italy with Roman units, and even recruit the Italic units from cities (beyond just the mercenary option)!

The cool thing about building the foreign military garrison in regions west of Anatolia is that it doesn't include the extra negative public order malus that exists for the same infrastructure in former territories of the fallen Persian Empire (minus Egypt). You can build such buildings in territories far to the west of Greece as Hellenistic factions alongside the core government building, but doing so means you can't upgrade the polis to a third teir metropolis (most settlements only allow you to build the second tier Hellenistic polis anyway). That means you can have your core Hellenistic units supported by a number of native units in the same settlement, be they Illyrian, Thracian, Celtic, Italic/Roman, Iberian, etc.

Also, one thing I forgot to clarify about Koinon Hellenon: they're not allowed to have standard Macedonian phalangitai or the Agema Basilikon (unless you mod it), but they are allowed to recruit more phalanx pikemen units than just the Deuteroi as my post implied. They can recruit Illyrian Sibinanai in the Balkans, Pantodapoi Phalangitai in West Asia and Northeast Africa, Chaldian infantry in eastern Anatolia, and Machimoi Phalangitai in Egypt too. They can also recruit mercenary phalangitai like everyone else who positions a family member/general outside of city walls in traditional Hellenic regions and the Diadochi settler territories as far as east Iran (as Quintus specified).

[Pooploop]

In preparation for the final release of 2.4, I want to lock in the most "historically plausible" settlements for actual Macedonian colonization of western europe (which factually never happened because they never GOT to the west). I'll be using Shoebopp's suggestion to edit the export_desc_building and add some new unit pools. I'm thinking, one province is Sicily, two in the Italian mainland, three in all of Gaul, and two in Spain. Is this too many settlements where "pure" Macedonians might settle in Western Europe? Do they outnumber the number of settlements they heavily colonized in Asia or Asia Minor? I'm thinking these eight settlements can only produce phalangitai once Hellenistic polities culture reaches at least 65%. Is this the right percentage for game balance, should it be even higher to further restrict the production of regular phalangites? Finally, what settlements should it be? Which ones would the most number of Macedonians flock to in this alternate scenario?

[King Shoshon]

Keeping it simple, I would say the best settlements would be the ones with already existing Greek communities. Sicily - Syracuse, Italy - Capua/Tarentum, Gaul - Massalia, Spain - Emporion. It shouldn't be too widespread the farther you get from Greece which is why I would think only 1 in Gaul and Spain each. 65% sounds like a reasonable goal. It would take time and significant investment of colony points by the player to get there (early game anyway) so you should be rewarded. If you wanted it to be higher maybe have replenishment available at 65% but local recruitment needs to be over 75% or 80%.

[Pooploop]

Thanks King Shoshon. How do you differentiate between replenishment and recruitment in the unit pool code though? How high are the culture percentages required in the original Asian colonies in-game?

[King Shoshon]

One of the numbers in the line for the unit that is a 1 you would replace with 0.99. The game will try to add replenishment numbers up to 1 but because it can only get to 0.99 it will never offer the unit on the recruitment tab. It will let you retrain the unit from the partial points in the pool. I never remember which one it is and usually just trial and error it until I have it on the right number. You would have to put in two different unit pool codes with one applying between 65% and 75% culture and another line for 75% and above. I'm pretty sure the Asian colonies are just available from the second level of Settler colony so just 25% (and 2-3 colony points depending on if you want to establish the minor polis with the military colonies or just the two military colonies). Some specific metropolis locations in Greece offer the light levy phalanx so that would be 69%.

[Hellenikon]

Alexander the Great showed interest in the west during his lifetime, so far as the sources mention: Araby and the coast up to Carthage and Sicily.
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...ed_to_conquer/

In addition, Agathocles of Syracuse had plans for conquering the carthaginian heartlands, and Pyrrhus was also motivated in his attacks to the carthaginians to get their riches. In the west, the carthaginian core lands were the most fertile, accesible and well known to the greeks, for centuries. The achaemenid empire was by far the richest polity, but in the western mediterranean, it was Carthage. It is not ahistorical at all to imagine greeks settling down in the carthaginian heartland, because those lands were some of the best in the mediterranean, far better that anything in the italian peninsula. Sicily, to a lesser extent, was also a rich territory, and already had what was arguably the capital of megale hellas, with significant greek manpower to draw from.

