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I did a 20 turn "hands off" testing of Spain (that is I didn't expand the territories and just built buildings and units to see how the AI would react). Around turn 10-15 the AI finally had built up enough and was making conquest on rebel territories and by the end of the session Carthage was sending some half-stacks to encroach on my borders.

Only complaints I have is that Spain starts with quite a good income (though this will be fixed later on I imagine), I didn't have to do anything except sit back, build and watch the income flow in.

I believe the Romans had as much or more to do with it - the Carthaginians actually used the elephants and bred them, whereas the Romans were much more into hunting, got up into the mountains far more, and exported large numbers of them for use in the arena.

There was also a species of North African lion driven to extinction due to Roman arena demand and there was also that one medicinal herb from Cyrene, Silphium.

I'll leave this here, from the other thread:

I can't remember which mod it was but they had a system set up where building trade and tax oriented buildings like docks, markets, and forums would give you income (with things like markets giving a negative health bonus due to those places being meeting areas where disease could easily spread) but building government projects like barracks, roads, sewers, bathhouses, theaters etc. would give you negative income "bonuses" to represent the cost of running and maintenance so you would have to balance out your buildings and couldn't just click spam the list or you could very well drive your city into negative income. You would have to build your city up economically first before you could build it up militarily, like it should be. It would also require you have a few cities devoted to purely economic purposes if you wanted to have some cities dedicated to building the best troops.

Now an extreme example of blitzkrieg tactics:

I agree with your point about balancing out income, I can't remember which mod it was but they had a system set up where building trade and tax oriented buildings like docks, markets, and forums would give you income (with things like markets giving a negative health bonus due to those places being meeting areas where disease could easily spread) but building government projects like barracks, roads, sewers, bathhouses, theaters etc. would give you negative income "bonuses" to represent the cost of running and maintenance so you would have to balance out your buildings and couldn't just click spam the list or you could very well drive your city into negative income. You would have to build your city up economically first before you could build it up militarily, like it should be. It would also require you have a few cities devoted to purely economic purposes if you wanted to have some cities dedicated to building the best troops.

As for blitzing, that's a hard issue to tackle since from what I understand it involves exploiting the flawed AI by attack cities behind those that border your territory as the AI doesn't really defend cities not bordering any other factions. The only way I could see this being dealt with is a garrison script.

Large Stone Walls might need to go as well, they are massive and I'm not sure those kind of walls were around at this time.

Most mods I've seen use large stone walls for special or historically large cities. But I agree on the epic stone walls are horrible and weird.

Just be careful though since most mods that do that end up invoking the Ptolemy issue where the Seleucids AI is so focused on the east that Egypt steamrolls them from the west with little opposition and causes the Seleucids to collapse and be taken apart extremely quick.

A Example: Take for instance my EB game as the Casse I'm currently playing, it's 235 B.C. and I turn FoW off and find the Selucids only own a small sliver of Anatolia and a few territories in the middle of Persia. The east was completely taken over by Saka-Raka, Parthia, Bactria, and the Middle East and Most of Anatolia is owned by Egypt with north Anatolia being owned by Pontus.

Disappointing Parthia playthrough posted.

Ptolemies should have African Elephants and War Elephants recruitable in Meroe or Axum? There were a couple of recorded battles of Egypt using Elephants. Also the Carthaginians and Egyptians used African Elephants (obviously) which were smaller and faster than then the Indian Elephants used by Parthia and the Seleucids. But the Indian Elephants were more durable and supposedly the African Elephants couldn't stand the smell and sounds of the Indian Elephants.

Also I can't remember where I read it but Parthians did use elephants, but not on a large scale like the other ancient empires did. Maybe have them only recruitable from one settlement like Taxila for the Parthians?

If you add Beserkers take away the Beserker ability as it is over powered and broken. You can literally take out multiple units with a unit in "beserk mode".

Both Greeks and Romans used Ballistas and Romans used Onagers. I'm against giving every faction onagers since that was Rome's thing. They're known for their siege engineering and other factions getting that would steal the thunder from Rome.

The druids should be ditched all together.

My Scythia game at the moment:

Spoiler

I'm at 264 B.C. Everything is going ok so far. Expansion of the other factions looks to be historical, I was actually surprised that Egypt wasn't quickly eating up the Seleucids and instead had lost some territory in the Israel area to the Seleucid Empire. I find it a little odd that they have the city of Kasia at game start as it is far separated from the rest of the Scythian territories. My game CTD'd right after taking Olbia, when loading from the battle map back to the campaign map. That is probably a BI bug though. I'll finish up and edit this post later.

Edit: I have 20 turns in, I'm noticing that no one is attacking me. There were opportunities where the Greek City States and Parthia could have easily besieged me as I had my garrisons thinned out, but they did not. I might play a little more to see what happens. Other than that the factions are expanding nicely. Egypt, just barely being able to regain a territory or two from the Seleucids expanded down into the Arabian peninsula (you might want to make Arabia an unconquerable territory since it's just a large desert expanse.) It also seems to me that the Scythian horse archers might be a little over powered. Someone else may need to test that to confirm if they are.

Suggestions:

Maybe add traits for barbarian factions that would somehow represent how they were a collection of various tribes and not one centralized country. I believe RS and EB do something like this? This could probably also work for the factions like the Greek Cities and Hellenic Cities.

Get rid of the dogs and pigs of course.

Maybe for the city maps you could get a hold of RS devs and see if they will let you use those? I have always found it a bit painful that in RTW all the cities have massive mega buildings, massive column monuments dotting the city etc. Hegemonia has great city maps for the Greeks as well.

Parthia:

Spoiler

I was only able to play to 265 B.C. Parthia starts out with a large horse army with almost no infantry and hardly and buildings in their settlements. Debt starts building quickly unless I pretty much disband my entire army and leave myself vulnerable to the wandering Seleucid armies. I was able to take one Seleucid settlement and the Seleucids started spamming militia hoplites at their neighboring settlements making it impossible to take. This faction will be hard to balance, on one hand they need at least a barracks in their capital to recruit basic infantry. On the other hand giving them to much leverage could overpower them as they have really powerful cavalry and start out with numerous horse archers and two heavy horse units.

Other suggestions, Parthian slingers need a better skin, an empire would have to be incredibly insane or insanely rich to outfit peasants with slings in purple robes.

What faction(s) would you like to test? Parthia, Scythia, and Spain have yet to be tested

I'll try my hand at Scythia and Spain.

Sign me up for this.

Hello, I'm from the U.S. state of Virginia. Uhh, I play Total War mods. I honestly don't have a favorite period of history and I like almost all periods almost equally. I have very minor knowledge of modding, I've dabbled in it in the past but that's about it. Also I was invited here by ahowl. Good to meet all of you.