We Three Kings II - An Imperator: Rome Multiplayer Beta AAR

[Peter Ebbesen]

We Three Kings II
an Imperator: Rome beta multiplayer AAR
by Swuul, Wyvern, and Peter Ebbesen
​

It is written in the scrolls that mighty Egypt, eternal Egypt, ancient Egypt of the Pharaohs, modern Egypt of the Kushian Djedhids conquered all the known world, extending its dominance from the Pillars of Heracles where in antiquity stood Atlas Telamon, to the borders of India where even great Alexander had halted. And then, inexpicably, in the crisis of the ninth century, it shrank and upstart empires replaced it in much of the known world.

Why is this written, the modern scholar might ask? Because the Egyptians were the ones doing most of the writing, that's why, and they were never shy about interpreting their observations in ways their rulers preferred. Their style ran to embellishment, exaggerration, and outright fabrication, whatever it took to please the pharaoh. That is why every minor setback is constantly proclaimed a truly horrific loss, only to be followed by completely unanticipated major victories, which could (obviously) only be ascribed to providence or their deified rulers, if not both.

This may seem an insecure way of acting to the initiate, but it is essential to the understanding of the school of “Woe Is Me” literature, which long outlasted the undoubtedly hard work of portraying one of the richest, most advanced, and most powerful countries in the world as an underdog. If we had on hand one of the scribes responsible for such a miserable performance in this day and age, he would probably claim that “God made me do it” - fully justified, mind you, due to the deification of their rulers.

The dearth of other sources of European history from those days has traditionally been explained by the regression of the Hellenistic world outside Egypt and the poor standards of record keeping in the Roman Republic, which, while it did share centre stage on the world scene for a century or two, ultimately fell to the inevitable and left nothing of worth save the AUC calendar bequeathed by that bitter historian of antiquity known as "the last Roman".

But tradition is wrong.

I have by extravagant effort managed to gain access to the Orontid Annals of Awesome Armenia, for long a state secret of Peerless Persia but these past two years publicly acknowledged and accessible only by special dispensation of the Great King, in whose service I labour as Royal Historian. It tells an amazing tale of the rise of the Orontids of Armenia and its later chapters hint at a deliberate suppression of historical information for most of the people under the sway of the Great King carried out to hide certain politically unpalatable truths concerning the rise of Orontes III and his successors.

Together with an unexpurgated copy of the tales of Exalted Epirus it paints a rather different picture of history. This collection of historical tales by an unnamed writer known only as the "narrator", who wrote himself into the historical narrative as an obvious literary device, is as incredible and enlightening as it is amusing. I regret to say that I am sworn not to divulge the circumstances under which it fell into my hands, but I vow to its authenticity by Ahura Mazda,


I will illustrate with a few chapters starting from the time that the respective narratives intersect, the year AUC 450. Alexander lies dead these 19 years and his successors are lesser men. Consumed by their squabbles, on the border of empire the strong seek advantage and the bold test the patience of the Diadochi.

Armenia is free of the Achaemenid yoke and the Diadochi have failed to make their claim stick as they struggle for control of Alexander's empire, so the satrapy of Armenia enjoys a taste of de facto independence. King Orontes, third of his name, has shown no inclination to end his life as a Seleucid satrap and may yet fall afoul of Seleucus Nikator, but the gravest threat to his rule may come from within, for the king is an ardent follower of Ahura Mazda and his people are not. The tribesmen already feel threatened by encroaching civilization, and with the king taking the Vendidad to heart, determined to teach them of the flame, the bonds of loyalty will be strained. By the light of the sacred fires Awesome Armenia will enforce the state religion.

Epirus is a speck of dust compared to the great powers of the world, but dust with ambitions. The boy-king Pyrrhus has yet to show that he is true blood of the Aeacidae kings, but his time is coming, and it is coming fast. Soon all the world will know his name. To the west, the Hellenic states of Italy are facing an ascendant Roman republic and may be amenable to Epirote protection, while to the east the family ties to Macedon have been sundered by the murder of Alexander IV by Cassander Antipatrid. Exalted Epirus will take the world by storm.

Kush languishes on the Nile, daydreaming, but what does king Peneus Penamus dream of? In the prime of his life, he is a great general in a country that no longer has need of such, safely ensconced on the Nile and feared by its neighbours, in no small part due to his early campaigns. Does he relive former glories as he rests his weary head on the bosoms of his handmaidens? Does he dream, perhaps, of a return to glory in Eternal Egypt as is customary? Or does his dreams aim higher yet? Of such dreams are nightmares made. Kustomary Kush will do whatever it takes.

And all the while the Diadochi play their deadly games, oblivious to their danger and unaware that the uncaring hand of history will weigh them and find them wanting.

Behold, my reader, as I lift the veil on the true history of those days as known to those that experienced them.

To this I attest in the name of the lord: Let me die impure, let my corpse be uncleansed, and let the crone greet me at the bridge of judgement should I prove false.


Dramatis personae:

Awesome Armenia is played by Peter Ebbesen
Exalted Epirus is played by Wyvern
Kustomary Kush is played by Swuul

 

[Swuul]

Kustomary Kush
PRELUDE
​

I have been dreaming of "We Three Kings, The Redux" ever since my Egypt won (as probably everybody remembers, but I just like to point it out anyway) the original "We Three Kings" EU:Rome MP game all those years ago. So when I finally was able to talk and nag and plead and blackmail Peter and Wyvern into this Redux game, I was drunk with joy.

We discussed the set-up for months, on and off as time went. As we couldn't seem to come to terms of what setting and countries to choose, the start of the campaign began to look to be in danger. At this point I asked Peter and Wyvern together to come up with sane and balanced starting countries for us all, and I would accept.

Apparently some discussions went on between them, and Peter then represented the suggestion: He would take the mountanous and culturally torn Armenia with access to Horse Archers (Peter is somewhat fixated with Horse Archers), Wyvern would (after some further discussions) take Epirus (which is a huge army with a smallish kingdom) so would suit well Wyverns explosive expansionistic behaviour in MP games, and I would get Kush (which according to Peter can form Egypt at will, and also can eventually run over the world with its camel armies, while using desert attrition as a creative defensive weapon, as it has the nice starting military tradition of reduced attrition).

That sounded cool, I have to admit! But even though I have put a couple hundred hours into the beta, I didn't know where Kush actually is (and I wasn't able to launch the game there and then), so I asked where it is. At this point Peter muted his microphone, and went unresponsive. Wyvern then took over, and told Kush is the big blob of a country, just south of Egypt, where modern day Sudan is. Wyvern then seemed to catch a terrible cough, and he too muted his microphone.

Anyway, that did sound even more cool. A big country with massive camel armies! ALRIGHT! Images of Lawrence of Arabia leading the camel charge against the Ottomans flashed through my mind (ok, yes, I am aware Lawrence of Arabia didn't exactly happen during the antiquity, but who cares).

As both Peter and Wyvern did seem to have problems with their microphones, I wrote them (rather exitedly) that I am so in! And so it was agreed.


When I finally was able to launch the game and check where the heck Kush is, I got a smile on my face. Yes indeed, a big blob of a country, safely away from Wyvern and Epirus, and Peter in the mountains to the north-east. This felt almost too good to be true, had the guys actually handed me a piece of gold?!

Nope. They hadn't. I should have known better.

While Kush at first appears as a huge blob of a country, it is actually 90% aestethics. Most of the blob is impassable desert, and the country of Kush itself is a long snake, with absolutely no room to manouver. If Egypt declares war and attacks, you have to meet them head on, absolutely no chance to manouver in any way.

And for desert? Yup, lots of desert. LOTS AND LOTS of desert. Meroe is btw the capital province of Kush.

As for the unbeatable camel army with reduced attrition, eventually rolling over anything? Yeah sure. I would eventually get an unbeatable panzer army to roll over the deserts too, because guess what? Kush has just as many camels as they have panzers. No camels at all. Zero, none, nada. And while Kush indeed gets the reduced attrition from tradition, it does *not* reduce the desert terrain auto-attrition (unlike one might first believe). Did I already mention Kush is kinda a desert nation?

I know now why I had never learned during my Imperator gaming where Kush is on the map. It doesn't exist for very long. I guess it gets eaten by Egypt ahd her clients very early in the game usually.

If I was a religious man, I think I would say "Stercus, stercus, stercus, morituri sum!". But here I stand, knee deep in sand, wondering how I got fooled to this.

 

[Wyvern]

Exalted Epirus
PRELUDE
​

As you've probably gathered, this is a sequel! A long, and I was going to say long awaited, but I doubt there are many here who remember the original AAR, so let's just say a long time coming sequel to the first 'We Three Kings', which was played just under 10 years ago when Paradox released the only expansion to their original Rome game.

Once more we have the renowned world conquerer Peter Ebbesen, and the cry baby troll Swuul as our opponents. We will all be trying to grab as much of the known world as we can whilst fending off the lies and half truths presented by Swuul, the first of which is obviously that he never had a hope of winning the original game - to be fair there was no real winner - but the audience, that's you, graciously awarded the accolade to Pontus, and that felt fair to me .

So on to the new game.

As winner of the first game, I was given the short straw this time, and the minor power of Epirus. Epirus starts with just 156 pops split into 17 Citizens, 119 freemen, 2 tribesmen and 18 slaves. Clearly a state primed for war and little else. (Note a day or two after we started this game, the devs in their wisdom rebalanced the games starting numbers, so Epirus now starts with numbers that look rather worse.)

Clearly if I was to compete with Armenia and her starting 717 pops, or Kush and their 444 pops, I'd need to expand and expand fast.

Pyrrhus gave me a very nice king, though for someone lauded by Hannibal as the greatest of generals, MIL 8 still felt a tad low, especially when my court Epistrategos began with MIL 10. The other problem was that Pyrrhus starts at age 14, going on 15, and so wouldn't be available to command an army for the first year and a bit. I'd need to remember to swap him in as soon as he aged up so as to avoid too many legions giving loyalty to another general and creating problems further down the line.

My plan was simple - try to expand southwards into the Peleponnese and conquer any targets of opportunity as and when they came up, whilst spending oratory power and gold if necessary to keep Macedon and Phrygia friendly. At the same time I'd just have to hope my two opponents had slow starts so I could have a chance to compete longer term! Beyond that very simple plan, nothing was set in stone.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Awesome Armenia
PRELUDE
​

With Paradox finally after many pigs were stabbed in their honour making a worthy successor to EU: Rome, Swuul, Wyvern, and I decided to write a collaborative MP AAR just like we'd done for the Vae Victis expansion a decade ago.

That AAR, "We Three Kings", dealt with the excessive expansion and conquest of the known world by the three kingdoms of Upstart Pontus, Eternal Egypt, and Blasted Numidia.

Numidia? Trust me, it made excellent sense in the context of the EU: Rome map, when we wanted second-rate monarchies with potential.

That game ended, as those few of the readers who were around at the time will recall, with a clear victory to Numidia as the great king Djedhor danced on the skulls of his enemies after Numidia had conquered western Africa and most of Spain, Gaul, Italy, and Germany as well, and was engaging in the invasion of Britannia when we ended. He'd beaten a civil war too.

Admittedly there were no declared victor of the game, as Swuul and Wyvern were too busy making irrelevant claims of importance to agree, but it was the only sane conclusion reached by those who objectively assessed the situation.

The theme this time around is the same, but to spice things up we've chosen kingdoms that each represent a different group of military traditions and each start next to the Diadochi.

My choice is Armenia, which represents the Persian traditions. If you are looking for horse archer porn, look no further. In a military sense of course, perish the thought.

Armenia is by far the largest of the three kingdoms at start, but a kingdom that has its own unique problems to deal with, not the least of which is bordering the largest of the Diadochi and being close to the second-largest, so let me without any further ado introduce you to fair Armenia in AUC 450.

Geography of Armenia:

As you can see Armenia is surrounded by potential enemies but only accessible through a few narrow gaps in the mountains. As you can also see my starting army of 21k is starving. I'll have to address that little detail.

Supply limits are generally low since Armenia, though large, is sparsely populated outside a few larger city centers. Given that most of Armenia's terrain consists of hills (slower movement) and mountains (much slower movement and halved supply), it is fair to say that playing Armenia without keeping a careful eye on attrition and army weights is a very swift way to deplete the manpower pool. In practical terms, that means that any army of greater than 13 army weight will suffer attrition if moving any significant distance or staying in the wrong Armenian city for long. Keep this in mind - I certainly intend to!

This is my handsome monarch Orontes, third of his name, and the vital statistics of Armenia, a major power of 126 cities and 717 pops. An autocratic monarchy, Armenia gets a military, civic, and religious idea, and 10% national slave output if the chosen ideas match. Which of course they will, because otherwise I'd lose out on the +2 to all four power sources, something much more important that the slight slave output bonus could ever be.


Culture of Armenia:

Looking at culture we note that all 717 POPs belong to the Persian culture group. Of these 601 are of the primary Armenian culture, but the remaining 116 at least belong to the same culture group so Armenia has no problems with culture.


Religion of Armenia:

With respect to religion the picture is considerably worse. Orontes is a Zoroastrian as is much, but by no means all, of his court. Only 15.9% of the POPs are Zoroastrian, the remainder are Khaldics and Cybelene. This is bad for any number of reasons, but the two foremost are religious unity and governing.

The lack of religious unity means that omens are all painfully weak at start, and while a good high priest and inventions can and will help ameliorate this a bit, in truth the only thing that will make the omens strong and worth spending religious power on is increasing the religious unity.

For governing, since the monarch counts as governor for all provinces in the capital region, Orontes governs most of Armenia. And since POPs get a happiness penalty both for being a different religion than the monarch and for being governed by somebody with a different religion, every POPs in the Armenian region that isn't Zoroastrian is twice cursed and hit by a combined -15% happiness modifier making the POPs produce less and cities far less loyal in the face of adversity.

Now, I'm all for religious freedom, but as seen above Imperator: Rome isn't, so this will have to change. Conversion is on the menu, and it is a dish best served hot. The sacred fires of the Zoroastrian fire temples will enlighten the land.

This will come at a considerable cost, specifically the opportunity cost of not using other governing policies (increasing income, manpower, etc.) as well as increasing unrest throughout the land, but it is a necessity.


Demographics of Armenia:

Those 717 POPs represent 57 citizens (7.95%), 141 slaves (19.67%), 189 freemen (26.36%), and 330 tribesmen (46.03%).

Since tribesmen grow more unhappy and hence less productive the more civilized and since they furthermore have the worst basic production of the four pop types, what this means in practice is that research, income, and manpower is very low compared to what the total number of POPs would seem to indicate.

With national manpower taking 25 years to regenerate, a considerable change from earlier Paradox titles, mercenaries will to a large degree have to substitute for standing armies or at the very least supplement them, and mercenaries are expensive.

So the tribesmen will have to be civilized. And, as noted above, converted. I can't do both at once, but eventually it needs to be done.

Furthermore 8% citizens is low, very low if I want my technology not to fall far behind. Honesty compels me to admit that were this a singleplayer game I wouldn't mind falling behind in tech that much, even falling far behind in tech, because against the AI one can always compensate. Against human players not so much.

So I'll also need to significantly increase the number of citizens, but that comes at the cost of promoting freemen, hitting my manpower pool.

But you get the point. Armenia is a kingdom with lots of potential, it is just that it has a number of internal weaknesses that needs to be addressed before it is ready to straddle the world like a colossus; A premature focus on expansion could lead to grief. Orontes Orontid III will have to wait a bit before treading the jeweled thrones of the world under his sandaled feet. Sucking up to the Seleucids until then sounds like a splendid idea.

