Come on in the water is fine. ;)
Ok, going to change to Democracy which I recently researched and see what that does.
As for confederations and federations, I’ll admit, I agreed to them when offered but did nothing to help build out infrastructure in their areas nor defend them when attacked, I basically left them to their own devices.
So, starting an AAR that no one asked for, just because.
After playing and completing campaigns as the three majors of the period I’ve started a campaign as Sparta. Geographically and politically they start in a fairly precarious position. Athens despite getting aggressively attacked from the north by Antigonid have declined treaties to confederate or just allow me to pass thru their lands to lend a hand.
As expected a Rome has already declared and are expected to be a problem from here on out. Surprisingly the Ptolemaic Empire has started out friendly, going to see if I can continue to develop this so I can get a large ally early on.
Athens who should otherwise be quite friendly have a bearded lady giving me the high hat so far:
The army such as it is consists of only two units the screenshot below representative of what I’m currently fielding, I’ve trained them to the extent my research allows before sending them off to establish a beach head to my East to attempt to sync up with the Ptolemaic Empire.
And lastly, here’s a map of the region at this point:
Hey, looking forward to this. I have played a ton of this game on random maps, but I am interested in how this plays as a smaller nation like Sparta on the historical map.
Taking a brief break from TW:3K which I can’t stop playing to jump back into my Sparta campaign.
Made the decision to head east (I’m red in the shot below) to scale my empire. this will no doubt allow Rome to expand north and west so it’s not w/o its risks. But there are smaller targets of opportunity over here like Macedon (pink), Pergamon (orange) and Pontus (yellow), so got an initial beach head established to work from:
Meanwhile back in Greece the Athenians continue to refuse confederation and amusingly only after I moved all military off the island did they agree to allow my troops to move thru their land. I’m developing a hoplite army in Crete to shuttle back to aid in their defense as they’re my buffer against Antigonid who are frankly getting the better of them as you can see in the shot below:
Hopefully they’ll hold out long enough for me to raise the army and get up there to aide them, they’re really getting rolled right now so it could go either way.
Sounds interesting. You’d think that Athens would be trying harder to expedite your assistance.
Kind of ironic in this era for Sparta to consider Macedon a small target of opportunity. What is the political situation among Pontus, Macedon, and Pergamon?
Well, when I say smaller targets it’s relative. I’m comparing Macedon to Carthage and Rome and the Ptolemaic Empire. Also, given their starting location they tend to get whittled down a bit by Pontus and Permagon as all three seemingly get into it right from the outset so I’m more just trying to take advantage of the fact they’re mixing it up.
The campaigns in this one end up being rather dynamic, from one to the next I’ve had Pontus, Permagon or Macedon take over that whole region and start going at it with the Ptolemaic Empire who really only have north to expand unless they hit the water or go west towards Carthage.
Part of what determines who behaves most aggressively is dictated by how you set the AI for each nation as all of them can be individually set for the campaign, coupled with where they are geographically and who their neighbors are.
Hello everyone,
we can proudly announce that we won an Indie Prize 2018 award in the category “Best Game Design”!
If you haven’t tried the game yet, you probably should now:)
Congratulations! Great effort.
I do have the game, but got distracted somewhat by The Division 2…but I will get back to it soon.
Bravo!! Very much well deserved!!
Spartans On the March - update from 242 BC
The Antigonid Dynasty continues to be a severe challenge for Athens who inexplicably continue to refuse confederation with Sparta, apparently the hate for their fellow Greeks is greater than their fear of being utterly destroyed, which in the next few years will likely come to pass.
The reason this is so much of a problem for Sparta is due to the diplomatic news that Antigonid and Rome have confederated. This is not good news. The strategic plan for Sparta was to expand east to scale up for a future engagement that loomed inevitable with the Romans, now as the picture below shows they’re on our doorstep. The red on the map northwest of the port of Aigion is the new border of the Roman Confederation:
And as the next picture shows our relative military strength is not up to the task of a two front war:
In the next installment we’ll see what the Spartans decide to do next…
Gotten a bit sidetracked in Three Kingdoms, haha, 50 hours into that one and still on first campaign.
So, where we last left off in 241 BC Rome was making it’s presence felt in many places on the map, but the most troubling was the threat of eradicating the Athenians.
Fortunately the Ptolemaic Empire was feeling pressure from the Seleucid Empire and as a result they offered us an alliance that expanded our relations to the point we are now brothers-in-arms. For them the benefit is Sparta is already at war with the Seleucid Empire so our expansion into their territory takes pressure off them and Sparta gains naval support we currently have virtually none of to combat Roman intrusions.
We also sent 10,000 troops via our one vessel to intercept the Romans before they took Athens itself, as the map shows things are getting dicey for the Athenians, fortunately our army stopped them but took heavy losses, below is the current situation for Athens (what little blue you see is all that remains):
After our intervention on their behalf the Athenians came to their senses and signed an alliance (day late and a dollar short):
The final developments locally, Epirus and Macedonia confederated, this will present yet another new issue to our north, but I suspect they’ll feel and have to contend with the same Roman pressure we Greeks are feeling which will likely keep them busy.