The idea that west was somehow alien or undesirable to the greeks is bizarre. It was simply dominated by "barbarians" as in the well established carthaginians and the upstart roman power. So it was more dangerous that going into the hellenistic east, which was equal if not richer and provided plenty of opportunities to thrive inside the greek world.

If you want to model phalangitai recruitment in the west, I suggest restricting it to the part of the mediterranean with the richest farmlands: the carthaginian core lands (atiqa, carthage, byzacena). In Sicily, I would suggest syracuse because it was the capital of megale hellas, even if the lands weren't as good, it woud probably act as the staging point for north african colonization. The rest of sicily could have deuteroi phalangites, to represent how the macedonians flock to the single best place in the island.
So in short I would put 2 phalangitai in carthage, 1 in atiqa, byzacena, and 1 in syracuse. The rest of the island could be deuteroi instead.

This said, the phalangitai are like the most overgeared and undertrained unit in the game, as in the most pompous part-time-soldiers ever in the hellenistic age. They're like hoplites but with the insane pricetag of the "makedonian" trademark. The other phalangites perform mostly the same, but at a more reasonable cost. Not to mention, the costo f opportunity of having these pampered boys instead of more thorakitai. I only use the pezhetairoi that you get as a macedonian kingdom in your capital, because they are already there, and not because they're great - too overpriced for what they do.

[QuintusSertorius]

You can already recruit Deuteroi in the Punic core.

I think Syrakousai, Rhegion and Taras (maybe Capua at a stretch) would be the only ones you could justify Phalangitai, with Deuteroi in the rest of Sicily, central Italy and Massalia.

Emporion is questionable, it had a Greek trading community, but that was about it. That's why it gives a more generous polis pool than the rest of Iberia, but you might notice it no longer gives Hellenistic units from it's native pool (see the Allied Governments).

[Pooploop]

Hellenikon...all I'm going to say is to turn off guard mode on regular and agema phalangites. Even without my later personal modifications to slightly buff their stats (+2 or +3 to defense - mostly in a desperate attempt to improve ALL phalanx types without overbuffing the regular and agema), they're the best "line" close combat infantry bar none. I can make them fight twice (even thrice though you MUST have their ranks eight deep at minimum) their numbers, and as long as you prevent them from getting outflanked, they'll hold back and grind through anything. Cataphracts, chariots, elephants, any infantry with shorter weapons...they don't care. The main threat to them (bar the usual rear attack which is the bane of all infantry) is other phalanxes of similar quality with guard mode off. The whole buggy problem with the phalanx family tree are the "imitation" phalanxes that get absolutely shanked because of the ongoing unsolvable spearwall formation integrity problem. Some infantry can just ghost through your unit to run to your rear. On the said imitations, this is devastating. On the regulars and the agema, they struggle a bit, then go back to poking their enemies to death. In fact, their excellent battlefield performance is underrepresented in auto-calc battles, where only their subpar stats (compared to other infantry of same tier) is taken into account to calculate victory.

That being said, I take the phalanx recruitment centers in the western part of the continent an important "what-if" scenario to mod in seriously. I don't want to overkill the thing and make phalanxes as common as theurophoroi for a hellenistic player. As Quintus himself cleared up for me (on the exact nature of these units), true "Makedonian" phalanxes are a precious resource that changes your victory rate for the rest of the game. Not counting similar phalanx dependent states, if you turn guard mode off, and avoid fighting steppe tribes, you will out-edge all other infantry majority factions. However, I think that having NO phalanx recruitment centers at all in the whole western Europe is an oversight. How about players like me, with the eventual goal of conquering the entire world in EB2? I'm definitely going through with it the moment the Antigonid royal house produces a general with traits similar to Alexander.

So, for those who want to play as megalomaniacly as possible it's kinda a downer if after conquering Gaul, Italy, North Africa, Spain, then Britain (avoiding Germany and Northeastern Europe) none of my vaunted phalangites want to settle ANYWHERE in all that free land! How snobbish can they get? Eventually making all my defensive/garrison armies in the region (after a generation or so after the conquests) not contain a single phalangite is like...like taking a gladius from a Roman. It feels wrong, and a bit "ahistorical" if looking solely on trends. Why would all Macedonia's western armies just drop the very weapon that gave it her empire (in that playthrough)? So in the viewpoint of that "hypothetical" Alexander-like (or Phillip like, taking my preferences to account) faction leader, where would he direct his "true" Makedonians to settle? If Phillip did it in the Balkans, and if Alexander did it in Asia, why can't he colonize Europe?

