It's the price you pay for being an unruly and fight-orientated culture Satis, it's normal.

My screenies are coming up, I'm about starting to kick ass.

I've installed the 1.2 patch, and I must say that te game has improved noticeably thanks to it. With one of the more obvious differences being that family members now don't necessarily are born in your capital city anymore...they are born in the same city as their father, which makes a WHOLE lot more sense and saves on having family members walk around for 3 years of their life just to reach a city. Here's a list of other improvements made...and these are just the more important ones.

Battles

•Fixed missile collision code to reduce friendly fire casualties
•Reinforcement AI – AI Generals are now less suicidal (lol)
•Fixed phalanx pursuit bug
•Fixed multiple groups converging on a single point when ordered to move
•Player can now select between drip-fed and AI controlled reinforcements before a battle
•Custom battles in both single player and multiplayer involving multiple
armies of the same faction are now supported. Armies of the same faction must all be on the same team.
•Allowed troops defending a city with no walls to leave the wall boundary
•Allowed men in siege towers to panic to stop men 'fighting to the death'
becoming stuck in an inaccessible place.
•Chariots carrying an officer or the general now get the appropriate health bonus
•Stopped men on bridges from panicking (thus leading to mass extinctions).
•Fixed armies withdrawing from an ambush on the battlefield where they couldn't escape the battlefield.
•You can now see settlements, wonders, ships on adjacent tiles when
going down to the battlefield (pretty neat)
•Increased the fatigue combat penalties by 50% to make them more
noticeable
•Fixed amok elephants not killing anyone after they went into a path following individuals.
•Numerous fixes to the testudo formation, particularly movement in cities, colliding with other testudos and getting stuck in the reform task
•General Improvements to unit movement when grouped.
•Fixed bug in locomotion, which was leading to men sometimes being trapped in the testudo state.
•Fixed path finding not taking constrictions (e.g. bridges) into account when moving to points within the constriction in some cases. (Usually manifested as people running into the river when asked to attack a unit standing on a bridge).
•Allowed troops defending the plaza to leave the plaza if being shot at
•Stopped elephants/chariots and cavalry running into rivers in an attempt to reach their combat target
•Units with shields can now effectively shield themselves when marching.


Sieges

•Fixed siege towers colliding (producing a rattling behaviour), when dragged out as close as possible then ordered to move.
•Fixed a crash when a unit tries to pick up ladders in deployment but doesn't have enough men in unit.
•Fixed siege towers creating arrows during deployment when in range and set to fire-at-will, which would all fly forwards in one huge volley when you started the battle


Campaign Map

•The Campaign Map camera movement has been made considerably smoother with the addition of inertia to remove camera judder. This option can be switched on and off in the preferences.txt file by changing the value of CAMPAIGN_MAP_CAMERA_SMOOTHING between TRUE and FALSE.
•Added 'show character details' button to coming of age message
•When accepting a marriage proposal, a marriage message is generated with a 'Show character details' button, so the character can be located
•You can now sally out against a besieging army only once per turn
•Heirs are chosen through their influence rather than their
management or command skills
•Decreased movement cost for deep sea, hence an increase in movement per turn
•Brigands now more active - they will move around more often
•Brigands now have the option of attempting to conquer human-controlled settlements on difficulty levels hard and very hard
•Reinforcements will now only be available in a sally battle outside a settlement, if the army that is attacked is the besieging army
•Fixed crash bug when doing a multi turn action on a fort or port which
then disappears before the action is finished
•Watchtowers were not using their height advantage to see over obstacles and terrain
•Limited the effect of squalor on public order to 100% max (thankgod)
•Rebalanced elephants and chariots in auto-resolve, they were hugely undervalued
•Improved behavior of the auto-resolve on hard and very hard
•Increased frequency of ambushes
•Losing or drawing army withdrawing now reforms with all it's routed units as long as there are enough soldiers to reform the army
•Assassinating generals is much more difficult if his army has a substantial number of men
•Slightly increased movement extends for agents
•Can now disband units in enemy territories
•Map information diplomacy costs increased in line with the amount of information received
•Post Marius upgraded bodyguard units are now working
•Subterfuge AI now much more active
•Sally battles are now only available against a besieging army rather than just an adjacency check
•Fixed many trait and ancillary issues
•Battlefield now shows adjacent settlements, forts, wonders, ships and ports
•Extermination cash reward reduced (awwwwh)
•Bribing settlements and characters is now a transgression
•Fixed bug where spies in an enemy settlement were getting killed when the settlement changed hands

