So, here we go...

Here is our kingdom to start with:



Not a bad way to begin. I basically follow Hussarknight's opening moves guide for the first turn; a shrine and a unit of peasants in each, and all the garrison from Thessalonica down towards Athens.



At the start of Turn 2, my spy enters Athens and I send my cavalry on ahead to build siege equipment while they wait for the infantry. Conveniently enough however, my spy opens the gates for me. I decide to risk an assault - time for an epic encounter of cavalry and phalanx...



Battle joins; I at once send all my cavalry towards the entrance.



Squeeze past the militia hoplites blocking the entrance; my general went in first to take advantage of his hitpoints to get the rest of my cavalry in. I'm not gonna fight them here though. On large scale of course, this wouldn't work for an instant.



Nope; I head straight for the agora, guarded by a lonely unit of militia hoplites.



I divert them with one unit, then charge them from all directions. They don't last very long, especially as they don't turn around to face my general when he charges their rear.



The square is mine; I begin to think this won't be so difficult after all.



Those sneaky Athenians haven't given up yet, but with typical AI stupidity, they are sending all their remaining troops from one direction, with their spear units miles apart from each other.



I prepare them a Macedonian greeting; my cavalry will attack from the front while my general smashes into the flank, whichever way they turn they're screwed.



Charge!



They rout disappointingly quickly. The peltasts don't hold for long either.



I reform to greet their last unit: the same formation, but inversed, with my general to come from the front and the rest of the cavalry from the flank.



They don't last very long.



Here you can see their last man has got glitched up on the side of the road where my cavalry's spears can't quite reach him...




They get him in the end. Victory!


Not a bad start to a campaign.



The greatest of the Free States of the Hellenoi has fallen to the Defenders of Civilisation.



Next, I sell map information to the Greeks for 1000 drachmai (or, as the Romans call them, denarii), and seal a trade agreement.



I end turn; a barbarian envoy from the North arrives at Bylazora with a request...



I accept, and also sell them our map info for 500 drachmai. I could have charged more, but it's not as though we really need it.



As a final measure, we also agree to an alliance, just to secure our Northern border a little bit. Now these barbaroi, strangers, are truly xenoi, stranger-guests.



Our spy infiltrates Sparta...



I leave us in quite a comfortable position for the next Overlord of Kings to take up the sceptre.



Sceptre passed to Orcrist_Beleg. Good luck!

[This message has been edited by Edorix (edited 10-21-2010 @ 01:57 PM).]

Excellent. May the prosperity of the Kingdom of Macedon continue!

Ah, a well played show of bravado at the beginning, exactly what is needed to begin a swap! Forward, and let us kill our enemies with great relish, for they would seek to burn our homes and rule our lands otherwise!

Hello. I just have run into some free time and was goin to do my little part BUT!, a problem has arisen. I tried loading the save file and every time it will go to the sliding red bar with the military maxim of the minute (loading screen). and when the red bar is finished it takes me back to the main menu. :/
In the mean time I will try again to unlock all factions while haunting this thread for further assistance...

(edit)update: I edited the Desc_strat file once more. Macedonians are now playable but some other factions are not(game crashes when i click on the faction symbol at the start new imperial campaign screen).

Just to iterate what i did with the file Edorix Emailed me...
-unzipped and placed it in Computer>C;drive>CA>Save

[This message has been edited by Orcrist_Beleg (edited 10-21-2010 @ 05:27 PM).]

Great start Edorix, as i was reading the bit about the battle, i thought of a great battle tactic.
The phalanx were scattered, and you had cavalry.
As the phalanx were walking/charging to the town center, pick 1 cavalry and your General unit, circle behind 1 phalanx unit with your general unit then fake charge your 1 cavalry unit, with your general unit also charging. The phalanx unit can only face one unit at a time, so whatever unit the phalanx faces, you hit it from behind the other charging cavalry unit and withdraw quickly. The unit the phalanx faces then fake charges without getting scrached.
Other than that, great start(again:P)
Let Macedon rule the world, as Alexander the Great did

[This message has been edited by Khalidbinwalid (edited 10-21-2010 @ 07:32 PM).]

Edorix, I don't know weather this assault was foolhardy or bravery worthy of Alexander. One thing is for sure. I am defenatly not as bold as you.

Good strategy. And Excelent tatic!
Edroix it was very impressive, the battle was great!

And thank you for reducing unit scale. since I havnt(beside the last 2 days practice) played larger scales. and its my first time with phalax faction(beside those 2 days...).

I have one note... I think that if you wanted, you could bring the infantry from the capitol to that battle - via ships, unless you wanted those ships to be left for other jobs...
I think we should utilze our ships for a rapid (internal and external transportation), of units and agents.

[This message has been edited by ExecutionSquare (edited 10-22-2010 @ 02:09 AM).]

Noob question, where in the world are the screenshots when you take them?

Wherever you specified for your screencapture device. I have an entire folder for each of my upcoming turns and set fraps to the first one.

Also, I think we should secure either Kydonia(Crete) and Byzantium. These will seriously open up a Stronger Aegean Sea Trade Network, and also be a deterent to Thrace as well as a Military base for the eventual invasions to come. All after Greece is away from our lands though.