[Shoebopp]

For your submod, please don't require 69% HP for phalangitai/deuteroi phalangitai outside of western greek colonies. That requires level 3 or reform colony, which are only available in the west in the greek colonies. You won't be able to build them deeper into "barbarian territory". 49% meanwhile only requires level 2, which is buildable nearly everywhere

[Pooploop]

Thanks for the heads-up Shoebopp! I kinda want to always reference the already existing Asian colonies though. In Asia Minor and Iran, do all those settlements needs to be at a very high hellenistic polities to recruit regular phalangitai or are they ALREADY at a high range? I want to make sure the recruitment of deuteroi and regular phalangitai in "what-if" western european colonies mimics the minimum requirements already present in the East. While inserting a reasonable building requirement as a stand-in for the missing hellen1 or hellen2 resource (in those areas).

[Shoebopp]

In the East, phalangitai are available in eligible provinces at level 2 hellenistic military colonies, which themselves require 25% HP. So in the east, the "soft" requirement is 25% HP, though there are exceptions in areas like Dura-Europos which starts with a level 2 hellenistic military colony despite starting with like 10% HP. So if you really want to mimick the East, then simply remove the HP requirement in the code that I provided. You're already supposed to copy and paste it into levels 2 and above - the 49% HP I added is just to restrict phalangitai until the level 2 hellenistic military colony has finished converting to its own max

[Roma_Victrix]

Thanks for the heads-up Shoebopp! I kinda want to always reference the already existing Asian colonies though. In Asia Minor and Iran, do all those settlements needs to be at a very high hellenistic polities to recruit regular phalangitai or are they ALREADY at a high range? I want to make sure the recruitment of deuteroi and regular phalangitai in "what-if" western european colonies mimics the minimum requirements already present in the East. While inserting a reasonable building requirement as a stand-in for the missing hellen1 or hellen2 resource (in those areas).

This is cool stuff, but just for the sake of balance and fairness (as I do in my own modded version of the game), don't leave Koinon Hellenon out of the mix. They can only upgrade existing poleis, not build new ones, and they can't even build Hellenistic military colonies, but they do have their own supervised Native (25%) and Hellenic (50%) administrations. Koinon Hellenon is not allowed to have Macedonian Phalangitai, but they are allowed to have Deuteroi Phalangitai, something they should be able to recruit in some western regions if you are going to allow Pergamon, Makedonia and Epeiros to do the same. Personally I just give them the Macedonian phalanx because I think it's silly that they wouldn't have access to it after conquering Macedon, but if you choose not to do that, compensate their roster and beef it up by providing them with more Thorakitai and Hoplitai heavy infantry to recruit in western regions via the supervised Hellenic administration (and Allied League if a polis exists in the settlement, while the polis itself could also handle this).

So, for those who want to play as megalomaniacly as possible it's kinda a downer if after conquering Gaul, Italy, North Africa, Spain, then Britain (avoiding Germany and Northeastern Europe) none of my vaunted phalangites want to settle ANYWHERE in all that free land! How snobbish can they get? Eventually making all my defensive/garrison armies in the region (after a generation or so after the conquests) not contain a single phalangite is like...like taking a gladius from a Roman. It feels wrong, and a bit "ahistorical" if looking solely on trends. Why would all Macedonia's western armies just drop the very weapon that gave it her empire (in that playthrough)? So in the viewpoint of that "hypothetical" Alexander-like (or Phillip like, taking my preferences to account) faction leader, where would he direct his "true" Makedonians to settle? If Phillip did it in the Balkans, and if Alexander did it in Asia, why can't he colonize Europe?

Technically the Balkans are also in Europe (even by ancient Greek geography standards), but I know what you're saying: Western Europe.

Yeah, southern and central Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, the Balearic Islands, Massalia in Gaul, and Emporion in Spain are all obvious choices for new Hellenic settlement since they already had Greek colonies going back to the Archaic and Classical periods, let alone the Hellenistic era. Again, I've already modded my game to allow Western Greek factions to recruit such units in these settlements! However, in a hypothetical situation where Pergamum, Epirus, Macedon, or a Greek league conquer the west and unite the Mediterranean like the late Roman Republic and early Empire, yes, it stands to reason that perfectly fine and agriculturally rich regions in northern Italy plus the immediate Gallic and Iberian interiors would eventually host such colonies of Greeks for recruiting the Deuteroi Phalangitai at the least. I would also extend the area of Mercenary Phalangitai for that matter.