End of Game Army Composition

[moj]

Oh, hi there and thanks for your interest! I had a serious man cold in the past days, but now I'm back in strength again!

Aw bless! Good to hear that you survived. You are, as my grandmother would have said, a ‘brave little soldier’.

So, the idea behind this build was to explore the viability and possibilities of the Velites. Someone (literal sum1won, or maybe possum, maybe even you?) had good experiences with them

Hell, not me. Having to steer them into position then steer them back to safety would be a no-go with my lack of ‘drill’. Also, getting them to the level where they’re actually useful is, I’d imagine, a very bloody experience.

Yep, what the title says, and more. This is not only the final army, these are all of my units that I purchased during this run. No pincushions at all, not a single peasant was hurt, not a single pretorian was bought, not a single mammoth was risen from the frozen grave only to be slaughtered, not one pincushion. Result kinda speaks for itself, this is sooo 2011.

1142k is *fine* for a ‘first attempt’. It’s exactly my build/purchase order but with a fourth auxilia chucked in. I’m still very curious about those archers, though: logically, the fourth auxilia should steal points from the archers. But yet again, you’ve got all your archers far beyond the megabow line. In my 20+ completed games I think I’ve reached Philippi without a megabow more often than I’ve got there with 2+ megabows. Starting to wonder if there’s actually some difference between the Mac and Win versions? IT'S THE PATCH!

Butt! Other than the final fame, this was unexpectedly enjoyable run! I had a strong bond with every unit. I gave them bis equipment without hesitation, and instead of counting every penny, I could be more than generous. The run was also surprisingly fast and relaxed due to a much lower level of micro (battle ballet) and macro ("crap, I forget to delete the half dead pretorians before mass heal, reload pls") managment necessary; I think that it took me half the time of the normal low-pincushion runs. It was also both a novel experience and a nostalgic one: I played like this back in mid 2000's, and I had totally forgotten that this leads to a much different, much more interesting and yes, much nicer gameplay.

Yeah, I love those guys. Not the archers, obviously, they’re anonymous, but every infantryman is special to me. Some of them have served with me since the days we used to massacre farmers. Hell, I’ve even bought them boots. Boots!

...as you might have noticed by the Legate's final level, I finally patched my game.

Ah, so it’s the patch that ‘neuters’ your archer progression!

*points and laughs at your pathetic archers*

Imho you either go full war hero or full war criminal, nothing in between really works.

Heh. Not sure why that should be in terms of ‘working’, but I guess the two extremes are easier to maintain. ‘No more than 100 innocents with pitchforks per battle’ would be a strange compromise.

I'm also really surprised with Vadimo Lake, I'd expect four lvl 12 - lvl 14 Auxilas to fare much better against what is mostly a greenhorn army of heavy infantry standing in rough, but they always bleed my nose.

My three aux are probably slightly more advanced at Vadimo Lake - L14/15 - which makes sense given you’ve got a fourth unit stealing points. In my usual game they’ll be W3/A3 with master feint/sword/endurance + disciplined formations. The setup is *always* like this:



(No idea why imgur has decided to double the size of that image)

The lefthand aux (the best unit) will eventually be killed. The front two archers on the extreme right will ‘seek’ the far right cavalry, which 90% of the time will break or be drawn to the advancing aux. The advancing aux, as long as it reaches the rough, can hold and will usually survive the battle (in my save scumming game they got away with three casualties). While that’s going on, the archers and remaining aux RUN LIKE HELL to point X.

And for the love of Jupiter, I need to keep my Auxilia at home for several battles towards the end of the whole show.

Which ones? At W6/A6+ with Achilles armour, there’s not much that scares end-game auxilia. Nicopolis and Zela can get pretty bloody but less bloody than with a heavy/’flat’ infantry. Apart from Africa...

Also, I replayed Africa for like thirty times, and not just for a better result, but simply because they defeated me no matter what.

What, ‘lost lost’? I can’t remember how many casualties you’re allowed, but I’ve never had to keep count. Archers bottom right with a guard aux to their left; another aux on the bottom of the centre/left ridge to distract a couple of cavalry units then take out the right hand skirmishers.; third aux bottom centre/right to get SMASHED by remaining cavalry. If you built a ‘hero horse-killer’ (which is useful for the consecutive battles Nicopolis, Zela, Africa, Thapsus) it’s possible to win Africa without breaking: W8/A8, expert protection from cavalry and GM3 anti-cavalry should do it!

Oh, and your own cavalry has absolutely no role in the battle. Sorry.

I started two IM games this week, not finishing either one of them. In fact I may have made a core development issue during the 2nd try, as I tried an unusual start with the Nobles. The idea was that as long as I don't care about the fame, I may simply develop a fast early core (Nobles + 2x Aux) with enough gold for pincushions so that I can build the Archers Horde asap, followed by some Triarii and Aux Cav to pack a punch.

Surprisingly, I lost very early, at Aequi Riders to be precise. Now, excuse my excurse, but this is the core issue (pun intended) of the IM challenge: you simply cannot deviate from your tried and true core army, battle plans, purchase order. So what's the fun then? Namely when the fame goes out of the window, AND you still can lose to a disengage bug, or enemy leader's ZOC extending all across the map, or random dude dying two seconds before the time limit, or random enemy guy NOT dying in the same way, or archers splashing to death with dumbos, etc.

In its current form, Iron Man challenge doesn't thrill me. The self-imposed restrictions are all that makes the difference from a "normal" run, I don't think that Slitherine will make a datadisk for 18 y/o game, so we're stuck with what we got, and I don't really enjoy that, namely when it seems like the best Iron Man army could be some kind of a 20-units behemoth that rolls over the enemy without consideration for our own losses. I may very well be proven wrong, but I cannot imagine that anything less than a complete juggernaut of an army could have enough punch for the 68 scenarios, although it would certainly bleed the fame.

Enough early power, four Auxilia to fight in the woods, many fast archers, two extremely powerful anti-cav dudes, two more horsemen for improved mobility in time-limited battles. Could this work? I may try this on the next Fri/Sat nights.

Nooooo, I can IRON MAN with my regular build, so you can too! But I think we’re agreed it’s not as much fun as a ‘high score’ game: it’s essentially 50 battles which simply cannot be lost (unless you get your legate killed in a ‘general must survive’ scenario), a dozen battles which can be lost if you play spectacularly badly, and perhaps six or so battles which require proper concentration to meet the victory conditions. Versus ‘every battle/heal point counts’.

I’m not going to make another save scum attempt (was just curious to see what sort of total I could rack up, but 20+ attempts at a battle and *never* beating your average score for that battle is uniquely frustrating and un-fun). Which leaves us with high score games...

I could start playing the ‘100pt penalty for every repeated battle’, and have arguments with myself as to whether ‘restarting after three seconds because you set all your archers to charge by mistake’ incurs a penalty or not. But actually, this isn’t a very attractive prospect either right now. I reckon I might have exhausted the ‘three aux / four archers / one cavalry’ format; if I’m going to continue to play (without another break of several years) then I’m going to have to create new targets. It might be time to revisit the ‘no archers challenge’!

I think that there's some hidden experience resource... Yeah! And on the 1st try the scouts gained few experiences although they killed more units then on the 2nd try; the peasants didn't even kill anybody, yet they still gained some exp. Interesting, if I knew about this, I did forget that. Gotta use this knowledge!

My aux cavalry sit out battles ‘off the map’ where possible for the free points. It’s genuinely useful the very first time in my (very established) routine: I buy before Heraclea and they’re not deployed, but they’re then ‘eligible’ for grade 1 weapons/armour ahead of Asculum. I can nurse them up to L7/grade 3 while barely using them in time for their first ‘test’, which is Adys.

Interesting to see the points distribution you get from the first battle. My legate and auxilia get 101pts each; it makes sense that your rubbish scouts earn more, but it’s strange that in the second instance your legate gets the same XP as non-combatant units despite making six kills.

And what’s your legate doing, surviving that battle!? I make it a point of honour to be killed in four of the first five battles!

Hernici Farmers ... has a really powerful intro, I always root for the farmers, they are neither cowards nor weaklings.

...says the pincushioning war criminal.

******************

Okay... tried another, more ‘considered’ IRON MAN while trying out a different skills path for my auxilia.

My regular path has always been endurance > swordsman > feint right up to ‘expert’ level (nine progressions), then discipline formations; then ‘master’ end/sword/feint. That brings them up to L14 starting from around Arretium, at which point I develop anti-elephant skills. The anti-inf/cav skills are left until much later in the game.

This time around I stopped at advanced end/sword/faint, followed by anti-inf/cav skills. By Cisalpine Gaul my most advanced auxilia was at L16 with expert anti inf/cav; additional skills were disciplined formations, expert endurance (to try and staunch the blood-letting), and basic anti-elephant (because those big grey boys are starting to loom on the horizon). The other two were L15 without the anit-elephant.

And they got DESTROYED. Didn’t record the score, but all three of them were routed. Just as they were kinda destroyed at Cisalpine Gaul (51 casualties, in recent ‘honest’ games it’s been mid-30s). And Arretium (46 casualties, when usually 20-25). Sentium and Samnites: a combined 59 auxilia casualties (plus a dozen or so suddenly exposed archers), when usually it’s around 30 casualties of all kinds in total.

So... what ‘anti’ skills provide is an increased chance of a critical hit. ‘Expert anti’ means a +15 chance, but there’s no indication what this actually means. I’m assuming it’s not a % figure – three levels of progression for a +15% chance is pretty expensive – but there’s no ‘critical hit’ bar in the squad stats so there’s no way of telling what the base level is. Ditto ‘protection from’: it’s an invisible stat.

Regardless, even if *every* hit is a critical hit, you’re still not going to kill your enemy if you’re unable to hit them!

I don’t have all the progressions to hand but Auxilia have a base ‘melee attack’ (ie chance to hit) of 9. ‘Advanced swordsman’ is a +6 to this; I’m guessing that ‘master’ is +12 (GM3 is +20; Achilles armour adds +10). Base ‘melee damage’ is 14. ‘Advanced feint’ is +7 to that; ‘master’ is +18.

In short if feels as though feint and swordsmanship are *far* more significant that anti- skills, certainly when playing my regular tactics. The exception, of course, is anti-elephant specialism: I assume that they need so much cumulative damage to kill that auxilia *need* to have the occasional ‘critical hit’ to stand a chance against them.

Any thoughts on that one?

[Aleksandr]

Aw bless! Good to hear that you survived. You are, as my grandmother would have said, a ‘brave little soldier’.

Hehe, thanks!

Hell, not me. Having to steer them into position then steer them back to safety would be a no-go with my lack of ‘drill’. Also, getting them to the level where they’re actually useful is, I’d imagine, a very bloody experience.

I trained them in Drill, in fact they don't get much more than bull's eye skills and Drill for the first levels. By the time they got Adv. Drill (or no later than Exp.) they kinda pay for themselves in terms of order points, however the micromanagment is such a strain on my patience, and they are not exactly effective once they are out of javelins , otoh you still got five of them for the price of two archer units, and we all know how totally useless the bowmen become without arrows. I think that a pair of Velites could potentially be a welcome addition for the army, even without anti-ele, especially for no-pincushion runs since you can train them in prot:inf, prot:missiles and use them as a decoy, arrows fodder. I think that their scattered formation helps them against arrows, but this may be just my superstition.

1142k is *fine* for a ‘first attempt’. It’s exactly my build/purchase order but with a fourth auxilia chucked in. I’m still very curious about those archers, though: logically, the fourth auxilia should steal points from the archers. But yet again, you’ve got all your archers far beyond the megabow line. In my 20+ completed games I think I’ve reached Philippi without a megabow more often than I’ve got there with 2+ megabows. Starting to wonder if there’s actually some difference between the Mac and Win versions? IT'S THE PATCH!

I tend to think in foursomes, a legacy of a former Legacy player; Magic is best with playsets.
But it's not just that, with that limited army I really like the idea of solid infantry force, and four are more powerful than three I'd guess.

Vadimo Lake pre-battle:


Result:

Yeah, I love those guys. Not the archers, obviously, they’re anonymous, but every infantryman is special to me. Some of them have served with me since the days we used to massacre farmers. Hell, I’ve even bought them boots. Boots!

moj, you're killing me!
And yeah, I also bought my infantry some exclusive high heels, there's nothing like proper boots! They improve agility... somehow... supposedly...

Ah, so it’s the patch that ‘neuters’ your archer progression!

*points and laughs at your pathetic archers*

Yep...
I don't have a strong opinion on the change. While several megabows are surely fun, they are also really overpowered. But now the bow seems like a totally unreacheable item, and that's sad. I would like if one or two archers get the megabow towards the end of the campaign, but not having even single one even post-Philippi is a pity.
This also means that I should rethink my core development. I don't think that the 4 Aux + 8 Aux Archers is viable anymore, especially IF the patch only nerfed the bowmen and didn't improve the auxilia.
Tbh, I'm kinda perplexed by the change, or rather by the need to rework my routine. I'm tempted to try the 4A+8AA core again, simply to confirm/refute my suspicion about them, but I think that auxilia wasn't changed at all (it's already powerful enough), while the archers were weakened. Does this mean that we need to use heavy infantry? I finished only one run with the new patch, and I ended 2k below my personal best, so maybe I need to purchase at least core Triarii. Also, this could solve the mystery of pgeerkens' 1148k result, that I couldn't replicate no matter what: is it possible that the difference in patches leads to such a difference in results? Could it be due to much more effective heavy infantry?

Heh. Not sure why that should be in terms of ‘working’, but I guess the two extremes are easier to maintain. ‘No more than 100 innocents with pitchforks per battle’ would be a strange compromise.

Yes, you're right!
Btw, when the two us gather, peasants had better sharpen the pitchforks.

I start to hate the "kill peasants" scenarios more and more. I know that it's just a game, but if I could change at least some of the scenario design, I'd remake the opening scenario and turn the enemy guys into organized militia.
But there's something powerful about LA in the way how it pictures the prehistory and antiquity. Remember the opening scenarios of Gauls' campaign? Chief's Sword? Starving Peasants? Wow, that was intense! Now imagine a Greek campaign... the start of the Indoeuropean incursions.... Dorian invasion.... ten burnings of Troy, Spartan massacres of helots... We're approaching grimdark!

My three aux are probably slightly more advanced at Vadimo Lake - L14/15 - which makes sense given you’ve got a fourth unit stealing points. In my usual game they’ll be W3/A3 with master feint/sword/endurance + disciplined formations.