 

[Wyvern]

Exalted Epirus 450-482
Spending a Jolly Evening with the Narrator
Autographs available after the show
​

Greetings fair listeners and thank you for signing up for this long awaited sequel! Has it really been 10 years? My oh my how the years have flown by.

But enough with the pleasantries, let me introduce myself, I am the Narrator. That's not my real name of course, however after some of the things that happened on my intrepid trip to the past, I was told it's best I keep that under wraps. Lawyers will be lawyers and all that.

So are you intrigued? Of course you are - you wouldn't be here tonight otherwise! Yes, I, the Narrator, had the recent privilege of observing the rise to power of Epirus and their infamous king Pyrrhus.

Now, normally I'm given very strict instructions when I go on these journeys. Observe they tell me, don't interfere! But I say, where's the fun in that? Am I right or am I right? So this time I *may* just have nudged events a little bit and given Pyrrhus one or two pointers on where he was going wrong. Nothing too drastic of course - well ok so we all make mistakes. And besides, there was competition of sorts - but more on that later. For now let's take a sneak peak at Epirus and how King Pyrrhus really made a name for himself!

My trip began in October of the year 450, as calculated from the founding of Rome.

Oh you'd prefer me to give you dates in the Gregorian format? Well let me tell you that Gregor chap hadn't been born yet, and wouldn't be for another 1800 years, so tough it out, I'm told to roll with the convention of the times, even if the convention was really only popularised by scholars during the renaissance. My hands are tied - lawyers again, what can you do.

Pyrrhus was a 14 year old lad, ready to be molded, err I mean led; ahem advised, on how to rule Epirus and go down in history as the greatest general of his age. No no, I'm not talking about his age, I'm talking epochs, the age of history, that sort of age. Oh never mind, I tell you I despair at modern education, really I do.

(look at those handsome features)​

So there was Pyrrhus, sitting on his bum with a newly recruited army of 17,000 archers and no idea what to do with them, but I knew, oh yes I knew. Some people told him he should build a fleet and sail over to Italy. In no uncertain terms, I told him no! South into Greece is where you'll make a name for yourself my boy. Trust me! And I mean who wouldn't?

So a month after arriving in the fair city of Nikopolis - that's the capital of Epirus if you were wondering - diplomats from Epirus rode south and declared war on the state of Akarnania. Boy that's a mouthful even for me. No other states intervened and the war was over before it barely started. I was hailed a hero - Ahem, I mean Pyrrhus was hailed a hero and quickly set about looking for a weakness in the Greek city states further south. Aetolia's defense was guaranteed by the great power of Phrygia, so the trick was to get Aetolia to commit its forces to a war without Phrygia getting involved. Easier said than done as it turned out.

Pyrrhus's first thought was to lay a claim on their ally Boeotia, but immediately after that was done both Macedon and Phrygia guaranteed Boeotia. So this wasn't going to be easy. I found the solution in the holiday port of Aigion, such a beautiful place and they had a defense pact with Aetolia so were ripe for the picking. This time, Pyrrhus I said, declare war and march without a claim. Don't give those crafty Macedon diplomats time to frame a response. So it was Epirus found herself at war with Aetolia, Boeotia, and Aigion. Alright that wasn't quite what I had in mind, but if Boeotia wanted to join the party, the more the merrier as Pyrrhus said, and by god he wasn't half wrong, as he summarily vanquishing his foes.

Situation after the war

There was one big bug in the ointment, as I'm sure the observant amongst you will have noticed. Yes that's right - Macedon. The devil who was king of Macedon at the time - a murdering psychopath by the name of Cassander, cursed be he forever - snuck in at the tail end of the fighting and annexed the coastal province of Naupaktos, thereby cutting Epirus in two. It was shortly after this that Pyrrhus came to me for advise, clever lad that he was. He'd had a dream where Macedon declared war within the year, and the size and supposed strength of Macedon clearly worried the young king. Don't worry Sire - I find it best to butter up royals, otherwise they can get a bit uppety - I have a plan!

So I admit. I took a little journey ahead of time to assess the situation. Macedon was for sure about to declare war towards the end of the year(*). Fortunately I'd already advised the merchants of Epirus to import Horses and Iron so some decent Greek Phalanx cohorts were already being trained, so I advised Pyrrhus on two fronts. Continue to train the army, and kiss Cassander's arse if that's what it took to make him his friend. The arse kissing commenced, as did training the army.

​

Cassander said Pyrrhus was his bestest bussom buddy, a friend for life, and promptly followed up with a declaration of war. Well what can you expect from the murderer of Alexander the Great's mother.

The situation looked pretty grim.

​

Now Epirus was bleeding money at this time, so the army began on half maintenance to keep the economy afloat. All this meant the common soldier really wasn't in any mood to fight. The one ray of hope was that Epirus arguably had a few more men to call upon than Macedon, assuming Pyrrhus and his generals didn't throw away their forces early in the war, but the difference was marginal, and evapourated completely when the first wave of invaders sent both Pyrrhus and General Olymiodoros fleeing back to the capital after their early offensive was overrun.

This was no way to run a war, I scolded Pyrrhus - sometimes one has to take a heavy hand even to a king. Fortunately he didn't have me executed on the spot, and instead listened to my words of wisdom - yes I really am that good. The key now was to let the army recover, and then break the siege on the capital. With 27,000 men split into two forces, it would surely be possible for someone of Pyrrhus's reported skill to turn this around.

Pyrrhus led a force of 5,000 Heavy Infantry, 5,000 Light Cavalry and 5,000 Archers, whilst Olymiodoros commanded another 12,000 Archers. By threatening the besieging army from both the north and the south, the Macedon general split his forces, and ended up getting defeated piece meal, despite using the better tactics when facing Olymiodoros. Clearly Epirus' second general was not in the same league as the king, still he won the battle and that's what counts.

With the capital saved, the war quickly turned around. The Macedon armies were chased back to their territory, and with few forts to stop them, the Macedon heartlands were overrun and Macedon's armies bled dry. The last key battle took place in the summer of 468, and saw Epirus link up with her ally Korkyra - an insignificant island city off the coast of Epirus - and soundly defeat Macedon's last army of worth.

​

Macedon was ripe for the picking, and Pyrrhus was greedy. Okay I admit I had a hand in the peace negotiations, so sue me. A small slip of the quill even accidentally included the acquisition of the Macedon capital as part of the deal!

​

So what next? Epirus was the new power in Greece, but viewed rather dimly elsewhere. Sparta had made a land-grab in the Peloponnese, but was hardly a threat to Pyrrhus, so I advised Pyrrhus to use the time to recruit a 3rd Stratos, of the same composition as his own force and retired myself to my newly gifted country estate whilst the diplomatic situation cooled down. One has to enjoy the finer things in life from time to time.

A few years of peace saw Pyrrhus flex his independence and manufacture a war against Stympholia. And when Sparta intervened on the side of her neighbour, her territory was also added to the pot. Somehow Megalopolis manufactured a peace where they ended up as a client state, rather than annexed - a small slip of the quill - I wasn't drunk I swear - whilst all other territory in the Peloponnese was soon added to Pyrrhus's growing empire. A job well done, even if I say so myself.

Epirus in the year 482

(*) Our adversary in Kush made a slight mistake and asked for a roll-back. I didn't object as it got me out of the Macedon war which had just started, though they dow'd again anyway despite Pyrrus befriending the Macedon King. In the end I needent have been so worried, and was able to bleed Macedon's manpower dry despite both my armies getting routed near the start of the war.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Awesome Armenia: 450-482
Yatha ahu vairyo
The will of the Lord is the law of righteousness
​

In the beginning was the worry, and the worry was that Seleucus Nikator would insist by force of arms that Armenia stop being, in the parlance of the day, a SINO.

A worry, because Orontes III Orontid, he of the great beard, quite liked being a SINO. Every few years Seleucus would send an embassy to ensure that Armenia remained a loyal satrapy, and incidentally, what had happened to the missing taxes? After feasting and getting the ambassadors truly sloshed, he'd tell them that sure, he was a good loyal satrap but bandits and/or goats must have eaten the taxmen, curse the evil buggers. Then he'd send the ambassadors on their merry way and continue doing whatever he wanted with nary a thought for his theoretical overlord.

This fooled nobody, least of all Seleucus, but it is of such polite lies that civilization is made: The forms had been observed.

Now, Seleucus was growing old and he couldn't last forever, but while he yet lived few dared cross him openly, and his patience had limits. In between fighting his fellow Diadochi he had been steadily extending his power over the eastern satrapies and had recently reached the end of the line in war against the Mauryan empire of India. What would Orontes do should Seleucus outlive his patience and look north to make a clean sweep of the satrapies? And should Seleucus die, would that result in opportunity or chaos? Or both?

Orontes III Orontid, he of courage unrivalled, would undoubtedly have wailed and gnashed his teeth if he was a woman, but he wasn't, so he didn't. He was a manly man, that's who he was if he were to say so himself, and so he did. Interminably. He was a strapping stallion of a man in the prime of his life, 31 years of age and had recently taken a young Sassanid filly to consort. She had already dropped a foal and showed every sign of becoming a good broodmare in time. It was good to be the king.

So instead of despairing he thought on the matter, and since he was a few ponies short of a thoroughbred he then thought some more, and he thought till his thinker got sore and smoke rose from the shiny dome of his forehead, and he came up with a plan. A cunning plan. A magnificent cunning plan.

FIRST, Orontes III Orontid, he of the great bronze balls, declared that Armenia would double down on trade by embracing a mercantile stance; Wars? Perish the thought, only disagreeable people would embrace such foolishness. Only peaceful traders to see here. Well-armed traders, naturally, but willing to trade with anybody.

SECOND, Orontes III Orontid, he of the brown lips, sent a magnificent gift to Seleucus, and he sent an embassy of his own to jolly up the Seleucid court with tales of bandits and/or goats.

THIRD, Orontes III Orontid, the bold barbarian basher, said that it was time to civilize the wild tribes of Mount Ararat, who every now and then went on a bloody rampage through Syracene or Ayrarat provinces, and if the effort should happen to civilize some of the mostly peaceful Armenian tribesmen in the process, well done.

FOURTH, Orontes III Orontid, beloved of the flame, declared that it was time for Armenia to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern world by embracing the revolutionary three-strike kindling, bringing that homey old-time religion of Zoroastrianism to the masses with modern fire-lightning techniques. Ahura Mazda previously being ignored by most Armenians in favour of worshipping any old god they fancied, Orontes would put the monomaniac back in monotheism where it belonged and light a flame imperishable.

FIFTH, Orontes III Orontid, master of horses, reformed the standing royal army by eliminating its infantry contingent altogether on the grounds that it was a) too slow, and b) too dirty after a long day's march. (He was a stickler for cleanliness.) The standing army would consist of 1/3rd heavy cavalry and 2/3rd horse archers.

SIXTH, Orontes III Orontid, he of the great lance, set about the necessary task of breeding strong sons on his consort, a task about which the less is said the better since Orontes III Orontid, whatever other adjectives might be used to describe him, had this thing about horses. He absolutely stallionized her. But I digress.


And time passed.

Six years later, AUC 456, the wild tribesmen of Ararat had thrown in their towels in return for complimentary hats and haircuts and taken up competitive dancing. The nearest barbarian threat were now the wild tribes down south in Atropane.

Seleucus did look north, but his first target was Atropane, and Orontes III Orontid, he of the cunning plan, saw that it was good. I tell a lie. It was pretty bad, but it was better than Seleusus attacking Armenia and that's a fact.

AUC 459 the Seleucids completed the conquest of all the kingdom of Atropane save for a tiny remnant, and their border with Armenia was no longer limited to two mountain passes in the south-west. Orontes III Orontid, he of the small thinker, worried, but he worried needlessly. Shortly thereafter the Seleucids became embroiled in war against Maka on the far side of the Sinus Persicus granting him that most precious of gifts, time.

To prevent further encirclement by the Seleucids, Orontes III Orontid began plotting the conquest of Albania to the east, which was then engaged in a war against Legia to the north.

By 461 the consort of Orontes III Orontid, he of the majestic lust, was used up, her flame extinguished. She bore him four live sons, but in the birthing of the fifth son she suffered complications and died in childbed. These things happen. Tragically, the king's fifth son died with her, and the king mourned the loss. But not for long. A man has needs.

With the selection of a young filly of the Deiocids the power in the kingdom shifted subtly and her numerous family grew closer to their royal kin.

The four living sons by the Sassanid broodmare were:


AUC 449: 12 years old. Abdagas, the once and future dummy, whose goofy looks proved tragically prophetic.

AUC 452: 9 years old. Orontes, the future warrior-poet, whose early baldness was an omen of his future career as an absolute badass.

AUC 455: 6 years old. Mithradates, the warrior and womanizer, whose splendid mane was to prove almost magically attractive to women of the opposite sex.

AUC 459: 2 years old. BagayashBayad, the zealot, the baby who was so large they named him twice.

But their internecine struggles were a matter for the future. In AUC 461 Abdagas was enjoying his first hat and refusing to lend it to Orontes, who argued that he needed it more. Mithridates was begging for a mirror and BagayashBayad was eating.

Time passed.

Following the fabrication of a claim on the Albanian Arran province, Orontes III Orontid, he of the swift sword, led a lightning invasion of Albania in AUC 462. Together with the mercenary band of Hystapses Pacorid he swept aside the Armenian home army and swiftly overran most of the country.

That was when the Albanian main army returned from campaigning in Legia bolstered by mercenaries of their own, evening the odds.

But when armies of mainly infantry and archers meet heavy cavalry and horse archers even odds won't cut it. To quote the famous dictum of Orontes III Orontid, he of the sure tongue, "Quality has a Quantity all its own". By 464 Albania had lost its Arran and Caucasian Albania provinces as well as its share of Kaheti province. Neighbours considered the conquest of these 26 cities to be rather aggressive expansion, but they would, wouldn't they?

Construction on fortresses along the border with the Seleucid Empire began immediately.

Time passed.

And the world was shaken to its core. Seleusus Nikator went mad as a hatter, and not a good honest Persian hatter capable of delivering masterpieces of hat fashion to the royal court, but a Macedonian hatter, and as all men know, Macedonians don't make good hats. His grip on empire ever more feeble, he had yet tottered on from success to success while the internal stability of empire was threatened by rising disloyalty.

AUC 466 the strain finally proved too much to bear and the empire tore itself apart. Seleusus maintained control of his capital and a small part of his army, and a few governors proved loyal, but everything else was up for grabs.

The Governors, warlords, and opportunists of all stripes seized power within the empire, and across the land new fresh armies sprang up to seize the opportunities the chaos created. In Phrygia Demetrios Antigonid rejoiced and laid dire plans and even Ptolemy Keraunos Lagid in distant Egypt took notice.

And Oronted III Ortontid, he of simplicity bestowed, looked to his nobles, and he spake, saying: "Wait and see."

And they waited, and they saw that wars ravaged the southlands. Meanwhile, wild tribes went rampaging across the border into Armenia, and Orontes III Orontid, he of the mighty thews, crushed them.

And so it came to pass that by AUC 470 it was clear to all that Orontes III Orontid, he of the mighty lance, he of the flame beloved, he of the swift sure sword, he of the great bronze balls, he of wisdom unencumbered, was no less than a polymath, and it was decreed that from that day henceforward he of the the many qualities never be referred to without a fawning appellation.

Across the land the words of Zarathustra spread and fully half the population now paid their respects to Ahura Mazda. Half begun is half done, and Orontes III Orontid, he of the most puissant devotion to the law of righteousness, would dearly love to see the other half completed in his lifetime. Unlikely, perhaps, but a man has ambitions, and he of the great thirst had more than most.

