So I'm a bit annoyed with Divide Et Impera because I might have been naïve. Or maybe I'm just dumb and not understanding the mod. Either way:
>play as Kaledonians (Picts/Proto-Scots)
>manage to conquer a single city south of me after a decent bit of effort (since I had to get used to building an army with population classes in mind)
>manage to fend off the Irish and make peace with them
>the Iceni, who have consolidated like four cities by this point, declare war on me
>oh frick
>I quickly rush to take an undefended town
>they send a full stack of weak unit
>wipe them out with some minor losses, release the prisoners
>next turn, another full stack
>what the frick
>wipe them with notable losses this time, release the prisoners (for the money this time, not out of goodwill)
>three turns later, another full stack (this one full of units a tier ahead of mine) shows up
>wipe them out but my army is now crippled and the town they're in doesn't have enough people to replenish my losses
>sent a spy to the Iceni and see them already building a fourth army
What is happening with this bullshit? I thought this was meant to be more realistic than vanilla
sounds like vanilla on higher difficulties
legendary/vh?
I had everything set to Normal. So if I set it to Hard...then ironically it will function properly and not frick me?
you have to understand the AI dont play by the pop rules. so the only thing stopping them are money and recruitment times. if you play on a higher difficulty, the AI gets boats loads of money so they just spam armies.
I distinctly remember DEI being recommended for hard/hard and that vh/vh wasn't actually a good fit for it
Maybe it's because of this
the devs specifically request that you don't play on any battle difficulty above normal because then all the careful balance got fricked
DEI is the most overrated mod I ever see.
DEI is shit and always will be shit because R2 is shit and always will be shit.
>DEI is shit and always will be shit because R2 is shit and always will be shit.
dubs of truth confirmed by the führer himself
iirc they tell you to play on hard campaign and normal battles otherwise the whole balancing around bonuses gets heavily skewed for the ai. They also had a script where enemy capitals spawned a few stacks if they're the last settlement they hold but I might be wrong, maybe it's just for Rome.
>he fall for dei meme
lel
How about you fall on my wiener with your boipussy, queer
frick off homosexual
The territory you conquered should have lots of 4th class (foreign) population. You gotta make use of that fodder, put them in the frontline to eat all the arrows, javelins, and charge damage to conserve your higher class pop.
Use another general to bring fresh units from your home territory, and send the badly damaged veteran ones you don't want to merge back to replenish.
Don't forget about mercenaries either.
This talk of hard difficult in campaign is nonsense. The AI already gets bonuses in normal difficulty as is. An AI city will not lose public order or starve even if you use agents/raid the province. AI factions with a single city can usually field 1½ armies without any damage to their finances - again, even if you raid them while they field those armies. The best way of defeating the AI is simply using ambushes or defeat them in detail.
I love DEI, but the terrible AI (CA's fault) and the linear, repetitive gameplay loop make playing more than 100 turns extremely boring.
>will not lose public order or starve even if you use agents/raid the province
it absolutely will starve and spawn rebels
I once raided some settlement north of scythia for several turns and kept it at zero food/supplies or whatever DEI uses, and not only did the armies take damage but its population collapsed into just a few hundred
I accidentally genghis khan'd it so hard it took like twenty turns to recover and provide some income
>it absolutely will starve and spawn rebels
What probably happened is that settlement had no food resources to begin with, normally in DeI raiding or deploying agents does very little if anything at all. Unlike vanilla where you can starve a settlement into defeat by deploying a spy for 2 turns
huh, could've sworn raiding did reduce food
It does but not by very much. What raiding is really for is acquiring more gold if you're playing a barbarian faction with few sources of income.
It's still Rome 2 so it's always going to be shit.
>What is happening with this bullshit?
The Iceni are the largest British faction and their territory has the largest starting population bonus. If by the time you go to war with them they already hold the entire southern half of Britain, you're literally fricked. You should have sent gifts and made nice with them early on if you didn't want them to come whoop your ass when they inevitably expand.