And I also start with Aux Cav 95 % of time, another expo thief. (I don't plan to change this, heheh!) So my auxilia are really underdeveloped compared to yours, not only levelwise, but also in upgrades. I don't purchase anything until I got full core and rather use temporal units. This may be wrong, but I cannot force myself to buy W2+A2 (I guess that anything less hardly even matters) to FOUR auxilia, thus spending 1200 gold without much of an improvement, while delaying the archers by three to four scenarios. Idk, maybe it's incorrect. When I purchased fast W+A back in the past, I never really liked it, the results weren't spectacular.
I'd love to see a video of your walkthrough. There's a guy on yt whom I previously linked to, but it's a few years old and he doesn't seem to be active in LA anymore, then there are few other clips, but no full walkhtrough like he did. (Both for Romans and for Gauls.)

Which ones? At W6/A6+ with Achilles armour, there’s not much that scares end-game auxilia. Nicopolis and Zela can get pretty bloody but less bloody than with a heavy/’flat’ infantry. Apart from Africa...

Oh, I totally forgot about the patch and the fact that you play with it for so long. It was absolutely possible to field just eight archers plus three pincushion dumbos for the last three or four battles, and they massacred everything in their reach without losing a single man.
Now it's not possible anymore, as their levels suggest.

What, ‘lost lost’? I can’t remember how many casualties you’re allowed, but I’ve never had to keep count. Archers bottom right with a guard aux to their left; another aux on the bottom of the centre/left ridge to distract a couple of cavalry units then take out the right hand skirmishers.; third aux bottom centre/right to get SMASHED by remaining cavalry. If you built a ‘hero horse-killer’ (which is useful for the consecutive battles Nicopolis, Zela, Africa, Thapsus) it’s possible to win Africa without breaking: W8/A8, expert protection from cavalry and GM3 anti-cavalry should do it!

Oh, and your own cavalry has absolutely no role in the battle. Sorry.

Once again, patch is a culprit. I just went through my old saves, and this was my Afrikakorps:



I got a lvl4 Triarii from some previous battle, but even 2x lvl1 Tri would work, they just need to hold firm before the archers kill whatever moves.
Cavalry is useful to kill the approaching skirms in the NE, but they are really not necessary, that's true.



********

Nooooo, I can IRON MAN with my regular build, so you can too! But I think we’re agreed it’s not as much fun as a ‘high score’ game: it’s essentially 50 battles which simply cannot be lost (unless you get your legate killed in a ‘general must survive’ scenario), a dozen battles which can be lost if you play spectacularly badly, and perhaps six or so battles which require proper concentration to meet the victory conditions. Versus ‘every battle/heal point counts’.

Yep, that's true, never change a winning team! I had a bad idea that I need to improve the guys somehow, but it didn't work at all.

I’m not going to make another save scum attempt (was just curious to see what sort of total I could rack up, but 20+ attempts at a battle and *never* beating your average score for that battle is uniquely frustrating and un-fun). Which leaves us with high score games...

I totally 100% agree! It doesn't feel like battle, more like an ARPG grind, it's unfun, daft, and uninteresting, moreover everyone with a stamina to replay 68 battles 68 times each can get to 1147k, it's not exactly an achievement.

I could start playing the ‘100pt penalty for every repeated battle’, and have arguments with myself as to whether ‘restarting after three seconds because you set all your archers to charge by mistake’ incurs a penalty or not. But actually, this isn’t a very attractive prospect either right now. I reckon I might have exhausted the ‘three aux / four archers / one cavalry’ format; if I’m going to continue to play (without another break of several years) then I’m going to have to create new targets. It might be time to revisit the ‘no archers challenge’!

I thought about the same. It's such a pity that there's no sandbox mode in LA, as I'd love to tinker with upgrade trees before trying it live. There's nothing like realizing your build doesn't work by the time of Munda...
I got a few ideas to try, but I may just as well go hiding for half a decade. I'm not burnt out... yet, but it's inevitable. We cannot play the same battles over and over for years and years, I hate the grind in Diablo, but at least the rng makes it much more replayable and fun. LA is more like a sculpting a perfect statue, like playing a composition; you try to reach the ideal. But it cannot be done forever.

Maybe a full no-pincushion run could be interesting? I dislike the fact that I cannot start with the Aux Cav, but I can live with the fact, and the run that I tried the last week was extremely enjoyable.
Yes, you are right that a no save-scum is another alternative. Lets BATTLE the game once again, not just PLAY it!
Low pincushion, no save-scum campaign with some other self-imposed limitation (like the no archers rule) is also a nice idea.
An approximately true republican-era legion with minimum number of missile units and large segment of heavy infantry?
Or maybe just my usual 1 ACav + 4 AUX + 4 Arch format, to simply enjoy the game?
Friday's coming...

My aux cavalry sit out battles ‘off the map’ where possible for the free points. It’s genuinely useful the very first time in my (very established) routine: I buy before Heraclea and they’re not deployed, but they’re then ‘eligible’ for grade 1 weapons/armour ahead of Asculum. I can nurse them up to L7/grade 3 while barely using them in time for their first ‘test’, which is Adys.

u wat m8? O_O

This is a really interesting tactic, or rather a core managment method! I never really thought about this, namely because this wasn't even possible or at least I don't remember that there was the post-battle exp. bonus in the old patch.
This opens whole lot of new possibilities, and this also explains a lot of my wonders! I should take this into consideration, because now it makes it possible to "train" the units wihout exposing them to danger, and a "free" lvl6 Triarii would definitely help in Africa... or anywhere else, ttbt.
I need to admit that reading is definitely not my skill, as both you and pg mentioned this possibility in past YEARS, but I never really explored it. Makes the core development much more easier... maybe not easier to PLAY, as the arrow fodder eats experience, but easier to PLAN.

Interesting to see the points distribution you get from the first battle. My legate and auxilia get 101pts each; it makes sense that your rubbish scouts earn more, but it’s strange that in the second instance your legate gets the same XP as non-combatant units despite making six kills.

He doesn't get experience for the lowly farmers, don't forget that he's experienced to slaughtering of peasants.

And what’s your legate doing, surviving that battle!? I make it a point of honour to be killed in four of the first five battles!

Not for the lack of trying...
Also, trying the dying in Scout the Etruscans is kinda ironmanic, isn't it?
Btw, once I realized the implication of post-battle bonus, I tried to play Sabine Ambush with only the legate; as long as I don't have a perma unit by this stage of the game, he can get all the expo, right? So unless you rush him into the enemy horde, he alone survives the battle mostly unscratched with 301 ep, and even if he immediatelly charges forwards, it still takes 40 second to down him.
It' not like my leader is afraid of death, more like a death is afraid of my leader. I shall name him Chuckus Norissus, I guess... #badjoke #dadjoke

Hernici Farmers ... has a really powerful intro, I always root for the farmers, they are neither cowards nor weaklings.

...says the pincushioning war criminal.

But seriously, there are some lines that always give me goosebumps, even after all those years.

"Do not underestimate them. They are neither cowards nor weaklings."
"Senate in its overconfidence made a grave mistake but you are to pay the price."

Written from memory, could be one or two words off.


******************

Okay... tried another, more ‘considered’ IRON MAN while trying out a different skills path for my auxilia.

snip

Any thoughts on that one?

Well, a few thoughts!

My progression for AUX is swordsman > endurance > ANTI-INF > feint > disciplined formation, then alternate swordsman, end, anti-inf, feint until (grand)mastered.
The idea is that early anti-inf should shorten the time to kill, and I mostly fight enemy infantry, there are very few enemy horsemen at the beginning of the campaign, and you can kite them to forest or use temporal units against them. I know that pg, sum1won or possum argued against high feint and it's true that it may be a wasted skill later in the campaign, but it allows better equipment, and without high feint I seemed to have issues against light targets and leaders.
Once this is done, I train at least some armour penetration which should help against heavies, then some defensive skills like Block, Honour Guard, maybe Dodge. I don't like the specialized Protection From Name abilities, as units get mixed and they often stand against w/e unit, and things like anti-cav and Stand Firm may be cool, but if my Auxilia gets caught in the open by enemy heavy cavalry, no amount of standing firm stops them from running fast really fast.
I really miss the sandbox, though. Without a possibility to test all that stuff, this is pure theorycrafting, and the final fame results don't speak the whole truth, as any screwed battle throws all the theory out of window.

So... what ‘anti’ skills provide is an increased chance of a critical hit. ‘Expert anti’ means a +15 chance, but there’s no indication what this actually means... Ditto ‘protection from’: it’s an invisible stat.

Yep, this is a real mistake, these stats should have been explained somewhere, now we're building from blocks that we cannot grasp.

In short if feels as though feint and swordsmanship are *far* more significant that anti- skills, certainly when playing my regular tactics. The exception, of course, is anti-elephant specialism: I assume that they need so much cumulative damage to kill that auxilia *need* to have the occasional ‘critical hit’ to stand a chance against them.

I think the same. Also, speaking of anti-ele, the other reason why it's so much more significant is the tiny number of animals in the unit, a critically wounded dumbo reduces the unit's fighting strength by 1/8. But I still hesitate to train it to some extremely high degree simply for the fact that we meet the elephants only a few times, and we can always splash with them in river... for hours... without end.


Wow, this was long, and it kinda got out of hand, but I like how we discussed all things possible, from gameplay, to tactics, design, mechanics, even the storyline.
I got an idea for my next run, it'll be called Heroes Of Our Hearts, and yes, it'll be a sort of low-pincushion run; I will use throw-aways, but all of them will come back home to their families: yep, a full healing campaign. I'm interested how this will work, as this really changes my approach, while I may still use some support if need arises.

Thanks for your patience, and as usual: cheers!

[moj]

Will respond to the above next week, but I thought I'd just drop this one in here...

It might be time to revisit the ‘no archers challenge’!

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN



Long, long ago I tried it with a more balanced but archerless army but couldn't get beyond Cynoscephalae. This time the MAGNIFICENT SEVEN won with 30 seconds to spare. Actually, they rampaged through all the time-limited battles far quicker than my 'normal' army does. The big map battles weren't a problem at all: around 45 seconds left at both Zama and Zela, over a minute a Vercellae and Illipa.

Would guess that over 80% of battles were 'one take', and the only battles I can think of that took more than two or three attempts were:

• Magnesia: I've completely lost my Magnesia mojo with *any* army composition; was properly defeated in my first half dozen attempts.

• Giants: those big German guys are hard to stop even with five Achilles-clad auxilia standing in the river; again, half a dozen attempts.

• A Small Victory: after 'missing the water' a couple of times I tried to play the rushing game. After 4-5 charges up the hill and bleeding out very quickly I realised it's just not possible to reach the rough (perhaps I needed better boots?). I reverted to the splashing about and won handsomely

At no point did I think 'I can't win this battle'. But oh, the casualties among my brave boys. I stopped counting after Magnesia, but the three battle sequence of Zama > Cyno > Magnesia produced 78/83/80 deaths. The Messana/Aggreigentum one-two were 99 and 104. I was 'blasting through' without trying to keep the numbers down, but still.

My first three auxilia (ie my regular start) began incredibly well, considering I wasn't looking for perfect play. I had a zero fatality (not zero heal, zero fatality) Men in Black, which is a real collector's item! It was once I 'deviated' by buying a fourth aux that the bodycount started to mount. There's no benefit to protecting them, but aux 4/5/6/7 got absolutely minced in each of their first few battles.

Perfect score of 1,151,000 minus 1,133,350 equals 17,650 dropped points equals 3,530 casualties. This keeps me awake at night in my splendid legatine tent. Then I remember that auxilia aren't actually real Romans and I have another cup of wine, eat a few more of those delicious dormice the quaestor's wife sent me, and fall asleep.

So... that's the combined 'no archers / no horses' challenge complete. I guess the next one is 'no auxilia', but that'll take some *real* work.

[Aleksandr]

Will respond to the above next week, but I thought I'd just drop my jaw in here...

This is an absolutely crazy yet wonderful idea! Do I need to try the Four Horsemen Of Apocalypse challenge?
I also love how this brought back memories (and thread!) back from Nov 2007, this is some real necromancy!

Speaking of battles and the overal campaign result: I'm impressed, and even more by the speed of both you and your auxilia.
I've thought about some challenges in the morning and of the many many ideas I had, there was an idea for Legate + 8 Aux + 1 Aux Cav challenge... that I dismissed after roughly five seconds as being absolutely silly. Half a day later and you come up with this? That's amazing! I wouldn't imagine that this is even possible at all, but then when I remember how powerful is the Auxilia, and that you don't really care about fame (although this result is famous!), it makes a lot of sense.

Would you mind to press F1 while in game, and then

Code: Select all

post here the army report like this?

I'm pretty stoked about the particular units' info.

My first three auxilia (ie my regular start) began incredibly well, considering I wasn't looking for perfect play. I had a zero fatality (not zero heal, zero fatality) Men in Black, which is a real collector's item! It was once I 'deviated' by buying a fourth aux that the bodycount started to mount. There's no benefit to protecting them, but aux 4/5/6/7 got absolutely minced in each of their first few battles.

moj, I would LOVE to see you playing! Is this particular gem a result of your tactic, or rather of the upgrade path and items? Zero fatality MIB is an absolute miracle, I'd love to know how's this done!
I'm more and more inclined to believe that my usual Aux Cav start is a waste, and that the W2+A2 (or is it even A3+W3?) upgrade is a real deal.

Also, I thought about a lesson from AOE2, where you always go armour upgrade first for the infantry, weapons later, mostly for anti-missile protection. Does it make sense in LA context? We have a completely different gold flow, and while in AOE you can armour up your inf and tank the damage while kiling with archers, it's much harder to do this in LA, where we simply don't have enough missile units to use our auxilia as a mere moving wall.

Perfect score of 1,151,000 minus 1,133,350 equals 17,650 dropped points equals 3,530 casualties. This keeps me awake at night in my splendid legatine tent. Then I remember that auxilia aren't actually real Romans and I have another cup of wine, eat a few more of those delicious dormice the quaestor's wife sent me, and fall asleep.

That was powerful!

So... that's the combined 'no archers / no horses' challenge complete. I guess the next one is 'no auxilia', but that'll take some *real* work.

Good luck!

Cheers!

[moj]

Would you mind to press F1 while in game, and then

Code: Select all

post here the army report like this?

I'm pretty stoked about the particular units' info.

Ah, I was wondering how people were magically posting those stats dumps!

Each time I press F1 it creates a new file named Reports\report[number].txt but sadly these files appear to be empty, and a file size of 16 bytes suggests they are indeed 'blank'. Had a search of the forum to see if anyone else had encountered/fixed this, but found nothing. I'm very possibly the only Mac player of the 4-5 people who have ever been active here?