And his sons grew tall and strong and independent, pushing his tolerance to the limits, and he ordered them to conquer the remains of Atropane to secure a more aesthetically pleasing border while in the north Colchis overran Iberia, and they did so.

Abdagas, who'd shown himself to be a middling military commander, was sent to govern the new region of Media.

BagayashBayad, who while an adequate commander had never liked the saddle, was appointed high priest, the Mobadan Mobad, a job more in line with his aptitude for zealotry and feasting.

But Orontes and Mithridates had shown their genius in combat, and retained their commands, both claiming that they'd make better kings than their brother and they plotted against him. And Orontes III Orontid, he of the fruitful loins, said nothing for Abdagas was his firstborn and the law was the law, but if secretly he thought they had a point, who could blame him?

So when a vacancy as oratory researcher opened up at court, Orontes the younger was shovelled into that job with almost unseemly haste.

Map of fair Armenia, AUC 482.

---​

A few notes on game mechanics and choices made.

Heirs:

I wouldn't mind it terribly much if the primary heir was to die as the second heir, Orontes, is a wonder by comparison. Less civic power gain, of course, but look at those stats! Oratory is the most important statistic when you need to perform large scale POP changes in a hurry as well necessary for facricating claims. Not to mention that I'd dearly love to change some laws, but at 250 oratory that could have been spent on e.g. promoting 25 freemen to citizens (my capital province now has only citizens and slaves, because I desperately need the research and direct promotion, though costly, is the swiftest way to get it done.)

The constant need to keep heirs 2-4 loyal is achieved by favouring them in event choices and having them lead armies, win at least one battle, and proclaiming a triumph. This is fairly cheap (20 military and religious power for +20 loyalty, 720 days cooldown) but comes with the potential downside of making them more popular as well. Should this ever come to civil war with several heirs popular and prominent it will get ugly. So I'll just have to prevent that.

There are other ways to help keep people loyal, but none that are readily available to me at the start without a significant oratory investment and/or a willingness to tolerate greater corruption. Now, corruption isn't all that bad in moderation in Imperator: Rome, but you don't want to make a habit of it – at least not for people who might end up ruling the country. I'll no doubt return to the issue of alternative ways to keep people loyal in due time in a few chapters unless I'm saddled with the moron Abdagas and his Oratory 1 skill for long, in which case it might take longer.


Military power and traditions:

The observant reader will note that I have 2357 military power stored. This is because as a general rule I do not pick military traditions before I need them, doing so because of a) preferring to keep my options open, even when I'm pretty sure what I'll pick next, and b) wanting to save power, since the cost of military traditions decreases by 200 with each military tech level, down to a minimum of 400, just like it increases by 400 with each tradition picked.

So picking the first military tradition at tech 0 would cost 800, but if I delay it until tech 2 it costs 400. The second tradition has 1200 base cost at tech 0 and can, in principle, be gotten for 400 if you wait until tech 4. And so on and so forth. I'm not going to delay every tradition in order to get it at the cheapest price possible (that is mainly relevant for military power hungry strategies centered on abusing the Military Colony and Raise Levy special actions), but I do have a plan for traditions and unless I end up in a desperate war where I need traditions immediately I will follow it. More about that in a chapter or two. For now, just accept that I have a plan. Possibly a cunning one, but let's see. You've probably guessed it anyhow, if you've been following the developer diaries.


National ideas:

As an autocratic monarchy I get one military, civic, and religious idea, and my special bonus for matching ideas is +10% national slave output, which isn't that important, and the generic government-invariant bonus to all four power types per month, which is. Choosing civics that do not match slots is prohibitively expensive in the long run, though it does occasionally make sense to do so for a short while.

My military choice is Martial Ethos. This is the go-to tier 1 military idea, providing a 10% bonus to morale that is multiplicative with any morale bonuses gained through tech, event modifiers, etc. It isn't a no-brainer as the other two tier 1 military ideas are situationally a better choice, but you just can't go wrong with this one.

My economic choice is Tax Farming, which increases the output of slaves by 20%, additively with other bonuses. If I were planning on building a lot of buildings choosing Standardized Construction for -30% build cost and build speed would be the economically sane choice, but my money is mostly spent on royal armies and mercenaries. If my commerce base was higher than tax base, I'd have picked Complex Tariffs for +20% commerce income. They may not be flashy, but the first tier of civic ideas are all good.

My religious choice is State Religion, which increases the country's maximum civilization by 10% and gives a bonus of 0.02% to civilization growth in each city, resulting in higher output from civilized POPs and lower from tribesmen as well as swifter recovery from barbarian invasions. For most countries that start with a religious slot it is a no-brainer. The alternatives are Haruspicy, which gives subject states a +10 loyalty bonus (very situational use, but highly valuable to those with many subject states), and Origin Myth which boosts the ruler's popularity gain by 0.33 (I prefer gaining popularity by conquering enemies, but there are situations where picking this makes sense).


The disintegration of the Seleucid Empire:

Some may have wondered why I didn't immediately seize this opportunity to attack the new minors near me. One reason has to do with my aggressive expansion; I don't care much about its impact on foreign relations, but I care some: I want Phrygia and Kossioi not to hate my guts. More importantly is the impact on foreign cultures in my realm – I have some in Albania and I don't want them too unhappy, moreover, some of the new minors are also foreign culture. Conquering them immediately while already having modest AE seemed contraindicated for that reason.

The other reason has to do with manpower. When new countries form from the breakup of another they don't start with empty manpower pools. Where the Seleucids manpower had been nearly exhausted during its wars, though their standing army of more than a hundred cohorts and ability to pay for many mercenaries remained and still inspired dread, the lands to the south were now divided between kingdoms with full manpower pools, all ready to raise armies and continue the mayhem while Seleucid remnants tried to reunite its lost empire.

(This makes sense. The available manpower in Imperator: Rome doesn't represent "everybody who can hear thunder, see lightning, and be pressed into the army and issued a weapon" like in PDS games set in later eras but people who are willing to take up arms for your side. So when a country breaks up and locals seize power men rally to the cause.)

So while the breakup certainly presented an opportunity, and a large opportunity at that, taking immediate advantage of would be expensive. Much better to let the enthusiasts fight against each other while building up my kingdom addressing the low research and wrong religion issues, so I'd have a strong Armenia at my back once the time came to make my move.

Most of all, and I cannot state this enough times, manpower is more precious in Imperator: Rome than other Paradox titles because it takes 25 years to recover. Great adventures are best undertaken while at high manpower or with lots of cash in the treasury for mercenaries and unexpected emergencies. Preferably both.

 

[Swuul]

Kustomary Kush: 450-482
And all around is the desert; a corner of the mournful kingdom of sand.
Pierre Loti​

Even though king Peneus Penamus is remembered as a great king who returned Kush to be a power to be reckoned, his time was full of trouble and concern. He was born in 415 AUC, and was always considered a nice child, enjoying a modest life as the third son of the chief of the Meroe tribe. But his childhood was abruptly cut when he was merely 11 years old. Raiding barbarians from Nubia entered the lands of the Meroe, and in the ensuing fight his father, mother ad two older brothers all were killed. Peneus was taken as a captive, and carried away as a slave.

Enduring the hardships of slavery for nearly two years, he was finally able to escape, stealing a horse and riding off into the desert. His mount died after two days from exhaustion and thirst, and Peneus carried on on foot, because he thought he saw something shimmering in the horizone. And indeed, the next morning, delirious and almost dead, he did reach the Nile. He drank water, the elixir of life.

He soon found out he was near the trading post of Napata, about half way between Meroe in south and Nubia in north. People at Napata had also suffered raids from the nubians, but they had no special love for some unknown child who claimed to be a prince of the Meroe. Still, common decensy saw Peneus to be able to get some food, and he soon found a caravan about to head southwards to Alut, and thus would pass by Meroe.

When Peneus arrived to Meroe, he found his fathers tribe all shattered up. Families were living separately, trying to scrape together a living farming vegetables and tending goats. While families acknowledged Peneus was indeed the new cief of the tribe, it would take years before the families moved together again.

At the age of 25 Peneus had succeeded to unite the people of Meroe enough that he could start to plan his revenge on the nubians. The meroitic tribes of Meroe, Napata and Alana struck an alliance, with an intent to end the nubian raids. It would take years, but finally in 449 AUC most of the nubians were pacified, and Peneus took as his wife the nubian princess Lysandra Nefarid. The following year, 450 AUC, Peneus was crowned as the Ity of Kush, King of all tribes. And thus began the story of the Kingdom of Kush.

The population of Kingdom of Kush was quite homogenous. Of the 444 pops 438 were kemetic meroitic, ie about 99% of the population. The population had 121 citizen cohorts, 140 freemen cohorts, 70 tribesmen cohorts and 113 slave cohorts. The kingdom had in all 54 cities, thus recognised as a regional power. In southwest Kush bordered the meroitic kingdom of Alut, in southeast the settled meroitic tribe of Boras, and in north the Egyptian client kingdom of Dodekaschoinos. Far to the north was Egypt, which Kush used to rule a couple centuries ago under the 25th dynasty; there were still some in Kush who dreamed of returning north, and reclaiming Egypt back to the true kemetic religion from the hellenic macedonians.

Peneus Penamus was 35 years when he was crowned the king of Kush. He was universally regarded as a modest and kind person, but also very stubborn. In life as in combat he preferred to barge straight through, without any sneakines or flexibility. Most of his life had gone to unifying the tribes, and stop them fighting with each other. Now he had begun to realise, he wouldn't get any younger, and to continue his legacy, he would need a family.

Lysandra Nefarid had been a nubian princess, and her marriage with Peneus was seen as the fulfilment of the united tribes in flesh. Lysandra was well aware of the situation, and she knew very well her role as consort of the Ivy was one of the corner-stones of the Kingdom.

While the meroitic tribes from Nubia down to Meroe had been united under the same flag, two meroitic tribes had refused to join the Kingdom. The wealthy tribe of Alut had decades ago formed their own kingdom, and saw no reason to join their poorer desert dwelling cousins. The tribe of Boras on the other hand lived in one of the harshest places on Earth, and were fiercely independent, relying on their camel warriors and strong desert-forts to keep the tribe independent for an eternity if needed.

Peneus wanted to unite *all* the meroitic tribes under one flag. As negotiations didn't seem to get things anywhere, it was time to make things happen by force. While Alut was of equal strength to Kush, it was still regarded as an easier target than the barren and dead lands of Boras. But conquering Alut wouldn't be easy, and thus the army of Kush had to be reorganised.

Peneus took himself command of the main army, which was now stripped down to just six heavy cavalry cohorts. The six light infantry cohorts were split into two smaller sieging armies, and their leadership handed to devout supporters of Peneus; Peneus did not want any pretender or other uppity characters the chance to build up a personal army for themselves. In addition, five heavy infantry cohorts and five archer cohorts were ordered to be built; these would join the main army (with the HI in center, and archers forming the screen of the army).

On November 1st 450 AUC troops of Kush went over the border to Alut, without a proper declaration of war. This sudden act of war saw the stability of Kush shaken, but the priests in Kush were stabbing some rare pigs (all pigs were rare in Kush) and saw from the blood flow this was the will of the gods. Thus the faith of the population restored, the loss of stability was only a minor shake.

While the war versus Alut were still going on, Peneus asked his cabinet to prevent such stability loss in the fuure, when war would be declared against Boras. The Amerkhatnebut and Sakhadshut found from old lore evidence, that the tribe of Boras had merely 400 years earlier agreed to serve the king of Kush forever, and they were thus clearly breaking that agreement now.

When Alut was conqured, her lands were added to the Kingdom, and as a sign of goodwill two of the noble families in Alut were called to join the noble families of Kush. The war against Alut had been a smooth one, merely some 3000 men were lost as casualties in battles and in attrition.

In June 451 a son, the new heir to the Kingdom, was born to Peneus and Lysandra. Peneus was so happy, he told his newborn son Ameny he would rule a great kingdom when his time would be to take the crown. Peneus thus immediatly called the troops, war was declared against Boras, and off to war Kush went again.

However, this war was not smooth and easy. The tribal warriors of Boras had built three very strong forts which they were defending to the last. In addition, Boras had allied themselves with the kingdom of Aksum far to the southeast, and the aksumite troops were also joining the fights. To make matters worse, the desert attrition took a heavy toll on kushite forces; some 40 thousand men were lost to attrition during the years of war. In 456 it began to look like Kush might lose all her armies in the desert war, and peace was signed. Boras handed over two cities and one of their forts, but remained independent.

Kush woud have to wait for years to see their manpower pool raise up again. A long and harsh war had been fought, and there was not much to show for the effort. Peneus began to feel depressed, would he not be the one uniting the meroitic tribes after all? Had he wasted thousands of good men in vain?

In summer 461 Peneus woke up after a horrible dream. He had once again gone to war with Boras, with no casus belli. This had seen the whole Kingdom split apart, brother rose against brother, all was lost. It took a while before Peneus understood he had indeed just seen a bad dream, it was not true at all, even though it had felt so very real.*

In autumn 461 however, right after the truce between Kush and Boras had worn out, Kush did use the old casus belli, and did again declare war on Boras. This time the war was however mostly fought with mercenaries, with Kush own troops only joining for two larger battles. The mercenaries were expensive, but at least their suffering to the desert attrition did not waste the manpower of Kush. The two remaining forts of Boras were taken, and Boras forced into peace. The stubborn noble families of Boras were all thrown into the snakepits, and all memory of their existence evaporated.

In the peace-deal also one city was taken from Aksum, and this would prove to be crucial in the future. The city of Tanachtala was not in desert, but in lush hilly terrain. Large armies could camp here, with plenty food and water available for resting armies.

In 466 news reached even to Kush regarding the implosion of Seleucid Empire. Stories of dark and evil magic performed by the witch-king of Armenia were whispered. It was said he had set his evil eye on the Seleucids, and all people had gone mad. It was good such an evil entity was so far away from Kush!

When the heir Ameny Penamus turned 20 years old, Peneus named him the Governor of Punt, and turned over the control of all armies and all external policies to him. Despite seeking for treatment for years, Peneus had never really got better from the depression he had fallen for after the first Boran war. Ameny would now carry the torch, while Peneus still was officiall the king.

Ameny didn't waste any time. Ameny attached all kushite forces to the province of Punt, and thus took direct control of all the armies. The three small kingdoms to the southeast, Aksum, Gwahara and Adoulia, had formed an alliance and declared war on the fourth small kingdom in the area, Yeha. Ameny staged his troops to Tanachtala, declared war on Aksum using the kushite claim on the province Punt (the province of Punt stretching for hundreds of kilometer in every direction), and the troops poured over the border. Nothing could stand in their way, and all three kingdoms were annexed. The relieved king of Yeha rode to meet and hail Ameny, but was handed a declaration of war (Kush using the claim on Punt), and Yeha too was annexed by Kush a few month later in 475. Not satisfied yet, Ameny used the claim on Punt on the coastal kingdom of Avalitia, and the follown year the lands of Avalitia were absorbed by Kush.

Fame of Kush began to spread. No longer was Kush considered some hilltribe in the desert, but a Major Power!

This saw finally Peneus get cured from his long lasting depression. Kush was the kingdom he had always dreamed! Kush had a future! He felt he would be ready for the field again, if needed, and asked Ameny to send the 1st army back to Meroe, where Peneus again took command of it. Too bad age was starting to catch up with Peneus, and soon after he was diagnosed with arthritis.

