Completed Let's Play Europa Barbarorum (Arche Seleukeia)

[Ivar the Boner]

It supposed to be Myth 2 but it's not this time of a year yet...



Welcome to let's play of Europa Barbarorum (Rome: Total War MOD) as Arche Seleukeia AKA Grey Blob That Collapses Really Fast. Arche Seleukeia is a sucessor state of empire created by dude called Megas Alexandros (nobody ever fucking heard of him) and was famous in history for it constant wars with other sucessor states (Ptomelaic Empire, Pontos and whole crapton of petty kings and kingdoms). In Rome: Total War though, it's only famous for being first faction to fall, and that's also true for Europa Barbarorum. Arche Selekeuia is HUGE but has enemies all around (Pontos, Baktria, Pahlava, Saka Rauka, Hayasdan and last but not least Ptolemaic Empire) and it's armies are either extremely expensive or useless (sometimes both).

Oh and I never played as them in EB because I was always put off by their size, so it is sort of blind LP and you should not expect me to win.


Alexandros knew. The key to his empire lay in Babylonia, not in Makedonia. After his death, Seleukos, another Makedonian, fought to regain Babylon for himself, and in 312 the city welcomed him with open arms and great joy. He repaid that generosity, retaking Susiana and then Media, pushing the limits of his new empire back to the Indos and then west to Syria, claiming much of Anatolia as his own. As a great old king he passed the throne to his son Antiochos seven years ago. Now the new king, of Makedonian and Persian blood, and master of an empire that stretches from the shores of the Aigaion to the borders of the Indos itself, must struggle to hold together his father's glorious gains. The wisdom of Achaemenid advisors, and now ancestors, will continue to guide this young empire and her army, but one thing must be remembered: Babylonia is still the key, even now, to the greatest empire in the world.

Alexandros' vision of a strong infantry combined with a Persian willingness to use local soldiers and their own styles of warfare have given the great king a powerful army for his empire. Persian light infantry and men from across the empire fighting in the Makedonian phalanx will be your basic footsoldiers. Greeks who have settled in Syria will form the bulwark of your regular troops and the best of their number, trained at the highest levels, are equipped for use as Argyraspidai, the famed "silver shields" and the legendary Hypaspistai. With the strong and fast Thureophoroi and their heavily armored cousins, the Thorakitai, few armies in the world can match your forces. Recruit skirmishers from across your empire and combine them with your cavalry forces, which include Median armored Lonchophoroi and Greek cavalry armored in the manner of the Kataphraktoi, to complete your mighty forces.

A great king must not allow his provinces to rebel, as petty princes are attempting to do in the "kingdoms" of Pontos, Baktria, and Armenia. Such is the burden of ruling a vast empire and you will not have the luxury of dealing with your enemies one at a time. Crucial decisions must be made in dealing with these rebellious princes; will you allow them begin their own empires, perhaps lessening your greatness, or will you risk your armies in an attempt to bring them to heel. The Ptolemaioi to the south were once allies to your father, but they now see their best hopes of expansion coming at your expense. They will send countless soldiers across the desert into the middle of your realm; if you are to preserve your Empire, they must be turned back, especially in southern Anatolia. Expand where you are able; some nearby cities are prime targets, isolated as they are from allies. Also, it would be unwise to take lightly the beating of hooves from the north. Our heavy cavalry have a difficult time standing against the great hordes of Armenian, Sarmatian, and especially Parni horsemen, and letting too many fall defending the northern borders will leave the Empire’s heartland exposed to attack from the treacherous Ptolemaioi. But take heart, great king! The blood of Alexandros and the Achaemenid rulers of the past will aid your throne, which is the greatest in the known world! Take heart, and prosper!


- Europa Barbarorum entry about Arche Seleukeia

Intro and first plans.

Spoiler

We are going to play with Very Hard campaign and Medium battles because that's recommended setting for EB. We are also going to turn off battle time limit and fog of war, because that's how I roll.

And that's our victory conditions. I usally don't care about those in EB but victory conditions for Arche Seleukeia looks pretty much like what I would wan't to do as them anyway. So who knows.

This is our Basileus (King) Antiochos Syriakos. He's is pretty much completely "meh" (at least he don't have horrible negative traits) and we will have to look for better military leader and leave this old guy in Selekeuia. But he is still our Basileus and he will make plans for our kingdom (which means I will make those plans and then LARP that he did).