Anyhow, my L34 guys from the MAGNIFICENT SEVEN finished up as follows:

exp 127414 (next at 130659), total kills 4671; highest kills 224; worst casualties 31; best exp 10414

equipment: armour grade 5; weapons grade 8; Achilles' armour.

skills: GM2 anti-cav; GM3 anti-inf; master anti-ele; GM3 Swordsman; master feint; master endurance; disciplined formations

squad health: 25+31+30
morale: 250+78+0
agility: 20+0+10
melee armour: 9+0+30
melee damage: 14+0+48
melee attack: 9+0+30
melee concuss: 1+0+12
ranged armour: 6+0+12
everything below this: the stock auxilia rating

You'll note I didn't have any shiny boots or helmets. The agility bonus comes entirely from the Achilles' armour. Grade 3 helmets give you +6 armour and +3 shot armour at a cost of 300 gold; upgrading grade 5 (body) armour to grade 6 gains you +5/+2 at a cost of 350 gold, so actually I *should* have bought helmets before this point.

The yellow bar of the squad stats is an experience bonus based on unit level. It appears to 'top out' at +31 for health and +78 for morale at L32; my L38 auxilia (I had a L38 unit in both my save-scum and IRON MAN games) have the same bonuses.

Looking at my IRON MAN L38 aux (who weirdly only made 4503 kills) they're up to GM3 anti-cav, GM2 anti-inf, expert protection from cav, and stand firm (an attribute which I've never been impressed by). They're also maxxed out with weapons 8, armour 8, helmet 3, boots 3. The only differences between these and the L32 unit are:
agility: 20+0+25
melee armour: 9+0+51
ranged armour: 6+0+21
trample avoid: 30+0+5

...so other than the 'stand firm' trample avoid, all VISIBLE improvements come from additional purchased gear. When running with the MAGNIFICENT SEVEN there's not enough money to completely kit out all those auxilia.

You'll be saddened but unsurprised to know that my auxilia cavalry always make do with grade 3 equipment + Sarmatian armour!

[Aleksandr]

Ah, I was wondering how people were magically posting those stats dumps!

Each time I press F1 it creates a new file named Reports\report[number].txt but sadly these files appear to be empty, and a file size of 16 bytes suggests they are indeed 'blank'. Had a search of the forum to see if anyone else had encountered/fixed this, but found nothing. I'm very possibly the only Mac player of the 4-5 people who have ever been active here?

Heh, it's amazing that the two of us who seem to be the last veterans here have similar problems, although we don't even share the platform. This surely looks like a Mac trouble, as the F1 works on both of my PC; the one with nvidia gpu doesn't show pop-ups, though. Kinda silly to fight with/against archers, when I don't know how many arrows do they have.

Anyhow, my L34 guys from the MAGNIFICENT SEVEN finished up as follows:

snip

Interesting, I use a slightly different skill tree progression, but we mostly share the build. How do you like the result? And is the high anti-ele really necessary? I guess as long that you don't have any missile troops to soften the dumbos, it's kinda neat to kill them on first touch.

You'll note I didn't have any shiny boots or helmets. The agility bonus comes entirely from the Achilles' armour. Grade 3 helmets give you +6 armour and +3 shot armour at a cost of 300 gold; upgrading grade 5 (body) armour to grade 6 gains you +5/+2 at a cost of 350 gold, so actually I *should* have bought helmets before this point.

The yellow bar of the squad stats is an experience bonus based on unit level. It appears to 'top out' at +31 for health and +78 for morale at L32; my L38 auxilia (I had a L38 unit in both my save-scum and IRON MAN games) have the same bonuses.

Yeah, I often fall for the high armour upgrade, I'm so used to the fact that it's better to buy armur than helmet that I tend to forget that it stops to be true past armour lvl5.
Do you think that the bonus cap is real, or that the game just doesn't have enough space to show the real numbers? I guess that the cap is real, Slitherine would definitely change the graphic if need be, so it seems like a real limit.

Looking at my IRON MAN L38 aux and the differences between these and the L32 unit... all VISIBLE improvements come from additional purchased gear. When running with the MAGNIFICENT SEVEN there's not enough money to completely kit out all those auxilia.

So the cap is real, I'd say.

You'll be saddened but unsurprised to know that my auxilia cavalry always make do with grade 3 equipment + Sarmatian armour!

I think that it makes a lot of sense with your game style, it'd be pointless to waste anything more on them. I give them all three big upgrades, and A6 + W6, helm3, but I don't buy standards, mostly because they don't really need them. They rarely run away, and if they do, it's after a long time. With proper equipment, horsemen can withstand a lot.

I plan another run in the very close future, maybe even before Friday, although it might be better to wait simply for the fact that I'd have a lot more spare time and I can enjoy the game in peace, at ease. I'm gonna try a simple no-pin run, a true rpg style endeavour without unnecessary restarts and some new ideas. I'll post the result on Sunday, unless anything happens, of course.

Cheers!

[moj]

This surely looks like a Mac trouble, as the F1 works on both of my PC; the one with nvidia gpu doesn't show pop-ups, though. Kinda silly to fight with/against archers, when I don't know how many arrows do they have.

I was just pleasantly surprised to discover the game still worked! Am running MacOS 10.14, which was released in September 2018, because it's the latest version which (99%) supports my ancient retail version of Adobe Creative Suite. I'm buggered if I'm going to pay Adobe £££ a month for Creative Cloud, but I haven't yet found a satisfactory alternative to Illustrator, InDesign, and more particularly Photoshop.

Not knowing your ammo status sounds horrific. Nothing worse than pointing your archers at an enemy unit and seeing them run off in that direction waving their little swords. Especially in my drill-less, order-point-poor style!

I use a slightly different skill tree progression, but we mostly share the build. How do you like the result? And is the high anti-ele really necessary? I guess as long that you don't have any missile troops to soften the dumbos, it's kinda neat to kill them on first touch.

In the absence of the sandbox it's difficult to tell what the results are! I think 'master anti-ele' is probably a luxury; expert will do it. Malventum is an extremely difficult battle without two units which are at least 'advanced'. You don't need more than two units with the skill, although as previously mentioned I break out into a sweat if I don't give all units exactly the same skills.

(my lack of cavalry upgrades)I think that it makes a lot of sense with your game style, it'd be pointless to waste anything more on them. I give them all three big upgrades, and A6 + W6, helm3, but I don't buy standards, mostly because they don't really need them. They rarely run away, and if they do, it's after a long time. With proper equipment, horsemen can withstand a lot.

Perhaps 'really *use* an auxiliary cavalry unit' can be my next run. You've mentioned your special upgrades before; but I forget what they are. Sarmatian armour, Teutonic horses, Achilles' armour? That really does sound like a killing machine.


******

THE AWESOME FOURSOME



Another quick blast-through. Started off playing with auxilia until I had enough cash and 'assets' to sell everything and buy my first Praetorians immediately before Men In Black. Was concerned about a rookie unit facing the MIBs themselves, but it was an easy win. Much easier than getting to this point without any equipment upgrades for the auxilia.

The next ten or so battles were mostly 'stand in a corner and wait'. Didn't begin making notes until I start having to think. Etruscan Treachery took a 3-4 attempts to beat the time, but it couldn't have been too bad because I can't remember how many units I had on the field!

Bought my fourth Praetorians before Arretium. Going into Vadimo Lake all four units were W1/A1, and got absolutely trashed in seconds. Had to disband the fourth unit and upgrade the remaining three to W2/A3, who proceeded to win both Vadimo Lake and Cisalpine Gauls with ease. The fourth Praetorian returned for Asculum.

Cynoscephalae was murderous. A three unit charge down the right, and a single unit down the left to a) take out the cavalry and b) sweep around into the archers. By this time all units were W5/A4 and between L16-19, but it took well over ten attempts. Between each attempt I was tweaking positions/orders very slightly to alter the targeting, but really it was just a case of 'play until the RNG smiles on you'.

Cypsela took a lot of attempts to get right, because if you get into a slogging match with heavies in the woods you'll time out. Managed to find the correct vector/timing to sent a unit up the right side towards the general and drag the enemy heavies with it for a lovely open-field slaughter.

the GIANTS probably took more attempts than Cynoscephalae, but at least it's a quick one to play. Tactic was a headlong rush, with the far right unit steering around the wedge to take out the archers. Quickly established that 'paddling' was more disadvantageous to me that it is to them (guess it slows things down for their archers). After possibly 20 attempts I had them down to a single unit continuing to fight at less than half strength. Took a leaf out of their book and bought standards for all my units, which kept them on the field long enough to win.

Was nervous about Vercellae, but by this time my AWESOME FOURSOME were sufficiently well dressed to fight and win in the woods without time being a problem. I think the only battle I had to replay from this point onwards was Zela; my boys just steamrollered everything in their path. Got as close as I've ever got to *winning* Crossing the Alps: timed out just as I engaged with their last light infantry unit, which would have lasted all of ten seconds. A Small Victory? End of the Dream? Both were a stroll in the park.

Which left Zela... I was starting to think I was unable to win this one. With my regular 'aux/arch' army I'll sit on top of the hills and send my best auxilia unit down the left to meet the walking column of cavalry on the ridge. With a Praetorian build the unit sent to intercept the cavalry column has to stop short of the ridge, but it took well over a dozen attempts to get the stopping point 'right' to attract the entire column. Some of the cavalry would either peel off and head south *before* reaching me, or trot right past me.

On top of that a) this cavalry encounter was losable, b) it could also time out (Praetorians vs cavalry in the open is definitely a slower kill than auxilia vs cavalry in the rough), and c) the remainder of the battle was always in the balance both as a win/lose and due to time constraints. After 20+ battles it all came together, but like Cynoscephalae and GIANTS it's a question of waiting until you get a streak of 'good dice'. This one's definitely not IRON MAN-able!

The L32 Praetorians look like this...

exp 150869 (next at 150930), total kills 6577; highest kills 302; worst casualties 38; best exp 5536

equipment: armour grade 7; helmet grade 3; weapons grade 8; standard grade 1; Achilles' armour.

skills: GM1 protection from infantry; master protection from cavalry; GM3 swordsman; expert armour penetration; master feint; master endurance; master dodge

squad health: 30+31+30
morale: 300+78+25
agility: 10+0+30
melee armour: 16+0+46
melee damage: 26+0+48
melee attack: 15+0+30
melee concuss: 1+0+21
ranged armour: 8+0+19
everything below this: the stock Praetorian rating

Not sure why I went down the ‘protection from’ rather than ‘anti’ route, but it just felt right. Also went for armour penetration and dodge. Obviously I’ve got no similar Praetorian campaign with which to compare the outcome of these choices, but I was trying (and failing) to get me a Dacian Falx. What’s the skill path that gives you this mighty weapon, is it even available to Praetorians, and is it any good?!

Compared to my L38 auxilia there’s no huge visible difference between the two units. The intrinsic L1 damage/amour ratings are very much overshadowed by equipment/skill bonuses. The Praetorians should quickly destroy the auxilia in the open; the auxilia should do the same to the Praetorians in the rough.

But... I doubt you could finish the campaign with five, even six, auxilia units. Looking at the purchase price the Praetorians appear expensive but that purchase price is utterly insignificant when you start to consider upgrade costs. The cost of kitting out a single infantry unit with W8/A8, grade 3 boots/helmets, and Achilles’ armour is more than I paid for all four Praetorians combined!

You’ll see my legate made it to L118, because the ‘just being there’ experience pool is divided by five rather than eight or more. The final regular skills upgrade happens at L78 or L79. From then on the legate still progresses, but when you click on the promotion box there's no pop-up. Once he reaches L100, however, *everything* is available to him. My legate ended up with equipped with a bunch of freebies intended for Cult of Mithras; he also became a GM3 Marksman with both advanced and disciplined formations.

A fun campaign that threw up some interesting new bottlenecks to work through. The score's best forgotten, though!

[Aleksandr]

I was just pleasantly surprised to discover the game still worked! Am running MacOS 10.14, which was released in September 2018, because it's the latest version which (99%) supports my ancient retail version of Adobe Creative Suite. I'm buggered if I'm going to pay Adobe £££ a month for Creative Cloud, but I haven't yet found a satisfactory alternative to Illustrator, InDesign, and more particularly Photoshop.

Yeah, this is truly weird, sometimes the old stuff (be it hw or sw) works better than the new one. Speaking of the new Adobe approach, they're simply put scammers. I want back my life-time Photoshop, no thanks, I'm not interested in leasing your license and paying it every 12 months.

Not knowing your ammo status sounds horrific. Nothing worse than pointing your archers at an enemy unit and seeing them run off in that direction waving their little swords. Especially in my drill-less, order-point-poor style!

Yep, it's such a pain, I don't even play LA on my "big" comp, I just use notebook solely for this game. And for an occasional tcp/ip Diablo 2 with my wife...

In the absence of the sandbox it's difficult to tell what the results are! I think 'master anti-ele' is probably a luxury; expert will do it. Malventum is an extremely difficult battle without two units which are at least 'advanced'. You don't need more than two units with the skill, although as previously mentioned I break out into a sweat if I don't give all units exactly the same skills.

I also train my units completely the same (which is wrong, and I know it, I should use some anti-cav specialists, but w/e...), and that's also the reason why I don't like the master anti-ele, it's not only one or two lvl more than needed, but also multiplied by the number of infantries used.

Perhaps 'really *use* an auxiliary cavalry unit' can be my next run. You've mentioned your special upgrades before; but I forget what they are. Sarmatian armour, Teutonic horses, Achilles' armour? That really does sound like a killing machine.

It may be interesting kinda "get out of my comfort zone", and maybe you'll like them.
Yes, these three upgrades. Pretty expensive toys, indeed, but I use just one cavalry unit, so it doesn't really pauperize me. Otoh it's still well over 2k, it's not like I rush the purchase.


******

THE AWESOME FOURSOME



snip
This one's definitely not IRON MAN-able!

moj, your challenges are getting weirder and weirder each day!
This is absolutely bonkers. I'm surprised that you were able to finish the game at all, I would expect a lot of forest battles to be unwinnable. No doubt that I wouldn't even have a patience to try this, counting the number of restarts I'd ragequit like I'm running a meme contest.

The L32 Praetorians look like this...
Not sure why I went down the ‘protection from’ rather than ‘anti’ route, but it just felt right. Also went for armour penetration and dodge. Obviously I’ve got no similar Praetorian campaign with which to compare the outcome of these choices, but I was trying (and failing) to get me a Dacian Falx. What’s the skill path that gives you this mighty weapon, is it even available to Praetorians, and is it any good?!

Maybe the pro:x/y is better. Contrarily to the Auxilia, you cannot just sit the Pretties into the forerst and let them eat alive anything that comes close. Also, I guess that they gained exp. in a slower pace, and it may be reasonable to improve the defensive abilities so that they bleed less until they get high enough level. But then again they already start with a strong attack, maybe one should lean into the agression? Idk, I'd really love the sandbox mode.
Master Armour Pene opens the Dacian Falx. It's... idk, but I'd say "not really necessary" could be the best description. I'm not sure about all of the hundreds enemy units, but I cannot remember single one that would seem to be suspiciously invulnerable. But when you take a look at any of my core armies in the past fifteen years, it's mostly an archers horde plus few auxilia, so it's not like I win through h2h. I also lost the habit of buying the very expensive upgrades once I went down the road of high-end pincushions. In a no-pincushion and even maybe in a lo-pi game, I'd definitely buy anything that could help my guys, and Falx seem like a more reasonable purchase than lets say a W8 at least from economical pov.

