Slitherine

Do the changes in 1.3.4 make it less powerful at all?
Thanks.

After some internal discussions, no... Reasoning being:

a) if you play against Persia, then the AI needs all the help possible to counter the player skills. Whatever Persia does, it usually peters out on the shore of Asia Minor. Only 1/10 will it succeed in taking solid hold in Greece. This is here that the true challenges being and the gaming tension is at its best, you have to fight to push them back. And you can do that.
If the issue is Legacy and not having Persia wins, then there are means to reduce their legacy, with selective targeting or a peace deal. This is also the reason why Egypt has some hefty legacy, to prevent Persia from winning too fast.
At worst, reduce difficulty level one level.

b) if you play Persia and despair it is too easy to win, just crank AI difficulty level, you have a lot of levels to go.

I considered adding an option to remove a few special bonus given to AI Persia but in the end, why not rely on the generic AI difficulty level instead? It is there for this purpose.

Try looking at this AAR for inspiration on gaming Persia.

... anyway, played first Sparta and Persia wins , but never came near Greece LOL

... after that played Rome, just to see if, I could build the Roman Empire, knowing Persia will win anyway, if you play only looking at the score !
So slowly building my Roman Empire and gave help to Sparta and Macedonia, as Athena joined Persia ... anyway , Persia won , before time with points 35 000 or so ... but continued
worked my way slowly to so called "Konstantinople" , what joke !

STACKS OF DOOM are also in that game ! SHAME ON YOU DEVS ...
because it was already 300BC Persia was now able to cross to Greece and was jumping around with an Army , which needed 300+ food per turn ... and most of the regions had only 100+ stored food or even fewer ...

When I used Armies with more than 10+ food needs I had problems ! But Persia was doing it all the time, it was jumping around with that stack of Doom in Greece , that is stupid.

ALSO PLEASE CHANGE the code for the computer controlled nations, that they try to keep their provinces together and not how it is now, that many of them had regions all over the map , their main goal should be to build full provinces and not as many regions as possible ... maybe the support for armies should be changed that it has a line of support or will get sick, if they use the food from the new conquered regions ...
or something like that ...
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But back to PERSIA, seems Persia gets too many points from all their regions and stop that possibilities to
form stack of dooms and don't let the computer do it !




Thanks

AND YES; when we decide to continue the game, EVEN PERSIA has already won, don't shove us that message EVERY TURN under our nose LOL

FlashXAron_slith wrote: ↑Fri Sep 25, 2020 6:09 pm ... their main goal should be to build full provinces and not as many regions as possible ...

+1 for me on that. It looks like the sometimes the AI gets an objective far away and aggressively tries to get it. This results in a long string of provinces which are unsupportable and disperse into islands over time. All this makes the AI nation weaker and it looks a bit unrealistic.
So a little less zeal for objectives and more weight on getting provinces would be nice.

Herodotus on the Persian attack on Greece
"They were so numerous that they drank rivers dry". (well streams, damming them and diverting to have more watering places).

In the game this means you need to expand more and quicker, so they don't get 3 times your legacy.
And more aggressively attack them.
It took me 10-15 games to win, ~5 to not let them win before time.

AI dispersal is indeed an issue ...

surely restricting objectives to immediate neighbouring areas would solve this problem (in Persia and the Grand Campaign)?