I'm never ever ever going to bribe a faction army again. Ever. Because, well, the civil war was like this for me: I was rolling up Italy no problem at all. Nobody could stand between Caius Julius Caesar and his legions of awesomeness. Carthage, more of the same. They run up with a full stack army to seige Carthage, I sally out and obliterate them, then repeat. Out east, Dacia/Thracia way, things were rough. Full stack Brutii armies all over creation. All the cities had wooden walls, which meant instant obliteration for me on sallying out. I was getting rampaged on hard out there. I was going to win, but it was going to be a long hard slog uphill to do it.
Then, just out of curiosity, I bribed an army with a diplomat. 4k denarii or so. Not a problem, given my 20-30k bankroll each turn. Now, in every preceeding bribe I had ever done, it cost the same or more (and I was pulling in like, 8k per turn), and the army just disbanded. Not here. The entire Brutii army JOINED MY SIDE.
Dude.
Well, I can see the Path as easy as the next man. Order up some diplomats, who I guess get more influence from being trained at my rather prevalent academies, and go to town. Suddenly, the civil war is a non-issue, and the Brutii front actually becomes EASY as I bribe their huge armies, then turn around and seige their cities with them. 10 years later or so, it's over.
And according to everything I've read, Julii gets BAD econ. I don't ever want to see what this is like with GOOD econ.
But now I get to try out Pharoah's gear, so that's all good.
Also, I want to mention something I touched on last post, and that's archers and onagers, and the flaming projectiles thereof. I've known for a long long time, since MTW if not STW, that massed archer fire is pretty much God as long as you have the ammo to keep up the shooting. That hasn't changed much. Now, artillery was always good too, but it was a pain in the ass to lug around, was useless on the attack, and you couldn't really aim it well. Well, that's changed here too.
So, I've always built my armies with a solid core of archers. Lately, I've been adding onagers and such to the mix, too. So I'm capable of sending lots of pointy things and big rocks downrange at anybody who attacks me.
Now add fire to that. It is, in a word, absolutely devastating. It's also visually stunning, in ways that I find it difficult to describe without a replay I can't provide. I mean, in MTW you see your masses of longbows dropping guys, and you're thinking "Damn, that's got to suck." But it's nothing compared to seeing 240 little streaks of fire arc towards the enemy, dropping men in little flaming human torches, followed by screaming.
And then you hear a *WHUMP* *WHUMP* sound, and four balls of fire come sailing into view, and when they land there's an explosion and suddenly that 40-man cohort is reduced to a handfull of guys running around on fire, screaming. And in that cav unit over there, man and horse both are little blackened smears on the grass. And there's more screaming, and units running around in panic and disarray.
And then it happens again. Holy shit.
Posted by Dwip at October 20, 2004 5:11 PMDaaaaaamn. So the artillery guys aren't operating as if they're blindfolded this time around? That alone would rock. I always wanted more use out of that stuff than just swiss cheesing fortresses.
And my archers of choice were always the horsies, for the same purpose, obviously. Plus, speed.
Posted by: Rachael at October 20, 2004 8:10 PMBut, as Dwip now knows, Pharaoh's archers are t3h pwn. So much so, in fact, that a mere 20 of them annihilated 240 normal archers. Give or take ten on a side.
I didn't use arty once in my Egypt game.
Posted by: Whir at October 21, 2004 6:05 AM*shrugs* I just always preferred to remain mobile, rather than lining up groups here and there, because you can never be 100% failsafe on anything. And I don't care how cool your weapons are, men on foot just can't haul ass like horsies can.
Now, if you could make something big, with fire, that didn't spook the horsies... that would be awesome. As long as only I was able to make it.
Never said I liked fair fights. :P
Posted by: Rachael at October 21, 2004 10:59 AMEgypt gets camel archers. They're better than most cav archers, but they cost more. And they spook normal cav units, so they're fun to maraud skirm cav with.
Posted by: Whir at October 21, 2004 2:57 PMOnce in Greek class, we were reading about how one ancient general beat another ancient general 'cos he used camels and it spooked his enemy's horses, and it led to this giant debate about whether or not camels really do spook horses, which ended with me calling my uncle who has a horse farm and asking him whether or not camels would spook horses. And he said they would. But think. All we needed for proof, REALLY, was R:TW. Or AoK.
Posted by: Regina at October 22, 2004 3:21 PM