This is Sarpedon Syriakos, second son of Antiochos who will be tasked with fighting Ptolemaic empire, therefore he will be our main military leader and his needs will come first.

My son, I'm old and it will be your task to fight with Ptolemaic menance. I decided to call you from Anatolia and send you south to stop and defeat armies marching from Egyptos.

What about eastern provinces? or north? we can't fight war on four fronts, father...

Sarpedon knows what he's talking about and eastern provinces should start learning fucking Pahlavan language because we are evacuating from there. Same goes for Anatolia, we are not going to try to unify it under our banner until we are finished with Ptolemaic Empire (In matter of fact, we are not even going to defend Anatolia).

And that's my simple plan for this campaign - A March South, while we TRY to keep really important provinces from eastern nomads and northern/western enemies.

-----------------------------------
Update 1 A March South
Update 2 A March South
Update 3 A March South
Update 4 A March South
Update 5 Offensive in Anatolia
Update 6 Let's wash our horses in Neilos
Update 7 Let's wash our horses in Neilos
Update 8 Let's wash our horses in Neilos
Update 9 Mountains of Kappadokia
Update 10 Down the Neilos
Update 11 Drums of Gaugamela
Update 12 Drums of Gaugamela
Update 13 Striking back at Pahlava
Update 14 Giants Under the Sun
Update 15 Giants Under the Sun
Update 16 Giants Under the Sun
Update 17 End of an Era and Beginning of New One
Update 18 We Blobbed... A litle.
Update 19 Fields of Hayasdan
Update 20 Achtung! Cataphract!
Update 21 Barbarians at the Gates
Update 22 Barbarians at the Gates
Update 23 Barbarians at the Gates
Update 24 Barbarians at the Gates
Update 25 Seleukeia at the Barbarian's Gates
Update 26 Seleukeia at the Barbarian's Gates
Update 27 Conquest of Arabia
Update 28 Conquest of Arabia
Update 29 Conquest of Arabia
Update 30 Conquest of Arabia
Update 31 Conquest of Arabia
Update 32 Conquest of Arabia
Update 33 Storm Over Europe
Update 34 Storm Over Europe
Update 35 Storm Over Europe
Update 36 By the Rivers of Babylon
Update 37 Storm over Europe II
Update 38 Storm over Europe II
Update 39 Storm over Europe II
Update 40 Veni, Vidi... Vat?
Update 41 Veni, Vidi... Vat?
Update 42 Veni, Vidi... Vat?
Update 43 Veni, Vidi... Vat?
Update 44 Veni, Vidi... Vat?
-----------------------------------

 

[Azira]

Will watch. Still waiting with bated breath for your resurrection of the Heimdall LP, but I guess we can't have it all, eh?

 

[Cassidy]

Establish a glorious legacy that will in the future crush the turbanhead menace for once and all!

Or even better, conquer the deserts of Arabia and set up a very strict Dateline show there, BLAM included.

 

[Ivar the Boner]

Will watch. Still waiting with bated breath for your resurrection of the Heimdall LP, but I guess we can't have it all, eh?

I will necro Heimdal eventually but first I need to stab some Ptolemaioi with very long pike!

 

[Kashmir Slippers]

Woo! Never played R:TW, but I have heard a lot of good things.

Good Luck!

 

[Ivar the Boner]

Update 1 - A March South... (Revolts, Rebels and RAPE).

Spoiler

Arche Seleukeia starts with some money AND income, which is rarity in Europa Barbarorum, usually you must deal with being broke from turn 1. Hopefully money we have will let us make army capaly of at least starting our "March South".

And I finished evacuation from eastern provinces by destroying infrastructure and setting very high taxes in hope that population will revolt and Pahlava and Baktria will have to kill rebels first to take those settlements.

Those two towns will be our "wall against nomads" because they both have, well... walls and mines. Also we will soon be able to recruit machimoi phalangitai here (which is shitty phalanx, but still phalanx).

So we wish our eastern generals "good luck" and say goodbye to east because our main concern from now will be south.

This is where the real fighting will take place. Our border with Ptolemaioi. This is where Sarpedon is currently heading and where we shall recruit army for him. So, let's talk what we will be calling "Army" from now...