The second of Peneus, brother of Ameny, Peneus Junior was a bright young man. Imemdiatly afeter having come to age, he had already served as a researcher and as the Iry-Pat in the governement. After a freak accident when he was seeking treatment for a flu he suffered a serious brain-damage though. The smart young man became a drooling idiot. Many mourned over his fate, because he would have been able to serve Kush in so man ways.

Ameny's wife, the lovely and extremely talented Hypatia Philothid went stark mad in 482. In her lunacy she killed the only child of her and Ameny. Ameny was absolutely heart-broken. Peneus on the other hand decided the problem of Hypatia had to be solved, and soon after he would make his move.

In 482 the neighbourhood of Kush looked somewhat different. All meroitic tribes were now united, and a few arabic tribes had joined the fold too.

Alexandria of Egypt was the most civilised city of the world. Closely behind Meroe of Kush, with a civilisation value of 57.

In technology Kush was second only to Egypt. While the war-crazy barbarians of Epirus and the dark sorcerers of Armenia had barely reached level 2 in tech levels, Kush, despite all the hardships it had had to go through, was close to having all techs on level 4.

While money was not totally drained, the cash flow was not what one would have expected for a "Major Power". Not to mention the absolutely atrocious manpower situation; living in Desert had had its consequenses.

Culturally and in religion Kush was no longer united. If Kush had any hopes of grandeur, the people in coastal provinces would have to broght to the proper kemetic meroitic fold.

---
*In summer 461 I clicked on Boras to check when the truce would go out; it would go out in two months, and I also had the CB ready for that. For some reason I succeed to misclick and not only declare war, but use the no-CB declaration of war too, which saw stability drop to -3, +5 War exhaustion added, 15 characters going unloyal and looking to start civil war. It would have been game over there and then. Wyvern and Peter agreed to roll back to the previous autosave, and I went and had something to eat (I hadn't eaten anything in 14 hours, so my brain was very likely functioning even worse than usually).

 

[Wyvern]

AUC 466 the strain finally proved too much to bear and the empire tore itself apart. Seleusus maintained control of his capital and a small part of his army, and a few governors proved loyal, but everything else was up for grabs.

View attachment 467566

This was such a shock - I bet Peter was drooling when it happened. Never seen the Seleucids implode like this in any of my SP games.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

This was such a shock - I bet Peter was drooling when it happened. Never seen the Seleucids implode like this in any of my SP games.

Gentlemen don't drool.

(Come to think of it that would make a catchy title for a book or a film, but I'm not quite sure what genre. Comedy, perhaps.)

 

[Wyvern]

Exalted Epirus 482-500
Of Minotaurs and men
And please all give a round of applause to Crete​

Good evening, good evening good evening. Have you missed me? Of course you have, I could hear the rioting at the doors to get in. So wecome welcome to another evening of entertainment from your scholar of antiquity, your adviser to kings, yes your very own pundit from the past, the Narrator!

Let me tell you I had a swell time last night, I hope you did too, but one thing I failed to mention was Pyrrhus's family! Yes, despite all his fighting he actually had one, though it took a while before he settled down with a bride, and the first one didn't end well. Eutychis Hiketasid - and try pronouncing that when you come home drunk - was the first wife. She produced an excellent heir in Thetima, if only Thetima has been a son. Sadly she wasn't, and we we were not going to rejig the succession laws however much she cried. So when no further children were forthcoming, I may have started a teenie weenie little rumour that Eutychis may have caught the Macedonian disease off some common soldier - these days I believe the English call it the French disease, and the French call it the German disease, but we all know what I'm talking. Am I right or am I right?

​

So anyway Eutychis found herself in the slammer and Pyrrhus was then free to marry Lysandra Hiketasid. Best to keep the Hiketasid's on side by marrying another one I said! Lysandra was much more forthcoming in producing sprogs, and had the bonus of being far easier to pronounce, so a win win situation there! By the time of we got to the year 482, Pyrrhus was the proud father of three strapping lads.

With that sorted out let's pick up where we left off. There I was sunning myself in that nice Greek port and perusing the state of the kingdom, when Pyrrhus walked in and told me he was off to war again. It turned out he'd just found out Cassander Antipatros, you remember that murderous soul right, had killed his cousin Olympias. I'm sure I mentioned her already? Blond hair, temper like a volcano. Mother of Alexander. Yes that's the one. So it seems Pyrrhus had been led to believe Olympias' death had been an accident rather than the murderous act of, this throne is mine, you can't have it and I'll kill you to make sure Cassander. So Pyrrhus was hell bent on wiping Macedon off the map now, and more specifically Cassander with it.

Pyrrhus my boy, I said, if your hearts set on this, I'm not going to stop you. I'll stay here and converse with the lovely Lydia here, and maybe have a few words with these philosophers. They've got so many things wrong and I can teach them so much!

So Pyrrhus marched off north and managed to bait Cassander into conflict by invading Taulantia, whose safety Cassander had guaranteed. This brought Thrace into the conflict, as well as Messapia in southern Italy, but with 50,000 men under arms I had full confidence in my charge.

Whilst Pyrrhus was having fun, I was having fun! That girl in the baths was, ahem, best left unmentioned. Suffice it to say I also spent a lot of time looking over the country's research and development - a boring job for sure, but someone has to do it - and making sure we were set to catch up to our rivals.

Have I mentioned my rivals yet? I say my rivals, because that's what they were. Well ok technically they were colleagues - the rest was just a silly bet that got out of hand. We were bored okay, so sue me.

Well Kushy - he likes it when I give him endearing little nicknames - had been going on and on for weeks about how his country was already at tech level 4, whilst my barbarians were lagging down at 2. The cheek. I bet he doesn't even understand where tech level 4 sits on the projects antiquity graph.

But enough of that, yes I have a colleague down in Kush, and another over in Armenia, just observing things of course. Like I do. Only with less suave! I'd need to keep an eye on them.

The war in Macedon was a success, and I believe Pyrrhus even had Cassander executed. Personally I didn't take much notice, I was kept too busy entertaining Lydia. What a woman!

So by the end of the year 487, Pyrrhus had vanquished all his major rivals in Greece and I was able to mark Epirus down as a bonafide Major Power in my yearly project report.

Pyrrhus of course wasn't happy to sit idle for long and was already looking at securing the Aegean Islands, the prize of which was of course Crete.

Crete had been mostly unified by the city state of Gortyna, and the island was heavily fortified. So rather than waste the battle hardened cohorts of Epirus, a mercenary force from North Africa was hired instead, together with 4000 elephants. So much dung I tell you, I'm glad I wasn't along for that crossing!

Now you can't blame me for Crete, I wasn't even involved I swear. No that honour goes to good old loyal dick of a General Platon Xenonid

Crete should have been easy. A small island province with a standing army of under 10,000 men. How could a veteran army of 16,000, plus a mercenary force of another 12,000 fail? It was the island's legendary Minotaur that did us in! claimed the few survivors. In reality it was those damn fortresses at Gortyna and Tarrha that commanded the mountain passes between the north and south sides of the island, and most importantly meant the cursed defenders could employ hit and run tactics at will by skipping north and south, whilst the Epirote fleet had sailed around the island each time they ran away if they wanted to reengage them.

Yet even with these tactics, it should still have been a walkover. General Platon chose to put both fortresses under siege allowing the defenders to recruit a force of 16,000 strong and then go on to rout and destroy both armies. This was the first setback of Pyrrhus' reign.

Pull yourself together lad, I said, best not mention he was 59 years old by now, the treasury's flush and there's a mercenary force of 31,000 men sitting here in Epirus doing nothing. Just hire them instead whilst you train a replacement for Platon's inept legion. A few more ships wouldn't go amiss either.

So it was that 46,000 men returned to Crete under my watchful eye this time, and pacified the island, all whilst tales filtered from across the sea of Phrygia descending into civil war. And yes I blame my rival in Armenia for THAT!

Gortyna forces finally defeated

With Crete conquered - well most of it anyway - Pyrrhus felt he had to prove himself yet again and this time declared war on the Phrygian Empire, laying claim to the Aegean Islands. I tell you this boy never stopped. But more on that next time!

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Awesome Armenia: 482-500
Ke verethrem-ja
Who is the victorious who will protect thy teaching?
​

And it came to pass that Orontes III Orontid, he of near-infinite patience, was visited by the Artabid, steward of the realm, the worthy Ara Deiocid. The king, he of the flaring nostrils, noticed the pallor of his steward's face, held up his hand in a forbidding gesture, and he inhaled long, and he snorted hard, and he spoke unto Ara Deiocid, the Artabid, saying,

“If I hear you saying one more time that the steppe horse trade route from Ponyporn in Fillyfiddlerland has been lost due to a change of rear management, or the fish have gone off, or the grain has caught fire, or the livestock has spontaneously exploded, or, indeed, the supply of anything to anywhere from somewhere, has been lost, or cancelled, or eaten by goats and/or bandits, or, indeed, anything of that sort altogether, I'll have your head. Dealing with trade routes is YOUR job. Not mine. Now, you were saying?”

At which point the Artabid, worthy Ara Deiocid, grimaced, wriggled his hands meaningfully, twisted his hips most unbecomingly, and jumped on the spot. Which just goes to show that there isn't anything so bad that miming doesn't make it worse. You try miming a trade route. I dare you.

But I digress.

The upshot was that Orontes III Orontid, he of indubitable sanity, declared that every valuable trade good in the capital province be produced in abundance, except for wood, as he didn't hold with ships, Armenia being landlocked.

And he ordered slaves marched from the provinces to the capital's cities, and they did produce goods in abundance.

And he further instructed the Artabid: Trade routes to the capital would be dedicated to trade goods benefiting freemen and citizens country-wide, starting with the dedication of two routes to import fish to the capital from newly conquered Albania to provide a steady supply.

Not fresh fish, obviously, given the distances involved, but even the driest eel tastes good when you are hungry, as the fisherman's wife said to the magus.

Several blessed years of peace and prosperity passed, but Orontes II Orontid, he of great balls of fire, did not rest on his laurels. Rather, he prepared for war. Finally, in the spring of AUC 486, he marshalled his forces against Corduene and launched the wave of conquests for which he won immortal fame.

Guarding the entrance from the Balales pass, the fortress of Chlomaron was a formidable obstacle. A small force of 6000 horse archers besieged the fortress while larger forces lurked in the pass beyond. Two attempts by Corduene to relieve their fortress were repulsed by swift counterattacks out of the pass, and when finally the fortress surrendered thousands of horse archers flooded the province, scattering the armies of Corduene and those of its ally Adiabene, then running down and utterly eliminating the survivors.

The fall of Corduene in AUC 487 left Sophene in the west wide open to invasion, and Orontes III Orontid, he of patience limited, lost no time extinguishing yet another rival.

The road to the heart of the Selucid Empire, such as remained, now lay open, and in far Seleukeia Megala Antiochus I Soter Seleucid quaked as he felt the ground slipping under him, but the time was not yet ripe for the definitive push south. It would take a year, perhaps two, to gather the necessary forces from all corners of the realm for this major undertaking.

But alas, it was not to be. Corruption, ever a threat to the pure, infected Orontes III Orontid, he of the hungry heart; AUC 491 a cancer began eating him up from the inside, which rendered him weak and unable to stand the travails of a campaign.

His four sons eyed their ageing father, now 72 years old, each by now considerably older than Orontes III Orontid, he of the fruitful loins, had been when he became king, and they thought their secret thoughts and re-evaluated their situations.

To prevent them from contemplating the issue of his mortality too enthusiastically, he sent them to conquer the province of Nineveh in Adiabene, and while his sons were gone and he was confined to the palace and in need of cheering up, the capital's magi celebrated the great king's 392nd conversion of the heathen early AUC 492 with a purification ceremony, and great Orontes III Orontid, the bringer of flame, saw that it was good and resigned himself to die.

But he did not die.

As AUC came along 493 he remained in ruddy health despite the cancer growing in him, and the fourth son, BagayashBayad, the Mobadan Mobad, always eager to suck to to his father, pronounced a blessing upon the realm, for surely no other realm was as clearly guided by Ahura Mazda as Armenia.

In the end all men are mortal, but Orontes II Orontid, the agéd king, were to survive one more upheaval: the descent of Phrygia into civil way. Antigonid fought Antigonid for the crown, and while Phrygia escaped the outright collapse that the Seleucids had suffered, a few greedy governors on the outskirts of empire seized the opportunity to proclaim independence.

Governors such as Peithon Nekrotid, the governor of the populous western Assyrian province of Osroene. Eyeing opportunity, Orontes III Orontid, the ever victorious, ordered his sons to finish the war against Adiabene already, because opportunity knocked.

Alas, the sons fell to bickering. It never came to blows, but their intrigue and chronic backstabbing disorder occupied most of their time, slowing the conquest. When finally Adiabene fell in AUC 494, they insisted that they deserved a rest and returned to the capital for what, one suspects, they considered a death vigil.

But cancerous though he be, deprived of his former strength, and unable to muster the will to dominate his sons, the king lived on.

And the years passed.

Ultimately what broke the stalemate was that old particular, poison. Early AUC 497 the fourth son, Mobadan Mobad BagayashBayad, fell deathly ill. His son faltering on the brink of death, the great king, he of unexpected wisdom, called for a holy man to pray for dying son.

The holy man came, and he prayed for the high priest, and by the grace of Ahura Mazda BagayashBayad recovered. Suspicion fell immediately on his three brothers, which seemed reasonable enough in the given circumstances.

At this Orontes III Orontid, he of the temper limited, gathered his faltering will for one final effort, and he waxed wroth, and he summoned his sons to his side on pain of death, and he issued his three elder sons an ultimatum: They could make peace with each other and go conquer Osroene forthwith as the dutiful sons they were, then withdraw to their holdings until he had need for them again, or he'd have them all killed and let their baby brother BagayashBayad inherit the throne.

The conquest of Osroene took half a year.

But every tale has an end, and the tale of Orontes III Orontid, great king, father of the mighty, neared its end. He struggled against the cancer another three years, and if his sons did not cease their plotting, at least they became more circumspect. Finally, AUC 500, in his 81st year of life, he died.

Choking on a herring at a party.

It was the way he'd have wanted to go, said his son and heir, Abdagas Orontid, who wasted no time claiming the throne.

----​

On the nature of cavalry in Imperator: Rome

While the mighty heavy infantry forms the center of the battle line for many countries, every country wants cavalry for combined arms operations. The four types of cavalry are:

Heavy Cavalry: Very bad against heavy infantry and war elephants. Slight edge against horse archers. Very good against all other units. Double attrition weight. Army movement speed 3, maneuver 2. Most expensive unit save war elephants. The mailed fist.

Light Cavalry: Very bad against heavy infantry, heavy cavalry, and war elephants. Neutral against camel cavalry. Very good against all other units. Army movement speed 4, maneuver 3. Cheap. Best flanker available to most countries and also good as a rapid reaction force.

Camel Cavalry: Very bad against heavy cavalry and war elephants. Neutral against light cavalry and heavy infantry, Slight edge against all other units, Army movement speed 3, maneuver 4. Great flankers and good general purpose cavalry.

Horse archers: Very bad against light cavalry. Slightly bad against heavy cavalry, camel cavalry, and war elephants. Very good against all other units. Army movement speed 4, maneuver 5. Great against all armies that aren't cavalry heavy. Awesome flankers and rapid reaction force.

In practice that makes heavy infantry a hard counter to heavy and light cavalry, heavy cavalry a hard counter to light and camel cavalry, and light cavalry a hard counter to horse archers on a unit-by-unit basis, all else being equal. As for war elephants, see next note.

