What is missing

[Henri]

What I find missing from this great game are a few things. One of them is that there are apparently no scenarios that go more than 20 moves or so into the game, so there is little information on what to do after the initial phases described in the AARs. This may be due to saed games being incompatible wioth the 1.02 patch.

For a game of this complexity, I am surprised that no one has written a strategy guide for some of the scenarios. Sure there are some good threads about how things are calculated, and the video tutorials are very good, but for instance in the Caesar Civil War scenario, it is not clear on the first attempt what one should do about the hunger revolts in Rome. I noticed in many AARs that most of the players are not playing the scenario for the first time so they know pretty much what to expect.

It does not replace a strategy guide, but what I recommend for the Caesar-Pompeii scenario is to put the game on easy as I did, choose Caesar and just play it by ear. This can give you an interesting seesaw hair-raising campaign if you are not too sure what you are doing. One fatal mistake to avoid in the early game is to send all your ships through the Italian heel gap when there is a storm there (second move or so) or to wait too long to regroup them and to let Pompeii wipe them out piecemeal. If Pompeii gets total command of the seas, he will nitpick you to death by Guerilla warfare by landing small armies all over the place while you run around like a headless chicken. The most irritating thing is the regular hunger revolts in Rome that force you to keep bringing armies there to snuff them out before they spread. The alternative is to control the grain-producing areas in Africa, Spain or Egypt, which is easier said than done. Getting to Africa is impossible in the early game unless you can use the sea, and there is no way you are going to get to Egypt before the game is practically over, and taking Spain is a long-term prospect, especially if Pompeii decides to go there instead of to the East, as he did in my game.

The early moves are obvious: send Caesar to Rome then to Sicily for easy victories, and Mark Anthony the drunkard (who is still your best general besides Caesar) North to Massada then to Spain. I have had no revolts in Gaul, so leaving a token force there is all that is needed. Pompeii will keep invading Sicily, and slowly move up Dalmatia if you do nothing about it, while harassing your units around Massada trying to invade Spain. If you break up your armies into small armies, you may get chewed up, but if you keep them together in say three armies, you are vulnerable to enemy armies sneaking behind your back to recapture areas you have previously captured. Your armies are generally stronger, but when you attack Pompeii himself, you had better have a big army, because he is the best general in the game except for Caesar. If you are a bit lucky, you will kill Pompeii early on in Spain and get control of the seas, otherwise you had better be careful about moving units by sea. And Avoid doing that in the Winter because there are more storms. Before the 1.02 patch, I lost most of my armies on the third move when the ships carrying them hit a storm, but I think that has been softened in the patch. Speaking of weather, make hay while the sun shines, because in the Winter, movement can be slowed considerably and units take considerable damage. If you manage to group your warships into a single stack, you have a pretty good chance of crippling Pompeii's sea power, which will not prevent him from guerilla warfare tactics, but will help keep your own seafaring units safe.

In Spain, you will find that your army has to carry a LOT of supply wagons, and you will have to keep sending empty wagons back to conquered cities for refills, and don't forget to drop all siege equipment and any garrison units before you move, otherwise moving the length of Italy can take six months. And when your units are heavily damaged, stop to rest in a city for a move or two until they recover, because attacking a full-strength enemy army with a weakened one can be expensive.

Most games have a tipping point where everything seems to fall apart at the same time for one side or the other, preferably not your side, and this game is no exception. One moment you are fighting on the edge of chaos and suddenly you are winning every battle with light damage and heavy enemy losses, and you have spare money. This will probably happen when you have conquered most of the coast of Spain, and you can tell by looking at enemy morale, which has dropped to half of yours. This is due to the enemy's many defeats and loss of many cities, which increases your revenue and decreases his. When he runs out of money, he is unable to replenish his armies already at a disadvantage because of lower morale, so at that point defeat is inevitable.

It is important to keep an eye on the production screen and to keep producing replacements, but not more than you can afford, and going overboard with creating new units can bankrupt you with their maintenance cost.

