early strategy with Rome as Rome

[unmerged(38057)]

Hi all,

I end the early war taking 1/2 Sicily and the toe area. Carthage took out the heal. This gave me a CB on them. I then did 2 wars with them leaving the heal under there control after war allowing me to keep my CB for the 2nd war. At the end of it all I had all of Italy, Corsica, Malta, Sicily, Sardina, Southern Spain, the islands near Spain and 3 province near Carthage running near modern day Lybia/Tunisia.

The huge neagtive with all this is Carthage remains but very weak now. Egypt got into the act and beat up on them a bit taking 2 provinces. My stability is a +2 with a tech level of about 5-6 on everything. I built some improvements in my provences. Going to war will be difficult will hard due to rebuilding stability and no CB any one.

kevin

 

[SonofWinter]

Umm, so, what's your question?

 

[unmerged(38057)]

The question is does this seem like the right approach? Or should I have opted for a much slower expansion. The biggest problem is the cost of going to war in terms of stability. I'm certain is technology takes longer now. The other things that bother me is the -3 stability loss from changing national ideas. The expansion of macadonia is extreme they are all ready Dacia and that's after a civil war with themselves. The other thing is my own starting ally expanding out to 4 provences now. Seems like there is a downside to doing even something good.

Kevin

 

[Azugal]

Take advantage of one of the slightly (hah) dodgy game mechanics. Assassinate one of the people in the country that you want to go to war with. Make sure your assassin has a high loyalty (80%+) and preferably a low intrigue so he gets caught, and when they imprison or behead your assassin, you get a CB on them, meaning no stability hit.

Your main problem though will likely be BadBoy, otherwise known as reputation. You take 1 BB for declaring war on someone that you have a CB on, and something like 1 per province you get in a peace deal. You can see the value in your own diplomacy screen by hovering the mouse over "Your current reputation is........".

 

[SonofWinter]

The question is does this seem like the right approach? Or should I have opted for a much slower expansion. The biggest problem is the cost of going to war in terms of stability. I'm certain is technology takes longer now. The other things that bother me is the -3 stability loss from changing national ideas. The expansion of macadonia is extreme they are all ready Dacia and that's after a civil war with themselves. The other thing is my own starting ally expanding out to 4 provences now. Seems like there is a downside to doing even something good.

Kevin

Of course technology should take longer. You see it takes 700 years to convert the religion in 1 province once you have 50+ provinces. Macedonia is colonizing and so is Masillia and Bosporeans and these were all things that I have personally brought up about 2 months ago. And then the patch came out and none of them got changed and so I gave up on EU: Rome and PI, it is also a reason why I did not buy IN, I don't have any trust left in me.

Don't take the CB province until its the last peace deal, before annexation. As for stability, its cheap and easy, just make sure you have enough cash to go from +1 to +2. Then declare war, as soon as you do, your cost to increase stability will cost 1/2 of the cash you've saved. 6 months later, you spend the rest of the cash on the next stability increase.

 

[unmerged(38057)]

Yeah its the expansion of Masillia and Macedonia that concern me as it get extreme. Masillia is x 2 in size now and Macedonia has gained 6-8 provinces since start.

Kevin