Heh, seems like you've got your hands full.

I'm close to victory, only need to capture 4 cities, which will be pretty easy. If i got to 50 cities, what happens? Do i unlock things, get nice cinematics, have a comet destroy the map?

you get a cinematic, and once you beat it you unlock many other factions to play as.

Well the Julii is probably pissed off now, i took all their huge cities, they still have about 10 or 15 cities left but they are towns and half developed cities. So their military force is crippled.

I made a move against scipii too, attacked them from behind and took 2 cities. Bad news is that egypt flanked me, they are not at the gates yet but he is moving a 2k army my way, theres a good possibility that i will loose a city to them. But its not big problem coz i could take three of his from the other side.

I was wondering: do you get anything for capturing the whole world? Just asking since i'm very close to victory and i don't know if it's worth continuing my campaign. Probably not i guess.

Scipii are against the ropes, they're down to 7 cities, 3 of them without a decent garisson and they can't even send reinforcements since i control the seas. And then some cities in Africa, where all what's left of their armies are waiting to make a final stand i guess. I just destroyed 2 of their armies when they wanted to break a siege and i intercepted another army with reinforcements and killed their faction heir.

I'm just happy i got Egypt to become my ally before attacking the other roman families. I haven't seen them do a lot lately, but at least i'm not getting attacked. Focussing on 2 enemies is enough for me.

I'll probably give Barbarian Invasion a go after i finish this game.

Try playing as the Western Roman Empire in BI It's probably the hardest campaign in RTW+BI.

J, apart from a message saying "you are now master of the entire known world, your empire knows no end" etc., there is no real reward for conquering the entire world.

I think Derf did it once!

today is one of the saturdays where i just have bags of time. love it.

i spent some time to recap on my very very old rome total war campaign (with RTR mod) and to be honest i can only play about 5 turns per day because it is very exhausting. When things start to get big-scale you encounter lots and lots of challenges.

Anyway, here is what i spent time on. a summary of my campaign at the moment...

Cool stuff Sounds pretty epic too.

Just a few remarks tho:

- why not try and conquer the islands near Spain and Italy like Sardinia and Corsica earlier on? I can't imagine them being towers of defence or anything. If necessary, have one the armies you ship over to Africa (or back) make a stop there and take over the place. Should be easy with a full stack. The isles in the mediterranean are crucial to any solid Roman economy...especially if you are strong on the coastlines on the North and South (which you are).

- not that I doubt the quality of Roman infantry, but what do you do against factions that rely on hoplites or missile cavalry? Wouldn't they sap your strength significantly if they show up with an army of about equal size?

- i don't know how the Gyppos are in RTR, but one army on guard duty seems a little weak. I mean, knowing them, there's a chance they'll come marching out of the desert with 5 full stacks. Not that you shouldn't be able to hold them off with good walls and a lot of roman infantry, but still. They might smoke you out.

- islands ...
I did early on. But the mod enables the AI to invade by sea, which caught me by surprise. I hear what youre saying but those islands arent really a military threat at the moment. Im spread fairly thin everywhere except Gaul now, so i cant afford to pull an army of the front to grab some unthreatening islands.

- roman infantry...
Hoplites aren't a problem. Remember, historically, Roman infantry pwned hoplite formations because the roman infantry units were very flexible, organised and mobile in comparison to the phalanx. All i need to do is use the checkerboard formation on uneven ground and the phalanx will fragment (just like history), then it's a matter of committing the phalanx to face 1 unit, while another unit flanks it. Oh and before that, a healthy volley of pila helps too.

- Gyppos ...
We're allied. And it's a fairly reliable alliance. The seleucids took the Nile delta from them and weve been buddies ever since.

Played a little bit more the other day and made VERY good progress in Gaul (as imagined). I have 3 armies totally steamrolling through that place with zero problems. I cant wait to return them back to Italy, retrain them and then send them off on a new campaign. Maybe 2 on the turkish border and 1 on island-grabbing duty.

Does RTR fix the insane diplomacy AI? Like when you've been allies with a nation for 200 years, gifted them cash from time to time, helped them out in battle and have a 'very trustworthy' rep, and they for some retarded reason decided to break the alliance by sending an army of 2 cohorts of peasants to attackyour epic walled city? THAT kind of insane.

I sure hope they fix that for Empire...cause I can barely ever play really diplomatic. The Indian capmpaign in Medieval : Kingdoms came close to purely diplomatic victory, but I had to crack some skulls towards the end.

And what about missile cavalry? Or even shock cavalry like elephants and cataphracts? Roman infantry may be strong but they're no spearmen pur sang. Is that perhaps the reason why you're not too keen on tackling the Seleceuds yet?

- RTR diplomacy...
Not sure about long term diplomacy being fixed. i havent gotten that far yet. And to be honest i prefer to keep myself to myself. Nothing stupid has happened yet though.

- missile cav, elephants, cataphracts
Ive so far seen very few of those so i cant say theyve been a problem. If/when i enter turkey that may change.

Poonage...

Thanks to autoresolve im able to make progress.

My african and gaulish campaigns finished and I was able to stack up alot of armies on the turkish border and deliver a pasting.

I now have 22 full stack armies of about 3000 legionaries, which means around 66,000 legionaries . About two thirds of which are in turkey.

Would it be great to have 1 battle with ALL of those units against ALL seleucid units? 66,000 vs probably 150,000 mixed units

Wtf, are you on 24/24 RTR duty or something? Still, nice work! How are the Selecued armies fighting?

I think it's about time you force the Egyptians into being vassals

I just spent about 4 hours on it total in 2 sessions since about 6 months ago. Probably gonna play another hour or two today.

The fighting in Turkey is more a numbers game. The seleucids recruit fast and have loads of units, but they are now no longer stacked in 1 place. Autoresolve is fighting for me since it would absolutely takes bloody ages fo fight 5 manual battles each turn.

Yeah point taken on the egyptians ... but my style is more naiive (sp?). I prefer to pretend we're friends, then once they make a wrong move, i crush them to shit.

Kinda like what happened to the Gauls. I was at peace with them but their ships and territory was disrupting the flow of troops to my fronts ... so they got "punished" for that.

That's probably my downfall with these games. I love micromanaging the tactical combat. Which makes the freakin' game take for freakin' ever. But I'm a better general than the computer is. Usually.

Yeah i don't think i've automanaged a lot of fights either. Maybe a few captures of cities where i had just beaten down the whole army and then there were only like 30 soldiers left.

If my soldiers die, i'll be the one who led them to victory, not the computer. AI manages to kill way too many of your soldiers as well.