Backbone:

Those guys will form majority of soldiers in our offensive "army". They are very good phalanx pikeman that can pretty much stop everything enemy will throw at them, problem with phalanx is that it don't do that much damage on it's own, you must have "hammer" for your "anvil". And we will be kinda lacking in "hammer" department...

Range:

Our stack won't be called real offensive army until it has 4 or 5 archer units. Those guys won't win battles for us on their own but they can do some significant damage to slow armies (Ptolemaioi).

Dedicated Skirmishers:

We will also use 4 units of light skirmishers, in theory to pepper our enemies with javelins, but their real job will be to CATCH enemy javelins minimazing casualties in our Phalangitai.

Skirmishers/Flankers:

Around 2 units of those guys to attack side of our enemies formations.

Hammer:

We won't use many of those simply because they are pain to retrain, they are expensive and require very developed MIC's so unfortunately, our hammer will be quite lacking.

This is what we will call "army" and what we will send to really fuck up our enemies. And now few words about our political situation. In theory we are allies with Pontos, Pahlava and Baktria but those alliances will be broken next turn so we have to expect being attacked from all sides. Now I will start recruting our "army" and prepare some cheap defenders for our border towns and we shall wait what happens next turn...

Pahlava betrayed us and besieged one of our eastern cities (not very surprising).

Our alliance with Pontos, Hayasdan and Baktria are over (I think that's actually scritped).

And Ptolemaioi army arrived near Damaskos. We have 3 units of Native hellenic phalangitai in Damaskos so we can give Ptolemaioi very nasty surprise if they decide to attack this city. We still can't do anything without an army so we have to wait...

Sarpedon finally reached Syria and now he waits for his army to gather.

Ptolemaioi decided to leave Damaskos alone but we go attacked by Eleutheroi (rebels) army. And there goes my plan for glorious Hellenic army without any native elements, we won't be able to recruit enough soldiers unless we accept some natives. Woe is me.

Right, Horse Niggers Pahlava attacked Asaak and Captain Athenobios have to defend it.

Ale we have here are Babylonian Heavy Spearman...

And Persiand Archers. So we gon get raped.

Archers, shoot their rams with flaming arrows in most ridiculous way possible!

Aye, aye sir!

It don't have much chance of working but we can try.

Horse niggers reached our glorious walls! Archers! retreat!

Let them come I say! LET THEM COME!

Whatever will come through this gate WE SHALL STOP IT MEN!

Assume scary position like we saw in this movie yesterday!

Sure it looks scary.

Horse niggers leader is watching battle from afar in eastern fashion...

While Glorious Captain Athenobious is busy stabbing shit left and right.

They pushed us where our archers would be if they lived.

Let's call it a draw okay?

They finally managed to break us and battle is over...

Well... we still have half of the known world under our command!

 

[Azira]

And the rape starts.

 

[Ivar the Boner]

Update 2 - A March South (Sarpedon's trial by fire).

Spoiler

Glorious Hellenes of Asaak must now suffer under rule of barbarians, we shall have our revenge. But not yet!

Ptolemaioi are now considered strongest faction, we shall se how strong they are...

Meanwhile in land of Casse..

... Back in Syria. Random Ptolemaioi family member got dangerously close to Antiocheia, but he is alone and cavalry can't push ladders or rams so we don't have to worry about him.

Those Eleutheroi are issue though, Sarpedon must gather what he have and beat them (Those guys technically are "rebels" but EB don't treat them as such, they are part of independent realm and that's why it is reccomended to play on Very Hard, those guys will actually attack you and they can retrain lost soldiers and city garrisons)

We are recruiting soldiers from Damaskos so we must break this siege. I hope terrain will be flat because we have heavy phalanx and they have light skirmishers and cavalry.

Nope, fucking hills.

Whatever, this is how we deployed.

Sarpedon himself. This is his first battle, not very big one but still he must prove himself.

Men, march! and someone tell Damaskos reinforcements to get the hell out of here, we got this shit.

We are near sand niggers positions and then came sudden realization that we are completely ill-suited for this battle, they will literally run circles around us throwing pointy shit at our expensive, shiny phalangitai... But we can't back off now.

Archers! advance!

We try to kill some of their mounted skirmishers with arrows but it isn't really working all that great.

