Octavium
Legionary
posted 30 January 2009 11:55
EDT (US)
1 / 8
Expanding fast is fine, it's expanding but leaving weak flanks that is risky. When you expand fast it's like playing musical chairs, so long as you keep taking settlements to pay for the large armies you need (by expanding your tax base) then you can get away with the weak and poor undeveloped settlements you own. However if you are forced to halt and defend yourself you will begin to go bust and be severely weakened. Thus always make sure the computer has no way of attacking you anywhere you don't have a large army. When I was Britain I once attacked Gaul and took the entire west coast of France. This meant that the Gauls could cut off my attacking army from my new conquests and force it to return to defend them. As a result I was forced into a battle of attrition, and once the Julii arrived I was overwhelmed. Now I'm playing as Parthia and I'm taking Asia Minor. I've got 2 armies, one besieging Sinope and one Mazaka. The one taking Sinope will then sweep round the rest of the peninsula while the Mazaka army will take Tarsus. A third army is taking Antioch. This means that the Selucids will always be on one side of me only, and the People of Pontus likewise.
The trick is making sure your enemies can only attack you from one directions, so they are predictable. If you keep to this basic maxim then rapid expansion is still safe.
ShieldWall
Legionary
posted 30 January 2009 12:52
EDT (US)
2 / 8
Well done for discovering the Germans, you will never be less than entertained by playing them. The key to winning is to recognise your strengths and your weaknesses. The first, as you have discovered, is spear warbands, as they will kill just about anything that isn't a good Greek phalanx. Your weakness is your economy. It's shite. This means that it's not a good idea to get carried away and spread yourself thinly over a very wide area, as you will struggle to defend it.
It sounds like you're doing the right thing, concentrating your big expansive effort in the west whilst holding firm in the east. You can hold the east by putting just a few spear warbands and supporting units on key bridges, and, if necessary, have one reasonably well equipped army that can cover the rest. Employ spies and build some watchtowers to keep a close eye on what the Dacians are doing - don't get surprised by full stacks appearing out of nowhere in a place where you have no troops. But there's no sense in expanding east too far because there's nothing there that will really help you financially. Indeed it will cripple you. You'll find you have a very large eastern frontier, and no economy to support the number of troops needed to protect it. And this is a problem because the Brutii will be expanding into that area, and they will throw army after army at you. So leave Dacia and its other eastern friends alone for the moment, look upon them as a buffer zone between you and the Romans on the other side.
The west is a good place to expand because after Britain has fallen you can pretty much advance your armies in one direction without having multiple fronts to worry you. If you have Masilia, a small bridge garrison on the Italian frontier will hold off anything from that direction. The Romans probably won't bother you from this direction, not until the Gauls here have been wiped out. Again, use them as your buffer. The Julii, however, have a very annoying tendency to send a fleet and a big army to Narbo Martius whenever you occupy it. But if you build a fleet, even of just 3 or 4 small boats, to cover this threat, you'll survive. And if they come ashore, a small garrison holding Narbo will win.
And this is how the situation should remain until you've conquered Spain and have nowhere else to go but east. Bear in mind that by this time you'll be building High King's Halls in a lot of your towns, and the new buildings to construct and glorious units to fill your army with will place a strain on your finances. It'll bankrupt you in fact, and you'll spend several turns trying to gather a few scraps to produce a few more units. But this doesn't matter so much because you the Romans have lots of money. So take it! Exterminate their towns and make yourself a fortune. Piracy is a good option too - a fleet with a general, archers, and a few spear warbands. Attack any populous and scarcely defended settlements, exterminate, destroy all buildings, then leave the city to rebel.
jurijb08
Legionary
posted 03 February 2009 12:50
EDT (US)
4 / 8
About expanding, I have once took all Gaulish lands. The Britons invaded and I only had one able army at the border to counter them but it turned out it wasn't enough. All occupied Gaulish settlements only offered recruitment of town militia and I needed alot more than that to stop the Britons. The settlements needed a lot more people to upgrade the settlements to be able to recruit hastatii and retrain the defeated army. Other armies that I had were in northern Italy. It was really stressful getting those armies to the borders and hoping the occupied lands would hold out with just peasants and town militia. In the end I learned thatI needed to bring with me some peasants to boost population growth. So the moral of this story is to take some peasants with you just in case.
ShieldWall
Legionary
posted 05 February 2009 05:25
EDT (US)
6 / 8
HAHA! Can't beat a bit of NIN early in the morning!
ShieldWall
Legionary
posted 06 February 2009 11:53
EDT (US)
8 / 8
Nine Inch Nails. It's one of their songs. I may be revealing my age by knowing that.