Pontus holds a large chunk of the map north of the Ptolemaic Empire (to our east) and I’m guessing in seeing our expansion eastward they anticipate where this is going and offered Sparta a confederation, we declined the offer as tempting as it was because they’re at war with our Ptolemaic ally so we’re staying true to that alliance and declining:
Our armies working to expand are taking a pounding so the expansion in the east is slow going, but as long as bolstering Athens keeps the Romans at bay we’ll leave them for the time being to their expansion as we pursue one of our own. In the future we hope to form more alliances with Roman enemies so we can actively pursue a containment strategy.
Latest News from the front:
Continued pressure in expansion into Pergamon territory led them to offer annexation to Sparta, which we gladly accepted, resulting in a large increase in territory in our move east (Sparta Red):
We’re maintaining peaceful relations with Pontus (yellow) to avoid fighting both them and the Selecuids (pink) who are exceptionally aggressive and their seemingly never ending stream of Hoplites and Cavalry are causing no end of issues with everyone in the region.
Poor Athens are nearly gone, we haven’t gotten them to agree to annexation, but at least we’re confederated and trying to help out with their defense as Rome is pushing them south and nearly off the map (Athens blue, Rome brighter red):
The expansion into Seleucid’s territory has been rough going, I’ve recruited Hoplite armies of my own and improve their skills before deploying them, even with this improvement and the fact they are fighting not only me but Pontus and the Ptolemaic Empire at the same time they’re managing to hold even with me and actually expand on the other two fronts, amazing (screenshot from the Sparta front lines):
Here’s the last shot of the Eastern front, we’ve definitely made progress in expanding, it’s helped our economics, we’re working good trade with many of the nations and are working diplomacy with Pontus and the Dacians in the north in the hopes of confederating with them rather than taking the time to conquer them because as the 2nd screenshot shows below, the Romans are working hard at securing a military superiority victory (shot my be hard to read, it shows the Romans already at 81%) and are well on the way to achieving it, so the strategy of leaving them be and scaling may require some re-thinking as we might well need to push north of Athens and open a 2nd front to claw back some of Rome’s expansion even though it means a two front war because we’ve got to stem the tied with them before it’s too late.
What a great game!
It is quite good, I like how dynamic the campaign is, and how the other Nations behave as if they’re genuinely trying to win the game (like Rome in this campaign) and not just coming after the human as it often feels like in many strategy and 4x games.
In more or less classic fashion, the strategic plans of Sparta were brilliant until point of contact with the enemy.
It was probably an ominous sign from the gods in 189BC there was an earthquake. This took out 1 city and wrecked every other piece of infrastructure in our nascent empire and burned thru a good bit of resources to repair.
Only a mere two years later Pontus who had been happy enough staying out of the war declared on us, no doubt because our ally the Ptolemaic Empire attacked them. This added yet another drain on resources to a war already in progress with the tenacious Seleucids who should have been knocked out with a two front war but simply would not die. What had initially seemed a promising strategy of scaling up the empire thru eastward expansion had bogged down and started to bleed us dry.
Intelligence on Rome was sketchy because our expansion had not been that direction, so we didn’t have good visibility to just how aggressive it was going. We found out in 190BC it was dangerously aggressive as we were informed they were at 91% military superiority. Athens startled by the powerhouse looming at their door agreed to Federate. It was too little too late.
Being bogged down in the east the resources to fight a two front war and take it to the Romans simply wasn’t there.
One short year later they federated with Massilia which pushed them over the threshold for victory, and just like that Sparta was defeated, really before they truly got off the ground.
Postmortem: Rome simply does not run into sufficient resistance from the Barbarians to their north to properly contain them. Carthage who might otherwise be relied upon as a counterweight sat this one out and expanded into Gaul, which if I were them is what I would have done (in fact playing as Carthage that is what I did). I’ll play this campaign again at some point and this time I’ll force the issue with Rome from the outset and expand north to cut them off from flowing out into the east.
Yeah, Sparta is in a very difficult situation, and much more so if Carthage avoids them.
Thanks for a great write-up.
Really nice AAR! I was also reading it for enjoyment:) What was the difficulty setting and why you didnt continue the game? You can still try to win the other victory conditions.
Difficulty was normal. I figured as a small nation I was going to have enough trouble. And as it turns out I was right. I’ve still got the save so I suppose I could continue on. But what I’m more interested in doing I think is starting again and trying for a strategy of containment on Rome.
What I think I need to understand is how do I diplomatically get other nations in alliance against what is obviously the main threat we’re all facing.
If for example I get to Brother in Arms with someone and we’re both at war with Rome, will they actively engage Rome militarily as a result? Because it feels like what I need as Sparta or any small nation is alliances to counter Romes expansion, otherwise they achieve military superiority before I can scale up myself because as a small nation I can’t ramp as fast as they do and never catch up.
Yes, it is not easy to win as a small nation but believe me, it is possible:)
Brothers in arms does not differ in the way AI behaves. It just automatically goes into the war with all the enemies you declare war to (and the other way around).
AI always analyses the threats and risks. If they share the same border with an enemy, AI will always try to defend this border first and if it is strong enough, it will also engage in military campaigns and landing operations.
Therefore it is always better to be in BiA with players sharing borders with your enemies or such AI players who are strong enough to not just defend but also consider offensive military campaigns.
Nevertheless, it is always vital to be in BiA with players you want to get closer to. Longer you are in such relation, more firm this relation is. If you eventually want to join into confederation or even federation, BiA is definitely a good way to increase the chance of this happening.