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The Empire at the Edge of the World:An Ordovices AAR

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Aug 26, 2007
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  • Europa Universalis III
  • Europa Universalis III Complete
  • Europa Universalis III Complete
  • Europa Universalis: Rome
Well, a would-be Empire, anyway. :D

Hello, I just bought EU:Rome this last weekend and after a few short decades in a game as Rome, I started feeling an urge to give a minor a try (a problem I had when I started playing EU3. Many small nations were ruined by an advisor named Zimfan before I got the hang of the game). I figured an aar of my most likely laughably poor attempt to turn a minor into a major power after a short skim of the manual and limited play time might be of some interest, so here goes nothing.

Finding vanilla EU:Rome to feel a bit empty as far as number of nations I decided to give the Rome:Enhanced Mod, counting on the dubious advantage of not being aware of all of vanilla's intricacies and features to keep me from being taken off guard by any changes it makes to gameplay. For some time I scanned the map, awed by the number of small Celtic and Germanic factions added. I quickly discarded the nations with 2-3 provinces, deciding that if I picked a one province minor and got my butt kicked I'd at least have an excuse. After some time I settled on Ordovices in present day Wales. Several other one province minors nearby to ally with or fight, but still somewhat isolated and, hey, dark green happens to be my favorite color.



It would prove to be a wise decision. Ordovices had a leader good for fighting and nothing else, an army of 3k soldiers comapred to nearby Dumnonii's 1k, and the iron resource. I may not have played the game much but it didn't take a lot of experience to figure out how much better heavy infantry are than most other units. So I opened a trade route to other nearby tribe the Icenii, accepted an alliance offer from the Picts, gave my army a general and marched off to fight the Dumnonii, swallowing a steep stab penalty.





Along the way I had a couple of neat events, including one that allowed me to civilize a little faster in exchange for some penalties, and another where I specified my "war goal", choosing between several with different penalties and bonuses.



The Dumnonii kick my butt at sea and land a unit of men at my capital, while recruiting one more at their own. Luckily I had also recruited a unit in my province, and both fights were won easily.



After surprisingly few battles I was able to destroy their armies (they really did eliminate ping pong battles in 1.2), and take their capital and annex them, only to have a barbarian invasion of Ordoveces itself!



After a forced march back to my capital in which my men arrived in the nick of time, they lose. :wacko: Ordoveces is sacked and I'm starting to worry that I've ruined my faction even faster than I had expected. Receiving a ton of demands for tribute from tribes I couldn't find on the map didn't help my mood any.



Still, the mighty Ordoveces do not give up that easily. The invaders make a beeline for my new province of Dumnonii, my own army hot on their heels. On their way they pick up even more men, now outnumbering my army two to one, but General Togodumnis pulls off a heroic victory, destroying the 9,000+ army.



As my final act before taking a break, I set up a trade route between my two territories, allowing me to trade without having to send my nation's precious iron elsewhere to help lesser tribes recruit heavy infantry. I've managed to avoid running my nation into the ground, so far at least.

 
A BritanniAAR I see - good good, must be encouraged. :)
 
yay, I has found another new aar!
And it seems that the some random other guys also found this... before me...

Could you post a map about mediterranean also someday? :)

Anyways, unite Britannia, then take Gaul.
And Iberia and etc.

But good luck! ;)
 
Nice start! It also makes me want to try Rome:Enhanced Mod. You should become their unofficial spokesman. :p

Unite Britannia then onward to Gaul!
 
comagoosie THanks, my Swiss one should be updated within the day as well. :)

stnylan Come to think of it, except a short stint as Wales once in EU3, this is the first time I've played a British faction in an EU game. Better make up for lost time, then. :D

Enewald They're definately not random, comagoosie and stnylan are nice enough to comment in many an aar. :)

Britain then Gaul is the plan, although there might be a hiccup or two along the way. I'll try to get some screenshots of the rest of the Med.

Eber I'm sure they already have better spokesmen who know the mod well, but if I draw some attention to it that can only be good.

Britannia, then Gaul!

Big up date coming late today or tomorrow. Let's just say I had a rather long playing session (think I saw the sun rise. :p ).
 
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Alright, time for huge update, part one.

