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See if you can beat this:

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Mike/Softw ... lRatio.jpg

Just load up this Barbarian Invasion savegame for Rome: Total War and hit "next turn" to try your luck. I've almost reached the level where I'm glad when a barbarian horde hangs up with three or four large armies on one city (particularly one with large walls like Salona), because I can break the power of that faction in one stroke.

1) Holy shith!
2) Captain Marjoranus, that's priceless! I'm sure the Barbarians thought so.

The only way I could even thing if reproducing that is to cram 5000 peasants in a town square, surround them with armored elephants, and mash them like grapes. My best ever kill ratio was slaughtering 1800 Scipii with 600 Julii, but I credit that to buying a unit of mercenary elephants and their not having many archers.

I have something to aim for that'll take me the rest of the year at least.

You started playing as Constantinople Mike?

Crown wrote: You started playing as Constantinople Mike?

Nope, that's a Rome game. Why did you think it was Constantinople?

Alferd Packer wrote:1) Holy shith!
2) Captain Marjoranus, that's priceless! I'm sure the Barbarians thought so.

The only way I could even thing if reproducing that is to cram 5000 peasants in a town square, surround them with armored elephants, and mash them like grapes. My best ever kill ratio was slaughtering 1800 Scipii with 600 Julii, but I credit that to buying a unit of mercenary elephants and their not having many archers.

It helps to have the natural defensive advantage when they're attacking one of your cities. But this battle was a real touch-and-go affair; as you can see from the picture, they overran the outer defenses and made it into the city square.

Of course, in Rome 1.2 the AI had a severe bug that made it possible to achieve virtually unlimited kill ratios even on VH difficulty, because you could attack a numerically superior besieging army and goad it into rushing your defenses by simply putting one unit outside and letting them rush toward it, then ordering the unit back inside your walls. They would simply sit outside your gates and get nailed by defensive fire from your towers, thus allowing incredibly cheap and easy uber-kill scores. But they fixed that bug with the Barbarian Invasion add-on.

Darth Wong wrote:

Crown wrote: You started playing as Constantinople Mike?

Nope, that's a Rome game. Why did you think it was Constantinople?

The sign on the standard ... wasn't it Constantine's? Do they have the same standard but different colours? What's the East's standard anyway?

The Chi-ro was adopted by Constantine and carried on to the rest of the Byzantine Empire, yes. However, beyond that I can't tell you much as my knowledge of Roman insigna is spotty beyond the aquila and good ol' Senatus Populus Que Romanus...

In BI, the red Chi-ro is the West and the purple Chi-ro is the East.

On a side note, when I'm outnumbered, I use flamed arrows alot more often now, much more so than I did in RTW. I often try to break the enemey's morale instead now, since a straight head on fight won't do any good (if you're largely outnumbered).

Fire Fly wrote:In BI, the red Chi-ro is the West and the purple Chi-ro is the East.

Ahhh ... that makes sense. I still think that they should have gone with this instead;



Βασιλεύς Βασιλέων, Βασιλεύων Βασιλεύοντων

(King of Kings, Reigning over those who Reign)

The flag of the Byzantine Emperor's.

So... how good is BI really? I really enjoyed RTW but tbh, the BI demo didn't sold me. To the people who already bought it:

Is it worth pursaging with all those free mods going around?
How would you rate this expension?

I'm happy with it. It doesn't cost too much and it does provide a new aspect to gameplay. Those gigantic hordes are quite a shock to the system after you've gotten used to RTW. You have to develop new tactics, which is an interesting exercise. There are certain irritations to the game, but it does lessen somewhat as you start finding ways to counter them. It's only the micromanagement right off the bat which is kind of annoying, as are the rebels. If I could change the game to make it more entertaining, I would increase the public order bonuses for buildings so that you start off in the same dire straits but once your cities are established you can stop micromanaging them, and I would cut down on the number of well-armed rebel groups that pop up out of nowhere in your territory.

I do want to beat the game at least once on VH/VH difficulty as Western Rome because that's the hardest faction to play, on the highest difficulty level. Once I've done that, then I can start modding the game for faster gameplay with a clear conscience.

As for the existing mods, almost none of them work with Rome 1.3, and Rome 1.2 suffers from a horrible AI bug that makes city defenses almost trivially easy. It's still possible to ass-rape attackers as a city defender, but you have to work for it now.

The beginning of the campaign is tedious and you spend a lot of time on the campaign map. As said, you must micromanage all of your cities carefully to maximize financial output and you must constantly monitor your financial status/spendings/cost of army etc. You have to put the right people in the right cities while watching the factions around you. Of course, all of this is the hard part; once you get over that and start to make a modicum of money, you can begin to upgrade and prepare yourself for the inevitable barbarian migrations (lots of them).

So if you a game that is challenging and pushes you to the edge, you'll like this game. In Barbarian Invasion, victories are so satisfying, to know that you've survived horde after horde. The few complaints I have are too many rebel groups popping up constantly and the enormity in cost of comitatenses. I have to say though, I am not addicted to BI as I was with RTW. With the latter, I found myself playing at least 4 hours a day. With BI, I play a few turns and then come back to it every few days. I do expect the mods to make the game even better, though.

So, to your question, the game is not as fun as BI and it can be boring and frustrating at times, but if you want to experience a different dynamic in gameplay, BI is worth a try. The AI is definitely more difficult in combat and doesn't make stupid choices anymore. It doesn't rout as quickly and is definitely challenging.