Compared to my L38 auxilia there’s no huge visible difference between the two units. The intrinsic L1 damage/amour ratings are very much overshadowed by equipment/skill bonuses. The Praetorians should quickly destroy the auxilia in the open; the auxilia should do the same to the Praetorians in the rough.

Sure! And it took me years to acknowledge this fact...
It's also a reason why the heavy inf generally suck. By the time you can finally purchase them, your auxilia is ten lvls higher with all the fancy upgrades and abilities, much cheaper upkeep cost, and a bonus in rough. I think that the heavy line should have been a bit more stronger, but I never played any multiplayer game, and it's really possible that the heavies shine in those.

But... I doubt you could finish the campaign with five, even six, auxilia units. Looking at the purchase price the Praetorians appear expensive but that purchase price is utterly insignificant when you start to consider upgrade costs. The cost of kitting out a single infantry unit with W8/A8, grade 3 boots/helmets, and Achilles’ armour is more than I paid for all four Praetorians combined!

Well, your math is correct... but I'd be still interested how the 6x Aux core would fare! Simply for the reasons stated above: earlier purchases, faster experience gain, light inf bonus. Only the cheaper healing doesn't count, obviously; if we cannot get past the particular scenario, no amount of fame helps.

You’ll see my legate made it to L118, because the ‘just being there’ experience pool is divided by five rather than eight or more. The final regular skills upgrade happens at L78 or L79. From then on the legate still progresses, but when you click on the promotion box there's no pop-up. Once he reaches L100, however, *everything* is available to him. My legate ended up with equipped with a bunch of freebies intended for Cult of Mithras; he also became a GM3 Marksman with both advanced and disciplined formations.

Yeah, this is funny!
I remember experiencing this for the first time back in February 2010:

EDIT5:

Romans. Normal, LA:

name: . lvl . (highest kills/best Exp.)
Legate: 50 (33/1556)
Scouts: 86 (250/22k)
Militia: 178 (314/31k)
Skirms: 48 (64/6.5k)

Lol, this sooo was funny.
Next time I take one Militia more, because it's a little pity that you cannot pass lvl 120 (game crashes at that point). Double troops = half Exp., yeah, but I can live with my lvl 90 Militia...
Or... maybe I try some Paesant action? Who can tell?
And yes, they wore everything available. Achilles' Armour, Teutonic Horses, D. Falx, Ajax B., Sarissa...

FAME: 137 220

And then of course there's that by now famous thread Upgrading Legate Past Level 135 that always makes me smile.

A fun campaign that threw up some interesting new bottlenecks to work through. The score's best forgotten, though!

I don't think I had nerves to try this kind of challenge, and I appreciate your stubborness. Score? Well, yeah... I'd say that it could be worse!

[moj]

Speaking of the new Adobe approach, they're simply put scammers. I want back my life-time Photoshop, no thanks, I'm not interested in leasing your license and paying it every 12 months.

Yeah. Bastards. I bought the final version of Creative Suite at a decent discount before people realised the full horror of the Creative Cloud model, but it won’t run under the most recent versions of MacOS. Have been looking for a Photoshop alternative for over a year but I can’t find one that I really like. Hopefully my old Mac Mini still has a few years of life.

I also train my units completely the same (which is wrong, and I know it, I should use some anti-cav specialists, but w/e...), and that's also the reason why I don't like the master anti-ele, it's not only one or two lvl more than needed, but also multiplied by the number of infantries used.

We know the answer but are too scared to go there: asymmetric skill development. *shudders*

It may be interesting kinda "get out of my comfort zone", and maybe you'll like them. Yes, these three upgrades. Pretty expensive toys, indeed, but I use just one cavalry unit, so it doesn't really pauperize me. Otoh it's still well over 2k, it's not like I rush the purchase.

Okay, I went there... bought 3x aux > aux cav > 4x archers, rather than cav last. Got them up to L32 with ALL THE TOYS. Slightly suppressed my auxilia levels (L32/31/30). Might have slightly improved my archers, as I got two megabows after Philippi (how useful).

The super-equipped auxiliary cavalry stats are fantastic: significantly higher stats than my (Archilles + falx) auxilia in everything but ranged armour. The melee armour and melee damage stats are faintly ridiculous.

There were definitely a few battles where their comparatively advanced progression came in very handy – the ability to blow away enemy missilemen in seconds definitely saved a few auxilia infantry lives – but I’m not sure they saved *points*. Which I know wasn’t the object of the exercise, but still. Final score 1,136k.

When I tried engaging heavy infantry the outcome seemed to be a random binary: either they suffered 0/1/2 losses, or they got wiped out. Didn’t seem to be much consistency to it either, although we’ve established that ‘upgrades beat experience’ and we’ve no way of knowing whether those opposing L15 heavies are equipped with broom handles and dustbin lids, or with M4 carbines and VPAM-rated vests. I’m convinced the L17 heavies at Pydna are wearing the latter (not that I engaged them with cavalry).

Obviously I’m a novice at offensive cavalry tactics, but the withdraw/reengage really didn’t seem to work for me. Will give it another go, but I’m not terribly excited!

One game variant would be looking for the least number of deaths rather than the highest score: basically everyone in your army has a value of 1 rather than 5 or 10. I can work that out when I bother to record a game in my spreadsheet, but it’s a pity it’s not noted in the squad history. I think my legate’s achievement in nursing a squad of archers from the annexation of Etruria to Philippi without a single death should be noted. Especially as even the youngest of them would be ~300 years old.

moj, your challenges are getting weirder and weirder each day!
This is absolutely bonkers. I'm surprised that you were able to finish the game at all, I would expect a lot of forest battles to be unwinnable. No doubt that I wouldn't even have a patience to try this, counting the number of restarts I'd ragequit like I'm running a meme contest.

Yeah, those were the battles I was most worried about pre-game. Illipa and Vercellae weren’t a problem. Cyspsella was okay once I’d managed to drag the advancing horde away from the woods. Cynoscephalae, GIANTS and Zela were the scary ones; I was definitely outgunned and had to replay until I threw the right dice.

Maybe the pro:x/y is better. Contrarily to the Auxilia, you cannot just sit the Pretties into the forerst and let them eat alive anything that comes close. Also, I guess that they gained exp. in a slower pace, and it may be reasonable to improve the defensive abilities so that they bleed less until they get high enough level. But then again they already start with a strong attack, maybe one should lean into the agression? Idk, I'd really love the sandbox mode.

Essentially we don’t know, and we have no way of knowing. It’s a mystery.

Master Armour Pene opens the Dacian Falx. It's... idk, but I'd say "not really necessary" could be the best description. I'm not sure about all of the hundreds enemy units, but I cannot remember single one that would seem to be suspiciously invulnerable.

Again, those L17 heavies at Pydna seem to be impervious to archery, and always annihilate whatever unit I face up to them, even when dragged into the rough.

I think that the heavy line should have been a bit more stronger, but I never played any multiplayer game, and it's really possible that the heavies shine in those.

Would heavies (or any units) be ‘different’ in a multiplayer game?

I’d be still interested how the 6x Aux core would fare! Simply for the reasons stated above: earlier purchases, faster experience gain, light inf bonus. Only the cheaper healing doesn't count, obviously; if we cannot get past the particular scenario, no amount of fame helps.

Thinking about it, 7x auxilia was far less trouble than 4x Praetorians, and I suspect 6x auxilia would also be marginally more comfortable. Especially if you pour your mid-game money into upgrading the first four (say) units at the expense of the the other two, rather than sharing the love all around. Many of the problems with the Praetorians stemmed from the fact that there just weren’t enough units to push around the field.

I remember experiencing this for the first time back in February 2010

Someone, somewhere, suggested that units could actually progress/change during the game, eg peasants can become skirmishers can become velites; or following the classical progression, hastati > principes > triarii. I don’t think it could work, but it doesn’t sound as though your L178 militia needed to be reclassified: Achilles' armour, Teutonic horses, Dacian falx, sarissa?!? Even my L118 legate wasn’t offered the sarissa! Did they actually perform as well they should on paper?

[Aleksandr]

Yeah. Bastards. I bought the final version of Creative Suite at a decent discount before people realised the full horror of the Creative Cloud model, but it won’t run under the most recent versions of MacOS. Have been looking for a Photoshop alternative for over a year but I can’t find one that I really like. Hopefully my old Mac Mini still has a few years of life.

Yep, my wife is a graphic designer, she was furious like an amazon when she realized what's going on. I'll let you know in case that we'll find some alternative, but as both you and us were unable to find anything, I guess it's a lost cause...
The glory of terminal-stage predatory capitalism.

We know the answer but are too scared to go there: asymmetric skill development. *shudders*

I found the strength, but honestly, I'm not sure if it's helpful in any significant way. I'm extremely suspicious about the anti-inf, anti-cav skills, much less about the anti-ale, but then again it's useful in half a dozen of battles. I think that you're right and the anti- skills are not really worth it, feint plus armour penetration might be more decent and more all-round solution. I really don't know what to think about the anti- skills, but at least the anti-inf and anti-cav don't seem to be powerful enough. But I also didn't really spec into them, and I had some issues with units' control, so they often rush into the incorrect enemy class and then their bonus is wasted. Moreover they lacked the generic feint and/or pene, and thus the results were painful.
I'm also really conservative (on the brink of an actual superstition) when it comes to skill tree, but I'm also not really willing to lean into decisions. Roughly around unit lvl16 I start to be nervous due to unbalanced skill tree and I try to "balance" the units with quick points into basic/adv. anti-cav for the anti-inf guys and vice versa. Idk if it's bad approach, my gut tells me that I should stay true to my build, but it' kinda hard not to panic when the first elite enemies show up. It's nice to keep the build clean and use the specialist units, but when there are several high level hoplites across the field, my anti-cav dudes start to tremble a bit.

And yeah, as you might have realized, I started another run, but more on that later.

Okay, I went there... bought 3x aux > aux cav > 4x archers, rather than cav last... Obviously I’m a novice at offensive cavalry tactics, but the withdraw/reengage really didn’t seem to work for me. Will give it another go, but I’m not terribly excited!

They are truly an amazing shock troops, and they can wipe away everyone except for the heaviest infantry in seconds. But your observation is true, they can be unreliable and in the past years I had many unexpected results, some of them were of the less pleasant kind. I don't expect them to survive a full frontal sacrificial attack, but when they die to a subpar unit, I always wonder what's going on. It's really possible that your idea is true: it wouldn't surprise me if we'd realize that many of the opposing heavies are beeefed up with anti-cav skills and equipment. (Can the late era Greeks have e.g. Sarissas? I doubt that they're skilled enough, but then again idk what was the Slitherine guys able to do via scenario editing.) The Aux Cav also sometimes fares very badly against the other cavalry, and I had them run away from light cav of a similar level... which further strengthens my suspicion that the enemy units are on steroids.

One game variant would be looking for the least number of deaths rather than the highest score: basically everyone in your army has a value of 1 rather than 5 or 10. I can work that out when I bother to record a game in my spreadsheet, but it’s a pity it’s not noted in the squad history. I think my legate’s achievement in nursing a squad of archers from the annexation of Etruria to Philippi without a single death should be noted. Especially as even the youngest of them would be ~300 years old.

Yes, this would be really cool, and yes, this is absolutely annoying to do via spreadsheet, there should have been in-game statistics. We also miss automatic savegames, another thing that always bothers me a bit, namely when I wish to restart the campaign from a particular point in the timeline.
The archers make sense, you just need to dress them in green: they're high elves.

Yeah, those were the battles I was most worried about pre-game. Illipa and Vercellae weren’t a problem. Cyspsella was okay once I’d managed to drag the advancing horde away from the woods. Cynoscephalae, GIANTS and Zela were the scary ones; I was definitely outgunned and had to replay until I threw the right dice.

Part of the reason why I'm hesitant to try the Four Horsemen challenge.

Essentially we don’t know, and we have no way of knowing. It’s a mystery.

Last time I played with the Principes section, I was pretty disappointed. Maybe I should have tried Legs, or even Pretorians, but the price tag is insane. I really liked the Triarii for anti-cav duty, and contrarily to your experience, I was kinda satisfied with stand firm, I had battles where the Triarii suffered only the no-healing losses, and this was partly due to the fact that they didn't lose men during the initial charge. Otoh they aren't really useful for anything else than dedicated anti-cav duty,they cost a lot, don't grow exp fast enough, and cannot kill heavy infantry. Also, during the battles where you'd need them the most (like Africa), there are often a few skirms/archers scattered around, and one salvo is enough to bring the low-level Triarii into healing; speaking of the great cavalry ambush towards the very end: yep, no archers in sight, but the heavily forested nature of the map is perfect for the auxilia, and last time I had to fight the battle, i kept everyone at home except for the four best auxilia who ate the horsemen alive.

Again, those L17 heavies at Pydna seem to be impervious to archery, and always annihilate whatever unit I face up to them, even when dragged into the rough.

True, these are awful to fight. It also doesn't help that by this time I got eight archers, so it's kinda hard to micromanage them and avoid shooting at the lvl17 supermen. And dragging them into the rough isn't an answer, too, as you noted, they are able to miraculously withstand a lot of punishment, I even lived through the horror of them breaking through the auxilia (in rough!) and killing two archer units. Needless to say, this battle ended prematurely...

Would heavies (or any units) be ‘different’ in a multiplayer game?

Idk, I never played a single one, but I think that Slitherines were afraid that they could be broken in pvp. One can do silly things in the army builder, and an op heavies could easily eliminate all other units from competition. Part of their weakness (at least speaking of the AI) is that they are easily drawn into bad terrain where we can dispatch them with light inf, but in pvp no one falls for this trick, and the battles could either turn into stalemates with both sides waiting indefinitely for the other guys to move, or they could be a rolling earthquake kind of affairs where the Praetorian juggernaut steamrolls everything in its path. That's at least my reasoning why the heavy infantry suck (relatively speaking, I guess high lvl Prets are not to be underestimated), at least in my experience with campaigns.
pg had a lot of success with them and I am tempted to try a completely different approach on my next run, namely if I'll once again try the no-pin challenge.

Thinking about it, 7x auxilia was far less trouble than 4x Praetorians, and I suspect 6x auxilia would also be marginally more comfortable. Especially if you pour your mid-game money into upgrading the first four (say) units at the expense of the the other two, rather than sharing the love all around. Many of the problems with the Praetorians stemmed from the fact that there just weren’t enough units to push around the field.