Naval

•Navies are now more likely to blockade enemy ports (believe me, a LOT more likely)
•Navies will consider moving to reinforce a navy that is transporting troops, as long as the moving navy has not already moved that turn, and can reach the transporting navy within one single turn
•Navies transporting passengers will no longer consider merging with other navies
•Fixed bug that was preventing navies from merging (hence lots of little
ships in version 1.0)
•Fleets may split into smaller fleets if the faction doesn't have enough
individual navies to satisfy all transport requirements
•Added contiguous coastlines to help with long range naval pathfinding
•Fixed admirals not getting command stars after battle


Characters/Agents

•Fixed bribery attribute so that it increases your chance of bribing
rather than reducing it.
•You cannot bribe a family member back after another faction has bribed them. He is disinherited from any of
his former factions
•Cannot bribe fellow Romans anymore whilst you're allied
•Bribery costs increased to double and also according to the wealth of the briber
•Bribery of a captain with agents and incompatible units was disbanding the agents with the army. Now fixed.
•Infiltrated spies remain when a settlement changes hands
•Maximum chance of assassination and sabotage is changed from 100% to 95%
to stop assassins assassinating everything.
•Characters can now be cured of the plague when they are not in a settlement
•Character plague duration has been reduced from 8 to 5 turns
•Command stars will not be assigned in battle when the odds are overwhelming in favor of the winner and vice versa for the loser
•Fixed transgression bug when making small value deals


Events

•Birthplace, marriages, and adoptions can be at other settlements now, not just capital. New characters will appear in the settlement where their father (or father in law in the case of marriage, and adopted-father in the case of adoption) is garrisoned (w0000t)
•Tweaked the age of marriage candidates so that you get less old suitors and overly young suitors.
•Marius is now more likely to happen later on in the game
•All future disaster events and historical events were being erased when a save game was loaded up. This is now fixed

AI

•Improved the AI unit re-training behavior
•Tweaked the AI subterfuge so that assassination missions, sabotage
missions, infiltration missions are actually carried out. Is now less
cautious with lower ranked assassins and spies.
•Tweaked the AI tax level setting code (also affects player-assist)
•Fixed the player-assist AI updating the tax policy when part or all of the
garrison is moved out of a settlement
•Fixed the AI not attacking enemy controlled forts in its territory
•Changes to campaign AI strength evaluation
•Improved likelihood of AI sallying
•Allowed AI armies to move again after executing an attack
•Increased AI target evaluation of provinces which contain Wonders
•Changed campaign AI production behavior to make it more likely that elephants and Artillery are produced
•Fixed protectorate behavior (Tribute and not attacking)
•Fixed other Romans attacking your protectorates
•Fixed bug stopping the AI defending fords in river battles
•Reinforcement AI – AI Generals are now less suicidal





So...on the whole this means:

->more logical game events
->exploits being reduced (eg only one sally allowed, if you ahd wardogs you could theoretically sally 4-5 times because they "regenerated" every time)
->diplomacy/subterfuge tweaked and nerfed. Both making yours less effective and the Ai's smarter.


The Ai has become noticeably smarter since I installed the patched, which is nice. I'll continue in another post because this one's alreayd huge.

K, now for my REAL post. I've expanded over France and Spain, wiped out the Gauls and basically only am bothered by Germania anymore. And the Julii, on the sea and in my ports. The Romans have started fighting but I managed to remain friends with the Scipii so I'm 'safe' to the South. I even used their lands as a way of getting what I want, but more about that later.

There are quite a few towns with good infrastructure in my realm already, and I'm packing family members...but! I'm in the Satis-situation, ie making huge losses. So I can't produce, retrain or train. Not sure how I'm gonna solve this, maybe by becoming friends with nearby nations and trade with them. Give them a region or two. bleh.