Nickel-
The best way to take screenshots: http://rtw.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=10,7241,0,365

Orcrist-

Just to iterate what i did with the file Edorix Emailed me...
-unzipped and placed it in Computer>C;drive>CA>Save

It should go in C:\Program Files\The Creative Assembly\Rome - Total War\saves, which I assume is what you mean since you were able to start it up.

I have redownloaded, unpacked and played the save and it does work... the only thing I might ask is have you done any modding, and are you playing on version 1.5?

[This message has been edited by Edorix (edited 10-22-2010 @ 11:02 AM).]

I am not sure what version I have. I am running a Gold Edition and have not installed any patches.

GO forth without me!

@Orcrist_Beleg
After starting the game go in to Options from the main menu and in the top right corner of the screen should be the version number. For example, it should show v1.5 in the top right corner if you have v1.5.

[This message has been edited by Scipii (edited 10-22-2010 @ 01:50 PM).]

If you have Gold Edition, you should be fine. I have gold edition, and it worked perfectly well for me in the previous swap. It is possible the save got corrupted in transit, Edorix, send the save to Orcrist again, see if it doesn't work this time.

[This message has been edited by GundamMerc (edited 10-22-2010 @ 08:23 PM).]

Save resent, but...

Quoted from Orcrist:

GO forth without me!

You sure?

By the way, fellow Overlords of Kings, from tomorrow until Thursday, I will be in the lands of the Helwetioi studying the land and such like. In my absence, please send saves or ask questions to Terikel instead. Thank you.

[This message has been edited by Terikel Grayhair (edited 10-23-2010 @ 09:45 AM).]

In preparation to my turn, i have completed the Macedon campaign over the last few days, just in order to be prepared.

I strongly suggest a classical eastwards expansion into asia minor, and through into Syria and Mesopotamia.

And where Alexander failed to turn westwards and conquer Rome and Carthage, we shall succeed.

I suspect we will end up being drawn in three direction: by about 245 BC maybe we should control all of the Balkans, Italy and a little bit of Asia Minor. Then I think we will begin to accelerate Eastwards, and more slowly into Barbarian Western Europe and Northern Africa.

Wait...

Guys, I have an idea.

How about we have a house rule where we are not allowed to provoke a war with Carthage? We make an alliance, and then we can't attack them until they attack us. That way we can watch them grow stronger in the West while we grow stronger in the East, and in the end have a massive world war!

Sound cool?

Agreed, but what if we end up in a massive world war with the House of Scipii instead?

How is that not fun either?

I think we'll wipe out the Scipii quite early on to be honest, but we'll see...

I see Edroix expansion plan as most fitting to my opinion.
Since we will have the sea to protect us from the east.

How about we have a house rule where we are not allowed to provoke a war with Carthage? We make an alliance, and then we can't attack them until they attack us. That way we can watch them grow stronger in the West while we grow stronger in the East, and in the end have a massive world war!

Oh I'm in favor of that! Maybe go so far as to give them Sicily or their original lands if we don't get there fast enough? I'd reinstall vanilla to play that

Why have peace at all, just declare war on every one and fight battle after battle.Now thats what i call campiagn, war with every person on the planet, and nothing counts but surviving.

This game has stalled, I believe we must skip Orcrist for the time being and go on to Bastworshiper.

Lord Orcrist has become wounded in battle, and selflessly proclaimed "go forth without me!"

He has since fallen silent.

Thus his wishes are fulfilled. Lord Gundam, an electronic horseman has been dispatched to thee with the Sceptre of Kings. Thou shalt have three days, or seven seasons, which does arrive first.

I have received your message concerning the current situation of our empire, and have begun commanding our forces, awkward as it may be to someone used to commanding 20 meter tall 'mechs. At least the view of our forces when in battle is familiar.

So far, I have alternately been focusing on upgrading the military capacity of our forces, with the legionary barracks being finished in Thessalonica. I have also focused on ports and mines to increase our meagre economy. Oh, by the way... I took Sparta! I also wiped out an army of 6-7 peltasts plus some militia hoplites with our faction leader and two light lancers (wonderful for charging peltasts, as they continously charge back and forth through the unit), clearing the way for the takeover of the last Greek settlement on the mainland.

I have gotten map info and trade rights from Thrace (which they thoughtfully offered). Then I offered trade rights to the Brutii, proceeding to sell our map at the weekly special price of 700 Denarii (why Macedonians should stoop to use the Roman monetary unit is beyond me). Either I or one of my successors should ship a diplomat by sea to discuss trading with Pontus and Egypt. This will provide the trade that will cause Athens to flourish into the Gem of our Empire. We should probably think about throwing out the Brutii from Apollonia. I find that the romans usually give up on Apollonia after being driven from it once or twice.

[This message has been edited by GundamMerc (edited 10-25-2010 @ 03:03 PM).]

Ok, basically the campaign stalled out somewhat in the second half of my playing. Thrace is laying siege to Bylazora (or was it Thessalonica?), while an odd diplomatic chain of events led to the greeks getting a ceasefire, breaking it, breaking our alliance with Dacia. At least when they attacked they did so with their armies coming on as seperate reinforcements, allowing me to eat them up piecemeal.

We should be able to take Thermon easily, and use the two armies up north to break the seige of Thessalonica. My suggestions, ship the diplomat in our only fleet east to that one peninsula to get trade rights with Pontus. Also use our diplomat north of the romans to become allies with the Britons.