he's got freakin' Santa Claus leading his army! The bastard.

He's a badass motha even though he's in his sixties by now And his successor's even better. looks like Minsc with hair.

Hehe...nice pics. I've started my game with the Britons btw...so far nothing shocking. I conquered Ireland. (rebel territory) They starts with the British isles+a foothold on the European mainland, but I must say the fact that its an island makes me feel very safe. I'm purely investing in trade and happines on the isles, while I'm stocking my european foothold full of troops. And family members.

For anyone who played other barbarians, did they have a 'witch' retinue as well? (increased chance of having children) Cos boy, those Brits are potent bastards....I'm only playing a few years and I've got 2 or 3 more family members than I have cities already, plus just about every one of them seems to have the witch trait. Makes a nice change from the erh, questionable sexualities of Roman and Greek commanders.

yea, my germanic people breed like rabbits. I wasn't paying attention to all the marriages and growing ups, and had like 5 family members that got kicked out of the main city due to lack of space for units. I'm thinkin of a 20 unit army made of family members, riding around wiping out rebels or something. Maybe drop singles into cities here and there, just to make my people happier.

btw, my game is dragging on. I'm losing momentum thanks to unhappy populaces and too many people. My income is negative. I've pulled my troops out of every city that is not happy (too big and costly to control)...then I wait for it to go rebel and put it under siege with those same troops. Next 2-3 turns I should be start taking the cities back. And I'll be decimating those bastards. Should give me the cash I need to continue my trek of world domination.

btw, Italy is nearly mine. Two more cities, one of which is about to fall. The brutii are sending armies of 500 against my armies of 2000-3000. It won't be much longer.

hehe...i did a similar thing once, with the family members-only armies. It was a disaster...I lost like 5 family members in one rebel fight. So I suggest you drop some off here and there yeah...

I've just been pwned by the gauls I've got some problems retraining (i'm a retraining-bitch) and recruiting because of low populaces, so I was mostly moving around one and the same army on the European mainland. Now, I sent it to assist fending off an attack on one of my 2 cities on the mainland, succeeded, garrisoned the entire army in the city in order to retrain them. (the other cities are too low on population )of course, next turn an army of 3000 freaking gauls besieges the settlement. So I'm left with a battered army in a poorly walled city, with 3 family members (chariots, move around really badly inside cities) and 2 units of missile chariots (idem to family members).

I decided to make an attack first, trying to get my chariots outside my walls and pick off some parts of their army...I moved the chariots out through the east gate, and the biggest part of their army moves there as well but doesn't attack, so I start shooting some of their swordsmen etc. Now, because the biggest part of the army was on the east side there were only some 3-4 infantry cohorts plus his general left in front of the main (North) gate. I break out with infantry there and engage them: everything looks a lot brighter suddenly, if I manage to kill their general and rout these cohorts I can sandwich the part that moved to the eastern gate! But...the gallic swordsmen, warbands and naked fanatics in the North fought like CRAZY. It was ridiculous...I heavily outnumbered them, brought them down from 200 to like 6 and the assholes didn't rout...:O instead they were owning my infantry, who went running back into the camp jamming the gates (sigh). I decided to focus ALL my infantry there on the enemy general and after some fighting I take him down. I'm convinced that the Gallic infantry that was fighting so bravely to the death would now rout, seeing their general's candle blown out 20 meters from them. But noooo, they kept on fighting and cost me another good part of men. They must have been MAD experienced. Comes down to it that after that debacle my infantry had been thinned out too much to engange the remaining troops, so I withdrew inside the walls with everything I had, drawing the battle.

Having no reinforcements to engage the still huge enemy army I decide to send down a diplomat (it would take him two turns to get there) and attempt to bribe the now general-less army with a good 6k I had saved up. Seemed like a plan, but when the diplomat is halfway the Gallic army attacks (with reinforcements, too) with 4-5 battering rams from different directions. And as you well know wooden pallisades can be breached everywhere with a ram. The result: 3 family members dead, my only real army (with some nice XP) slaughtered, and my other city on the European mainland besieged by another Gallic band in the same turn. But on the bright side; i'll prolly be able to bribe the ones besieging the other city. But still, it was a freaking nightmare. That should teach me from taking along 2 family members by accident. Homelands are secure tho, and I've finally stopped making huge financial losses in London. And I'm allied to the Germans, Brutii and Julii, basically just about anyone on the other side of the Gauls. Maybe I'll urge them to attack them to buy me some time on my front.


Btw, stupid thing: I forgot to re-assign the sreenie button after re-instaling so no pics, yet. Too bad cos I had some nice ones from the historical battles. I've finally won the Gergovia battle (was epic shit) won the following one or two (forgot) battles easily, but now I'm stuck at Carrhae which is plain ridiculous.

The Gallic experience sounds familiar. Especially the part where they just KEEP throwing huge armies at you as if it's nothing. I too am struggling in my Gallic wars (BTW, are you playing on Hard finally Rinox? ) The Brittons are an added aggravation factor. I really need to get rid of that foothold on the continent of theirs, because every time I'm ready to invade the Gallic homelands the Brits besiege a city so my army has to turn around to take care of them. On the Eastern front (Germans ALWAYS have two fronts, one against the French and the Brits and one against the Russians, commie bastards, in this case personified by the Dacians) my Faction leader is on a personal incredibly heroic crusade to eradicate the Dacians from the map with some three units that are now less than half their original size. His tactic consists of standing there and drawing the ennemies onto him. And slaughtering them of course. He isn't known as Vannius the Defender for nothing you know The problem is that he just has no chance in hell of reinforcements and that there's no money for mercenaries either...

To be continued...

lol, well, my germanic campaign continues. I allowed a large number of my cities to revolt so I could take them back and eradicate the populace (thereby making money) and it's been mostly a success. I'm finally not in the red any more, but I mildly miscalculated a few cities and had some armies wiped the hell out. I've had some MAJOR defeats...but, on a positive note, it wipes out a large garrison of useless troops and reduces my overhead costs. heheh. Rome revolted and is held by rebels now. :p I have Scipii invading from Spain, and the Brutii and amassing large numbers of pitiful armies (lol, like 10 armies, but maybe 2-3 units per army, so easy pickings). I'm about to ride my 20-person family army around the map to drop them off as governors and need to finish taking back rebel lands. I'm also poised to invade Spain (again). And the Dacians are being bastards...I may have to put some pain into them as well.

Sounds like everyone's having fun. Personally I found that I had to adapt to the barbarian style of fighting...it's really very different from the Romans or the Seleceuds. Losing a lot of men is 'normal', whereas the seleceuds for example relied on smaller elite troops. It's a different philosophy, I guess. The fact that the British elite infantry troops (chosen swordsmens) require only one turn to produce and aren't all that expensive is a testimony to that.

Blah, anyway...been squashing the gauls somewhat, but I'm struggling in terms of population and finances. You can't assemble an army without recruits and money, obviously. Still breaking my head over Carrhae in the historical battles; I came very close once but no beef.

@Lacessit: I only play on hard when the game is really too easy, or when I'm out of new gaming material. None of which apply here.

EDIT: oh, and fuck this: I can't produce freaking British head hurlers!! they're in the game (custom battles for example you can use them) but I can't seem to produce them...that sucks...they're awesome.

When I was playing Germania, I didn't lose large numbers of troops. I had to play real smart, but I managed to not die in droves. That fact no really elite units were available yet helped...by the time people started fielding high-end cavalry and archers, I had the population base to mass-produce units.

Definetely a problem with population when I started, though. Thankfully that's behind me now. You pretty much need to either fortify and build as many population-increasing structures as possible, or go all out and try to take as many enemy cities as possible.

Mm, tnx for the advice...I've already been lowering taxes everywhere in order to increse pop. growth and finally some cities are expanding. The good thing is that once they reach a certain size the % makes them grow exponential, obviously. And I conquered the Gallic capital which was literally dead in the middle of my mainland provinces, which made for a major boost in trade routes.

Now I'll keep an eye out for the population structures. And conquer cities, of course. Does anyone know if the unit upkeep cost is tied to the city of production, or if it is taken from your general budget each turn? Because of the above problems only my capital is big and well-structured enough to produce elite troops en masse, so I'm constantly spewing out units and distributing them over my European cities. And the loss it makes each turn is getting higher and higher. (about -3080 by now) The other cities, however, are fine. So, anyone have an idea? It certainly looks like it's city-dependant.


Still bummed that i don't have any head-hurlers.

the amount of cash a city spends on military maintenance is based off its relative population. IE, large population centers pay a large % of the upkeep cost. Which is another problem with the economic models. Between corruption and that, a large city seems impossible to turn a profit.

Aaah...that explains a LOT, as my capital is my only really big city. Thank you.

Weird, the bastards are taking the mickey out of my otherwise ass-kicking axemen. Maybe you should be looking at temples, they allow me a lot of unique units with the Germans...

Ah..yes, I've been building temples that add to happiness more than anything else on the British isles, thinking that I wouldn't have anyone attacking me there. (which hasn't happened, either) And the mainland bases are too small to build hi-tech (if you can call hurling heads that )units...i'll just tear down a temple in a big city and replace it then. Good call, tnx.

Might be another building too, like my night stalkers come from the Bardic Circle. Just make sure you've built every kind of building at least once.