The use of Scipii land that I mentioned was to reach the Egyptians. I assembled an elite army of chosen swordsmen, head hurlers and chariots (both missile and heavy) and marched it from Gibraltar to Memphis, all the way over Scipii territory, took me quite a few turns. But my armies of Briton barbarians came suddenly marching straight out of the desert towards the Egyptian capital, it was glorious. I conquered it, and now took Alexandria as well...I've established quite a foothold in the Nile delta already. And for some freaking reason the Julii appeared there with an army or two as well, having no settlements anywhere near. So now the Briton barbarian dynasties are defending Memphis and Alexandria against the invading Egyptian and Roman hordes, lol. It's priceless. And best of it all is that the army's 4 mad experienced missile chariots are raping the egyptians, who's laughing now huh? Sweet revenge for all those frustrating battles.

They're surprisingly easy to own with these armies...the barbarian super-morale usually turns the battles around in no time. And the only thing that could possibly give them an advantage (phalanxes) are skillfully take care of by head hurlers. 2 salvos are enough to make them run. Yes, it's good to be an elephant-riding barbarian in Egypt.

here are some pics

Post nr. 3 (yeah yeah, I needed an extra post anyhoo for these pics so I kept the accompanying rant for this post)

I fought one of the most epic battles yet against Germania, a while ago...it was insane. A full-scale barbarian rumble in the woods, me packing 2 untis of wardogs, 2 of druids, 1 unit heavy chariots (useless in the woods) and a good few chosen swordsmen. The enemy had TONS of spear warbands, accompanied by screeching women, axemen, archers warbands and chosen axemen. (god I hate those bastards) The ratio of men was 1200 vs. 3700.

I was getting ready to be massacred; but I won the damn battle. Mostly thanks to the druids, I think. They were on a hilltop just outside of the forest chanting, with my chosen swordsmen near them. I was constantly fearing the swordsmen would rout, but nope, it was the enemy that routed fairly quickly, to my great joy. It was only when I thought victory to be certain and lost sight of parts of the battlefields that things got scary: a bunch of chosen axemen had decided to attack my druids so I had to stop them chanting for a while and most of my army routed, except for one unit of swordsmen that was WAY off. The druids owned the exhausted few axemen and continued chanting, but a few spear warbands (3) that returned after routing where steadily walking towards them. The 20-30 swordsmen that were left could attack them in the back but were exhausted and far away so only approached very slowly...I had nothing left but a few wardog trainers behind the druids so I sent those in to keep the spear phalanxes busy for a sex; and guess what: they actually routed one of the phalanxes, head on. LOL. It was awesome, and extremely funny. Then the swordsmen arrived an routed the last 2 phalanxes, and the battle was mine. Took about 25 minutes, too. Here are the pics!

As you already know Rinox, I had the exact same experience around the same time as you. My straggling main force of Germans were fiercely attacked by an enemy outnumbering them at least 2 to 1. So I saved my game before I was going to retreat and then thought "Ah what the hell, I'll take the fuckers on."

What ensued was Slaughter. And Mayhem. Their 1700 men went for my 900 with all the rabid determination that is part of the Brittish heritage (I'm definintely playing those guys sooner or later). We were in woods , so very soon the battle became frantic and fragmented. I was desperately trying to remain in control and steer my troops into the right direction.
After about 15 minutes of slashing and killing both armies were seriously bled dry. Most of mine and the enemy's troops were either killed or had routed. I had two units of archers left (may I nominate the German chosen archer warband as one of the best ranged units in the game?) and two units of spears. The enemy had similar forces, but still outnumbered me. Then my spears were raped in the side while they were out of phalanx formation by a remaining Brit cavalry unit. All of a sudden, things looked grim again. But my archers, bless the little buggers, ripped the remaining enemy infantry apart and even stood up to some serious melee when needed. I won. I was left with about 500 men (most of them I recovered from routed units)

So there I am, celebrating my unlikely succes with the amusing and cheerful victory-tune you get with barbarian factions when all of a sudden *Bam* another little blue guy swings a sword at me! Same turn! I remember thinking: "No way, these guys are exagerating", but no, another superior force of Brits attacks my heroes. Some 650 frenzied tattooed headhunters are the opposition. This time, victory is easier for me. My archers are incredibly veteran by now and are able to take out the head hurlers before they get to my lines. Still, my army suffers pretty badly. I'm down to some 350 men.