To be honest, Arabian slingers do more damage to our archers than our archers do to arabian cavalry.

So we order our men to advance while archers cover us.

I tried to be all sneaky and flank arabs with Carpedon's cavalry but they saw that one coming.

Charge!

Well, he reached their lines.

But then got swarmed by arabian cavalry and he had to retreat.

Wait for my signal!

... And enemy cavalry decided to chase him.

NOW!

We ordered Pezhetairoi to lower their pikes and arabs charged straight into wall of fucking sarissas.

Most of them died and those who survived decided to retreat.

Meanwhile our second Phalangitai unit got swarmed before they were able to form phalanx.

We ordered heavy skirmishers to charge enemy from the flank while our infantry keep them in one place.

Then Pezhetairoi (those guys who routed arabs cav) came to help.

Now this battle is terrible clusterfuck but we managed to kill enemy general.

And this always means one thing - Mass rout.

Now we will chase some sandniggers for free experience and end this battle.

Numbers lies because Damaskos garrison did not took part in this battle but still, it went pretty fucking terrible to be honest.

But hey, Damaskos is saved and we can continue to recruit soldiers there. Also, I won't be showing you absolutely every battle I fought (especially against Eleutheroi) but I thought that this one was worth showing because it was Sarpedon's Trial By Fire and numbers of soldiers were equal (if you don't count Damaskos garrison), and then, I have to show you SOMETHING before we recruit our glorious army for proper March South.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Fucking epic defeat of the sandnigger arab scum, Ivar. Masterful baiting of the skirmirshers, I must say.

 

[Ivar the Boner]

Update 3 - A March South (Fucking natives, how do they work?!)

Spoiler

Pahlava is not satisfied with Asaak and floods through our eastern borders. Unfortunately our defences there are not yet ready.

Our Royal army is nowhere near complete but I noticed that Sidon is very lightly defended so Sarpedon decided to attack while rest of his army gathers.

Sidon is garrisoned only by Ptolemaioi native phalangitai and 3 units of jews. This should be easy!

Problem is, because of our poor MICs (Military industrial complex) most of Sarpedon's army consists of native phalangitai and those guys are not really well-suited to form phalanx formations.

But it doesn't matter. Sidon should be ours soon. We order Heavy Peltastai to push rams while archers get ready to pepper jews with arrows.

Jews don't really know what to do so they just run around like headless chickens.

KNOCK KNOCK MOTHERFUCKERS!

And the gate is open.

We order Peltastai to throw some pointy sticks at jews while our native phalangitai prepare to enter the city.

Jews reacted quickly but we managed to form almost proper phalanx.

ALMOST

Now we order Peltastai to butt fuck jews while natives holds them in one place.

And this is only part of this siege that went well.

Jews have enough and try to run away. We won't let them though.

Now there is slight problem here. Ptolemaioi also have phalangitai unit here and in those narrow streets it will be 1 on 1 fight.

They are also native phalangitai...

This whole Phalanx formation concept is quite now to them and they formed it backwards.

We poke them and now they try to reorganize themselves.

STAB STAB

Then...

- Fuck this faggy greek Phalanx bullshit! let's punch them!
- YEAH!

And this battle turned into bar brawl.

I had to send some Hellenes there to figure out what the fuck is going on.

Then I told my persian levies to get the hell out of there and Ptolemaioi natives formed phalanx... sideways this time.

Peltastai managed to rout them.

And then we ordered fresh persian levies to deal with one last unit of jews.

Well, this battle costed us more soldiers than it should but at least it was funny so I'm ok with that.

Sidon is taken! Send news to my father!

 

[Ivar the Boner]

Fucking epic defeat of the sandnigger arab scum, Ivar. Masterful baiting of the skirmirshers, I must say.

Thanks for your kind words friend! I'm afraid my battle skills are lacking because I never played RTW in multiplayer so I pretty much stick to one style of fighting (which not always works, even against AI).

 

[Ivar the Boner]

Update 4 - A March South. (Business in the front, RAPE IN THE BACK)

Spoiler

Mighty Basileus, your son conquered Sidon!

Great news, but he needs to keep pushing, barbarians are already overrunning our eastern border, we need to deal with Ptolemaioi!

