AGEOD Forums

Well, I've just played through my first attempt at the Spartacus scenario, as the Romans, which gained me a minor victory, in which I held all my strategic objectives, and was in the process of wearing down and destroying the separated armies of Spartacus and Crixos in Southern Italy, when the game ended.

I did a bit of research beforehand, so knew what happened historically, and in the event, chose not to activate Pompeii's army when it became available (nor a smaller force available at the same time). I was wondering throughout what the outcome might be, and whether I might want to adjust the ai difficulty settings to reflect a more historic balance, and then carry those settings forward to future longer campaigns, but I have to say it seems to have been very well balanced with the normal difficulty settings.

The rebels focused most of their troops and efforts on attempting to capture Neapolis (which they never managed to do - did they ever have any chance anyway without seige equipment?), which over time allowed me to send troops along the East coast to attack the smaller units they had fighting there. Also, my men in Sicily crossed onto the mainland and prevented the rebels getting anywhere near there. I never saw any sign of pirates, but I'm sure I shall see more of them when I now try the game from the rebel side. That should be a bit more of a challenge I think.

My understanding of historical events, is that Crassus was principally responsible for the eventual Roman victory, but that Pompeii took most of the credit, having mopped up the last groups of rebels once he arrived on the scene. That seems to tie in pretty well with what I managed to achieve, so I shall be retaining the normal ai difficulty settings for my next games. Great work guys!

The slave army has no siege equipment nor ships for blockading coastal towns, so they can only conquer places with level 1 forts. Well, of course they can take any city that is left defenseless, even Rome itself, but that rarely happens.

As the slaves, you have to make one major decision: either to stay in the South (the historical choice) or to march to the North. Whatever you decide, it's going to be a challenging game!

PJJ wrote:The slave army has no siege equipment nor ships for blockading coastal towns, so they can only conquer places with level 1 forts. Well, of course they can take any city that is left defenseless, even Rome itself, but that rarely happens.

Any city will surrender at some point (regardless of the fort size), when their supplies run out. It's just a matter of keeping your besiegers supplied, and defeating possible attackers.

Well, I've never managed to besiege any city that long as the slaves. Maybe it's just bad luck.

pantsukki wrote:Any city will surrender at some point (regardless of the fort size), when their supplies run out. It's just a matter of keeping your besiegers supplied, and defeating possible attackers.

"when their supplies run out".

But a city with a harbour can resupply by sea. The AI manages this quite well for the Greek cities in Southern Italy. I have kept a siege up for over 5 years there as Romans, without any change in the situation. Every breach was repaired within a turn.