RTW: Alexander

[Darth Wong]

OK, I'm playing it now, so you may not see me for a bit.

The objective is to take 30 territories including Pella (which you start the game with), Halicarnassus, Issus, Tyre, Rhacotis, Memphis, Babylon, Ecbatana, Nisa, and Bactria. You must do this within 100 game turns in order to emulate the real Alexander's remarkably aggressive advance across the ancient world.

Game notes:

• So far, I've used up 19 turns and I've only taken Halicarnassus and Issus, along with a few minor territories. My play style is clearly too conservative for this game, and I need to be more reckless. That's only 3 out of the 10 cities I need, and some of the remaining targets (like Bactria) are really far away.
• It's frustrating as hell not having any missile troops. I guess I'm accustomed to having missile troops similar to my enemies, so that I give as good as I get at range. But now, thanks to the Macedonians' almost total lack of missile troops, I have to approach under fire with my heavy slow-moving phalangites without any way to respond, until I can trade blows with the enemy at close range.
• Alexander's cavalry unit is huge, and represents a major battlefield asset. Very handy.
• Persian infantry is of very poor quality but vast numbers, as expected.
• There's no time to build up cities at all before rushing onward. I find that I have to leave cities in a pitifully underdeveloped, undergarrisoned state when I move on to the next conquest, otherwise I fall even farther behind schedule.
• Despite my irritation at the countdown to the end of the game, I find it an interesting change of pace and a nice alteration to the gameplay experience. I find myself being forced to play the game differently than my usual "turtle, build, attack, turtle, build, attack" style. Now it's just "attack, take a short breather, attack again".

[Stark]

Is it playable in any way other than 'replicate Alex's conquest'? I was hoping there was a regular sandbox game in pre-Roman times.

[Soontir C'boath]

Considering the territory objective is three-fifths of RTW already, I'd imagine the player wouldn't have time to do anything but to keep marching forward.

How does the game handle public order if you couldn't establish a garrison or a stable infrastructure?

[Vympel]

Is Brian Blessed's narrative awesome?

[Adrian Laguna]

It's frustrating as hell not having any missile troops. I guess I'm accustomed to having missile troops similar to my enemies, so that I give as good as I get at range. But now, thanks to the Macedonians' almost total lack of missile troops, I have to approach under fire with my heavy slow-moving phalangites without any way to respond, until I can trade blows with the enemy at close range.

The real life Macedonians had crack javeliners. The fuckers wtfpwned Darius' chariots in the Battle of Gaugamela.

[Darth Wong]

It's frustrating as hell not having any missile troops. I guess I'm accustomed to having missile troops similar to my enemies, so that I give as good as I get at range. But now, thanks to the Macedonians' almost total lack of missile troops, I have to approach under fire with my heavy slow-moving phalangites without any way to respond, until I can trade blows with the enemy at close range.

The real life Macedonians had crack javeliners. The fuckers wtfpwned Darius' chariots in the Battle of Gaugamela.

Oh, I've got javelineers. I guess I don't count them as missile troops because you have to get so close to use them. Even if I don't get long-range archers, at least some slingers would have been nice.

Is Brian Blessed's narrative awesome?

It's not bad, and it's certainly better than some of the voice shit in the original RTW, but it's not as if the game relies too heavily on voice-overs anyway.

Considering the territory objective is three-fifths of RTW already, I'd imagine the player wouldn't have time to do anything but to keep marching forward.

How does the game handle public order if you couldn't establish a garrison or a stable infrastructure?

Easy; you have to exterminate every city when you take it. That's the only way to leave it with a couple of hoplite units and then go charging off to your next target without risking rebellion. In fact, you start the game basically teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and the cost of running your army will quickly drive your finances into the red if you don't quickly conquer and exterminate some cities for loot.

Is it playable in any way other than 'replicate Alex's conquest'? I was hoping there was a regular sandbox game in pre-Roman times.

As far as I can tell no, but there are historical battles and a "tournament" mode.

PS. I have now taken Tyre and Memphis, and I'm knocking on the door of Rhacotis. The easy part is over now that I have Egypt and Asia Minor, and it will soon be time to make my push into the heart of Persia. To Babylon!

[Vympel]

Can you give us a break-down of Alexander's army in the game? How many types of units do you command?

[Darth Wong]

He has:

• His personal bodyguard (62 heavy cavalry)
• Two units of Companion Cavalry
• One or two units of light cavalry (I don't remember now whether I started the game with one or two)
• Four units of light spearmen (can't form phalanx but can throw javelins; they're used for protecting the flanks)
• Two units of hoplites (can form phalanx but wear limited armour)
• Two units of phalangites (heavy phalanx units)
• Two units of javelineers

It's not a full stack army. Because of the frenetic pace of the game, I've advanced all the way into Egypt without really being able to add to it, save for picking up some mercenary slingers. As I wheel around back toward the east and cover some previously covered ground, I'm hoping to add some more phalangites so I can widen and strengthen my main battle line.