We shall continue to put a smack on Ptolemaioi by pushing towards Hiorosolyma. We have some Ptolemaic forces behind us but city of Tarsos is not capable of recuriting reliable troops and there are no mercenaries in Syria, so we should be somewhat safe. But to be sure I'm in process of sending Sarpedon's brother here to deal with Ptolemaic towns in anatolia. East is still in deep shit but there is nothing we can do about it now.

Are they stupid or just in deep troubles?

Not my problem, have fun charging that!

We took this small hill and just wait for some Ptolemaioi fools to slaughter.

I put Peltastai in front to catch some jewish javelins, Peltastait are expensive but still cheaper than Phalangitai.

Here they come!

Mostly jews, egyptian natives...

And some Galatians.

Now we just wait...

They are having some second thoughts about charging phalanx uphill, this gave our archers more time to shoot them.

Peltastait! Throwaioi Javelinaioi!

Git some!

And then some more!

Ok, Ptolemaioi won't be throwing any pointy sticks at us so we order Peltastai to retreat.

Lower sarissas!

Seriously AI, this won't work.

Then we put Peltastait in tight formation and order them to flank our enemies (starting with galatians fighting in this small pack of trees).

Just threat of being attacked from behing made Galatians flee.

And then mass rout started through domino effect.

We won, now let's kill some running jews for free XP.

Silly Ptolemaioi!

RAPE, not much sense in showing you this battle, let's auto-resolve it.

Yup, rape.

More soldiers managed to join Sarpedon and Royal Seleucid Army Basileukoi Seleukoi Armoikoi (that's sounds way better, but doesn't mean anything, I don't know Greek and just made it up) is looking scarier. Now we continue our march at Jewopolis.

Zadrakata fell to horse niggers but that's it. Now we are going to put up a fight and Pahlava will be terribly surprised if they try to attack us again.

We reached Jewopolis.

Problem is, it's garrison is small but quite strong and assaulting it will cost us many soldiers but such is live. We must deal with Judea quick.

Oh, we won't have to deal with city fighting at all, Ptolemaioi decided to accept battle in open field.

Dammit, Phalanx don't work very well in forest.

But there is small open field near.

We will deploy near it and then make mad dash to capture it first.

RUN MY MINIONS!

We are almost there and some Ptolemaioi soldiers are coming from the forest.

Unfortunately that's not Heriosolym garrison, that's relieve force. Garrison is behind us.

We order our Peltastai to attack while rest organize themselves.

Jews are surrounded but simply don't give a fuck and keep fighting.

Men, turn around. They are behind us!

Jews are dying left and right but just keep fighting...

Like they are waiting for something...

Probably for fucking Thracian cavalry charging from the forest.

Prodromoi! we need to help our skirmishers!

We managed to break Thracians and the Jews.

This is relieve force so I'm not that much interested in annihilating it.

We killed who we could and let the rest escape. Then I couldn't find Heriosolym garrison. It turned out they are just chilling in some valley.

We had to haul our asses to them, shoot them a little until we run out of arrows and then ordered attack.

They have some neat stuff there - Kretan archers and Thesallian cav for example.

Jews with pointy sticks popping out from the trees! It's a trap!

Our skirmishers had to fall back.

But Ptolemaioi ambushers smashed into wall of sarissas.

And then fall back into the valley.

Let's show them some Seleukoi discipline... FORM CHARGING PHALANX!

We order our men to run towards enemy in normal formation.

And then, at the last moment we ordered them to lower sarissas. It doesn't give you any charging bonus but looks cool as shit.

Thesallian Cavalry finally showed up and is trying to charge into flank of our Pezhetairoi.

I knew they are somwhere around so we were prepared.

And charged them with Prodomoi and General's guards when they reached our Pezhetairoi.

And this broke Thesallians and then everyone else thanks to domino effect. Now we will have to make sure that Heriosolym garrison is all nice and killed.

I'm fucking proud of those guys, not because their performance during the battle but because they managed to catch and annihilate routed Thesallians and this could won as Jewpolis without sieging it.

Yup, Ptolemaioi pretty much gave us this city attacking us and loosing this battle completely.

 

[Azira]

 

[Nadosh]

Awesome LP, will follow!

 

[Storyfag]

It supposed to be Myth 2 but it's not this time of a year yet...

