Masallia Hints??

[Blathergut]

Tried getting back in the game on difficult, playing Masallia/Messalia/Mesallina?? (Bet Claudius would have liked some helpful hints for Messalina!)


In the early 20ish years plus:

1. Do you try to nab enough regions to form the province? I've managed to nab some but never could hold them long.

2. Do you try to build commerce and kick that into high gear?

3. If I can't form the province, is there much benefit to trying to hold two or three regions? What?

There's a lot to try and remember!

D.T.

[Soar]

I started a Massilia playthrough in the new patch. I figured it's not worth it early on to try to take on the Gauls to form the province or hang onto the nearby undeveloped regions that are going to get constantly raided and possibly invaded, given you start with so little manpower, so I focused on stockpiling bigger resource pools and developing the capitol region instead. Unfortunately it took until turn 55 to roll my first Mercenary Recruitment Center.

Nonetheless, before that, I took Sardinia, the Baleares and the gold mine region of Malaka in Iberia off Carthage, who were getting ganged up on by most of their neighbours + Rome as they often do, reasoning that the island regions are exposed to much fewer threats compared to expanding on the coasts (and as Massilia, you do ultimately benefit a lot more from regions next to water), while the gold mine region is valuable and defensible. Although the Sardes are currently tying up some resources since they have a stack too sizable for me to wipe out yet, and they constantly raid my half of their island...

Here's a screenshot of my Massilia. Notably, I've been neglecting military buildings in the city in order avoid unlocking the tier 2 buildings, to try to maximize the odds of rolling a Mercenary Recruitment Center. That also means I don't yet have a source of Heavy Infantry. Now that I finally have access to mercenaries, I have to start working on other military development. Luckily the Gauls have been too busy with their inter-factional struggles to come bother me. I've also been passing over health and culture buildings simply due to an overabundance of other great building options.



The new patch enables you to buy manpower from other factions (needs +25 or better relations), though not at a very favorable ratio. Also, when my capitol region got assigned to Rome as an objective, I was able to bribe them into dropping it. Massilia is certainly not ready to take on Rome before a lot more expansion and development, so here's hoping the good relations hold...

[Pocus]

Buying manpower has been further restricted in the official patch, it is now only in transaction treaty with neighbouring nations with cordial relationships. The ratio varies depending of the availability of manpower in the target nation also.

[Blathergut]

Thanks for this. I spent a day playing/replaying to relearn the game. At one point a massive horde came in...I purchased something like 2000 worth of mercenaries in one turn.