Yes, I think you're right. I also think that the gold splitting is bad, because you can easily end with an army of average units, none of them good enough to be a pillar of your core. I would love to see your progression until the end of Gauls and Pyrrhos minicampaign (at least in the form of army reports, although in your case this could be tedious, due to F1 not working on Mac). I would like to know where's the sweet spot considering the balance of number of units vs. their upgrades. I got a feeling (supported by your MIB result) that in the beginning stages, two fully kitted (roughly a3+w3) auxilia could be the way to go, but trying to do the same with say four units is stretching it too far. I also dislike how this delays the purchases, and I'd like to know the overal effect over the whole campaign. Is it worth it to save say 1k fame in the first half of the game thanks to the early upgrades, when we lose 2k fame due to slower core setup? I always wonder about the archers, and namely now when they hardly ever get the Odd Bow, I think that I can delay the core build up and rather purchase fast upgrades.
But then again this way you can paint yourself into corner with too few units (although elite ones), who lack numbers to finish the battles in time, and who get easily surrounded and chewed up.

Someone, somewhere, suggested that units could actually progress/change during the game, eg peasants can become skirmishers can become velites; or following the classical progression, hastati > principes > triarii. I don’t think it could work, but it doesn’t sound as though your L178 militia needed to be reclassified: Achilles' armour, Teutonic horses, Dacian falx, sarissa?!? Even my L118 legate wasn’t offered the sarissa! Did they actually perform as well they should on paper?

It could have been me, the proposed idea is soooo Panzer General, that it simply must have been mine. I kinda dislike the fact that I'm stuck with my initial purchase unless I wanna lose the experience, but I think that we've already established the fact that exp+items > initial purchase. It's just like you suggest: there's no need to officially reclassify my militia once it crosses the lvl 99 and gets all the stuff including cavalry upgrades.
I don't really recall how the particular campaign went (it's more then 10 years, and it was also a "mere" Hard run), but considering the amount of smilies and the fact that the only trouble worthy a mentioning was the fact that the game crashed under the sheer weight of the auxiliary experience, I guess it was more than fine!


In other news: I just finished my new no-pin run, the result is far from spectacular, and I need to digest the experience, too. I was really suprised with how badly some of the battles went, but then I remembered that it was also no-save-scum attempt, so maybe I should be satisfied with my 1138,5 k result.
More on this later, I hope that I'll find some time in the evening. At least my ocd didn't suffer this time, I hope that you also enjoy the symmetry:

[moj]

Yep, my wife is a graphic designer, she was furious like an amazon when she realized what's going on. I'll let you know in case that we'll find some alternative, but as both you and us were unable to find anything, I guess it's a lost cause...
The glory of terminal-stage predatory capitalism.

The Affinity InDesign/Illustrator knock-offs are fine, but Photoshop... I think I’ve tried half a dozen alternatives, and none of them ‘work’ for me. I guess if I was forced to use one for a month I’d get used to it, but the workflow/adjustments seem so alien/clunky when compared to Photoshop. Many of them want to manage your photo library as well, which is an instant turn-off for me.

I’m extremely suspicious about the anti-inf, anti-cav skills, much less about the anti-ale, but then again it's useful in half a dozen of battles. I think that you're right and the anti- skills are not really worth it, feint plus armour penetration might be more decent and more all-round solution.

Hmmm. I’m not wholly sold on armour penetration... ‘bypass their armour and inflict greater damage’ is a bit woolly. Have just realised I haven’t a clue what all those floating numbers mean! When a yellow 31 appears out of a melee, is that 31 points of damage inflicted on one specific enemy fighter? Or 31 chiselled off the overall unit health score?

Are you fighting against (say) 48 men each with 60 health points, meaning you need to hit the same guy twice for 31 damage to kill him? Or are you fighting against a monolithic unit, meaning that 2x 31 damage against any target results in a fatality? Do those yellow numbers on screen appear to be attached to specific individuals? I’m going to have to do some 0.25 speed staring...

Where are my DEATH SKULL GRAPHICS for critical hits?

Roughly around unit lvl16 I start to be nervous due to unbalanced skill tree and I try to "balance" the units with quick points into basic/adv. anti-cav for the anti-inf guys and vice versa. ... It's nice to keep the build clean and use the specialist units, but when there are several high level hoplites across the field, my anti-cav dudes start to tremble a bit.

With the campaign below I went master anti-ele for the first two auxilia and completely ignored the skill for the other units, going with armour penetration instead. Wasn’t too disturbing to my delicate psyche, and they all end up the same anyway. Late game my hero unit starts to veer off in an anti-cav direction for Zela/ Africa/Pharsalus but otherwise I tend to ‘pair’ the anti-cav and anti-inf.

In the interests of symmetry I *always* make the mistake of worrying when one unit slips 2-3 levels below the rest, and expose them to extreme/costly danger to boost their level. NO MAN LEFT BEHIND EXCEPT AS AN UNDER-TRAINED CORPSE LYING LIMP ON THE BATTLEFIELD.

It's really possible that your idea is true: it wouldn't surprise me if we'd realize that many of the opposing heavies are beeefed up with anti-cav skills and equipment. (Can the late era Greeks have e.g. Sarissas? I doubt that they're skilled enough, but then again idk what was the Slitherine guys able to do via scenario editing.) The Aux Cav also sometimes fares very badly against the other cavalry, and I had them run away from light cav of a similar level... which further strengthens my suspicion that the enemy units are on steroids.

Yes! There were definitely a couple of occasions when my aux cav at L10+ with grade 3 gear when head-to-head with L10/L12 light cavalry and got convincingly whipped. It only makes sense if the llight cavalry are W6/A6.

The archers make sense, you just need to dress them in green: they're high elves.

Legolas *definitely* has the MegaBow.

speaking of the great cavalry ambush towards the very end: yep, no archers in sight, but the heavily forested nature of the map is perfect for the auxilia, and last time I had to fight the battle, i kept everyone at home except for the four bets auxilia who ate the horsemen alive.

FOUR auxilia? Coward...



Ambush at Divo really isn’t one of the scenario writer’s proudest moments!

One can do silly things in the army builder, and an op heavies could easily eliminate all other units from competition.

Ah, never looked at the online game and didn’t realise it had a points-based army system. I can see why ‘single juggernaut unit’ needs neutering if it's the most effective way of playing.

I would love to see your progression until the end of Gauls and Pyrrhos

In my regular three aux setup they’re all W1/A2 in time for Thirst for Gauls. By Claudine Forks they’re W2/A2, with two W2 archers. By Vadimo Lake they’re W3/A3 and I have all four archers, still at W2. I’m conserving money to buy my aux cav for some ‘offscreen experience’ prior to Adys. Aux W4/A4 and archers W3 by Adys. Where the aux go from here differs... I *think* armour is generally preferable to weaponry over the next 12-15 battles, but there’s probably a case for asymmetric kit development ie a ‘killer aux’ and two ‘defender aux’.

In other news: I just finished my new no-pin run, the result is far from spectacular, and I need to digest the experience, too. I was really suprised with how badly some of the battles went, but then I remembered that it was also no-save-scum attempt, so maybe I should be satisfied with my 1138,5 k result.

I would imagine the Cynoscephalae / Magnesia / Cypsela run got pretty messy with what would have been comparatively green auxilia?

Your score is SHIT. But it’s also a couple of hundred points higher than mine...

THE SUPER SIX



I recently wrote “I doubt you could finish the campaign with five, even six, auxilia units”, but thinking about it a bit more, and (mis?)remembering how the MAGNIFICENT SEVEN was a relatively straightforward run, and emboldened with now knowing how to get hold of the Dacian falx, I decided to give it a go.

Started strongly before suffered 153 casualties at Aggreigentum (which might be a personal record for a ‘winning’ battle). Forgot to bother watching Trebbia and recorded another 101 deaths, then 66 at Dertosa, 131 at Magnesia ( the bodies were piling up, but I was still undefeated and dreaming of an IRON MAN result going into GIANTS.

Ahead of Noreia I’d ignored anti-cav/inf (and ‘protection from’, but that’s always been my regular play) in favour of armour penetration and getting hold of those lovely big Dacian falces. As a consequence a) my anti skills were minimal, and b) I’d been holding back my spending knowing that I was now after a second bit of ‘hero kit’. My first auxilia had reached L26 and had Achilles’ armour, but all my aux were at W4/A5. In the ‘three aux’ campaign they’d be W5/A6 by now, and with more progressed anti- skills. And the shortfall in weaponry/armour had been evident over the last 10-12 battles...

Before the battle I panic-bought W6 for four of the auxilia, and proceeded to get wiped out in seconds. They could hit the river perfectly, in either offensive or defensive formation, and they’d still get munched in moments. Tried moving the whole battle over to the left hand rough and they got chewed up even more quickly. After 8-9 attempts it somehow came right and I won with a single shaken unit remaining (much like the 4x Praetorians).

Took all units to W4/W6 but the losses in the remaining battles were almost universally heavy: a combined 43 deaths at Vesuvius and Granacus, for example! Aquae Sextiae took two attempts. Lost End of the Dream *badly* a couple of times until I remembered I could sacrifice one unit while racing all the others up into the woods. These and GIANTS were the only three battles I had to replay, and I didn’t restart any battle regardless of how badly the score was going. On balance, this run was far more straightforward than the AWESOME FOURSOME.

Got my sixth Achilles’ armour before Alesia, and my sixth falx before Thapsus. But despite this I still managed to sustain 52 deaths at Philippi!

My MAG7 L34 auxilia was as follows:

equipment: armour grade 5; weapons grade 8; Achilles' armour.

skills: GM2 anti-cav; GM3 anti-inf; master anti-ele; GM3 Swordsman; master feint; master endurance; disciplined formations

squad health: 25+31+30
morale: 250+78+0
agility: 20+0+10
melee armour: 9+0+30
melee damage: 14+0+48
melee attack: 9+0+30
melee concuss: 1+0+12
ranged armour: 6+0+12
everything below this: the stock auxilia rating

My SUPER6 L37 auxilia reads:

equipment: armour grade 6; helmet grade 3; weapons grade 5; Achilles' armour; Dacian falx

skills: GM2 anti-cav; GM2 anti-inf; master anti-ele; GM3 Swordsman; master armour penetration; master feint; master endurance; disciplined formations

squad health: 25+31+30
morale: 250+78+0
agility: 20+0+10
melee armour: 9+0+41
melee damage: 14+0+33
melee attack: 9+0+20
melee concuss: 1+0+40
ranged armour: 6+0+17
everything below this: the stock auxilia rating

The SUPER6 guy is better-armoured: grade 6 vs grade 5, and a top-of-the-range helmet.

The MAG7 guy is ‘differently weaponed’: the full grade 8, vs grade 5 + falx. And this seems to be a really significant difference? 62 vs 47 melee damage; 39 vs 29 melee attack. The ‘melee attack’ is ‘chance to hit’, which is adversely affected by the falx.

‘Melee concuss’ is 41 vs 13 in favour of MAG7, but I haven’t got a clue whether it’s worth the loss of ‘regular’ melee damage. Again, what does ‘bypass their armour and inflict greater damage’ mean? A multiplier on regular damage? You do occasionally see a three digit yellow number float past...

Harking back to early in this post, without knowing more about the damage mechanics, I’m *really* not sold on the falx. I have the feeling that a high level auxilia unit can kill an archer with a single blow of his trusty sword; why waste time/effort swinging a heavier weapon with a significantly reduced chance of hitting, simply to hit him with a blow that could kill him three times over? It is, literally, overkill.

The one thing I know for sure: my brave boys should not be suffering 43 deaths at Vesuvius and Granacus, or 52 deaths at Philippi, even in the absence of archer support.

The (far) tl;dr – The falx sucks and I’ll be spending the money on regular weapons and armour instead. Armour penetration sucks. I’m back to anti- skills and protection froms, unless you want to try and sell me on dodge and block!

So... can the game be won with five auxilia? I reckon that with the extra money for more/quicker weapon and armour upgrades, and possibly a couple of levels of NCO and standards to keep them out on the pitch a little longer, it might *just* be possible...

[Aleksandr]

The Affinity InDesign/Illustrator knock-offs are fine, but Photoshop... I think I’ve tried half a dozen alternatives, and none of them ‘work’ for me. I guess if I was forced to use one for a month I’d get used to it, but the workflow/adjustments seem so alien/clunky when compared to Photoshop. Many of them want to manage your photo library as well, which is an instant turn-off for me.

If you find something, let me know, even ten years from now. It may be helpful, namely if Adobe only continues in their trend.

Hmmm. I’m not wholly sold on armour penetration... ‘bypass their armour and inflict greater damage’ is a bit woolly. Have just realised I haven’t a clue what all those floating numbers mean! When a yellow 31 appears out of a melee, is that 31 points of damage inflicted on one specific enemy fighter? Or 31 chiselled off the overall unit health score?

Yeah, it's a pity that many game mechanics are explained in such a cryptic way.

Are you fighting against (say) 48 men each with 60 health points, meaning you need to hit the same guy twice for 31 damage to kill him? Or are you fighting against a monolithic unit, meaning that 2x 31 damage against any target results in a fatality? Do those yellow numbers on screen appear to be attached to specific individuals? I’m going to have to do some 0.25 speed staring...

Where are my DEATH SKULL GRAPHICS for critical hits?

Exactly my thoughts! I'd really love to know if the LA units are Panzer Genral monoliths or AOE wannabes where every man counts. If you really undergo the high speed camera testing, I'd be seriously interested in results.
Alternatively, we may pester Iain or Pip, but I'm not sure that any one of them knows how the 15+ y/o game exactly works.

With the campaign below I went master anti-ele for the first two auxilia and completely ignored the skill for the other units, going with armour penetration instead. Wasn’t too disturbing to my delicate psyche, and they all end up the same anyway. Late game my hero unit starts to veer off in an anti-cav direction for Zela/ Africa/Pharsalus but otherwise I tend to ‘pair’ the anti-cav and anti-inf.

In the interests of symmetry I *always* make the mistake of worrying when one unit slips 2-3 levels below the rest, and expose them to extreme/costly danger to boost their level. NO MAN LEFT BEHIND EXCEPT AS AN UNDER-TRAINED CORPSE LYING LIMP ON THE BATTLEFIELD.

I always heavily specialize into anti-inf, as it seems to be much more relevant in the opening scenarios (there are hardly any cavalry units except for the Gallic Scouts), and I don'r really care about anti-cav, mostly because I can draw them into the rough terrain. It's possible that I'm overdoing the anti-inf. For my next run I'll try to go without both the anti-inf and anti-cav, concentrating solely on the more alround and unambiguous skills like feint and swordsman for offense, plus endurance and I guess block for defense. It's more than probable that without the anti-XY skill I'll miss some offensive power, but I really wanna test that. But maybe not in the 68 scenarios of a new run, I think I'll find some testing ground, preferably Ambush at Divo.
A note on "drawing into rough" that bothers me a bit: I think that the designers were far too generous when creating the rules for terrain engagment. I understand that there are balancing reasons for how it works, but no, no one and nobody wants to fight waist deep in a cold water. Everyone should have had a malus in water, except maybe for dumbos who could have been enjoying it a bit, but even those should have felt a bitof a discomfort. But maybe I'm wrong, I don't have my good ol' copy of De Bello Gallico (autographed by the author in his own blood), but I still cannot remember one single instance where the units deliberately decided to line up in a fierce stream or an icy mountain lake.