All-cavalry armies are a thing in Imperator since the slowest unit in an army dictates movement speed, but are vulnerable to enemies using units that counter them well.

As a general rule you will want to use combined arms for important battles rather than all-cavalry armies. They perform better in combat and the presence of infantry allows you to assault cities.

That being said, all-cavalry as quick reaction force is just as good as one would expect, and for the cavalry-centric military traditions all-cavalry is also a viable choice for the main armies in SP or MP when fighting enemies whose armies aren't built specifically to counter them. You can always use auxiliary infantry armies for city assaults if you intend to engage in such practices.

Using mono-armies consisting of a single type of cavalry is a more risky proposition, especially in MP, since such an army is extremely vulnerable to counter units, but with the right traditions boosting cavalry it can be a powerful strategy. This is mostly seen with Levantine/Bedouin traditions using camel cavalry armies and Persian/Steppe dummy traditions using horse archer armies, but in principle everybody can engage in it with heavy cavalry armies without any traditions, though that might not be the best use of resources.


A note on war elephants:

War elephants don't just hard counter all cavalry, they hard counter everything except other war elephants. Most other units have penalties to damage them, they have bonuses to damage most other units, and on top of that they take half strength damage. Any fight against equal numbers of war elephants is a guaranteed loss. But you will not be fighting such fights.

Since they count triple for attrition purposes, are even more expensive than heavy cavalry, and move as slowly as infantry, one should think twice before fielding all-elephant armies.

Having a battle line wide enough that the enemy doesn't outflank you with large numbers of high maneuver units (up to 3 on each side for light cavalry, up to 5 for horse archers) is important. Even the best elephant is swiftly turned chopped up or turned into a pincushion if it is on the flank and being attacked by 4-6 units.

And, of course, they suffer morale damage just like everybody else.

So while having war elephants in the center of the line for a combined arms force is a very strong play, using lots and lots of war elephants in an army or even using the hypothetical all-elephant army is more of a SP demonstration thing for jokes and giggles than effective play or good use of resources unless you've got resources in abundance.

Fun, though, where province supply limits allow.


My traditions so far and plan for the future:

For this game I've chosen to double down on the Persian steppe dummy traditions, which focus on horse archers with a sideline in heavy cavalry. The two other lines of Persian traditions (Achaemenid, Bactrian) provide bonuses more suited to a HI/AR/LC combined arms approach, though the Bactrian line sneaks in a bonus to war elephants and horse archers as well.

In addition to modifiers from traditions, I get +10% discipline to light cavalry and horse archers from surplus of horses and steppe horses in my capital respectively. I can gain a further +5% from exporting those goods. Finally I can get the same discipline bonuses as everybody else from inventions.

In the following screenshot I've highlighted the important bonuses for my cavalry focused strategy; they are not the only bonuses from the tree that are beneficial to me, but they are the ones that are important enough to pursue for their own sake.

The game won't last long enough for me to get everything I could possibly desire, so I'm beelining down the steppe dummy branch, after that it will be time for the 10% manpower bonus should the game last long enough. (Though, should I prove desperate for manpower before reaching the sweet discipline bonuses, I may pick manpower prematurely). And after that? That depends on circumstances.

An obvious choice would be to continue down the Achaemenid track going for Raise Levies, which can be used to raise large numbers of light cavalry. That costs military power rather than manpower as you are directly drafting people rather than relying on the pool of manpower that'll sign up of their own volition, and it has a cooldown of 5 years in each province.

Of course, I'd prefer never to be in so desperate a situation to make drafting dozens of LC from several provinces a sensible choice, but.. it is something to consider. Most countries are out of luck if their manpower is depleted and they can't afford to hire mercenaries, while countries that can raise levels are able to fight on a bit further. (Raise Levies is only available to the Persian Achaemenid tradition track and the Barbarian Celtic tradition track.)

I can pretty much guarantee the game won't last long enough to also reach the desirable traditions deep in the Bactrian tree as I've got very poor research due to a low percentage of citizens and having to deal with wrong culture group and religion issues in my conquests unlike my competitors in Kush and Epirus.

 

[Swuul]

Kustomary Kush: 482-500
In a world of one colour, the sound of wind.
Matsuo Basho​

Hypathia Philothid, the mad wife of Ameny, was sent to prison for child-murder, and shortly after that executed. Ameny was heart-broken, but Peneus soon arranged a new marriage for Ameny, with the fabulously beautiful Euphemia Phileid. Ameny found himself to be in love again, and soon enough Euphemia was pregnant. Peneus was happy, as surely this would mean the line of Penemus would be secure.

During the next years Euphemia gave birth to two children, both girls. Also Peneus the younger, the braindamaged brother of Amenys, had succeeded to seed daughters only. While Peneus the Elder loved her grand-daughters, he was worried for the line of Penemus. Depression again caught Penemus, and after a while he was found out to also have cancer.

In 487 Penemus, aged 72, broken by grief and cancer, died.

Ameny Penemus was crowned as the new Ity of Kush, the King of all tribes. One of the first things he did as a king was to declare war on Blemmia, the pirate state on the coast of the Sinus Arabicus. This not only would gain Kush more trading ports, but also open a new front against Egypt.

Yes, Ameny had joined the people who thought it was wrong the hellenic macedonian immigrants ruled Egypt. It was a disgrace the great heritage of Egypt was oppressed, and that Isis was not allowed to be worshipped on her sacred grounds. It was thus important to start planning for the liberation of Egypt. First step would be to secure the lands of Blemmia from the pirates using it as their base of operations.

The war vs Blemmia was a swift one. With all due haste the pirate-country was overrun during the first months of 488. All countries, even Egypt, sent letters of gratitude to Ameny for removing the pirate threat in the Sinus Arabicus.

In 491 Peneus Penemus the Younger, brother of Ameny, governor of Punt, finally died. Despite his heavy brain damage he had been able to sire five children, all girls. Meanwhile Ameny and Euphemia had got no more children, as the two seemed to grow apart. In 493 Euphemia, Queen of Kush, aged 30, was accused of stealing the silverware of the palace, and she was thrown to jail. Ameny, apparently shocked of his wifes actions, immediatly took a divorce. Soon after he married the 17 year old beuaty Theophila Bastid, an extremely talented young lady. During the marriage celebrations all prisoners in Kush, including Euphemia the former consort, were pardoned and released from prison. Ameny seemed to be extremely happy with his new wife.

Over the next five years Theophila gave birth to two lovely children, both girls. The late Peneus Penemus thus had got 10 grandchildren in all, and they all were girls. The succession of the crown thus seemed to be in jeopardy; pretenders laying claim the crown became restless. In 496 the powerful Nefarid family, originally the royal family from Alut, spent all their gold and raised an army of their own, threathening to start a civil war if the family wasn't recognised as the true heirs to the crown of Kush.

When the news of this private army reached Ameny, he had to ask twice "How big army do they have??", and when he was sure the army indeed was 6000 men strong, he was seen bursting out laughin. After he had laughed for a while he did understand this was not a good sign; while the Nefarid army was small, it perhaps was just the first one of many, as the tribal families all tried to move in and secure the crown of Kush for themselves.

In 498, on his 47th birthday, Ameny declared Kush was to follow the ancient Egyptian succession law of Agnatic-Cognatic Primogeniture. If the king didn't leave a son to inherit the crown, then the oldest daughter would inherit the crown. It had dawned to Ameny he was not getting any younger, and the chance for getting a son was getting slimmer by each year.

With the former pretenders thus stripped of all legal ways to get the crown, the kingdom did calm down. For the next two years peace reigned (although the Nefarid family refused to stand down their army). It was a calm before the storm.

Kush began military reforms in 500. The army needed more able soldiers, especially if there was to be a war with Egypt in the near future.

All that stood between Kush and Egypt was the small kingdom of Dodekaschoinos, a client of Egypt. Kush claimed Dodekaschoinos based on historical facts, as well as the coastline of Sinus Arabicus from Egypt (which also historically was Kush territories).

Only Alexandria of Egypt was more civilised thn Meroe in Kush, and only the city state of Sidon was technologically more advanced than Kush or Egypt.

In military traditions Kush had advanced far beyond the barbarians of Epirus or the armies of the sorcerers of Armenia. Kush had not only improved heavy infantry at use, they had also already started to use the Greek Phalanx tactics.

---

My thoughts on army building and set-up for battles, with the experience of having spent about 200 hours trying to come up with the most effective build.


And now these three remain: Gold, Manpower and Military Power. But the greatest of these is Gold.

In my opinion, for a succesful war in Imperator, you need two of the three to be better than your opponent:
1) Able to sustain gold drainage
2) Able to sustain manpower drainage
3) Able to sustain Military Power drainage

If you have all three, you are guaranteed to win. If you have two of the three, you will eventually win unless you are absolutely surprised with your pants down early in the war. However, if you have no gold, you will lose unless you perform some desperate manouvers to save yourself.

You need gold to be able to pay for your armies and mercs. You need manpower to build and reinforce your armies. You need military power to recruit mercenaries and to assault forts (if you happen to play one of the rare nations who have Persian Achaemenid or Barbarian Celtic military traditions, you can also (eventually) use Military Power to raise Light Infantry/Cavalry levies for 50 Power (but need no gold or manpower for that, so can be crucial in some situations)).


Go therefore and win in the name of Primary, Flank and Secondary

Primary section is the cohorts you send in first, as per the definition of the game. They will always meet the enemy Primary cohorts, they will never be outflanked (unless you have no Secondary troops). It is pure slugfest between the two Primaries. Essentially, you would want your Primary forces to deal maximum damage, but not get killed. This is why increased morale loss compared to manpower loss is what you need for the Primary cohorts (you would want these units in the to fall back before they are killed, as this does not break the morale of your army; besides, Manpower is one of three things that you need to keep your eye on); both Archers and Phants have this (Archers get increased morale loss, phants gets decreased manpower loss, so essentially same thing in different wrapping, though the phant version is the better one), though in a pinch Heavy Cavalry will do ok too. Using Light Infantry in the Primary slot is dangerous, because they take less morale loss than manpower loss, so they will quite often die with their boots on and cause the whole army to rout too early (not to mention the manpower drainage they caused to you).

On "Flanks" you have cohorts who fight the opposing flank cohorts. Late in the game you can widen your flanks, especially as you get traditions boosting the "proper" flankers (Light Cavalry, Horse Archers, Heavy Cavalry, Camels), as they will be able to smack in the enemy flankers and then roll on against enemy center. Early on in the game you want on the flanks you something that will at the very least *not* be overrun by the enemy flank, and if they can overrun the enemy flank it is a bonus (unless you have something distinctively better from traditions, early in the game in pitched battles Heavy Cavalry will be the best here).

In the "Secondary" section you have the meat of the army. Your army stands or dies with your Secondary. If you win the skirmish between the Primary cohorts, if you win on the Flanks, you are safe of course. But if you lose when/if Secondary lines meet (or you have no secondaries at all to meet the enemy secondaries), then it is all over. In Secondary you want something that hits hard and does not rout. Secondary is the ground for Heavy Infantry, or if you do not have HI, then Light Infantry boosted by trade and traditions and preferably superior numbers (and if your LI sucks, then Chariots do ok in early game for tribes until you have HI or buffed LI available).

For small battles everything is slammed into the front, of course (as the battleline fits 30 cohorts in each line). Which is why I think a 5+5+10 (for example 5 Archer, 5 Heavy Cavalry, 10 Heavy Infantry)** is the army composition you should use. Two such 20 cohort armies attached to each other (using the "attach" command) would then see 10+10+20 units in the field, which sees half of the 20 (which happen to be 10) in Secondary line up behind the 10 in your Primary. If you attach three such armies, you will see 15+15+30, and now you will have two full lines against the enemy (with your heavy infantry in second line, and thus able to smack up anything that comes through the first line). IMO you should never have more than 60 cohorts entering combat at the same time, as it does mess up the lines; better to have the remaining troops arrive staged after some days after each other (to bolster morale, and also be able to take up empty slots that have already occured).


**Early on, without proper military traditions, 5+5+5 (for example 5 Archers, 5 Heavy Infantry, 5 Heavy Cavalry) composition is easier to maintain (both for attrition and upkeep). Two such 15 cohort armies attached to each other fill up the whole battle line of 30 cohorts, three such armies attached to each other see the 15 cohorts of the Secondaries line up behind the Primaries, and you should be on a roll.

 

[Wyvern]

Exalted Epirus 500-518
The Beast from the East
​

My oh my, what a great audience we have tonight. I can't wait to tell you more about my time in Epirus!

Last night I was just getting ready to recount Pyrrhus's first war with the Mighty Phrygian Empire when I ran out of time, so let's start there. Really I knew it'd be a push over before I goaded the king into it. Pussy that he was he was scared of 'Corrhabus Antigonid', the Basilius of Phrygia. So what if has 93 cohorts at his beck and call, there's this little matter of an on-going civil war to distract him, and by all accounts his royal recruiters are coming up short on gathering fresh young men for his armies too.

Take the initiative boy, it'll be a walkover. And was I right or was I right?

By June 501, Athens and the Aegean Islands had been overrun and the invasion of Phrygia's vassal Ionia and Aeolia had begun.

Sadly time catches up to all of us - well technically not to me, I have a free pass - but Pyrrhus wasn't a lad any more, more like a 66 year old war vet long past retirement age, AND suffering from cancer to boot. Ah err, I forgot to tell you he had cancer didn't I. Oops. Well he'd only come down with it recently, and that Armenian king survived eight years right? So what was there to worry about.

Anyway, Pyrrhus told the priests to bugger off and continued to lead the invasion of Asia Minor. The war did drag on a bit, but Phrygia offered no real opposition, so by the summer of 503 it was as good as over even if it took another year before the Phyrgian diplomats would agree to a deal I found acceptable. By now Pyrrhus stuck to the fighting and left me to deal with the trivial matters, like signing pieces of parchment. And with peace came that jewel of a city, Athens! I told him to go easy on the city - so many interesting people there I wanted to meet!

The new Epirote Empire was coming along nicely.

Next thing I knew the priests were come to me complaining that we were expanding too quickly, and generally being a bad boy. I told them to stop bothering me and go pray to Zeus or something. I'm sure he'll make everything better.

Whilst they did that, Pyrrhus invaded Sicily. Oh wait. I'm getting my Pyrrhus's mixed up aren't I. Yep it was the son that invaded Sicily, please bear with me. The father - suffering from cancer, 66 years old, you remember the chap - yep in 510 he finally keeled over, leaving the realm to Pyrrhus. Oh do keep up.

So like I was saying, Pyrrhus chose to invade Sicily - there were one or two close battles early on, but really, you couldn't expect them to put up much of a fight against the battle hardened Epirote Legions could you?

Quite predictably, Syrakousai fell.

I want more, I told 'the young' Pyrrhus. Err what I mean is, the Young Pyrrhus cried out from the Syrakousai battlements - I want more! and he meant it, for shortly afterwards he invaded Massapia and added that to his growing empire too.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So a word on Traditions. Epirus has the Greek Traditions tree and early access to a couple of nice boosters to Light Cavalry and a nice morale booster for Heavy Infantry. I took these as soon as I had the military power to grab them! These dictated the make-up of my armies after the very early game and persuaded me to use my first two capital import routes to bring in Horses and Iron as Epirus has native access to neither. Iron was easy enough to trade for, but horses took a lot of bribing and influencing to get, but I had them before the first Macedon war so all was well.

Our first few legions consisted of 5 Archers, 5 LC and 5 HI, but later ones I forsook the archers and went with mostly LC and HI. At the back of my mind there was always the thought that eventually I'll be bordering Armenia and I really don't want to face a horde of Horse Archers with no counter. LC counter Horse Archers, so I'll need a goodly number at the ready to avert a future disaster!

