Need help with the grand campaign game

[dbt1949]

After about 6-8 games I'm still having problems spreading out my empire. I usually start off in the upper left (Thraciasns?) and get a few good cities in Asia Minor before I just get overwhelmed. I have strong,advanced and large armies that will win usually,but the AI keeps throwing army after army after army at me,giving me no time to recuperate.Eventually they get their cities back. I've tried keeping a couple of standing armies to blunt these attacks before they reach my cities but eventually they too get worn down and they are expensive to maintain in the field. The best I seem to be able to do is barely hold on.
Any suggestions would be more than welcome.

PS I play Spartan and Gates of Troy a lot and have no problem with them so it must be some aspect 0f CoW that I can't grasp.

Thanks!

[anguille]

Be sure to focus on one enemy at the time and use your diplomats well to calm your other neighbors

[efthimios]

Although the diplomatic system in CoW is far more eh let's say subtle, you have to use diplomacy if you want to have an easy(ier?) time. Try to make friends the powerful states near you, and focus on the smaller ones. When you do go to war against one of them, fight till the end, do not stop attacking.

What I usualy do is have one, two or three huge armies attacking everything and cities, and then producing cheap armies for garrison duties.
When those spearhead armies get too obsolete, I use them as garrison and just build others.

[dbt1949]

Thanks guys!
I always thought the ambasidors in this game basically just told you how another nation felt about you without actually doing much.
I think another one of my problems is that by playing Thrace(or whatever it's called) I have the Hittites right in my face.
Can you all tell me some of the easier nations to play?
Thanks!

[honvedseg]

Rotate out the damaged units, and let them recover on their own in any nearby city. They will recruit roughly 2 replacement troops per unit each turn, so a badly damaged unit may take a while. It still beats paying for field replacements, and you don't lose the experience of the unit that you would by letting it be ground down and destroyed. I keep a full stack of extra troops near each of my active borders just to provide spare units while the regular garrisons regenerate. After a few battles and their accumulated experience, your units should be able to handle 3-4 stacks of attackers in a turn, and then you can swap them out for your spare stack on your own turn. I've never seen the AI throw more than 6 full stacks at a city in one assault, and they usually get in each other's way, some hitting one turn, others the next.

Placing a ranged unit (skirmishers or archers) behind your main line beats up the inbound attackers to the point where they may drop to the next morale category before they even make contact. As morale falls, units fight less agressively, so they do less damage to your own troops while yours fight at full strength. Place your light infantry where they will engage the enemy (especially the enemy's heavy infantry or chariots) in woods, and make sure your own heavy troops will meet the enemy in the open. Once you have archers, an obsolete unit can be used to hold up the enemy while you shower his men with a lethal barrage of arrows. When the obsolete unit breaks and runs, your better, fresh troops can then engage the already battered enemy units, making short work of them. Learn to use the short and long holds to time your contact with the enemy to your best advantage.

[dbt1949]

Okay,I've started a game as the Dahae. I sent ambasadors to the neighbors to the south. I've conquered a couple of independents.
Now I guess I just sit on it for awhile while building my strength and seeing if the Sakae to my south weaken or not.If not then I guess I'll send an expedition to the Hill Tribes for some more territory.
I sure wish I had ships like in Spartan.

[Carolus_Rex]

You can try to start with Lower Egyptians. They fare quite well if you know how to expand. And when you have taken the whole egypt-nubian area they have a small narrow path to defend.
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[honvedseg]

I've had excellent results with the Assyrians, as long as I can grab a few Mitanni cities right away, otherwise it's a long, hard struggle. The hills and rivers to the East block encroachment from that direction well enough to give you plenty of advance warning, and the rivers to the South channel any attacks across the few bridges, making defense easy. You can concentrate on expanding to the West, all the way to the coast, and then worry about the other borders. I generally have a solid hold on the entire coastline all the way down to Egypt, and up into Hittite territory, before turning to the other borders.

Any time the AI starts cranking out large numbers of troops better than peasant levies, take the city that's building them. That's better than fighting an endless war of attrition against rapidly respawning waves of attackers, since it stops them for a while until they scrounge up the resources and the empty build slot for another barracks elsewhere.

[Carolus_Rex]

Assyrians? ow thats a hard nut. Only 2 settlements in the start.
and way inland.