Yes! There were definitely a couple of occasions when my powerful aux cav got convincingly whipped... it only makes sense if the opposing light cavalry are W6/A6.

It happened to me most notably during Latin Revolt where the enemy scouts had exceptionally good day and routed my aux cav.

Ambush at Divo really isn’t one of the scenario writer’s proudest moments!

I kinda like the battle, it's a good change of pace and it's weirdly satisfying to chew all that horse meat. But yeah, it's such a tower defense scenario...

Ah, never looked at the online game and didn’t realise it had a points-based army system. I can see why ‘single juggernaut unit’ needs neutering if it's the most effective way of playing.

It's just my guess, as I also never played a single multiplayer game, but it seems reasonable.

In my regular three aux setup they’re all W1/A2 in time for Thirst for Gauls. By Claudine Forks they’re W2/A2, with two W2 archers. By Vadimo Lake they’re W3/A3 and I have all four archers, still at W2. I’m conserving money to buy my aux cav for some ‘offscreen experience’ prior to Adys. Aux W4/A4 and archers W3 by Adys. Where the aux go from here differs... I *think* armour is generally preferable to weaponry over the next 12-15 battles, but there’s probably a case for asymmetric kit development ie a ‘killer aux’ and two ‘defender aux’.

I don't exactly like archers for Caudine Forks, and if I buy them, then only because I don't want to delay them any further. I realized that if ugly things happen, the archers are helpless and get destroyed in seconds. This is one another of the splashing battles, and if the auxilia cannot get/stay into the water, results are awful.
I would imagine the Cynoscephalae / Magnesia / Cypsela run got pretty messy with what would have been comparatively green auxilia? Yeah, I hated the results. Also, many fo otherwise easy battles were pretty hard without the usual bowmen horde. E.g.: I was able to kite the enemy during the Cisalpine Gauls, and they died without touching my auxilia, but once their left flank moved into the battle, I lacked numbers to shoot them down on approach and lost quite some men once they hit me.
I had kinda solid results with Velites, as a missile unit they remain standing where I order them to stand, so it's much easier to capture the enemy heavies in river, even though that means that I won't shoot anymore. Speaking of Velites: what do you think about an idea to use a few them instead or alongside a few archers? Considering their upgrade path, there are a lot of skills that they learn but either never use or only in desperation, and I would like to know if it's possible to use them as decoy and true skirmishers, giving them pro:inf, pro:arch, block, etc., whenever a bull's eye skill isn't available. I don't like to run myAuxilia into the rain of arrows, but then again maybe it's better to simply train auxilia and archers for their particular roles, than waste money on a core pincushions.


***

Your score is SHIT. But it’s also a couple of hundred points higher than mine...

That was diplomatic!

THE SUPER SIX



I recently wrote “I doubt you could finish the campaign with five, even six, auxilia units”, but thinking about it a bit more, and (mis?)remembering how the MAGNIFICENT SEVEN was a relatively straightforward run, and emboldened with now knowing how to get hold of the Dacian falx, I decided to give it a go.

snip

The (far) tl;dr – The falx sucks and I’ll be spending the money on regular weapons and armour instead. Armour penetration sucks. I’m back to anti- skills and protection froms, unless you want to try and sell me on dodge and block!

So... can the game be won with five auxilia? I reckon that with the extra money for more/quicker weapon and armour upgrades, and possibly a couple of levels of NCO and standards to keep them out on the pitch a little longer, it might *just* be possible...

That's sick! O_O
I adore your scientific approach, whenever I tried to play the game more seriously, it deteriorated quite fast into "yet another battle, hurr, hurr, hurr!" playthrough. I'd like to record my runs, too, but I'm kinda lazy to dick around wqith all the stuff necessary, including the mic setup, something that I always considered pointless, until I watched some D2 run without any commentary and it felt like a lullaby.

Since our kids are in a Hysteria-19 isolation until Sunday, it seems like I got a time for yet another run tonight! I'm going to try a bit different core this time, moreover I'd like to omit the anti-inf, anti-cav today, so I expect a completely dubious result, because testing is best done when you randomly change all the settings without taking consideration of any variables at all.

Cheers!

[moj]

Exactly my thoughts! I'd really love to know if the LA units are Panzer Genral monoliths or AOE wannabes where every man counts. If you really undergo the high speed camera testing, I'd be seriously interested in results. Alternatively, we may pester Iain or Pip, but I'm not sure that any one of them knows how the 15+ y/o game exactly works.

I'm just going to stare very hard at a one-on-one engagement at lowest speed; not sure that counts as 'testing'! If I ever harbour thoughts of actually recording an engagement and studying it repeatedly I'll know it's time to stop playing...

EDIT: but I'm going to find out what restricted/disadvantaged actually means!

Don't pester Iain or Pip. They're really busy working on Legion Arena 2: Byzantine Boogaloo.

I always heavily specialize into anti-inf, as it seems to be much more relevant in the opening scenarios (there are hardly any cavalry units except for the Gallic Scouts), and I don'r really care about anti-cav, mostly because I can draw them into the rough terrain. It's possible that I'm overdoing the anti-inf. For my next run I'll try to go without both the anti-inf and anti-cav, concentrating solely on the more alround and unambiguous skills like feint and swordsman for offense, plus endurance and I guess block for defense.

I'd give 'block' a miss: Master Block is +10 armour bonus; 300 gold of helmet alone is +6 melee / +3 ranged. Looking at my Legate, I'm not wholly convinced that the block bonus is even shown? He's armour-less and his melee armour shows as 17+0+5? The Feint and Endurance bonuses look more impressive (and tangible!). Swordsmanship is an invisible stat but feels very real (and opens up Achilles armour) and unlike armour bonuses it can't be bought with gold.

IA note on "drawing into rough" that bothers me a bit: I think that the designers were far too generous when creating the rules for terrain engagment ... maybe I'm wrong, I don't have my good ol' copy of De Bello Gallico (autographed by the author in his own blood), but I still cannot remember one single instance where the units deliberately decided to line up in a fierce stream or an icy mountain lake.

Yes, I can imagine that taking up a defensive position standing waist deep in a melt-water stream wouldn't result in peak performance. My understanding is that legionnaires usually fought as individuals in a relatively loose formation: it wasn't all shield walls and testudines*. So I'd imagine they suffered minimal 'discomfort' when fighting in rough/wooded terrain. Conversely, light infantry should be in no way restricted in open terrain; it should simply be that any opposing heavy forces are in their own comfort zone.

For a greater degree of realism (and completely ignoring gameplay/balance issues) sword-carrying heavies should have less significant penalties in the hills/rough/wood, while close formation spear/pike units should be at a *huge* disadvantage in such terrain. Re horses, I've never played with light cavalry but they appear to be just as crippled as heavy cavalry in bad terrain; in reality I'd imagine they'd be less hampered?

A couple of things that could easily be implemented without having to consider melee balance: missiles launched at targets in woods should be significantly less effective, and heavy cavalry should have a significant movement penalty through woods/hills.

*it's a decade since I've tried 'advanced formations', and I'm not sure I ever experimented with the 'square' rather than the 'wedge' but I assume it's a defensive formation for melee combat. How about Legionary/Praetorian TESTUDO MODE against archery? While in testudo mode the units would be utterly immobile and have no offensive capability, but get a huge ranged armour bonus.

I don't exactly like archers for Caudine Forks, and if I buy them, then only because I don't want to delay them any further. I realized that if ugly things happen, the archers are helpless and get destroyed in seconds. This is one another of the splashing battles, and if the auxilia cannot get/stay into the water, results are awful.

This is the only battle using that map that I set up on the central rough. Archers start in front of the auxilia and are immediately redeployed 'off the map'. If the aux split too far apart in contact then the second wave of attackers can come straight through the middle, but it's very unusual. Occasionally enemy skirmishers will target an archer unit once they've run out of ammo, but they're L1 and have all the offensive power of wet celery.

Speaking of Velites: what do you think about an idea to use a few them instead or alongside a few archers? Considering their upgrade path, there are a lot of skills that they learn but either never use or only in desperation, and I would like to know if it's possible to use them as decoy and true skirmishers, giving them pro:inf, pro:arch, block, etc., whenever a bull's eye skill isn't available. I don't like to run myAuxilia into the rain of arrows, but then again maybe it's better to simply train auxilia and archers for their particular roles, than waste money on a core pincushions.

I *never* speak of velites.

I adore your scientific approach, whenever I tried to play the game more seriously, it deteriorated quite fast into "yet another battle, hurr, hurr, hurr!" playthrough.

Yeah, once I suffer '100 casualties in what should be a 40 casualty battle' then all thoughts of 'scientific play' go out the window; it's 'line up and press GO'. It's actually quite depressing to see often pressing GO and wandering off to get a coffee has results every bit as good as one's most micro-managed battle! At Avignon that's actually my tactic: line everything up on the right and charge. Sometimes it's 15 deaths and sometimes it's 30, but no amount of highly considered play has ever really reduced those numbers. Have tried starting on the left before moving up and archering them to death but I *always* time out.

Since our kids are in a Hysteria-19 isolation until Sunday, it seems like I got a time for yet another run tonight! I'm going to try a bit different core this time, moreover I'd like to omit the anti-inf, anti-cav today, so I expect a completely dubious result, because testing is best done when you randomly change all the settings without taking consideration of any variables at all.

Ah, 'Scientific Method' in action!

I'm 100% sold on taking feint/endurance to their highest levels, followed by anti-x. And swordsman/marksman, obviously. Not quite decided upon armour penetration vs protection from, and would take some SERIOUS effort/replay to decide which was more beneficial. Get to it!

[moj]

I've found the sandbox: Conclude the War. You'll (presumably) have three or four auxilia at a wide spread of levels (my #1 guys were a L10) and different levels of feint / grades of weapon. Field a single unit and slam it up the far right scrub into the L1 boy skirmishers; you'll then be engaged by L7 lights. Repeat for all three formations. Then try doing the same up the open terrain centre, into the L5 heavies. For fun, see if you can win the battle this way with a single unit. Then come back and tell me your findings; would be interested to know if you can make any sense of it!

In later battles it's generally too much of a scrum – you don't know which unit you're actually attacking – but I had a closer look at GIANTS. Very strange... my boys are dealing out 30s and 40s with the occasional 100-and-something, and the so-called GIANTS are hitting me for a mere 10 or 11 time after time. The disintegration of your vanguard unit, so quickly that there can't be time for more than a single volley from their archers, just doesn't seem supported by the magic floating numbers.

I assume the three digit numbers are the result of achieving 'melee concussion', which comes with weapons grade and armour penetration. While damage of 100-and-something is probably a one-hit kill, it probably isn't the same as a 'critical hit'; logically a 'critical hit' doesn't have a numeric value, it's just 'lights out'? In which case, it's possible that the GIANTS are regularly achieving critical hits on my brave boys but there's no visual representation of the blow. We need the YELLOW FLOATING SKULLS OF INSTA-DEATH.

******

THE FAMOUS FIVE



Using lessons learned from the SUPER SIX – abandoning armour penetration and falces in favour of anti-x and regular weapons/armour – this was a really smooth ride. Just two defeats, each requiring just one further attempt, the final score of 1142k was very respectable given that I didn't restart any 'battles going badly', and I think I achieved my highest ever single unit / single battle kill count...



Going into Cynoscephalae the FIVE were undefeated, and 2400pts up on the SIX. Levels were 26/20/20/19/19 so I'd reached my first Achilles' Armour ridiculously early (I'm usually happy if I get one Achilles by GIANTS) but couldn't afford to buy it. All units at W5/A5 rather than SIX's W4/A5, and with anti-inf/cav skills rather than the SIX's armour penetration. The SIX had a comfortable win with 35 seconds left on the clock. What could possibly go wrong?!

What went wrong was that several of my auxilia auto-engaged one of the central enemy light infantry units but by the time they reached the spot previously occupied by said enemy, said enemy had ceased to exist. So they continued to charge off the scrub and straight into the enemy leader, setting up the big crunch melee on the open plain. Ouch. Second attempt went swimmingly (44 casualties) although I was down to 5 seconds remaining.

Second (and final) loss was Magnesia, the very next battle. Possibly 'relaxed' by the end of any IRON MAN dreams I went for the 'can opener' tactic, which is fine with a decent cavalry unit charging into the opposition archers but is never going to work with auxilia. I got chewed up and spat out in seconds. On my second attempt I went for a defensive stack from the very bottom of the left-hand woods. Saw off the sweeping attack with ease, but once that was done trying to reach the evil archers was nervewracking. Was actually a more convincing win than it felt at the time: 'just' 87 casualties (the first >50 loss battle of the campaign).

At Pydna the FIVE took 77 casualties, compared to the SIX's 45. This was the only 'big' battle where the FIVE's score was significantly worse than the SIX's without me making an obvious error. Given that the FIVE would generally be one level higher, and with marginally better equipment, I'm wondering if the difference is that the SIX would all have had 2-3 levels of armour penetration: that to take out those nasty L17 heavies you need a bit of concussion?

A rare first attempt win vs the GIANTS! Heaviest casualties yet (88) but only two units were actually broken – by this time I'd bought Grade 1 standards.

Came close to losing on time at Vercellae (8 seconds) and Siege of Alesia (3 seconds). Had a scare at Nicopolis: my highest casualties at 103. It's never a nice battle for an no missiles / no horses army; haven't stopped to properly examine the opposing infantry but rather like Pydna there are some high level heavies who are capable of *nasty* things even when operating in the rough. And the fewer units you have on the field, the more chance there is of quick 'breakages' due to missile fire. A Small Victory was messy – 96 casualties – but reading back, both the SIX and the SEVEN required multiple attempts at this one. This time around I had the benefit of everyone wearing Achilles' armour. Just how much armour did Achilles own?

Had some fun at Munda (see screen grab above) and allowed myself the luxury of multiple attempts at repeating the feat at Philippi. In 12-15 attempts before I gave up and added a second unit, my L42 auxilia were able to defeat all opposition infantry on three occasions (once unshaken!) but my legate wasn't powerful enough to beat the archers within the time limit. Equally, my hero unit was blown away having taken out less than half the opposition on the majority of attempts. It's surprising just how much variation of outcome the magic dice will produce!

Next challenge? I think a 4x aux campaign would hit several impenetrable brick walls, starting with Cynoscephalae. I could drop to 'hard' level each time I need to bypass those walls, although that kinda kills the sense of involvement. But the Praetorian AWESOME FOURSOME 2 in which I lead with anti- rather than protection skills would be interesting... I believe it will have much less reliance on 'replaying until I fluke it''.