You shall be forgiven, on account of my love for EB. Do be sure to use the forced diplomacy cheat, otherwise it'll get crazy, with AI too dumb to realise it's loosing the war.
Also, how did I manage to miss this yesterday?! Oh, yeah, was playing Heroes III to the death.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

LOCHOS

EPELASI

 

[Kattze]

Ivar, you have my boner.

 

[Ivar the Boner]

LOCHOS

EPELASI

This is your fault man, I saw your post about EB in Rome 2 thread and I had to reinstall it. Oh and by the way I remember EB team being sad that they had to use "modern greek" for Greek faction in Europa Barbarorum and I always wondered, can you understand what troops are saying?

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

They use a mix of modern and ancient greek with english pronounciation. I can understand what they are saying clear enough most of the time.

Lochos Epelasi roughly means Company Forward

Agema en ton polemion means Company/Elite Company/Warband (advance) towards the enemy

And that's as far as I can remember from EB.

 

[Ivar the Boner]

Update 5 - Theodoros offensive in Anatolia.

Spoiler

Hierosolym is ours and Ptolemaioi are pushed back to Egyptos. They will have to march troops from Alexandria to launch any kind of attack. I decided to stop Sarpedon's offensive and give him some time to rest.

Older brother of Sarpedon and heir to the throne of Arche Seleukeia - Theodoros is marching to Edessa from our northern border. It is Basileus will to kick Ptolemaioi out of Anatolia before final push into Egyptos itself will be made.

Ptolemaioi managed to provide some of their slaves with spears and decided to throw this "force" at Antiocheia. This situation should be resolved quickly.

This battle is not really important so I will just show you quick recap of what happend.

We had 2 units of Prodromoi shock cavarly and 2 units of Phalangitai. Ptolemaioi had whole mass of cheap native spearman.

Plan was to hold ptolemaioi spearmen with phalanx and then smash it from behind with heavy cav.

Plan was executed allright but effects were... surprising.

Native spearmen did not break.

We had to charge them multiple times from behind.

And only third or fourth charge manage to break them.

I expected them to break straight away so I was quite shocked to be honest.

Theodoros forces are more than enough to take Tarsos and Side, I wanted to keep recruiting soldiers for him so he would be able to conquer whole anatolia but that will have to wait, we have almost 2 stacks now and we are running out of money. Phalangitai armies are extremely expensive, one unit costs 2 times as much as roman manipular infantry so even though Selekeia is rich, we won't be able to maintain large armies for long.

East calmed down, Pahlava seems to have hard time forming army big enough to even think about attacking city that is actually defended this time.

Theodoros Syriakos (He is actually historical figure known as Antiochus II Theos) is sieging Tarsos while his brother is fending off small Ptolemaic raids in the south. We are not going to rush the walls of Tarsos, Theodoros will wait for garrison to surrender or sally. I decided to slow down a little because our economy starts to collapse under weight of our armies. Waiting some time will let us build some farms and save Theodoros soldiers lives.

Ok, this time Ptolemaioi are willing to accept battle in open field. They will have terrain advantage but we outnumber them badly.

It's actually not that bad, only small bumps, not really a hills.

We deployed in "I never played against human player" Formation.

And then AI retreated completely wasting our fucking time.

Douchebags!

Parthians crossed our borders again, it seems like they are going to Alexandreia-Ariana but Ubermanschen-Alexandria is prepared for them.

Tarsos is out of food, next turn garrison either surrenders or will be forced to sally.

And they surrendered! Tarsos is ours!

No time for celebration though, we have to push for Side.

Parthians decided to go around our defences in the east. town of Gabai is fucked.

Theodoros reached Side and we shall starve it like we did with Tarsos.

Parthians are just standing near Gabai doing nothing and we might be able to save this town by building palisade quickly and sending some garrison there.

Romani upstarts asked as for trade rights. We decided to give them honour of trading with us.

Ptolemaioi managed to send small relieve force to Side and attack us. They are outnumbered and just look at Theodoros, three fucking golden chevrons of experience, his personal guards can kill whole regiments by just looking at them.

Terrain is quite uneven and we will have to fight slightly uphill but we should be fine.

Theodoros soon to be Antiochus II Theos and his elite squad of rapists.

First wave of Ptolemaiois is getting in range of our archers.