[Kissaki]

The Cimmerians (don't remember off hand whether it was the East or West Cimmerians, or if it made a difference) a good starting bet, as they have close access to lavish amounts of gold, and lots of horses, too. That area to the north is a flippin' gold mine - literally! Gold is the most important resource in the game, as you can buy everything else with it.

[honvedseg]

Both the East Cimmerians and the Egyptians have ready access to gold in quantity, although the Egyptians are metals poor and need to buy a lot of it, and the EC have a lot lower limits on their food and building supplies, so they will either need to develop more of those or expand into more fertile lands.

I'm currently running a Tyre campaign, one of the small Mediterranean coastal kingdoms. It was a long, hard struggle to gain access to copper, and tin is becoming an even bigger issue with new unit types coming into play. I've bumped headlong into the Meshwesh (who now hold 90% of Africa, including both upper and lower Egypt), the East Cimmerians (who took over the entire northern central region down through Mittani territory), one of the Hittite kingdoms (which now controls the entire Turkish region in the NW except for a small sliver of Thrace and my only copper producing city), plus the Amorites to the SE, and it isn't pretty. EVERY TIME my diplomats manage to bring the opposing kingdoms' views back up to Neutral, they launch an attack. Most of my size-3 border units already have Experience ratings of 4 or 5 at this stage, and I'm constantly rotating out full stacks of 8 battered units to other cities for gradual recovery, or else I'd have run out of resources trying to repair them all. Assyria was a breeze compared to this.

[Kissaki]

Both the East Cimmerians and the Egyptians have ready access to gold in quantity, although the Egyptians are metals poor and need to buy a lot of it, and the EC have a lot lower limits on their food and building supplies, so they will either need to develop more of those or expand into more fertile lands.

I just checked, and that's the West Cimmerians, actually. The East Cimmerians start out with cities that produce a lot of horses and food.

[ikki]

but all ones really needs early on its a TON of food production to get those peasant armies flowing and growing the army from one citystate to ~7
Then you might already have access to some technology, some auxillia, which allows a bit harder bite into the enemies still 8-peasant armies.

Eventually youll get the wheel, and can roll across the world with those gish wagons..

[Amob_M_S]

An alternate strategy is to start in a corner of the map. I found that Dilmuni (Qatar), though tiny at start, is actually fairly easy: lots of Tribal Independents to munch on and grow bigger. Once you win the first two wars (that country in Yemen and the Nabatu, in that order) you will be the one big guy among many weak desert countries. You won't face stiff resistance until you hit Egypt, the Levant, and Mesopotamia.

The Sherihumi are also easy- Rich, two borders safe by map-edges, and plenty of weak neighbors. The Hill Tribes and Persians will be your early challenges, followed by whoever the Mesopotamian power happens to be.

EDIT: Also, if you have any basic modding skills, there's some sort of "uses_population" value for units. I have peasants set to use one pop up; this tends to force the AI into building more advanced, but smaller, forces.

[Kissaki]

An alternate strategy is to start in a corner of the map. I found that Dilmuni (Qatar), though tiny at start, is actually fairly easy: lots of Tribal Independents to munch on and grow bigger. Once you win the first two wars (that country in Yemen and the Nabatu, in that order) you will be the one big guy among many weak desert countries. You won't face stiff resistance until you hit Egypt, the Levant, and Mesopotamia.

The Sherihumi are also easy- Rich, two borders safe by map-edges, and plenty of weak neighbors. The Hill Tribes and Persians will be your early challenges, followed by whoever the Mesopotamian power happens to be.

I find that as long as you start with sufficient food and an expensive resource, you have it made. The Byblosians, for example, have loads of wood. Wood is extremely valuable, and I do not need to produce more than 5-10 of it per turn myself to begin with. Selling the surplus makes me a wealthy man, and I can buy everything else. I like to start out with a faction that only has one city, though, because it forces me to wage war aggressively until I have seized 5-7 cities, at which point I can slow down and start developing my army in earnest.

EDIT: Also, if you have any basic modding skills, there's some sort of "uses_population" value for units. I have peasants set to use one pop up; this tends to force the AI into building more advanced, but smaller, forces.

That's very interesting, I'll have to look into that.


Edit: Actually, there doesn't seem to be any such function. Looking at an older thread, the same suggestion was made and the line was supposedly in squads.txt. No such line exists in that file, however, and the response in that other thread was the same: the line does exist in Gates of Troy, but not in Chariots of War. Adding the line apparently had no effect.