[Aleksandr]

I'm just going to stare very hard at a one-on-one engagement at lowest speed; not sure that counts as 'testing'! If I ever harbour thoughts of actually recording an engagement and studying it repeatedly I'll know it's time to stop playing...

Hello there, my name is Aleksandr and I'd love to know how to change my old signature to a new one.

I'd give 'block' a miss: Master Block is +10 armour bonus; 300 gold of helmet alone is +6 melee / +3 ranged. Looking at my Legate, I'm not wholly convinced that the block bonus is even shown? He's armour-less and his melee armour shows as 17+0+5? The Feint and Endurance bonuses look more impressive (and tangible!). Swordsmanship is an invisible stat but feels very real (and opens up Achilles armour) and unlike armour bonuses it can't be bought with gold.

Yeah, true, even though lots of other skills are either too specialized or absolute horseradish.
I still prefer block before the pro:xyz because it's absolutely impossible to predict whom your unit will face in the remaining 30 battles. Otoh, a wasted skill is a wasted skill, and considering how there are only a few actual offensive abilites, one should definitely take anti-xyz before both pro:xyz and block.

Yes, I can imagine that taking up a defensive position standing waist deep in a melt-water stream wouldn't result in peak performance. My understanding is that legionnaires usually fought as individuals in a relatively loose formation: it wasn't all shield walls and testudines*. So I'd imagine they suffered minimal 'discomfort' when fighting in rough/wooded terrain. Conversely, light infantry should be in no way restricted in open terrain; it should simply be that any opposing heavy forces are in their own comfort zone.

Yep, that's exactly what I thought about, namely the light infantry part. They really shouldn't be limited in open terrain, it's not like they start losing balance just because there is less of a mess under their feet.

For a greater degree of realism (and completely ignoring gameplay/balance issues) sword-carrying heavies should have less significant penalties in the hills/rough/wood, while close formation spear/pike units should be at a *huge* disadvantage in such terrain. Re horses, I've never played with light cavalry but they appear to be just as crippled as heavy cavalry in bad terrain; in reality I'd imagine they'd be less hampered?

A couple of things that could easily be implemented without having to consider melee balance: missiles launched at targets in woods should be significantly less effective, and heavy cavalry should have a significant movement penalty through woods/hills.

Yes, that's another thing that always bothered me, I'm not an archery expert neither a javelin thrower recordman, but I'd bet that it's significantly harder to hit anything when there are branches blocking your line of sight and covering your target.
I do understand that for an easier and more accessible gameplay they went with a really basic division of the inf branch, but if they'd ever wanted to change that, swordsmen could definitely suffer much lesser penalty. I also think that there could have been four levels of terrain harshness, because it seems like a bit of a stretch that fighting in a river is equal to fighting in a grove.

*it's a decade since I've tried 'advanced formations', and I'm not sure I ever experimented with the 'square' rather than the 'wedge' but I assume it's a defensive formation for melee combat. How about Legionary/Praetorian TESTUDO MODE against archery? While in testudo mode the units would be utterly immobile and have no offensive capability, but get a huge ranged armour bonus.

I doubt that I ever used avanced formation in the past ten years. Contrary to the Balanced Form., these seem like a unimportant improvement moreover too late in the campaign that they'd have any impact.
Testudo sounds cool, I like the idea. It would definitely help again missile troops without being too much of a fantasy, moreover we would have access to the iconic legionary tactic.

This is the only battle using that map that I set up on the central rough. Archers start in front of the auxilia and are immediately redeployed 'off the map'. If the aux split too far apart in contact then the second wave of attackers can come straight through the middle, but it's very unusual. Occasionally enemy skirmishers will target an archer unit once they've run out of ammo, but they're L1 and have all the offensive power of wet celery.

I mostly try to hold the middle with an elite auxilia bathing, then there is a line of the worse auxilias holding the left with archers behind them. The bottom-center dirt patch is held by the remaining aux who most of the time can win; the enemy skirms are kinda annoying, they are not exactly powerful, but there are a lot of them...
Funnily enough, that's a lot of tactic for what seems to be a non-battle.

I *never* speak of velites.

I respect your emotions.

Yeah, once I suffer '100 casualties in what should be a 40 casualty battle' then all thoughts of 'scientific play' go out the window; it's 'line up and press GO'. It's actually quite depressing to see often pressing GO and wandering off to get a coffee has results every bit as good as one's most micro-managed battle! At Avignon that's actually my tactic: line everything up on the right and charge. Sometimes it's 15 deaths and sometimes it's 30, but no amount of highly considered play has ever really reduced those numbers. Have tried starting on the left before moving up and archering them to death but I *always* time out.

Yep, same here, and it's the most painful when this "hurrraaaay!" tactics wins me the battles after twenty well thought-out and well failed attempts. -_-

Ah, 'Scientific Method' in action!

I'm man of learning.
Btw i started a new run, but I didn't have that much time as I thought. But I still learned one thing, the archers-heavy core simply cannot work in a no-pins setting. I bleed fame like crazy, mostly because my weak auxilia cannot hold the lines, and the enemy at least cripples them, sometimes even breaks through and hits the archers. It's so bad that I'd restart the run, but I'm interested in result, moreover I hope that it gets much better past a certain pont in the campaign, as the fast archers should start to be really good sonn.
I went with this...:
Leg Aux Aux Arch Arch Arch Arch Aux Aux AuxCav
...and so far it stinks. But I'm not done yet!

I'm 100% sold on taking feint/endurance to their highest levels, followed by anti-x. And swordsman/marksman, obviously. Not quite decided upon armour penetration vs protection from, and would take some SERIOUS effort/replay to decide which was more beneficial. Get to it!

Idk about pene, but I feel that it shouldn't be trained to extreme, and you're right about falx, it's pointless... pun intended.

I've found the sandbox: Conclude the War. You'll (presumably) have three or four auxilia at a wide spread of levels (my #1 guys were a L10) and different levels of feint / grades of weapon. Field a single unit and slam it up the far right scrub into the L1 boy skirmishers; you'll then be engaged by L7 lights. Repeat for all three formations. Then try doing the same up the open terrain centre, into the L5 heavies. For fun, see if you can win the battle this way with a single unit. Then come back and tell me your findings; would be interested to know if you can make any sense of it!

Ha, I may spend an afternoon with this new game mode once I finish my un, this seems like an exact thing I looked for, a proxy sandbox.

In later battles it's generally too much of a scrum – you don't know which unit you're actually attacking – but I had a closer look at GIANTS. Very strange... my boys are dealing out 30s and 40s with the occasional 100-and-something, and the so-called GIANTS are hitting me for a mere 10 or 11 time after time. The disintegration of your vanguard unit, so quickly that there can't be time for more than a single volley from their archers, just doesn't seem supported by the magic floating numbers.

That's indeed weird. Did you notice it during any other battle, say End of the Dream? Could this hidden dmg be... an actual armour penetration bonus? I don't have power to rethink my core mid-run, much less redesign it, but this would surely make me reconsider my general approach. (I'm far less satisfied with the archers since I patched the game, and a working armour penetration namely on heavies could explain the spectacular results by pgeerkens.

I assume the three digit numbers are the result of achieving 'melee concussion', which comes with weapons grade and armour penetration. While damage of 100-and-something is probably a one-hit kill, it probably isn't the same as a 'critical hit'; logically a 'critical hit' doesn't have a numeric value, it's just 'lights out'? In which case, it's possible that the GIANTS are regularly achieving critical hits on my brave boys but there's no visual representation of the blow. We need the YELLOW FLOATING SKULLS OF INSTA-DEATH.

Well, then I guess that's it. Isn't there some bug that messes with melee critical hits; I do see a lot of floating arrows when my archers hit the enemy, but I never seen a single sword icon that the manual speaks of, and this could be an explanation.

******

THE FAMOUS FIVE

O_O

Using lessons learned from the SUPER SIX – abandoning armour penetration and falces in favour of anti-x and regular weapons/armour – this was a really smooth ride. Just two defeats, each requiring just one further attempt, the final score of 1142k was very respectable given that I didn't restart any 'battles going badly', and I think I achieved my highest ever single unit / single battle kill count...

That's interesting find, and the result is spectacular for such a tiny core and no-pin battles!

Going into Cynoscephalae the FIVE were undefeated, and 2400pts up on the SIX. Levels were 26/20/20/19/19 so I'd reached my first Achilles' Armour ridiculously early (I'm usually happy if I get one Achilles by GIANTS) but couldn't afford to buy it. All units at W5/A5 rather than SIX's W4/A5, and with anti-inf/cav skills rather than the SIX's armour penetration. The SIX had a comfortable win with 35 seconds left on the clock. What could possibly go wrong?!

What went wrong was that several of my auxilia auto-engaged one of the central enemy light infantry units but by the time they reached the spot previously occupied by said enemy, said enemy had ceased to exist. So they continued to charge off the scrub and straight into the enemy leader, setting up the big crunch melee on the open plain. Ouch. Second attempt went swimmingly (44 casualties) although I was down to 5 seconds remaining.

These things always drive me crazy, and it's doubly painful with auxilia who are really good at dying in the open.

Had some fun at Munda (see screen grab above) and allowed myself the luxury of multiple attempts at repeating the feat at Philippi. In 12-15 attempts before I gave up and added a second unit, my L42 auxilia were able to defeat all opposition infantry on three occasions (once unshaken!) but my legate wasn't powerful enough to beat the archers within the time limit. Equally, my hero unit was blown away having taken out less than half the opposition on the majority of attempts. It's surprising just how much variation of outcome the magic dice will produce!

Next challenge? I think a 4x aux campaign would hit several impenetrable brick walls, starting with Cynoscephalae. I could drop to 'hard' level each time I need to bypass those walls, although that kinda kills the sense of involvement. But the Praetorian AWESOME FOURSOME 2 in which I lead with anti- rather than protection skills would be interesting... I believe it will have much less reliance on 'replaying until I fluke it''.

Yeah, that result is pretty cool, and I immediatelly thought "heck, moj could be able to win the game with 4 Aux!" Idk if you'll try that, and it's hard to tell how much fun that would be, but it would definitely be your most serious skilltest so far!

I don't think that I'll have much time until Friday, but I'm halfway through the run, so maybe we'll know more in the next few days.

Cheers!

[moj]

Yes, that's another thing that always bothered me, I'm not an archery expert neither a javelin thrower recordman, but I'd bet that it's significantly harder to hit anything when there are branches blocking your line of sight and covering your target.

Then again, even L1 archers are pretty good... I’ve commanded troops in many thousands of battles, and I’ve yet to hear one report of a death down to friendly fire. Which is great, because it cuts down on all the health and safety paperwork.

I do understand that for an easier and more accessible gameplay they went with a really basic division of the inf branch, but if they'd ever wanted to change that, swordsmen could definitely suffer much lesser penalty. I also think that there could have been four levels of terrain harshness, because it seems like a bit of a stretch that fighting in a river is equal to fighting in a grove.

Yep, close vs open formation seems an obvious point of difference for heavies. As you know I don’t use any pointy boys, but from what you say they already take a lot of progression to become useful; I guess that neutering them further with ‘loss of cohesion in poor terrain’ would render them even more problematic. Still on the subject of pointy boys in particular, I’ve never felt that ‘outflank’ actually does anything: being hit from the side or back really doesn’t seem to result in enough destruction. And ‘envelop’... what the hell does that do?!

A middle level of terrain penalty would be good; as you say, dense forest is a much greater challenge than a few pebbles.

I doubt that I ever used avanced formation in the past ten years. Contrary to the Balanced Form., these seem like a unimportant improvement moreover too late in the campaign that they'd have any impact.

Inspired by the GIANTS there were a few occasions when I tried Praetorian wedges. From memory they were possibly a bit more deadly in melee, but crumbled very quickly. Would need to look at the formation’s adjustment values to know if that’s true.

I went with this...:
Leg Aux Aux Arch Arch Arch Arch Aux Aux AuxCav
...and so far it stinks. But I'm not done yet!

I don’t think legionaries are heavy enough. Hell, I don’t think Praetorians are heavy enough.

Ha, I may spend an afternoon with this new game mode once I finish my un, this seems like an exact thing I looked for, a proxy sandbox.

Would be interested to see how you get on. With regards to trying to win with a single L10 auxilia (punch into the central heavies and just sit back except to rally): both defensive and balanced formations were very similar, breaking after making 80-100 kills; in offensive formation you could be broken for 60 kills, or you could win the battle for 200 kills, with nothing in-between. Which is the kindergarten version of my attempts at Philippi with a single unit, resulting in either an ingloriously rapid death or in seeing off every infantry unit.

That's indeed weird. Did you notice it during any other battle, say End of the Dream? Could this hidden dmg be... an actual armour penetration bonus? I don't have power to rethink my core mid-run, much less redesign it, but this would surely make me reconsider my general approach. (I'm far less satisfied with the archers since I patched the game, and a working armour penetration namely on heavies could explain the spectacular results by pgeerkens.

The following screenshot actually is from End of the Dream (featuring the AWESOME FOURSOME 2, who were in fact useless - read on!). But vs the GIANTS it’s definitely the giants themselves who are killing me, whereas at EotD I think it’s the opposing archers; certainly once the archers are out of ammo, the ‘kill clock’ stops for my casualties and rapidly accelerates for their casualties.

Well, then I guess that's it. Isn't there some bug that messes with melee critical hits; I do see a lot of floating arrows when my archers hit the enemy, but I never seen a single sword icon that the manual speaks of, and this could be an explanation.

Swords, that’s it. But I think I’d prefer skulls. In short I like to think that critical hits *do* occur, but there’s no visual representation of the kill.

These things always drive me crazy, and it's doubly painful with auxilia who are really good at dying in the open.

My auxilia at Cyno were the victims of their own success: had the opposing lights held up a few seconds longer then the opposing leader would have met them on the rough before being joined by his heavies, which leads to a totally different outcome.

Yeah, that result is pretty cool, and I immediatelly thought "heck, moj could be able to win the game with 4 Aux!" Idk if you'll try that, and it's hard to tell how much fun that would be, but it would definitely be your most serious skilltest so far!

My gut feeling is that my FAMOUS FIVE were a very lucky army; if I tried exactly the same build again I think the chances of getting through the campaign with just two defeats is <1%. Four auxilia either just doesn’t have enough bodies to soak up missiles, or doesn’t have enough units to dedicate one to attacking archers, or both. And the AWESOME FOURSOME 2 experience has put me off grinding through 10+ attempts at battles...

A week or so ago I wrote "Next challenge? I think a 4x aux campaign would hit several impenetrable brick walls, starting with Cynoscephalae. I could drop to 'hard' level each time I need to bypass those walls, although that kinda kills the sense of involvement. But the Praetorian AWESOME FOURSOME 2 in which I lead with anti- rather than protection skills would be interesting... I believe it will have much less reliance on 'replaying until I fluke it''. And so...

AWESOME FOURSOME 2


“Legate Mojius Maximus’ campaign report was not well-received back in Rome”


Couldn’t win Cyno. Couldn’t get close to winning Cyno. The FOURSOME 2 were split W4/A5 and W5/A5, all with basic standard, and with a mix of expert/master anti-inf. The original FOURSOME, which eventually won the battle after several near misses, were W5/A4 and had done down the ‘protection from’ route. So the winners of Cyno had weapons at the expense of armour, but defensive skills rather than offensive skills.

Anyway... I couldn’t be bothered to play the battle another twenty times; I really don’t think that they’d have ‘got there’. Switched down to ‘hard’ to play the battle and moved on. Ditto GIANTS: now up to W5/A6 but they just crumbled, time after time. Another switch to ‘hard’.

I don’t *think* this was a case of me, the legate, performing badly on the battlefield. I believe it was simply a bad build. Of the original FOURSOME I wrote “not sure why I went down the ‘protection from’ rather than ‘anti’ route, but it just felt right.” They would only have been a few levels down either skills path by the time of Cyno, but I think this must have been the significant difference; more so than the slight change in weapon/armour balance.

Comparing FOURSOME 2 to the FAMOUS FIVE from Men in Black onwards (the point at which I sold everything and bought my first Praetorian unit) is was 2704 vs 1870 casualties, and 26730 vs 8700 heal points!

The only battles in which FOUR2 beat FAM5 in terms of heal points were the very early Thirst for Gauls and Lingering Gauls, and A Small Victory (more due to the FAM5 being ‘messy’ rather than the FOUR2 being impressive).

In terms of deaths, in the 48 battles beyond Claudine Forks, there were only 10 in which FOUR2 took the fewer casualties, and in just four of those was the improvement in double figures: Cannae, Magnesia, A Small Victory, and Nicopolis.

Cannae is interesting: W4/A4 Praetorians take 25 deaths; W5/A5 auxilia take 39. Both following the same ‘anti-x’ skill path, which the aux would obviously be further along. The disadvantage suffered by light troops in open ground really is minimal, and is nothing like as bad as the disadvantage of heavy troops forced to leave the open plains.

...and then the Praetorians marched onto Dertosa and managed to take 31 casualties there (a total which would embarrass my auxilia), 120(!) at Zama, 102 at Pydna... there are many battles where my L20+ Praetorians are *outmatched* by L17-20 enemy heavies...

Auxilia are simply the better unit for 90% of battles, and would still be the better choice even if they had the same 10pt heal cost as heavies.

I’m done with heavy infantry.

[moj]

Aleksandr? Aleksandr!?

"I doubt you could finish the campaign with five, even six, auxilia units."

"So... can the game be won with five auxilia? I reckon that with the extra money for more/quicker weapon and armour upgrades, and possibly a couple of levels of NCO and standards to keep them out on the pitch a little longer, it might *just* be possible..."

"I think a 4x aux campaign would hit several impenetrable brick walls, starting with Cynoscephalae. I could drop to 'hard' level each time I need to bypass those walls, although that kinda kills the sense of involvement."


THE FAB FOUR



First close call was Adys: won the battle for just 15 casualties, but with zero minutes on the clock. Timed out on first attempt at Illipa, but completed the second attempt with forty minutes left.

Cyno, which I'm always nervous about, was a first time win with 25 minutes left. Magnesia, another scary one, was another first time win. Discovered a new tactic: sit in trees, see off the big enemy sweep from the right, then draw back every unit to the bottom left corner. The evil archers will 'chase' you, and in doing so will advance slightly beyond their screening infantry. At which point you run like hell at them!

By GIANTS the auxilia were all W6/A6 + basic standard, and two had Achilles' armour. Regular 3x offensive charge into stream, with one unit out on left hand scrub to immediately run into their archers. Hit the river perfectly. First attempt: blown away in moments. Second attempt, without moving/changing a thing: a win for 54 casualties (which is light for an aux-only GIANTS).

Initially timed-out at Zela (unable to reach archers in time), second attempt a 25 second victory. At Africa I actually ‘bled out’ for the first time in years! Have been trying a new tactic of an offensive formation rush up the left hand side. By the time the charging cavalry realise that you’re not where they think you should be, your auxilia should be firmly entrenched on the rocks. For some reason they got hit hard on the first attempt. Second attempt was exactly the same starting positions and movement, and resulted in 32 casualties.

Had another go at the Single Aux Philippi Challenge, this time with a properly armed Legate, and won on the first run...

THE HEROES OF PHILIPPI




So, comparing the FAB FOUR with the FAMOUS FIVE:
1,143,090 points / 1582 healed casualties vs 1,142,035 points / 1793 casualties

Lost battles: Ilippa, GIANTS, Zela, Africa vs GIANTS, Magnesia (all won at second attempt; Africa could have been won with regular tactics)

Costliest battles: A Small Victory (405), Magnesia (365), Vadimo Lake (310), Cyno (305), Vercellae (285) vs Nicopolis (515), A Small Victory (480), GIANTS (440), Magnesia (435), Pydna (385)

From Arretium onwards (which for me is where the campaign really ‘starts’) the only battles in which the FOUR suffered 10+ higher losses than the FIVE were: Vadimo Lake (not sure why; should actually be lighter given only three units are ever engaged); Cyno (I guess because the archer-killers had to do some other stuff first); and Crossing The Alps (again not sure why, but it's not a battle I play close attention to).

Both the FOUR and the FIVE had the same skills paths: master endure/sword/feint + disciplined formations by L14, then two go for master anti-ele while remainder build anti-inf/cav. So differences in scoring come down to how far along the skills path each unit is, and how much more gear they're wearing/wielding. The FOUR all had Achilles armour by Aquae Sextaie, and were naturally an equipment level (or two) ‘up’ on the FIVE for most of the campaign. By the end my lowliest unit was L36; in the FIVE campaign the second best unit was L34. Makes a big difference in their 'protection from' levels.

There’s also a benefit to just having four bases to accommodate. Means you can fit more easily into small areas of rough terrain, the most obvious battle being Aggreigentum. Although late in this game I accidentally discovered ‘the overlap’: there’s a sweet spot where two units can occupy the same space! I’m assuming it’s always been there, but I’m surprised it’s taken me so long to find it.




So... is a THREE AUXETEERS run possible?

No, no it’s not. Regardless of the higher skill/equipment levels there is absolutely no way that just two auxilia could beat the enemy infantry at Cyno while the third aux nips around the back and kills the archers. Similar problem at Zela: one unit to meet the cavalry, one unit to take the archers, leaving just one unit to face the Pontic horde. Both would almost certainly be winnable without the clock, but there’s simply not enough time allocated.

There are a further half dozen or more battles where I’m pretty sure that 144 bodies just isn’t enough (or isn't enough without many, many attempts): Magnesia, Pydna, GIANTS, A Small Victory, Nicopolis for starters. The greater concentration of enemy missile fire will break them before they’re able to break through the melee.

So... will I give the THREE AUXETEERS a go?

Perhaps.

[Aleksandr]

moj, this is simply crazy... :-O

I finished my "normal" run on weekend, and it was a bit weird experience, moreover not quite satisfactory. I'm not able to write too much right now, much less play the game, and I'd also like to try the sandbox that you wrote about, so there won't be any news from me until weekend. I'm gonna reread and reconsider your last two write-ups, it's such an unbelievable result, not to mentions the really high score. You broke some of my past high-pincushion records, if you told me this year ago (heck, around last Christmas), I'd dismiss it as a fever dream, but ths is epic.

I will post a proper AAR on Friday, and I'll also share my thoughts on your incredible stuff!

Cheers!

[moj]

Thought I'd have a go at three auxilia and a scout (because 5pt heals)...

THREE MEN AND A HORSE



Bled points early on, and was 835 down on the FOUR after Lingering Gauls. Final score was 780 down, so actually a 'win' over the last 55 battles. The scouts saw a fair bit of action, and as with all cavalry I found them hugely frustrating: attacking what appeared to be the 'same' unit could result in a lossless victory or a crushing defeat; they're too bloody twitchy and liable to plough into enemy lines; and I *cannot* use disengage - they'll break for a few seconds, retreat a short distance, then plunge back in again.

Previous thoughts on a three auxilia attempt:

Regardless of the higher skill/equipment levels there is absolutely no way that just two auxilia could beat the enemy infantry at Cyno while the third aux nips around the back and kills the archers. Similar problem at Zela: one unit to meet the cavalry, one unit to take the archers, leaving just one unit to face the Pontic horde. Both would almost certainly be winnable without the clock, but there’s simply not enough time allocated.

There are a further half dozen or more battles where I’m pretty sure that 144 bodies just isn’t enough (or isn't enough without many, many attempts): Magnesia, Pydna, GIANTS, A Small Victory, Nicopolis for starters. The greater concentration of enemy missile fire will break them before they’re able to break through the melee.

Well... battle by battle...

Cyno: Utterly bizarre first time victory. The three aux (W6/A6, same as the FOUR but one with Achilles) did my regular 'walk from bottom centre'. Pointed scouts to top left but they decided to do a 90º turn and engage the heavy cavalry and were routed having made just seven kills. Then all of a sudden the battle was firmly on the central rough, and all enemy infantry and cavalry were engaged with two of my auxilia, and the third auxilia was standing there doing nothing. I steered it right and charged the archers. Won with over an hour remaining and suffered just 20 auxilia casualties in total. Inexplicable, and I'm sure unrepeatable. Which is a shame, because it needs to be repeated for a 'three auxilia only' (3AO) victory!

Magnesia: Fought in the woods; tried a three-sided sneak-around with the scouts to reach the archers, but they got gobbled by enemy lights before they could rout their target. Auxilia charge got there and it was another unexpectedly comfortable win with 34 auxilia casualties. Suggests a 3AO army should be able to survive.

Pydna: Scouts had *just* enough to rout the top right Archers of Doom before themselves being routed, and the infantry battle was relatively comfortable with 34 casualties. I still have a sneaking feeling that a 3AO win will be extremely difficult: those archers have to be taken out, and the unit that's assigned to the job can easily be shaken by the time they get there, and have to fight their way through at least one unit of light infantry too.

GIANTS: Traditional 'paddling auxilia and cavalry hit archers from left'. Effective kill by the scouts, but 45 auxilia losses (all of whom were wearing Achilles' armour). An incredibly tough battle for a 3AO army if one of the three aux has to hit the archers.

A Small Victory and Nicopolis: 51 and 53 casualties respectively, with minimal scout involvement. Neither battle should be a problem for a 3AO army.

Zela: On first attempt my hero aux were broken by the enemy cavalry column; which is rare. On second attempt all went perfectly: scouts (in their final W8/A3, Achilles, Ajax form) took out both enemy archers cleanly, and it was a win with 25 minutes left. By this time I had nothing left to spend money on; without the scouts to equip it might be possible to beef up the Legate to the point were he can rout at least one of the archers, but a 3AO battle is likely to time out multiple times before victory.

I believe the above 'identified choke points' were all won first time, with the exception of Zela. Etruscan Treachery and Adys took two and four attempts respectively, but I'm confident that a 3AO army can win both with 'micro-tweaking'. Vercellae took three goes but I won (with one minute on the clock!) without deploying the scouts.

I'm going to have a go at the BRIO TRIO.

Wish me luck!

[moj]

THE BRIO TRIO



Hell yeah!

Looking at the previously identified Scary Battles...

Cyno: the 'inexplicable, and I'm sure unrepeatable' victory was repeated first time when one auxilia was permitted to waltz up the field unmolested, for 32 casualties, with 63 minutes left.

Magnesia: I'd not realised that the enemy screen in front of the archers was on a long hold, because I usually play higher up in the left hand woods and trigger them. Playing as deep in the lefthand corner as possible, the boys saw off the charging elephants, heavy cavalry, and heavy infantry for four casualties. Then sat back, waited until the remainder of the enemy woke up and charged, and performed an auxilia sneak into the archers. 38 casualties in total.

Pydna: In the first attempt I tried rushing the bastard archers, but failed dismally (routed the archers but was in open ground and got crushed; second aux also drawn from trees). I don't think it's possible to keep infantry in that very narrow band of woods. Second attempt: set up on central rough and slammed my legate into the archers. He was able to tie them up for almost the entirety of the battle. 44 casualties.

GIANTS: All auxilia were W6/A7 with Achilles and at least GM1 anti-inf. First attempt failed, quickly. Second attempt didn't. Seemed fairly comfortable, although two units were shaken and were running out of 'rally boost'. 57 casualties. I actually didn't buy a standard/banner throughout the whole campaign.

Zela: Surprisingly easy first time win with 32 minutes to spare. One aux was able to hold the ridge while another snuffed out the two archers. 38 casualties.

Vercellae took two attempts to beat the clock but second attempt had a full 20 minutes remaining. Adys was a 'zero minutes remaining' first timer; none of the other timed battles caused problems.

Capped it off with a first time single hero unit win at Philippi (something I didn't get close to achieving in 10+ attempts with the Three Men and a Horse hero unit, for some reason).

So... it took me 71 battles to complete the 68 battle campaign. Pydna, GIANTS and Vercellae were the only battles which required a second attempt following an defeat. I wasn't playing strict 'iron man' rules, ie there were probably 8-10 times where I restarted in early battle because I knew I wasn't positioned correctly, but I *did* accept a few messy scores from 'battles which are set up correctly but for some reason have turned bad', which is my regular style of play.

The MAGNIFICENT SEVEN scored 1,132k, the SUPER SIX were 1,138k; the FAMOUS FIVE broke 1,142k (just), the FAB FOUR snuck over the 1,143k mark, and the BRIO TRIO reached 1,144,365. Which is within 500 points of my best (non save-scummed) '3 aux / 4 arch / 1 cav' score, and my brave lads earned every single kill mano a mano. None of this archery nonsense: we could see the whites of their eyes.

So it looks as though three units is the sweet spot where rapid advancement and plenty of cash maximise scoring. After all, you can't win and hence 'score' a battle in which you suffer 80 casualties if your army is so small that it'll break before that point (my closest call was Nicopolis with 69 casualties, but remember I had no 'morale enhancement'). But no, I won't be attempting a two auxilia run!

Given that I appear to have found winning tactics for both Cyno and Magnesia, and possibly also for Pydna and Zela, I'm starting to wonder in a BRIO TRIO is actually IRON MANable. Would certainly take a sizeable chunk of luck – the aforementioned four battles/tactics might prove to be no better than 50/50 chances; Vercellae and Adys can both be screwed up even with four or more auxilia; I believe GIANTS is won and lost by the random number generator. But it would be nice to have a proper go at it, while seeing if I can find another 500pts to set my 'honest' high score.




Special bonus content: Miracle at Magnesia!