"So that was that" I think "They threw everything at me but the kitchen sink." Which was the exact moment they threw the kitchen sink at me. A THIRD Brittish army of about 300 men attacks. Luckily it is obvious why they left this attack till the last. Because it was shite. I defeated them as well. Sweet sweet swéét victory was mine. I'd lost my general in the first battle, but then, who cares.

In the heat of the moment, I forgot to take screens

Those three battles DID break Brittish power on the mainland though. Shortly after, the remaining grizzled German veterans (I can only think of them like that) took the Brittish city in Belgica.

I *do* have screens of some of the nice stuff that happened after the Great Battles of Belgica. I'll post those later tonight.

So, Screenie-time. After a battle I won under the command of a captain, I got the message in screenie 1 all of a sudden. A first for me, but a very nice one I must say.
Frankly Captain Dodonis' youth and abilities impressed me rather greatly. After the Glorious Vannius (aka the defender, the mighty, the conqueror, the attacker and some other ones I forget right now) had gone to meet his ancestors in the long halls of Warrior Walhalla he passed on the sceptre to an elderly relative that had never left Denmark. And HIS successor looked even worse. So that's how screenie 2 came about. A career-man through and through obviously. I see a great and very bloody fututre for him. One even Vannius would envy.
All of a sudden, Dodonis finds himself and his forces besieged in freshly taken Lugdunum. so he sallies forth, spearmen up front, followed by some night raiders (aka the s&m biatches of antiquity) Screenie 3 illustrates the handiness of a phalanx in a doorway.

Aaaand three more screenies.
The first one is the tally of the battle in the previous post's third one. Those spearman can really slaughter as if it's nothing.
And finally, screenies 2 and 3 are just cool moments. I really like the one taken of the charging hordes. You know mayhem is going to ensue, and boy are those guys UP for it!
And the running Gaul is cool too I think. The poor guy looks just so fùcked.

lol @ #3!

I like the middle pic, hehe. Nothing much to report...Egypt owned me. I gifted the only city i had left in the Nile delta to Germania, with whom I just made peace. Let them deal with those desert dorks, I say.

A pic of a very promising youngster, but nothing extraordinary either

That is some pretty serious facial hair for a 16 year old! Some not too shabby frown lines too

Good grief, I actually re-BOUGHT the game That's how awesome I think it is. Nice and easy with the patch now as well. Any other online playing guys around here? Maybe we could set up a few battles...

Nope, I still haven't figured out my online gaming...which applies to most ppl here I think. Like I said, when it gets cheaper.


@ Suga: lol..never really thought about it but yeah, those barbarians are hairy bastards. You should see guys of 16 sporting a full beard.

lol. I'm still playing the same game, still at the same spot. I've got a bunch of money from all the reconquering and extermination of my cities...basically I'm allowing cities to revolt, then retaking them and looting the crap out of em a couple time until their populations are really low. That and I'm fighting war on 3 fronts now. West I'm fighting Scipii in Spain, southeast I'm fighting Brutii in and around athens and Appolonia and whatnot, and to the east I'm fighitng Dacia. The Dacians are more a thorn than anything...it's just a matter of wiping their armies out every couple turns. Scipii I'm trying to fight off until I can build up a substantial military presence there. Brutii I'm also just holding my own after losing a major army. The rest of my empire is bordering on revolt, which is why I'm doing the annihilation thing. Anyway, at this rate it's going to be awhile before I conquer thost last few territories I need to win.

Made a post on the totalwar.org forums:

http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=44002

Hiya guys, I've got one screenie I wanted to share, it's the first time I see the trait. And I thought it was funny.
In the game, the power of the Brittons has now been broken for good. London is mine and they begged me for a ceasefire. I'm not yet quite sure if I'll respect it or spank their sorry asses into oblivion.
Anyway, screenie: