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Why is Messenia in a defensive alliance at the start of the game now. Now its nearly impossible to expand as Sparta.

From the patch notes...

Messenia now starts in the Mantineian defensive league, this should help their survivability against Sparta

...but will that stop a real Spartan?
 
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Not played the update yet, I guess just take your time, maybe try take some of Crete? Forge a strong alliance and pounce on oppertunities where the alliance is in a defensive war? That’ll be my plan anyway.
 
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Not played the update yet, I guess just take your time, maybe try take some of Crete? Forge a strong alliance and pounce on oppertunities where the alliance is in a defensive war? That’ll be my plan anyway.
Will let you know how it goes. You start out with a deficit and only 2 ships so Crete will be difficult. Just found out you can snag an alliance with macedon early so I might try using them as a battering ram against greece. We'll see
 
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Do you also have a problem with the characters in the game?

Looks like this problem which occured already after 1.4, when having used mods:


Deleting the Imperator folder under Documents/Paradox Interactive should help.
 
...but will that stop a real Spartan?
Yes it will, they immediately stomp you with 25k+ army since Menander also apparently make enemies stack more.
Previously it was kinda hard to expand since the first enemies were doable but then the DIadochi blobs were there. And the clock is ticking, if you take too long everyone will ally with everyone and it will be impossible to expand (unless Menander did changed the WW1 chain reactions in case of war).
Most importantly, Menander make spartan mission a pure sneer at player. Just when i finally thought Menander will make me like this game, it blocks one of the few remaning interesting starts (since all the others are blocked by Diadochii blobs since always).

Will let you know how it goes. You start out with a deficit and only 2 ships so Crete will be difficult. Just found out you can snag an alliance with macedon early so I might try using them as a battering ram against greece. We'll see
Crete is super hard since you have no money for the fleet, and no way to get them as you can't conquer anything in Greece. Macedon is quite open to alliance but won't help you much because even if they somehow join the fight, they are too busy with certain one-eyed guy and they are far so by the time their reinforcements would arrive, you are already gone since enemy is really better in joint wars now.

I will play some more tomorrow, but i don't have much expectations. I will not fight in the shade.

EDIT: Fortunately it's not this bad as i first thought, just helluva random and lot of resets.
 
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Yes it will, they immediately stomp you with 25k+ army since Menander also apparently make enemies stack more.
Previously it was kinda hard to expand since the first enemies were doable but then the DIadochi blobs were there. And the clock is ticking, if you take too long everyone will ally with everyone and it will be impossible to expand (unless Menander did changed the WW1 chain reactions in case of war).
Most importantly, Menander make spartan mission a pure sneer at player. Just when i finally thought Menander will make me like this game, it blocks one of the few remaning interesting starts (since all the others are blocked by Diadochii blobs since always).


Crete is super hard since you have no money for the fleet, and no way to get them as you can't conquer anything in Greece. Macedon is quite open to alliance but won't help you much because even if they somehow join the fight, they are too busy with certain one-eyed guy and they are far so by the time their reinforcements would arrive, you are already gone since enemy is really better in joint wars now.

I will play some more tomorrow, but i don't have much expectations. I will not fight in the shade.
Found a way. Use macedon or Phrygia to destroy their defensive alliance. Add on argoron Lycaen and Ellis and you're good to go
 
Just played as Sparta. Diodachi fight lead to Argos ending up vs. Macedon, and thus with only 1 or 2 allies, so I ate them. Ate a couple city states who didn't have alliances/leagues. Then got lucky with Messenia throwing a civil war and dropping their league, which was the perfect opportunity to eat them. Was using the Greek hegemony mission or whatever (I don't have the flavor pack for Greece) which gave me 3 free feudatories; ate a couple more city states, and now my own def league and Macedon are about the only things in my way.

Tl;dr, it's doable but may need some luck.
 
I played few more times. It seems to be random and slightly annoying. After 5 resets Macedon slugged with Antigonids, but i went for Antigonid alliance, and i actually profited on AI stacking armies since Athens and few more allowed me to lead their army and i looted my way through northern Greece, then they all just whitepeaced.
Not once in 5 resets that damn alliance broke or even engaged those wars though, so it's back on square one, though with enough money to actually try for Crete.
On a side note, Armenia blobbed and it's little easier to earn money now apparently (not including the looting).
 
I personally enjoy accepting an Antigonid alliance that allows me to go ransack Egypt early game to flood my cities with slaves and gold. If you avoid their navy and manage a landing party typically the delta is undefended as they are fighting over in Syria so lots of free gold waiting for you to claim it. With that gold you can easily merc up and take on crete and the city state defensive leagues for early expansion. For Crete expansion take the "Matter of Greece mission" first to get a claim on the entire city state sprawl so you can wipe them all out with maybe the exception of Rhodes which is not independent.
 
Anyone know why when i choose to call allies to war the check mark says they will, but then they betray? is there something im missing here?

What do you mean by "betray"? Do they join the war not at all, do they leave it some point or are they in the war and just don't engage in it/help you with their contribution?
 
What do you mean by "betray"? Do they join the war not at all, do they leave it some point or are they in the war and just don't engage in it/help you with their contribution?
They have the checkmark showing they will join the war, but then after checking their name and declaring they don't join and you lose the alliance. Maybe the numbers were actually showing they wouldn't join but the checkmark stayed idk. Wasn't sure if this was built into the game or a bug
 
They have the checkmark showing they will join the war, but then after checking their name and declaring they don't join and you lose the alliance. Maybe the numbers were actually showing they wouldn't join but the checkmark stayed idk. Wasn't sure if this was built into the game or a bug

Unless being some special case (e.g. weird combination of A attacking B while allied with C and C somehow diplomatically tied with B, too), I think that sounds buggy and is at least worth a report in the bug section to allow official investigation. For that kind of issue you will have to provide a save though, which allows reproducing.
 
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