Archers! Open fire!

Then our Peltastait did their "throw stuff and then retreat" thing and Ptolemaioi don't really know what to do now.

We have to go to them then. March!

Good old hammer and anvil.

But Ptolemaioi did not break, we will have to charge them again.

No mercy!

First wave was killed but Ptolemaioi main force is just sitting near edge of the map chilling. That's not right because they should be attacking and I start to wonder if everything is allright with AI because it's not first time it happened.

But I will look into it later. Now let's deal with rest of Ptolemaioi.

Peltastai! Fall back!

One unit of our skirmishers was too slow...

... But ptolemaioi Peltastait wen't through them straight into our phalanx.

And got their retarted asses surrounded and killed.

Prepare for another charge!

Then we send our cavalry to smash enemy from behind.

We had to push forward surrounding isolated units with phalanx.

Seleukoi rat trap.

We dealt with enemy general with same manner.

He died like a real man, fighting to the last moment.

Soon after that, rest of his army fled the field.

Only one unit of skirmishers remained, sitting on the other side of the map doing nothing.

We had to send our cav after them.

I seriously have to check what the hell is with AI or just reinstall EB because Rome: Total War AI is retarted, but not THAT retarted.

Side ashmed by Tarsos surrender decided to to fight to the last and die like real hellenes. We took the city anyway but we will build some monument in honour of brave defenders or something.

 

[Storyfag]

What is your policy towards conquered settlements? I usually just enslave the shit out of them. It greatly reduces revolt risks in my experience.

 

[Ivar the Boner]

What is your policy towards conquered settlements? I usually just enslave the shit out of them. It greatly reduces revolt risks in my experience.

It depends, really. Right now I occupy former Ptolemaioi cities because culture and infrastructure (government and MIC's) are "compatibile" so population don't seem to care which sucessor state rules them. I was playing "warm-up" campaign before starting this as Sauromatae* and after expelling first two larger towns I conquer to rise population in my "empire" I had to enslave the shit out of everyone because nomads are so damn poor (25 provinces controlled and I could afford to keep only one full stack, and sauromatae units are cheap) that they can't keep large garrisons.

*I planned to do this LP as them but their army is so fucking overpowered that it's not even funny.

 

[Storyfag]

Compatibile MIC's? Oh gawd, itz heavan. A Roman can only dream about such things outside Italy. Well, of course Marius makes that dream come true.

 

[Dayyālu]

Good luck, ΣΩΤΗΡ ΚΑΙ ΣΕΒΑΣΤΟΣ. (I know the second title is bogus in this age. Let it pass, oh mighty Codex.). Will follow.

I always wanted to do a Seleukeia game, but I can barely keep my one-year-and-a-half Romani game up, in the hope of ending it sooner or later. And remember, as they say, if they don't submit the only solution is to BURN, DEVASTATE AND DESTROY. In that order. You gave them a chance, after all....

Can I ask, if the 'different .exe' gives 'different AI' story is true? The only thing that I find ''''''bad''''' in EB is that, after a while, Strategic and Tactical AI simply stop being a challenge. if I use the BI or Alexander .exe things could improve?

 

[Ivar the Boner]

Good luck, ΣΩΤΗΡ ΚΑΙ ΣΕΒΑΣΤΟΣ. (I know the second title is bogus in this age. Let it pass, oh mighty Codex.). Will follow.

I always wanted to do a Seleukeia game, but I can barely keep my one-year-and-a-half Romani game up, in the hope of ending it sooner or later. And remember, as they say, if they don't submit the only solution is to BURN, DEVASTATE AND DESTROY. In that order. You gave them a chance, after all....

Can I ask, if the 'different .exe' gives 'different AI' story is true? The only thing that I find ''''''bad''''' in EB is that, after a while, Strategic and Tactical AI simply stop being a challenge. if I use the BI or Alexander .exe things could improve?

If you play through BI.exe AI will do naval "invasions" but it doesn't change anything on battle map. I heard that alexander.exe "improves" battle AI but I never used it myself (Alexander was shitty cash-in and I never bothered with it) and none on is actually sure in what way AI is improved so I seriously think that "alexander.exe improves AI" is just CA bullshit that Total War community swallowed (And Total War community is prone to swallow all kind of CA shit).