Having defeated the perfidious tribe of Dumnonii I set my sights on connecting my new province to my capital and started a colony. In a nice change of pace from the kind of unexpected event that usually occurs during my EU games I get a trade offer virtually the same day my colony is complete. Ordovices is now a three province nation that trades with the outside world, quite a step up from its humble beginnings.



I get an unpleasant barbarian event or two in my new colony, but they're easily put down. Dreams of rolling up southern England dance through my head and I make preparations for war with the Iceni to the east. The traitorous Gangani refuse to join the war (no idea why I asked them, think I was hoping for help from my Pictish allies). That's ok, I plan to conquer them later anyway. War goals event comes up again, and of course I pick "We will conquer!". :D

The Iceni war is pleasantly short, as some barbarians I had beaten before the war started happened to move onto their province and beat their army. I ended up fighting the barbarians for Iceni and won. :D Boy did I luck out in having picked a nation with Iron as a resource. For anyone who is making the transition from EU3 to EU:Rome, unit type counts for a lot in the new game, and if you can only have one unit, make it heavy infantry (well, maybe elephants if you could afford it. :p ). Anyway, as said the war was short and, well, you can see the results right here. Ordovices was now the size of Macedonia, although likely a bit poorer.



I spend most of the next years colonizing and fighting off barbarian attacks. Elsewhere major things are happening, though. Just after a war with the Seleucids that ending in Egypt losing their few territories in Anatolia, they get into it with the Carthaginians. Needless to say, the Egyptians, probably still suffering manpower problems from their just ended war, do not fare well.



Around the same time the Egyptians are getting their butt kicked, I get my own bad news, a very nasty "overstretched" event that seems to happen to tribal governments after their nations reach a certain size. +3 revolt risk? :wacko:



Revolts and Barbarian attacks become the order of the day And at least one colony of mine is pillaged.



I don't let that stop me, and before long, the Ordovician border is almost knocking on the Pict's door.



Meanwhile things are going worse for Carthage, they managed to grab a decent chunk of territory from Egypt, only to suffer a crippling Civil War (I believe this screenshot includes the rest of the Med, Enewald. I'll get another couple shots when I catch up to where I've played to :) ).



I get the occasional event asking me if I want to change the path my country is on but at this point I don't think I can handle the stability loss. I'm not sure if it's different in vanilla, but in the Rome:Enhanced Mod these choices can affect what National Ideas you can adopt.



I notice the Picts allied with Gangani (tribe in Ireland) after the latter deserted me in the Iceni war. :mad: That's all the reason I need, and I prepare for another war. I DOW, even though it ruins my stab (at this point I was still unsure whether to use assassins to get a casus belli, I'm over that now. :p ). Of course, as soon as I do I get an event causing barbarians to spawn in Brigantes.



And of course Gangani answers the Picts' call to arms and there turns out to be a "land bridge" between Ireland and southern Scotland. Did I mention that mid-war the Picts colonize the province below their starting one so I can't annex them (doh!)?



The Picts prove easy enough to handle, and the Gangani only a bit harder. The constant revolts and barbarian problems finally break me, though. Not knowing that paying tribute is basically accepting vassalhood (not being able to start wars, etc.), I go ahead and sign a bad treeaty to get Gangani out of the war.






Refocusing on the Picts I take their new colony, getting a special Rome:Enhanced Mod event that lets me leave it alone, loot it, or enslave a big chunk of the population or raze it if I so desire. Razing it would destroy the colony (reduces population enough to bring it to zero in an already sparsely inhabited province) but I can't quite bring myself to, so I loot it for the cash. A couple more battles, and the Picts are now paying me tribute and cede their colony to me.





That's the end of part one of the update, Part two will be even longer. :)
 
comagoosie The Ordovices government's official stance is that these "overstretched" rumors are malicious slander spread by the hateful people of Gangani, who fear us and wish to stop our nation's constant expansion. :p

Then again, maybe there is something to it. ;) Note that even my capital isn't doing great.

 
The next years are spent consolidating. Revolts are still common, but the number of barbarian incursions gets fewer and fewer, as there are no more unclaimed territories in Britain itself, and the barbarians in my colonies are slowly absorbed into Ordovices culture.

Over time I begin to get some discoveries from my slowly rising tech, including Noble Cavalry (although I have no access to the "horses" resource I discovered cavalry despite not having any. :rofl: ), Patronage, Irrigation (which I cannot afford for my provinces), etc. My King gets the trait "confident" from his many battles, and he also attains a rival, an event I unwisely ignore.



In 490 I have some nice news. Somebody in Gaul actually wants to trade for one of my worthless grain provinces! :eek: I've had a couple extra grain provinces for which I couldn't set up trade routes for quite some time, so both the extra income from trading far away and the Iron from Arverni are very much appreciated.



As if I needed more proof that the Ordoveces are favored by the gods I get my first successful omen. :D Up to this point the chance of a successful omen had been under 50% so I'd been avoiding them. After this I will do this omen (+2.5 pop growth) and the one that adds to my research points for the year almost constantly, as they seem to be the two with the best long term gains.



Figuring I might as well continue my policy of fixing overstretching by even more expansion and finally stop paying tribute to Gangani, shortly before dowing the Picts. Unfortunately I did not notice that they were allied to the Arverni, so I lose my trade route. :eek:o

It is a pathetically short war. The Picts hadn't recovered from the last one, and had almost not troops. All of the island of Britain was officially unified.



Recall how I mentioned unwisely ignoring who my King's rivals were? It seemed as if I reaped what I sowed with my indifference, and I had my very first civil war. As it turned out, this actually helped me. My generals were none to impressed with the ranting of the anti-Duratid faction, and I had all of the troops. Then when I crushed the revolters, I received +1 stab and my chief gained +25 loyalty. Who'd have thought that brutally crushing a rebellion made you more popular? :rofl:





I think I've been remiss in my report so far. I've failed to mention one of the most interesting events that I think is Rome:Enhanced specific. Every couple of years I would get the "At a Crossroad" event. Basically you could choose to continue to advance and suffer a research bonus and both army morale and character loyalty penalty (and presumably open up the chance for special events) or pick "Stick to the Old ways", satisfying your armies and nobles but hurting research costs. At this particular point I was planning on invading Ireland and chose the latter, but most of the time I put up with the penalties for advancing faster.



And so at the dawn of a new century, I started my attack on the Gangani, while the Romans were apparently finally getting around to starting the Punic Wars. The AI's ability to take island surprised me a bit, although they were having less luck with invasion of the North African mainland, where Carthage had a big advantage.



Anyway, who cares what the Romans are doing? Not like it could ever affect the mighty Ordovices. Right? ;)

The Gangani turned out to be allied to the Parisii and Carnutes. I thought I'd have an easy time of it, being bigger than all three of them combined. I'd just leisurely take Ireland, then move to the Mainland and maybe get some tribute or a new province or two there. How wrong I was. The Parisii beat my navy and landed troops in Britain constantly, while the Carnutes just got military access from the nation holding the "bridge" from Gaul to Britain and walked across. Things got pretty bad at some points, and sadly my lack of screenshots attests to how hard the war was and how much attention I had to pay to it. :eek:o

Here's one of a special series of events you get if a province is occupied. Occasionally rebel groups will spring up in territories occupied in war. The occupier gets choices in how to handle them, and depending on what happens they raise the revolt risk in the province considerably or eventually get caught and it goes down.



Things got pretty bad, and if you look around the edges of this "demand terms" screen, you can see several of my southern provinces occupied and an enemy army in the old Pictish homeland. Luckily Gangani was the alliance leader and I managed to get them to cede two Irish provinces to me and tribute.



The Romans made out pretty well in their war as well.



After a couple more years I decided it was time to make a break for the mainland and I had my last "major" war for a while. I dowed Aulerci, in control of northwestern Gaul, and their allies to the south the Lemovices. I formed Ordovices' largest army up to that date, with a "mighty" 26,000 men, and invaded.



It took a while, and they did the same "colonize in the middle of a war" thing the Picts had done to me so long before, but that just saved me from having to colonize myself, as I would take the province in the peace deal. :D



Sadly King Duratid died midcampaign (and not in combat, surprisingly), never getting to see his goals of uniting not only Britain but Gaul. However, he brought the Ordovices from a single province tribe to one of the mightiest nations in the world. He would be remembered as the first great chief of his people, a founding father of sorts of the Ordovices Empire. His successor, of the Galbrid family, had the same lack of personal charisma as his predecessor, and only a decent martial rating, but an absurdly high finesse rating.



 
The new King was intent on bringing his people into the 6th century AUC, and reformed the government from the top down. The Ordovices would now be run as a Military Republic, with frequent elections. Rumors that the Ordovices Empire had overstretched itself finally ended, as it's new rulers implemented a much more efficient administrative system.





Within the next decade the euphoria brought on by the Ordovices reforms and conquests ended, as a new power arose in Gaul to challenge their comination. The Roman Empire that had seemed so far away not long ago expanded to our very doorstep.



The sudden proximity of the two nations caused both to race to take out the smaller tribes of Gaul. Whoever won the race would have a strong advantage over the others. Sadly, The Ordovices were not able to keep up, and the ROmans slowly outpaced them. After decades of war by both nations, nearly all of Gaul had been carved up, with the Romans additionally making inroads into Germany. Now Ordovices stared across the border at more than twice their number in Romans soldiers, who were also better financed and equipped. Rumor had it that the Romans were having problems not only keeping their new provinces in line, but even their home ones, and that was why they had not declared war (stab -3), but all knew it was only a matter of time, and that the Romans would have the advantage.



And so we end part two of the giant update. :) Things look bad. My manpower is around 40,000, with a max of 200k or so, while Romans manpower is well over 100k, and maxes at over 300k. And they have much higher tech than I do :wacko:

There are virtually no more small tribes left to conquer, and it seems like only a matter of time before the Romans turn to the one northern nation that could challenge their dominance. Looks like this game just got harder. If anyone has any tips, I wouldn't mind hearing them. :D

Anyway, as per Enewald's request, here are some screenshots of the rest of the Mediterranean. :)

Carthage is doing quite well in Iberia, although they are still weaker than Rome, despite having more same culture provinces.



To the east we see the Romans and Carthaginian heartlands. Carthage has expanded a bit into Egypt, who is now paying tribute to the Seleucids.



The eastern end of the Mediterranean, where the Seleucids reign supreme.



In the northeast, tribes are just finally starting to consolidate.

 
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Yay... finally those wastelands are ruled!
And... a huge celtic state in western europe... lets hope the first clash with rome is won by you. And thanks for pics. :D
 
Looks like a very interesting game. This is a lot of fun to read. What is your culture type and how many of your territories share the same type as you? How has being a military republic changed the play from being tribal? Is your religion still druidic?

As for advice -- May I assume allying with Rome is out of the question? If so, perhaps an alliance with one of their enemies?
 
Just realized that something might not be readily apparent. Those dark green provinces in Northern Germany are the Lombards, not Ordovices conquests.

Enewald Rome:Enhanced does a good job of putting more factions in what was formerly empty space. :)

I'm not too optimistic about a clash with Rome but who knows. I'd try to run their manpower down by letting them attack me, and merging my stacks to make a big one to take out their 15 unit stacks.

Machiavellian Thanks, it's been fun to play, and the gameplay style of writeup is pretty easy timewise.

My culture type is Celtic, and all of my territories share that type. Rome:Enhanced does have different specific cultures in the Germanic culture group, so maybe they'll add a few for the Celts eventually as well.

I don't think I've gotten any Military Republic events yet, but the change has had some effect. Losing the Overstretched penalties was the first nice thing I noticed. I also get a +10% Discipline bonus to my troops. Leaders are elected now, and tend to have high popularity, lowering the chance of a Civil War. The National Ideas I can choose from have changed as well, with two military slots (note that in Rome:Enhanced tribal governments get multiple ideas as well, unlike Vanilla). My religion hasn't changed.

I wish I could ally Rome until I was stronger. Relations are terrible with them and most of the big countries though (and paying them to improve relations costs more than I can manage to keep up with relation decay :wacko: ), because of the penalty for not sharing their religion group. Maybe I'd stand a chance with one of the Germanic tribes?
 
Looks like you and Rome are due a massive showdown.
 
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