At the beginning of the game, Alexander's army is near Pella, and Sparta is on the verge of revolt but that can be averted by simply lowering their tax rate. Parmenion has a small army (less than half-stack) in Asia Minor threatening Halicarnassus, but there are two or three full-stack Persian armies in his way, and precious few mercenaries available to hire. I was able to march Alexander's army to the east to take Byzantium and then take ships to cross the narrow strait onto Asia Minor, where Parmenion's army had camped in a fort and fought off one full-stack army already. With Alexander now in the vicinity, I used Parmenion's army to take Halicarnassus while Alexander completely destroyed another full-stack army that was laying in wait to break the siege, and then marched east to take Issus. After that point, it's been a matter of marching Alexander's army around the shores of the Mediterranean, taking city after city. Now I'm wheeling back east, and the primary difficulty will be the sheer distances I have to cover. I have roughly two thirds of the game duration still available to me, and I have to conquer a swath all the way to Bactria.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Hmm, working under pressure to achieve the seemingly impossible. I like it. I'll have to consider getting this sometime then, given M:TW2 is a way off still.

[Darth Wong]

At the halfway mark of the game now, I've just taken Babylon. They made a stand at Hatra by attacking me with a pair of large armies, but the terrain was to my advantage. I was able to situate my army on high ground in a defensive posture, thus neutralizing much of his ranged advantage, and I was able to annihilate both armies with minimal losses. Hatra and Babylon both fell easily after that. It seems like I'm right on schedule, but I've got a long way to cover on the eastward march ahead.

[Nephtys]

Huh. Interesting layout for your starter army. 62 heavy calvary on a self-regenerating bodyguard unit seems utterly unstoppable though. In Vanilla Rome, two generals together equal that, and they're pretty unbeatable.

So your main reinforcement option seems to be Mercenaries?

[Darth Wong]

Huh. Interesting layout for your starter army. 62 heavy calvary on a self-regenerating bodyguard unit seems utterly unstoppable though. In Vanilla Rome, two generals together equal that, and they're pretty unbeatable.

It seems that way at first, until you realize that quite a few of the enemy generals also have unusually large bodyguards. I've seen quite a few Persian generals with bodyguards numbering 50 or more. And a lot of them are chariot generals too, and we all know how those damned scythed chariots cut up cavalry. Still, he's a very powerful battlefield asset, but I've found that the best tactic is to rely heavily on your phalangites to do all the heavy lifting. March them directly toward the enemy and they will almost invariably carve up his line. March them by simply giving them move orders right into the enemy, rather than ordering individual units to attack enemy units.

So your main reinforcement option seems to be Mercenaries?

It's definitely how you quickly move through Asia Minor and Egypt. The pace of my advance slowed down when I hit deep into Persian territory because the quality of mercenaries went down precipitously. In Asia Minor you can recruit hoplite mercenaries, but in Persia all you get is shitty Persian spearmen, and the occasional cavalry unit. Luckily, a lot of the Persian cities are quite large, and can retrain your better units without having to wait a long time to build more advanced structures.

PS. Looks like I should be able to take this one walking away. 17 turns left and I have all of the key cities already, having taken Bactria several turns ago. I also have 28 territories under my control, so I only need to take 2 more. Turns out there's only 32 territories in total, so you basically have to take almost the entire map. At this point, I can win this campaign even if I start playing like a retard. The trick is being able to engage and destroy two full-stack armies at a time, because you'll find yourself in that situation more than once in this game. The Persian faction has been completely destroyed (lucky for me because they had a full-stack army threatening a city that I'd left with a skeleton garrison and this army promptly lost 3/4 of its units and went rebel when the faction collapsed), so the only remaining enemy faction is the rebels and the Dahae barbarian faction.

[Darth Wong]

Won the campaign with 11 turns to spare. I could have conquered the remaining two territories in the remaining 11 turns and had control of the entire map, but it automatically switched to a triumphal narrative as soon as I took territory #30.

I'm working on the Historical Battles now. They're surprisingly difficult, even on Medium difficulty where neither you or the computer gets any tactical advantages. I beat the Battles of Charonea and Granicus, but I'm stick on Halicarnassus. The computer is much more aggressive during these Historical battles than it is during normal battles; I suspect the AI has a lot more detailed scripting to deal with various possible moves on your part. For example, they send out their cavalry to attack your forces. The first time I tried the Battle of Halicarnassus I advanced my siege towers and ladders as usual, and held my main force back. I didn't even notice his cavalry coming around the corner and charging the men pushing the tower until it was too late because the computer normally never does that.