Wow, I can't even begin to wonder how you held them off to only 300 casualties for so long even with your city tactics.

Captain Marjoranus definitely was for the Huns.

Did Marjoranus become a general after the battle? I've noticed since 1.2 that when outrageous battles are fought and won the captains commanding would get promoted which I think is a cool part of the game.

Soontir C'boath wrote:Wow, I can't even begin to wonder how you held them off to only 300 casualties for so long even with your city tactics.

It took two tries. On the first try I miscalculated and ended up losing horribly (10 to 1 numerical superiority is a bitch).

Captain Marjoranus definitely was for the Huns.

Heh heh ... actually, it was the Vandals. They won't be vandalizing much of anything now.

Did Marjoranus become a general after the battle? I've noticed since 1.2 that when outrageous battles are fought and won the captains commanding would get promoted which I think is a cool part of the game.

Actually no, which really annoyed me. You'd think that a captain who achieves a 20:1 kill ratio, defeats an enemy army ten times as large as his own, defends the empire's most outlying city against repeated attacks without reinforcements, single-handedly smashes the entire Vandal horde, and bravely hurls himself into battle until only 10 of his original 54 horsemen remain would warrant a fucking promotion. This was actually his second consecutive battle; in the first battle he killed off roughly 2000 Vandals, so that in two battles he killed 7000 Vandals and pretty much wiped out the whole horde.

Darth Wong wrote: Actually no, which really annoyed me. You'd think that a captain who achieves a 20:1 kill ratio, defeats an enemy army ten times as large as his own, defends the empire's most outlying city against repeated attacks without reinforcements, single-handedly smashes the entire Vandal horde, and bravely hurls himself into battle until only 10 of his original 54 horsemen remain would warrant a fucking promotion. This was actually his second consecutive battle; in the first battle he killed off roughly 2000 Vandals, so that in two battles he killed 7000 Vandals and pretty much wiped out the whole horde.

Perhaps he'd be too powerful politically. Generals are politicians in Rome, and this guy would be fucking ridiculous. I'd assasinate him right now just to be sure.

Darth Wong wrote:See if you can beat this:

The closest I've ever came that wasn't a custom game was as the Danes in MTW. Sweden had revolted, and it was basically 3-5 units of spears/Vikings, and my entire Royal family (King and heirs all) vs. ~2000 angry peasants.

Poor bastards never had a chance

This one wasn't a custom game either. I discovered that it's financially impossible to maintain very strong garrisons in all my frontier settlements, so the only way to stop the barbarian hordes was to develop highly effective ways of defending cities against huge barbarian horde armies with normal-sized garrisons.

I just managed to take a Gallic settlement with a garrison 1600 strong with two Briton generals and about 450 spanish mercs (1 unit slingers, 3 units Iberian infantry, and two units barbarian mercs. See, I had two plague-bearing generals, and lacking anything better to do with them, I marched them alone off to Numatia in Spain, thinking I could at least disrupt the goings-on in Numatia. When I saw the city was a full-stack, I quickly hired all the mercs in the region and laid siege, thus setting the stage for the battle: 1600 Gauls v. 500 Britons and mercs.

I don't even think I lasted a turn on the siege before the Gauls sallied forth. This was actually good for me, because it meant I was on the defense, and I would win by default if I could somehow last long enough. I didn't expect to do even that.

Anyway, they sallied forth with heavy infantry and warbands to start. I let them come to me, having the Iberian infantry and the slingers pelt away before charging with the barbarian mercs. They were holding their own, which is when I pincered them with my chariots. Oh, chariots, how I love thee! They withered and routed, and I was beset by a second wave of infantry (we were now fighting quite close to the gates). This my infantry shouldered as I repositioned the chariots(as an aside, are chariots supposed to be deliberately impossible to move where you want them to? Jesus Christ, that was annoying!). Suddenly, the enemy general, who had snuck out from around the other gate, smashed into my left flank! Luckily, my chariots were ideally positioned to handle this, and they chopped the general's cavalry apart like...sharp things chopping up soft things.

By now I'm starting to love chariots. The second wave routs, and I send my generals into the city, the mercs in hot pursuit. of them. My chariots rolled over any standing units and quickly caused a general rout. Presing my advantage, I rolled up and through the line of retreating soldiers. By now, I'm bouncing up and down in my chair, because these chariots are just annihilating everyone! The continue smushing infantry as I position mine for the killing blow. A more cautious man would've simply waited out the clock. I, however, had no such caution in mind.

I first let my slingers and Iberian mercs bombard the town square. By now, every single unit on the Gaul's side has taken heavy losses. I sent in the infantry on three sides and charioted them from the rear. It was a tougher fight, because they obviously weren't routing, and I lost both generals (though the units were still relatively unhurt, but repeated chariot charges just absolutely wrecked them. In the end, all 1600 were dead, and I counted my losses at a scant 200.

So, something I did on impulse netted me a new territory, AND I got rid of the freaking plague bearers! What does this teach us? I don't exactly know, but british chariots, properly used, are fucking badass. Plus, I think this ranks higher than my victory as the Julii over the Scipii for the following reasons:

A) I was using crap units, and had basically no say in what I got,
2) The numerical disadvantage was slightly higher in this fight, and
D) The Gauls had the advantage of their town square, even if they made little use of it.

It's not 5000 on 500, but for a completely impulsive manuever, I'd say it went very well.