Tradition wise, so far we've just taken the 3 obvious ones that boost LC and HI. After that it gets a bit more tricky. The above table shows our choices, colour coded against my likely priority. White are the likely best ones, Black are somewhat useful, whilst the Cyan are mostly useless. Why are they useless? Well the Trireme bonuses aren't going to change the balance of power in the med. Neither of my opponents even have a coastline yet, and when they do, they'll never have enough ports to compete in a long naval war, so those techs are irrelevant. Wars will be won or lost on land.

I doubt I'll ever build a Light Infantry unit or another Archer, so those bonuses are also irrelevant, whilst all the remaining cyan traditions just save a bit of money, which for the most part is neither here nor there. So the left hand tree looks the most promising for the most part, and the right hand tree down until Raid Ports isn't too bad. It's probable the game will be over before we get beyond that, but I guess eventually I'll try heading down the middle tree for the Heavy Infantry discipline bonus right at the bottom, but that'll feel like a long trek past a lot of questionable 'bonuses'.

Manpower wise we're sitting pretty good, helped enormously by all our conquests to date being in our own culture group and religion, meaning we have a nice productive and stable realm. The attrition you see in the above pic is due to moving our armies through some rough terrain whilst getting into position for our next target - but more on that next episode!

Finally here's a look at our Empire at the end of session:

 

[Swuul]

Kustomary Kush: 500-518
In war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after victory has been secured.
Sun Tzu​

For Kush to reclaim their ancient right to the throne of Egypt, and to throw out the evil greeks from the sacred grounds, some planning was needed. The greeks in Egypt, after all, had strong armies, and stood united. To eventually break that united front, Kush began in 500 sending gifts to three different pretender in Egypt, hoping to befriend them enough to cause cracks in the unity of the Egyptian ruling family.

To claim the crown of Egypt many cities along the Nile would have to be secured for Kush.This would not be an easy task, as this included also the greatest city of all, named after the greek throne-thief, Alexandria.

In 500 Egypt and her puppet Dodekaschoinos got into a war against the arabian tribes Lihya and Nabatea in Arabia. The greek generals of Egypt had no understanding how to fight in desert, and thousands after thousands of egyptian soldier were lost to attrition. By the end of 502 the armies of Egypt and her puppet had diminished, and it became hard to find more men to be thrown into the desert. They still had over 60 cohorts at use, but reserves had dried up

With some 40 thousand men in reserve and a standing army of 35 cohorts Ameny still didn't feel the war would a secure thing. Dodekaschoinos was desert, just as Kush, and Dodekaschoinos had two strong forts and in addition Egypt had two strong forts on the border of Dodekaschoinos. The war would not be a swift run. Kush thus hired 46 cohorts of various mercenaries, their goal would be to immediatly rush out to siege the forts, and when the first cracks arrived in the walls, they would assault. Ameny expected there would be thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of dead in such assault, which was why mercenaries would lead the assaults. After the forts would have been taken, and the remaining mercenaries paid off, the regular forces of Kush would take positions behind the forts, and destroy any Egyptian forces arriving to the front.

War was declared in December 502. The war went as Ameny had expected. When the armies of Egypt began to arrive to the scene in February 504, all four forts had been taken by Kush, and Kush had got out of the driest desert. Egypt began to besiege the forts taken by Kush, and the forces of Kush moved in for counterattack.

The counterattack of Kush destroyed four Egyptian armies, and the doors into Upper Egypt had been slammed wide open. However, as this would be just the first step on the way, and Kush did not want to take lots of lands without proper claims. Kush offered an extremely lenient peace to Egypt, which they eagerly accepted.

With minimal losses and minimal Aggressive Expansion Kush had expanded out from the desert in the north. The lush hilly lands of Upper Egypt now stood open, Kush wouldn't have to worry about thirst in Desert anymore in the future wars.

A great cheer went through the palace of Meroe right after the peace. Teophila, aged 32, gave birth to a son! Ameny, aged 54, was overly happy. The line of his father would be carried on! The late Peneus now had 12 grandchildren, of whome 11 had been girls and now first boy! Ameny named the new son Peneus, after his late father and his brother who had had that terrible accident all those years ago.

Not all were happy about the newborn son. The stepsisters of Peneus, the oldest of them already adults and having their own families, suddenly saw the crown of Kush escape their reach. Theophila understood soon especially the two oldest sisters of baby Peneus were dangerous women, and went through a lot to keep Peneus secure. This may have been one of the reasons Peneus already by the age of 1 was Depressed, the royal illness of Kush. Soon after Peneus was diagnosed with Inflammation, and it began to seem the new heir to the crown would never reach adulthood.

Despite all the bad signs, Peneus did survive early childhood. The inflammation never got worse, and by the age of 7 he had also been able to drop the Depression that had been hampering his early years. In fact, Peneus did seem to be growing as a very brigh lad indeed, a worth heir to the crown of Kush!

On the diplomatic front Kush had not been idle. Gifts and notes of friendship were regularily sent north to Egypt, to the various pretenders of the egyptian crown. Oh those greeks! There was apparently no wall high enough in the palaces of Egypt to stop a camel carrying golden coins from Kush. Dissidence was sown amongst the ranks in the ruling family of Egypt, but nobody seemed to want to be the one to crack the country apart. But as there were many friends of Kush in the court of Egypt, Egypt saw no need to fortify their southern border; in fact, Egypt tore down all their forts west of Sinai as a sign of goodwill to Kush.

However, Kush had also found ancient texts showing all of Uppe Egypt and Myos Hormos in fact did belong to Kush. Using these old texts as the Casus Belli, Kush went to war with Egypt again in late 516. The warplan was simple; rush up the Nile, take up blocking positions, use the fleet to block Egyptian reinforcements to cross from Arabia and Sinai to Myps Hormos and siege down all provinces south of the blocking positions. A special desert army, the 7th Army, was also formed, and this army was to race to the sea through Cyrenaica, to slow down possible reinforcements from northwest and to also act as a threat to the great city of Alexandria itself.

In less than two years Egypt had been overrun south of Lower Egypt. The egyptian armies, arriving one by one to the front, had been crushed. Egypt accepted the peace Kush offered.

This peace sadly caused some unjust feelings against Kush, as rumours of Kush being an Aggressive Expansionist began to circulate. Not only did the neighbouring countries begin to act unfriendly in the diplomatic messages, but even the population of Kush itself was not entirely happy.

That was however not the only bad news Kush recieved in 518. Ameny was diagnosed with Cancer, the same sort which had evntually killed his late father.

While Kush still of course was the most technologically advanced major country in the whole wide world, and the military traditios of Kush were comparable to none other, in pure military strength and population Kush was far behind the cruel barbarians of Epirus and the evil sorcerers of Armenia. Ameny spent sleepless nights suffering from the cancer and worrying the ill fate Kush had fallen into.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Awesome Armenia: 500-518
A Airyema ishyo
May the vow-fulfilling Airyaman come here
​

And so it came to pass that Abdagas Orontid, he of small wits, became king, and the people marvelled at the dummy-in-chief.

Cruelty incarnate, his first act of government was to order the execution of the royal chronicler, an impious abuse of power that will surely see him damned when he reaches the bridge of judgment. Nevertheless, as is my sworn duty, I will record his vile acts until they come to take me away.

[The rest of the scroll is too damaged to read. The next scroll is written in a new hand.]

And so it came to pass that in his 51st year, Abdagas, firstborn and favourite son of Orontes III, assumed his rightful position as king of Orontid dynasty of Armenia despite the unworthy jealousy of his brothers.

Two sons and a daughter had Abdagas. Madates, his firstborn and heir, a fine young man of 16. Gotarzes, the spare son, 11 years of age, and tiny Barsine, as cute a four year old hellion as ever there was and the apple of her father's eye.

From early childhood Madates had shown wisdom and vision beyond his age, dreaming of founding an empire to stand the test of time. His health weakened by childhood disease that had come near ending his tale prematurely, he overcame weakness and now rested secure in himself, applying himself to serving the interests of the family. One thing only was there to say his discredit, and it was this: He was slow to anger, but when angered he became like unto one of the horse lords of old, dangerous in his violence and quick to strike.

Wily Abdagas decided to channel Madates' fire by marrying him off to a renowned beauty of the court, Apame Mithradid. Wiser to the world at 20 years of age and known as a chaste and forgiving woman, she might temper his anger and guide him onto a gentler path. Or at very least provide a challenge for him to overcome.

But all was not well at the court of the great king.

His younger brother Orontes, unworthy son of their mighty father and a disgrace to the name, prepared a coup in the name of pragmatism, claiming in his delusion that awesome Abdagas was unsuited as king, and there were craven opportunists who found this wise.

But it was not to be, for he was as naught compared to the splendour of Abdagas, and most nobles knew it. Ever magnanimous, the king forgave him, saying, “Ha! Let the scamp go. It's likely just harmless talk", and shame everlasting his destiny and stricken with remorse for his evil ways, Orontes rejoiced at the king's mercy.

With one brother discredited, cunning Abdagas chose to distract another, ordering Mithradates the warrior-poet to conquer the lands under the sway of Seleucid revolters is Assyria and Mesopotamia. It was during this war that he was granted the cognomen, “the Mace”, or to use the long form, “the Mace of Zarathustra”, by his loyal troops. Some of the older verses of the soldier's cadence, “the key to the kingdom”, are said to have its origins in this event.

Following the harrowing of the Seleucids, Mithradates continued campaigning into Garamea in Mesopotamia, a hilly province bordering the mighty Kossioi who had seized power in the north when the Seleucid Empire broke up, and with whom old king Orontes had carefully maintained the best of relations.

Quiet years followed as good Abdagas cast a covetous eye on the heart of Mesopotamia, split between the Seleucid remnants and a resurgent Babylonian kingdom. His brothers grew older and frailer, but the weight of age touched him not, and his enlightened diplomacy brought the Kossioi into alliance in a treaty of mutual protection and opportunity.

AUC 509 the magi proclaimed an auspicious year; It was obvious, they said, that Ahura Mazda was guiding the king and armies in their every success, and the morale of the armies soared.

AUC 510 was a hard year for the royal family. The heir, mighty Mandates, was yet without a heir of his own body, as his consort Apame's chastity had proven an insurmountable obstacle despite numerous spirited attempts at surmounting it over the years. She considered her body an unassailable temple of virtue.

As all men know, there's nothing wrong in worshipping at the temple of a woman's body, unless it is an impure and defiled temple where corrupt acts take place, but it is properly the duty of the husband. Apama worshipped at her own temple and wasn't slow to defend its sanctity by the application of force to exposed enemy positions.

After several years of failed assaults on the temple by persuasion, stealth, and ambush, Mandates had to agree she had a point, and this did cause an undeniable strain in their relationship despite the kindness and caring with which she nursed him back to health following each failure.

Ultimately, the humiliation to the family proved too much to bear for good king Abdagas; Even the kindliest of men can only stand finding their son and heir outside the door to his apartments clutching the royal jewels in pain so many times before he has to take steps. Especially when the court is watching.

And besides, the Mithradids weren't as important as they used to be. Following consultation with the Magi, Apame was convicted of heresy and beheaded. Mandates consorted Parysatis Sassanid, a prominent young woman of 18 with many suitors, who might well be cruel and uncaring, but at least she knew her duty. Her first pregnancy followed within months.

Mandates' firstborn was a daughter, but he consoled Parysatis that practice makes perfect, and anyhow due to her lack of experience nobody had given more than 50/50 odds on her getting it right the first time. His mother, fair Orypetes, pointed out to Parysatis that she had managed two sons before her daughter, and the sons hadn't turned out half bad at that, but given that she came of ancient Asinid stock rather than inferior Sassanid stock, perhaps Parysatis' failure was only to be expected. If she'd just apply herself next time, surely she'd do better. And Parysatis gnashed her teeth, thanked Orypetes for her wise words, and got back to work.

When the generals of Armenia led the invasion of the Seleucid Empire and Babylon in AUC 511, Mandates left a pregnant consort behind, eagerly praying for a son. But that was not the will of Ahura Mazda.

The battles raged on as the heirs of Alexander drained their treasury to hire mercenaries to bolster their exhausted armies, but none could stand against the swift horse archers of Armenia. Outmaneuvered, outgeneraled, and in the end, outnumbered, they were forced to stand in defense of Babylon and Seleuckeia Megale, after there they were broken.

The fall of Babylon in AUC 513 drew condemnation, as Mardonius Asinid's troops got out of hand during the plundering. It was rumoured in the army that he'd be reprimanded, but when the news reached the royal court he got a blanket dispensation. “Boys will be boys,” said observant Abdagas, “and besides, Babylon had it coming. But so long as she stays true, she'll be treated kindly.”

True to his word, when the Seleucids and Babylonians gave in, their capitals remained comparatively untouched, as the supreme king Abdagas wishes both cities to remain vibrant centers of commerce.

But all was not well in Mesopotamia. Slaves, emboldened by the chaos of war, rose in revolt. And in another realm, a weaker realm, or one with slower armies, such a revolt might have spread. But not in Armenia, where swift cavalry reinforcements are never far away. The revolt was crushed before it managed to spread from its origin, and the surviving slaves crucified.

Time passed, but good king Abdagas felt poorly; Had old age that had finally crept up on him like a thief in the night? The royal physician reassured him that this wasn't the case; Why, it was merely cancer eating away at him, and hadn't his own father managed survive eight years with that? Eight years is a long time. On the other hand, set against the infinity of paradise with Ahura Madza, surely 8 years wasn't that long time to be in pain, was it now?

And the king was much reassured.

Sensing weakness, the Magi made a bold move for increased power and independence, and they were but the first, but resolute Abdagas was not so far gone that he didn't see through their schemes and return them to the fire temples.

Loyalty was in short supply, and by AUC 517 indomitable Abdagas found the solution: He passed a law exempting the nobility from taxes. The magi decried this as institutionalized corruption, but as wise Abdagas pointed out, better corruption be institutionalized than the old unfair traditions of personalized bribes, triumphs, and family stipends be used to keep the nobility loyal. This way everybody got to share, fair and square!

Appended is the world map of AUC 518, showing the wide domains of august Abdagas in all their glory.

-----​

Arrrgh! Yet another cancer-stricken king. What am I doing to deserve this. And if he must be stricken with cancer, what about killing him off quickly rather than letting me suffer with negligible power gain for years on end. Is having him die quickly and mercifully so his son can take over too much to ask? Sometimes this game is cruel. (He thought, looking at the superior stats of Wyvern's Aecidae monarchs.)


Issues of Loyalty, or, just why did you enact that law?

The truth of the matter is that so long as things are going well, so long as you don't mess up your choices in character events pitting members of your court against each other, and so long as you don't suffer a bad transfer of power but transfer power peacefully to an adult heir who has the support of nobles, loyalty is a trivial thing to handle.

But sometimes, just sometimes, the game doesn't work out that way.

Perhaps the loyalty of your non-primary heirs drop quickly because they are more suited for other jobs than commanding your armies so they can't be awarded triumphs, or perhaps you want to save your military power rather than triumphing. Perhaps you unavoidably insult a governor who happens to be the head of a family by stripping him of his job just to realize that his family is now scorned. Perhaps your best general has become incredibly popular with your troops. Possibly a poorly executed succession resulted in a crisis that has led to low legitimacy and everybody's loyalty is going down the drain, or perhaps the best man for a job just happens to be a disloyal son of a bitch with loyalty decreasing personality traits.