At some points you have to make difficult choices: should you abandon your Spanish campaign to go to Africa to get the grain, and if so when? Or should keep plugging away at Spain and send units from Italy instead, at the cost of delaying operations in Dalmatia or maybe even in Italy? And when you do so and Pompeii retaliates with invasions at Sicily and Massala, how should you react?

In my game, resistance in Spain has almost disappeared after the death of Pompeii in a battle near Massala, and Caesar has crossed the strait at Byzantium while a smaller force is cleaning up in Western Africa after Anthony was sent back to Spain after finally wiping out Cato and other Pompeii refugees in Africa. I am getting close to the 121 move limit, but I don't expect that a good player could get this far at the higher difficulty levels, which is not necessary to win. Although I will not have time to conquer the whole map. I will probably win because I have a huge lead in victory points.

Although this scenario looks very long at 121 moves, after the first 20 moves or so when you get the hang of things, a move consists essentially of moving 3 or 4 armies.

Henri

[oldspec4]

Having just purchased the game, thanks for your comments and notes on this scenario. Although I have played many of AGEOD's titles and understand the UI basics, I usually have issues w/ initial strategy.

[Erik Springelkamp]

I agree with you.

I formulated it a bit differently in this post:
http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?25654-Reinforcement-Schedule&p=246856&viewfull=1#post246856

"When you play a scenario for the first time, you have little idea of what you can expect, so your strategy becomes really a blind gamble.

If you have a general idea of what reinforcements you might receive, you can at least plan ahead a bit.

Once you play a scenario a couple of times, you will be able to design a sound strategy, but for me that is not like the real thing: a real commander couldn't fight a war several times until he won.

The most enjoyable time for a scenario is the first time, because everything is new and unexpected, but because of a lack of information you can rarely play it well.

In reality the leaders would have a vague idea where support might be coming from and they would use that information in their plans.
"

In that thread Yellow Ribbon replied that it is difficult to show reinforcements because of the non-linear nature of reinforcements.

Yet one needs some information about the possibilities in order to make sense of the situation.

This very recent thread gives an example of this missing information:
http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?28542-Cantabrian-War-working-as-designed

Compared to the amount of work it takes to design and test a scenario, writing a background story that puts the player in an informed position at start seems a relatively minor task, yet can improve the joy of playing a scenario enormously.

The current scenario descriptions contain some hints that are useful, but I think it should contain more information.

I think this could attract a lot more customers, who are now intimidated by the situation they are put in.

[Henri]

I forgot to mention supply depots, because I did not use any! The supply situation can probably be alleviated especially in Spain by building depots, which may reduce the amount of shuttling of supply wagons that is necessary to keep Anthony in supply. However it is unclear to me what happens if the enemy gets his hands on your depots. Does this also alleviate his own supply problems? And should depots therefore be garrisoned to avoid capture by the enemy? And where do depots get their supplies? From neighboring regions? Does this reduce the amount of supplies from these regions? How long does it take for the supplies to accumulate in the depot?

Henri

[germanpeon]

I forgot to mention supply depots, because I did not use any! The supply situation can probably be alleviated especially in Spain by building depots, which may reduce the amount of shuttling of supply wagons that is necessary to keep Anthony in supply. However it is unclear to me what happens if the enemy gets his hands on your depots. Does this also alleviate his own supply problems? And should depots therefore be garrisoned to avoid capture by the enemy? And where do depots get their supplies? From neighboring regions? Does this reduce the amount of supplies from these regions? How long does it take for the supplies to accumulate in the depot?

Henri

I find that the utility of a supply depot entirely depends on the fluidity of the front. If my armies tend to move around a lot and are not consistently within range of a given depot (or potential depot location), the depot is less useful. It may or may not be worth building depots in Spain depending on how static your forces are.

Enemies can capture depots in the same way that they can capture towns, as they are both structures on the map, though some units destroy depots upon capture. I can't remember what the trait is called but it's shown on the unit card.

Unlike in other games such as RUS or PoN, depots do not move supplies around. Instead, as I believe they do in all AGEOD games, they generate supplies of their own by raising the supply level of a province in the same way that a fort, harbor, or town does. As such, there is no harm in building supply depots (other than losing the supply wagon), and it will not deteriorate the supply level of any other provinces.