> Divide Et Impera
Can’t even fix hoplites.If you have to use overarm animations at least space them out do the spears don’t clip through the bodies and shields of the soldiers behind them.
Are there any better mod alternatives to DEI?
None with as big a scope or as completed. Just play vanilla with a faction unlocker. It's not like you HAVE to play Rome 2 modded, the people who cry and say the game is bad have literally never even played it so just do that and form your own opinion.
First, the Celtic and Germanic factions are super weak in DEI. Their infantry doesn't benefit from shield wall or pike formations, their cavalry is pretty average and all of them have sub par economy. Chariots are broken too and will die basically instantly in melee.
Next, army upgrades, general traits and items can make a HUGE difference but are generally divided by unit type. As an example, lvl 3 'trained swordsmen' from the red general line + lvl 3 green line army tradition and lvl 3 red line army tradition for Brittanic factions gives melee infantry a 15% melee attack and defense bonus. This is enough for a mid tier unit to overcome a top tier unit and can generally be attained by turn ~20. This takes your average infantry crapstack and makes it viable against most AI armies. By having at least 2 generals active from turn 1, you will also guarantee an optimized infantry/missile stack and a cav stack. As long as they reinforce each other you will also have the advantage over significantly larger forces due to general abilities.
Elite units, though they can make the difference, also generally have their replenishment capped by DEI population mechanics. If you over recruit heavy infantry as an example, then fight a battle every turn for 5 turns, you will likely run out of pops to replenish for several turns after. By recruiting AOR units (flag at bottom left of unit tag), you will be pulling from the bottom tier of population, xenos and also the least valuable. This means your infantry/missile army in the early game, should not be elite. Instead, recruit whatever the best low tier infantry/missile and mix in some AOR units if available.
TL;DR
>restart campaign
>recruit 50/50 infantry/missile crapstack with ~10-15 units
>recruit second army with cavalry general and a 2-5 cav units
>take out surrounding factions as targets of opportunity and replace casualties with AOR units when available.
>manually fight every battle.
You literally just explained in the same post how to fix chariots and cavalry, you have to upgrade your units and research the correct lines. They are only vulnerable at the immediate start of the game and if you didn't bother to invest turns in developing them.
Does it make actual sense to larp Roman pre-Marian armies by utilizing the triplex acies formation? Strangely, considering Principes use a higher class citizen that are a finite resource it would be important to preserve manpower by having your Hastati be meat shields?
Also do you guys specialize the Rome/Latium province as an economic engine or the recruitment center? I could never decide between that and making Magna Graecia and Cisalpine Gaul the recruitment centers instead. There's a frickload of location-based economic buildings and other shit in Latium
Last I played, Principes and Hastati were the same population class, so it was better to only use the more heavily armored Principes, and use an auxiliary unit as a front line in place of Hastati.
There are some top tier Aux spear units right in southern Italy.
The triple acies formation itself is viable, but 3 lines sacrifices a lot of width. The checkerboard formation has its benefits. When the enemy engages the front, they'll begin to wrap around the separated units, exposing their flanks to javelins and charges from your 2nd line. Just don't delay getting your 2nd line into action, because your front will have morale penalties from being discontinuous.
Make Latium into an economic province. You can easily get it to generate $60,000/turn.
Don't need any recruitment buildings there, the Roman capital gives you access to your main roster on its own.
Setup recruitment in Magna Gracia. Taurantine cavalry and spearmen are both really helpful.
yeah, unless you play on some absurd difficulty settings once you kick Epirus out of southern Italy Rome is easy enough that you can roleplay as you wish, Hastati in the first line and Principes staying behind to rotate and fill the gaps.
Rome building slot itself unlocks your units, but I build a military building in one of the other towns for the Socii legion, but I also disband legions when not at war so. Depends how autistic you want to be tbh.
>play massalia
>All my generals rock shields that look like giant coins
ballin