The European relocation program
I'm on my second campaign in the game and I chose the selecuids because they made me cry the most when I played with the jullii after they became the last big empire.
The worst thing about them is that it takes a looong time to get (decent) elephants and heavy cav but they are so worth it. (Mainly becasue elephants and chariots are so much fun to play with) So after I conquered asia minor and egypt I was traumatised by having to fight on four fronts.
So when i only bordered numidia and scythia I trained huge fleets and armies of hoplites, elephants and chariots. I took control over the seas and started the program.
So how does the program work?
Step 1: Choose a faction with cities near the coast.
Step 2; Deploy spies and diplomats.
Step 3; Destroy all (enemy) ships at sea and block all ports
Step 4: Choose and besiege 1 or more cities, make sure to destroy their walls.
Step 5: Enslave the population, destroy all buildings and leave the city.
Step 6: give them back their cities with a diplomat, they will get some peasants in that city.
Step 7 attack city again with destroyed walls and enslave the population after you mow down these poor peasants with chariots.
Repeat steps 6 and 7 but exterminate them. This will bring down the population to 400 and gives some money.
Step 8; leave the cities and maybe keep 2 units of militia hoplites so the enemy has to take them back and take a bunch of casualties beacause of the naked long stick boys.
The enemy can't reach you because the ai often does not want to cross lands of factions they are not at war with, so no going through scythia and all ports are blocked.
The romans just kept attacking the greeks and germans. And Carthage keeps the numidians busy.
Love it, I did noticed that the ai just kinda T-poses when I'm not besieging them and the are not at war with anyole else. Their armies just stand there...
But the ai economy is ruined, their cities will never reach decent populations again and I get a shitload of money and population growth and I only need to worry about the Scythia, but scythia was the trial run... For multiple times now.. so they just do nothing. I don't need to keep pushing ever forward with huge armies to eleminate threats like I did with the romans or greeks have to do.
Anyone else using this tactic or has any tips for it?
But no I will not stop spending loads of money on chariots, it's to much fun.