These things happen. Less if you are prepared, of course, but they do happen.

One way of dealing with disloyal people who are a clear and present danger is imprisonment, execution, or banishment. These are rather drastic options and recommended as a last resort.

Another way is by providing a character with cohorts under his command which increases his loyalty each month for each non-loyal cohort, but carries its own risks as cohorts turn loyal over time and these decrease loyalty. You can then pay oratory power and money to reward veterans to break the bonds of loyalty.

This approach, natural to generals, is also useful for governors whose regions are otherwise unruly due to wrong culture/religion or war exhaustion, since the cohorts will do double duty reducing unrest and thus increasing province loyalty, or at the very least stop its decline, while also increasing governor loyalty. But you really don't want to give a governor troops unless he's pretty loyal already, so it is no good for a quick fix.

Apart from troops, the game has five broad categories of effects the player can use to address character loyalty issues in a more positive way.

1. Immediate significant loyalty increase to a single character: Bribing (oratory cost and corruption for both ruler and the bribed) and holding Triumphs (military and religious cost) belong to this category
2. Increasing loyalty over time of a single character: Free Hands (corruption each month cost)
3. Increasing loyalty over time of a non-ruler family: Stipends (oratory cost + increased wages cost)
4. Increasing loyalty over time of a category of people: Laws, Ideas, and Inventions
5. Increasing loyalty over time of everybody: Laws, Ideas, and Inventions

So far in the game I have mostly used Triumphs and Free Hands because Oratory has been in short supply, and I need Oratory for fabricating claims, assigning governor policies, as well as some early game crash promotion of POPs to citizen status to get my research started.

But as I'm getting more regions to govern and have a ruler who doesn't exactly inspire confidence and loyalty in his subjects, I've found myself using these simple fixes for loyalty problems ever more, and not only does it distract from more important business, I don't want corrupt governors.

Corrupt governors aren't as bad as corrupt rulers, and a bit of corruption never hurt anybody much so the occasional bribe or use of free hands is fine, but I don't want to make a habit of it. There are a number of problems in the game that can be avoided by not being corrupt to start with.

I have taken in several foreign noble families to deepen the talent pool and provide me more and better options for government office. And since I care more about appointing effective characters than keeping all families employed, than means that at any time several families are scorned. Absent a passive loyalty increase to compensate, the scorned families will hate me in the end, be they old established families or new to the kingdom.

Which is fine if they are powerless, by the way, but less so if I find myself in need of them, and who knows in which families the good governors, generals, and government officials of the next generation will be found?

So it is time to start focusing on avoiding loyalty problems in the first place. I could wait, and I would probably be all right, but better safe than sorry.

I already gain:
0.01 loyalty/month to everybody from the Legal Patronage invention (oratory 2), and
0.02 loyalty/month to all my governors due to the Propraetors and Proconsuls invention (oratory 4)

That's not much, but it is something.

I won't get more loyalty from inventions until my country is a great deal more advanced (oratory 8 IIRC), and as for the Idea that provides loyalty to everybody (Loyalty to the State), that requires level 12 in religious advances.

So I need a tool from my general-purpose toolbox, and the one that comes immediately to mind is Exemption for Nobility law + Sanctioned Privileges idea.

Combined the law and the idea provide +0.1 loyalty/mth and -0.05 corruption/mth to everybody in your court. It is a pretty expensive way to get loyalty as it costs an idea and a law, not to mention having a government with oratory ideas, but it is a powerful general-purpose solution. I will still have to placate some individual characters once in a while, but it will be a much less common occurrence.

The obvious choice for government to go with it is the Aristocratic Monarchy, since its requirements are Nobility Admissions law (which I have from start of the game), Exemption for Nobility law (which is the very law I want to apply), and 60%+ civilization in capital (which from the 40% base of an Autocratic Monarchy I have achieved due to my current State Religion idea, oratory tech, and a few marketplaces I just happen to have already built in the capital.)


So this is the first step. The next step will be the government change, but since the national idea slots are cleared when the government changes, there is no reason to change government until I have 150 oratory saved up to pay for new ideas.

Moreover, I expect to hit oratory tech 6 in a few years' time, which will allow me to use tier 2 ideas, and there's one of those I'm really looking forwards to as my second oratory idea, so I don't want to waste 50 oratory on first selecting one idea from tier 1 and then swapping to the tier 2.

Thus the government change will have to wait. Which means racking up a bit of corruption until then, but so be it. It'll be wiped out by Sanctioned Privileges when the time comes.

 

[Wyvern]

Exalted Epirus 518-538
All Roads Lead to Rome
or Making Epirus Great Again
​

By 518 Greece was secure, but our Empire wasn't, so I warned Junior that if he really wanted his name to go down in history, then Rome was the city where it was all at.

Those legion you have marching towards Thrace I said - recall them! Thrace isn't going anywhere, but Rome is growing, and is the only country of note to your west, whilst I happen to know there are two monsters in the east, so lad, let's secure our back before we advance any further eastwards.

So it was that in Spring 519 Epirus declared war on the Roman Republic and 90,000 men began the long march up the spine of Italy. Pyrrhus, the rat, dragged me along too. 90,000 sweaty, unhygienic men - is it any surprise he came out in a rash a few weeks later?

A hideous rash it was too, beginning on his chin, and then spreading to other unspeakable parts. The smell was unbearable, so I just had to take a quick trip home. I stopped by the chemist on the way back and told him to smear himself with this stuff. Can't trust your local doctors. Nut jobs the lot of em. Fortunately he was desperate enough to do whatever I said, and his chin healed up nicely after a couple of weeks. Always good to score brownie points with your friendly local despot.

After two years, the south was secure, and Rome's armies for the most part repulsed. Unfortunately for Pyrrhus, though perhaps somewhat fortunately for any village girls he passed, his little skin disorder may have cleared up fine on his face, but less so elsewhere, if you know what I mean; and after one particularly ugly encounter, he was now paranoid about what his wife would think when he got home. She was just a village wench I advised him. Ignore what she said, I'm sure the fair Kallimache will still appreciate whatever you've got under that tunic.

It was no good. With the war still ongoing, Pyrrhus declared that the only solution was to be chaste, especially with his wife.

All in all the war took three years, but at the end of it Rome was humbled beyond recovery, and the greater part of Italy was added to the Epirote Empire.

Three years later, a new crisis loomed, as the Phrygian King lay dead and the Antigonid heirs scrambled to claim their inheritance. Epirus was still coming to terms with the fallout from her Roman war, neighbours were unruly, and unrest lingered in Italy - we call it the 'Aggressive Expansion' index at the Bureau, and Epirus was sitting at 27.78 on it. Now don't get me wrong, that's fairly safe for a stable realm, but you don't really want to push it a lot higher, well not if you want a quiet retirement and pension. Still, this Phrygian crisis might turn out to be just too good an opportunity to pass up.

Whilst our agents monitored Phrygia, I had Pyrrhus enact a suggestion of mine to reduce the cost of mercenaries, and please our own armies to boot. Let's face it everyone likes the idea of someone else fighting instead of themselves. Am I right or am I right? The Epirote Legionnaires certainly thought so.

Phrygia held itself together for a few years, certainly longer than I expected, but by the year 530, it finally splintered, and so began the famous Eight Year War.

Now I had multiple goals for this war, despite what Pyrrhus said.

Of primary importance was to secure Thrace and her territory, as that would give us a nice defensive position against any threat from the east. Thrace however was guaranteed by both Egypt and Phrygia, so whilst Phrygia was strong and stable, and while Epirus was riding high on the WE index, a war would have been too risky, but by the year 530, WE was down to a nice cool 13, and Phrygia had burst at the seams, quite literally.

Then Egypt fractured too.

Within a year Thrace and the Islands were secure, but Epirus found herself in three wars.

The first was started when Eprius invaded Thrace. This one consisted of an alliance of Egypt as the alliance leader, Thrace as the ally they'd sworn to protect, and Phrygia, as in the official, sort of semi legitimate branch in the on-going civil war together with her vassals Athens and Kyzikos.

The second war was against the Egyptian revolters, and the third was against the Phrygian revolters. To make matters more complicated, the Egyptian revolters chose to fight Phrygia. I guess the two rebel factions of these once mighty empires figured they might as well team up. It sure made things complicated in the years ahead.

So, Egypt was alliance leader. And Egypt was being eaten alive by Kush once Kush saw Egypt in rebellion and already at war with Epirus. Oh he's a brave soul, my colleague in Kush. Now Egypt had no fleet, so we really weren't bothered about Egypt. The first order of business was to make a separate peace with Thrace. That was the easy bit, we had claims on nearly all of lower Thrace, so nice and cheap to do too.

Step two was to make peace with the Egyptian Revolt for some island I can't even remember the name of.

By the end of 534, the job was half done, and the generals said the war was won.

The problem now was bringing the enemy to the peace table. This was fairly easy with the rebels once Crete was fully occupied. The island, plus a little bit of land in Neracleotis were added to the Empire and everybody was happy. Egypt however, and more specifically Phrygia were a problem.

We held barely any land of Phrygia's, so couldn't force them to the peace table for the Athenian and Kyzikos territory, whilst most of their remaining territory was in the treacherous deserts of the Middle East, and being gobbled up by the Egyptian Revolt to boot. We had to be quick.

And so started the final stage of the war, with Cyprus becoming a staging ground for 50,000 men and a full on invasion of Phoenicia, as the Egyptian Rebels began a race against our armies to see who could occupy Phrygia first!

Finally come February 538, peace was signed, and the bloodiest war to date brought to a close.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

A few notes on the eight year war. Most casualties suffered were to attrition. I can count on one hand the number of battles we had against enemy forces, and all of them were minor affairs. Our biggest loss, which I unfortunately didn't capture with a screenshot (if I had, I could have averted it!), was when the Phrygian rebel fleet of around 40 ships met our island hopping 20 trireme transport fleet and wiped it out, whilst it was ferrying an 18k strong army. Didn't notice it until there were 5 ships left, and those vanished in the blink of an eye. That hurt. The rest of our losses were plain and simple attrition, and I guess they amounted to rather a lot! We started the war with a manpower pool of 184k and finished it with 127k, despite a monthly gain of around 1200-1400. So pretty bad.

I should probably have used more mercenary armies, but was keen to build up my cash reserves for when it might really matter, and wasn't paying any real attention to attrition. Also the invasion of Phoenicia/the Middle East was probably a mistake. All it netted me was the city of Kyzikos, but at least getting that makes my borders prettier, and let's face it, that's the most important thing .

 

[Swuul]

Kustomary Kush: 518-538
For they conquer who believe they can.
Vergilius​

Kush being the leading major power in technology was of course a given thing (because how would the barbarians or sorcerers understand anything about technology?), but there were even in Kush individuals who stood out. Bakenref Philothid was recognised as a genious already at young age, and when he turned 16 in 468, he had taken charge of the civic research in Kush. He would hold that postion for 68 years, until time finally catched up with him at the age of 84. By that time Kush was the leading country in the world civic technologies, even counting the small city states who focused on technologies as a survival trait. No wonder even millenials later sharp thinkers were called "philosophs" around the world, because such a mark Philothid had left on critical thinking.

Kush had not only been focused on technologies and liberating Egypt. Elsewere, around the Horn of Africa for example, the realms of Kush were expanded through colonisation. The people in smaller countries, such as in Mundia or Mosylonia, were awestruck by the amazing kushite culture, even while their rulers tried to spread lies of Kush being an aggressive monster gobbling up smaller countries. Those false leaders could not possibly lead the people against the will for an eternity, but Kush was lenient and didn't want to upset the current order with assignments others might have misunderstood.

In 522 Peneus III, son of Ameny, had already become of age, and had been named the governor of Punt (the traditional position of the heir of Kush was to be named governor of Punt; it was to give a kick into ruling for the heir, and had proven to be a good driving force in the past). As Ameny was getting more problems with health due to his struggle with the cancer, Peneus asked for more responsebility to lead the country, which Ameny gladly accepted to happen.

Peneus was married to Antigone Petubast, who was an extremely bright lady. She was also the niece of Peneus, which initially was seen as a good thing; the ruler to be after all married a family member. However, the first born son, named Ameny after his grand-father, was soon diagnosed with Epilepsy, and the second son, named Peneus after his father, great-uncle and great-grandfather, was found to be Dumb as a rock.

In 526 Antigone was diagnosed with the usual Kush consort diagnose, ie being a Lunatic. As the family had had tragedies before with Lunatic consorts, Antigone was first locked away safely to protect her children, and then quietly given poison, by order from Ameny.

When Peneus III found out his father had got Antigone executed, he went and had a private, but quite lively discussion, with his father. The discussion abruptly ended, as Ameny passed away, the intestal cancer finally having taking its toll on the old kin.

Peneus III was hailed as the King of Kush, the Ity of all Tribes. The king can not be unmarried, so he married the extremely stratight-forward thinking Thessaloniki Mago. Peneus and Thessaloniki were almost relatives, but not quite; the mother of Thessaloniki was Euphemia Phileid, with whome Ameny had been married before getting divorce with her. Euphemia had then married General Mago, and Thessaloniki were the daughter of these two. So Thessaloniki was the daughter of the former step-mother of Peneus (the actual legal term is ambiguous).

Ameny, the epileptic son of Peneus, was not a happy child. He was cursed by the depression which always seemed to loom over the males of Penemus family. He was certain he was doomed and no good. Perhaps he was omniscient, as in 530 Thessaloniki moved in to remove Ameny as the primary heir, and Peneus III accepted the fate of his first born son.

Peneus IV the Dumb became the primary heir, and the two sons of Ameny and Thessaloniki became the secondary heirs. The lad was Kind, nobody could argue anything against that, but he was just so slow witted he had trouble to find his own nose.

As the avid reader might remember, in 515 Kush had began to sow distress amongst the egyptian pretenders to the crown of Egypt. Hundreds of gold ducats had been carried to Egypt, many sweet words had been exchanged in secret letter. In 531 that all finallly did pay off, as the old king died, and the daughter and legally rightful heir to the crown was challenged by his younger brother. One final shipment of 500 gold ducats and several military advisors to train a private army for usurper tipped the scales, and a revolt began in Egypt!

Kush had for long been planning how to tackle Egypt head on, but Egypt had so far had more manpower available and a larger standing army. With the civil war in Egypt quickly escalating, the kushite warplan was put to effect.

The war was declared, and seven months later Egypt gave in to the kushite demands. The queen of Egypt much rather fought with his brother, and wanted the war with Kush to just be over as soon as possible.

The borders of Kush improved to a more aestethically pleasing form, though the cities held by the egyptian rebels certainly stuck out like a sore eye.

To correct the situation and to form more pleasing borders, a war with the egyptian revolters were declared in 535, and a few months later a new peace was signed with them.

With the reconquest of Egypt thus now almost complete, Kush was forced to wait for the final step to reclaim the lost crown of Egypt. Again Kush had been robbed its victory, again Kush had been left on the sidelines.

Even though the setback on the diplomatic front, Peneus the King of Kush was quite liked as a ruler. He was regarded as wise and generous ruler, although he was known to charge forwards, be it in war or in words, in situations were more careful men would have waited. But a content king is a good king, as the old saying goes.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Awesome Armenia: 518-538
Vispa humata, vispa hukhta, vispa hvarshta, baodho-varshta
All good thoughts, good words, and good deeds are produced with good intelligence
​

The years passed quietly, and while king Abdagas grew weaker with every passing year, he was sustained by the desire to outlive his brother Orontes, who even after all Abdagas successes was still bitter about sidelined into the role of researcher and dreamed that he should have been king.

A small ambition for such a great king as Abdagas, one might well think, but no such thing. A healthy dose of sibling rivalry never hurt anybody. Except the losers, naturally, but who cares about them? To great king Abdagas, all honour and respect.

Now, it came to pass that in AUC 520 Mandates, son of great Abdagas the king, felt poorly, and then he felt more then poorly, and finally he was decidedly ill, and his young consort implored the king to help as Mandates loathed the medical sciences. Faced with this threat to the succession the king ordered the royal physician to treat him, the dangers of medical malpractice being deemed the lesser evil.

Fortunately Mandates survived treatment unscathed, the desire to avoid treatment and return to his favourite pastimes of fighting and pottery collection spurring his recovery. Fully recovered in health and spirit, he returned to his army and began preparing for war.

AUC 522 brought good cheer to venerable king Abdagas as his younger brother Orontes shat himself to death. The court was much amused and Orontes' sons and friends wisely held their tongues.

With nothing left to live for, king Abdagas swiftly declined, and his glorious reign came to an end within a year. Succeeding this most illustrious of kings was his son and heir, Mandates, the strength of his claim silencing all opposition.

The Tale of the Man of Many Talents:

Once upon a time there lived a man of many talents. Born a prince and destined for greatness, he overcame the hardships of his youth with grace and dignity and in the prime of his life he became king of the fair realm of Armenia.

This many-talented man should have been the happiest man alive. If his kingdom was not the most powerful in the world, and arguably it was not, it was at the least more powerful than its neighbours, and any and all internal opposition to his rule was ruthlessly suppressed.

Admired by the court and adored by the people (at least those not being ruthlessly suppressed), personally wealthy, and in possession of good teeth, a cunning mind, a strong body, a beautiful consort, and two darling daughters, the king surely had all he could possibly desire.

Alas it was not so.

For he desired the pottery of ancient cities, to dance on the skulls of those who opposed him, to tread the jewelled thrones of the world under his mighty boots, and above all he wished for sons by his consort.

Where his consort was concerned, he was concerned; His first consort, Apame, had proven a heretic, severely defective where matters of procreation were concerned, and his second, Parysatis, eager to procreate though she might be, wasn't all that good at it and kept producing daughters despite clear instructions to the contrary. Was she defective or merely incompetent? If the first, would he have to shop for yet another replacement? If the second, would practice make perfect? This question vexed him sorely, but in the short run all he could do was to try harder.

With regards to ancient pottery, while ancient pots could be acquired on the open market, the Mesopotamians selfishly hoarded the best pieces, especially the antiques, and this angered the king.

And while collecting the skulls of his opponents and stacking them for a dance floor was an exact science perfected by the magi, the king, this man of many talents, lacked one talent in particular, and that was dancing. Despite many lessons, he tended to slip on bone fragments and this was a right pain in the arse.

Finally, to tread the jewelled thrones of the world under his mighty boots would require him to acquire said thrones first, and here, at last, was something he could approach in a pro-active forwards-looking mindset. He'd long awaited his father's death, he'd prepared and plotted and planned, and most importantly of all, he'd acquired a new pair of hobnailed boots.


The reign of Mandates I Orontid:

Mighty Mandates, first of his name, began his reign with a major reform, lessening his autocratic grip on power in favour of delegating more power to the aristocracy. Being an autocrat was all well and good, but he had seen during his father's reign the problems that could arise when all decision-making was centralized; The noble families of Armenia were numerous and playing them off against each other one of the better blood sports, but it did leave the king as the man who was not only considered the unquestionable source of authority, but also ultimately to blame for everything and anything that went wrong. By giving the nobility a greater say blame might profitably be diverted that way, or so he hoped.

Awe-inspiring Mandates prepared the army for war while looking for an opportune moment to act, and Kossioi's invasion of Suziana in AUC 524 provided exactly that. With Suziana succumbing in AUC 526 and Kossioi's forces being out of position, the conquest of Kossioi began with Armenian horsemen sweeping across its northern, western, and southern borders, while a separate force invaded the erstwhile Suzianian land.

Kossioi recovered from the shock of invasion quicker than expected, and while several of its armies had been defeated in detail in the border provinces during the early months of the invasion, in the interior of the country a vast host was assembling and it became a priority to hunt down lesser contingents moving to join it. The unmatched speed of the Armenian horse archers greatly aided this task, and finally in the summer of 527 Kossioi's main host was engaged and then broken.

By 528 Kossioi's few remaining armies were scattered and come summer it was deemed that only one remained active, operating in the heartlands and soon to be hunted down.

But it was not so. A second larger army had managed to escape to occupied Suziana and while all focus had been on the main theatre this army of 20,000 men had bypassed the Armenian forces occupying Suziana and marched on Babylon, seizing several strongholds on the way. When news reached the king's camp, he waxed wroth at this oversight, but there was nothing to it but to detach an army from the main offensive and send messengers to the Suzianian army, sending both armies in hot pursuit.

The mighty walls of Babylon proved too much for the Kossioi to overcome, and before its walls they were utterly destroyed by the relieving armies. The war ended in the fall of 529 with a resounding Armenian victory and Kossioi cut in half, losing its most valuable provinces.

When powerful Mandates I Orontid entered Bisutun, capital of the Kossioi kingdom, the people wept with joy, and to the sounds of “These Boots were Made for Stomping” he stomped their jewelled throne, and he stomped it good, but it turned out to be less satisfying than he had expected.

However, it was one of his desires checked, and you can't ask more than that, though that didn't stop him from scouring the palace for ancient pottery.

The aborted invasion of Babylon by Kossioi had demonstrated not only the vulnerability of this important wealthy province, always threatened by the Seleucid and Babylonian remnants, but also its high instability: The people of Babylonia and Sittacene provinces in Mesopotamia remained restless years after the conquest.

King Mandates took swift action and replaced the governor of Mesopotamia with his cousin, Aryanes Orontid, firstborn son of his uncle Orontes Orontid. Capable and fiercely loyal, Aryanes was granted permission to raise a provincial army to maintain the peace and guard against future calamity.

This being accomplished several years passed in peace in Armenia.

Great events were transpiring in the west, where Epirus encroachments upon Asia minor continued apace and news from Egypt spoke of a new pharaoh of the Penamid dynasty, while in the east the Mauryan Empire continued its slow westwards expansion, but in Armenia all was quiet.

A second of great king Mandates' desires was fulfilled in his 51st year, AUC 534, when his consort Parysatis Sassanid bore him a boy that he named in honour of his father. She had produced no less than four daughters and was rapidly approaching the date when she'd have been put out to pasture, but in the end practice did make perfect and she breathed a sigh of relief.

To celebrate the birth the great king commissioned a study of jewelled thrones in the vicinity, and small, wealthy, and above all vulnerable, Commagne topped the “to conquer” list.

Preparations for invasion were made, and the war of Commagne 535-536 proved utterly unspectacular, the defenders never recovering from the initial onslaught.

But while the war was unspectacular, the peace wasn't. Breaking with tradition wise Mandates I Orontid chose to invite the four greatest noble families of Commagne to join the Aremanian nobility as several of the Armenian noble families were aging or on the verge of extinction due to natural attrition.

Following the inclusion of the Commagnan nobility, the great families of Armenia were as follows:

-----​

Apart from the conquest of Kossioi, this session mostly featured consolidation. After decades of religious and cultural conversion most of the realm is doing well and I have started to civilize the tribesmen via governor policy and, where most tribesmen have been reformed, I've been busy implementing social mobility.

As you can see my three national ideas are now Conscription (+10% manpower), Sanctioned Privileges (-0.1 corruption/month), and Casus Belli (Aggressive Expansion -0.05/month).

The latter may not seem all that much, but it is 0.6 per year, 6 per decade... While none of the sources of AE reduction are individually impressive, it all adds up. Take a look at my current AE (a modest 30.4) and the modifiers affecting its decline. Note that the base decay of 0.2% of current AE only applies in peacetime.

One result of the improved demographics of Armenia is that my research rate is way up; With 19.8% citizens, many of whom are either of my culture, religion, or both, I've started to catch up on Epirus and Kush. I'm still 2-4 tech levels behind them and they will stay ahead, but due to the ahead of time penalty they are suffering I will catch up even more before we reach an equilibrium. In the important area of inventions tech is of less importance than the availability of civic power, and while my rulers have been poor specimens, where civic power is concerned they haven't been that much worse than those of Epirus and Kush. So it could be worse.

 

[Wyvern]

Exalted Epirus 538-555
Oh to be King!
or How he became a eunuch
​

Good evening and welcome everyone to the grand finale, yes this is the Ultimate of Ultimate installments as I, the Narrators, regale you yet again with the final tales of my sojourn in Epirus, and How I beat my rivals. I kid you not.

But before all that, I must spend a few moments talking about Euthykrates Aeacidae, the heir to the throne, for in many ways it is he who brings this tale to a close. Married at the age of 30, he did his duty and produced two male heirs, Iphikrates and a younger son given the name of his father, as was common amongst the Epirote royalty. Such benine details you will find in all the history books.

By aged 40, I'd learnt to avoid him as best I could. He could be charming . . . with the ladies. And the next day he might then have his favourite companion executed for no more reason than a dropped grape. In truth he was cold, uncaring and to be blunt, a lunatic! A lunatic who suffered from his fathers early vise, namely he was unable to keep his hands off the ladies.

By the time little Euthykrates was born, he had a string of mistresses, and had picked up an equal string of ailments. His wife preferring not to pick up the same, promptly kicked him in the balls and fled the palace, retiring to the island of Kynthos where she is credited with persuading the wealthy Phyromachos Hippostratid to build the magnificent temple to Athena, the remains of which can be visited to this day.

Euthykrates was left with a sizable inflammation of the nether regions to go with his other ailments.

And his life didn't improve in 549, when his doctors diagnosed him with the Pox.

This brother Nikeratos, a far more worthy soul, wept at his brothers suffering, as did most of the court. The tears of joy were a sight to behold.

The far more worthy heir, Nikeratos

Sadly Euthykrates's doctors told him he had one option, and one only, if he ever hoped to live to see his inheritance, and fool that he was, he took it.

And that my friends is how a Eunuch came to rule Epirus!

But enough about Euthykrates. I know what you all really want to hear and it's the sound of marching boots and the clash of steel on steel. Sadly only the highest of nobility owned a steel blade in those days, though I guess I could have given a few tips to the local metal workers on how to make more. Now there's a thought.

So anyway, King Pyrrhus Aeacidae kept Epirus at peace for four short years whilst preparing his forces for the big push east. My rival in Armenia had made his move, and Epirus could not linger for risk of losing the bigger prize.

The first minor conflict began in the year 541 with a short skirmish against the alliance-less Phygia Epictetus rebels.

During which time Armenia overran Cappadocia .

So Armenia gained a huge province, and Epirus gained barely nothing as all the surrounding powers dissected Phygia Epictetus before Epirus could.

In 543 the war was continued into the much richer regions of Caria and Lycia, resulting in their annexation at the end of 545, after which war against the Phrygian Rebels was declared.

The war against the rebels was of paramount importance to secure the land-link from Thrace to Asia Minor, and with Armenia moving swiftly, Epirus had to act in equal haste. My colleague in Armenia was proving more ambitious than imagined, and had persuaded his lord to push westwards at an alarming rate. Cappadocia had fallen, and barely two years later both Ponus and Galatia Trocmi succumbed to his rule. I told Pyrrhus if he didn't act fast, Armenia would end up with it all, and Epirus would hold just a few colonies on the coast that might prove impossible to defend. So when Armenia invaded Phrygia Paorea Pyrrhus's course was set, and to hell with AE!

There was only one solution, Total War, against the remaining independent states west of Armenia. It was for their own safety after all!

It was feared Armenia might intervene, but I knew my rival would have to spend at least some time digesting his conquests. I had Pyrrhus hire more mercenaries - with luck our numbers would scare off any adventurous thoughts he might have in mind, and come the year 554, the new borders looks like this; with my colleagues plans for Hegemony foiled!

I admit I did wince at the AE index.

Sadly for Epirus, a year later at the grand age of 75, Pyrrhus Aecidae the 2nd passed away, and the lunatic that was Euthykrates took the throne.

I grabbed a swift horse from the palace stables and took my leave . . .

 

[Swuul]

Kustomary Kush: 538-555
No matter how hard the past is, you can always begin again.
Buddha​

In 540 Kush got tired of the constant false lies spread by the ruler of Mundia, and war was declared. In 541 peace was brought to the area, as Kush generously accepted to wisely rule the lands from here on.

To fulfill the task of throwing out the greeks from Egypt, Kush had to once again go to war in 546. This was to be the greatest war since ages ago, as Egypt had as allies several other regional powers as well as being guaranteed by Phrygia. The war was a horrible war of attrition, with countless battles fought all over Egypt, Judea, Phrygia, Arabia, and the seas.

While the war was still raging on, Peneus IV the Dumb requested for responsibility. While he certainly wasn't the sharpest stick in the box, he was Silver Tongued and could speak himself out of many situations where his slow wits had taken him. Peneus III the Ity accepted the request, and name his son the Amerkhatnebut, and thus in charge of the foreign affairs of Kush.

As seemed to be so customary in Kush, Queen Thessaloniki went Lunatic in 551. With heavy heart Peneus III had to throw her in prison, and then put out of the misery. As the King can not be unmarried, he then took himself a new wife, the talented and beautiful Lysandra Philothid (who, quite un-customary, was in no way related to the King).

The massive war raged on, but in 551 the enemy lines began to crack. First Judea informed they are tired of the losing war, and asked to be annexed by Kush. Both King and Prince Peneus agreed.

The fleet of Kush was still small, but the technological advances of kushite sailors had shown to be of extraordinary use. The small fleet of 20 ship in Mediterranean had sunk huge enemy fleets. The enemy admirals could not understand how their larger fleets constantly were beaten by the small kushite fleet, but after a while they did not have to be concerned of that at all, as Kush was able to sink all hostile ships during the war.

Egypt lost control of last of its cities (in Syria) in 552. Kush offered a very lenient peace, because it would have been impossible to annex all of Egypt in one attempt. Instead, in an act of grand of generosity, Kush offered to only take control of the Egyptian lands outside the Delta.

After some strange hesitation Egypt accepted. Lands of Kush now stretched from the source of Nile to the source of Eufrat, making it the largest country in the known world.

Peneus IV the Dumb had become Depressed (as was customary in the ruling family of Kush), as he didn't seem to be able to produce a heir. In 554 however Ameny, son of Peneus IV, saw the daylight. A strong and healthy looking child (who was 4th in succession order after his father and two uncles) seemed to be everything Peneus IV had dreamed about. However, instead of losing his Depression, Peneus IV went Lunatic (just like his mother had gone, and his stepmother), as he was sure demons were haunting him as he was so lucky to get such a beatiful son.

In 555 Kush had reached its pinnacle. In just 100 years Kush had risen from being a rabble of desert tribes to being a formidable Kingdom. A kingdom, which just a couple years later would take over the mantle of Egypt, and rule the world for an eternity.

The long and attritious war against Egypt and her allies had eaten up most of the available manpower of Kush. Kush however was rich, and could recruit any number of mercenaries needed.

Kush was a multicultural country. While the true Kemetic faith was steadily spreading, there were still many different faiths followed in kushite lands. That of course did change during the next decades, but in 555 Kush was a myriad of different cultures and religions.

The last governement of Kush, before Kush took over the mantle of Egypt, was formed by family members of the Ity. His brothers, sons, uncles and brothers-in-law held all the positions in the governement.

And thus ends the story of Kustomary Kush, and the story of Eternal Egypt begins!