Sorry about that, yeah I meant "MIDE" not "MIRE". It's been a couple of years since I've played the game so I was going purely from memory.

No worries, there are not too many playable nations in this one so it was easy to work out what you meant. They were a good suggestion. I need just one more burg to win a short victory. There are quite a few victory objectives, different ways you can win. You and I have discussed this many times and it's a nice feature in this one and all titles that have similar.

I don't have longbows as a Gaelic nation, gotta play the Welsh I guess. But otherwise the roster is fine. I've never been a fan of jav units in any TW game, but they're quite effective here, especially against cavalry.

My opening moves were to attack to the east, taking out the little nation there to reach the coast and then getting in to it with the settler vikings, eventually wiping them out. Landed in Wales when Gwined went rebel, took that whole province for a beach head in England, but haven't pursued it. Connact had grown strong, but had no allies, so I've just knocked them out to lock down the north of Ireland. The island essentially got carved up in to four nations by turn 100, well, three now.

Managed to get a handle on loyalty. Have managed to avoid any civil war or defections, figured out how to hand out estates too.

This campaign is a lot of fun. The density of the towns, and the recruitment and replenishment systems make for good flow to the warfare. The vulnerability of your small towns kinda sucks, but on the other hand it's sort of cool. Wars have more of a reactionary element to them than usual in TW titles, where I can usually stick to my plan since my towns all have walls and if the enemy manages to slip past in to my heartland they still need to assault to take a town. Here, they can swipe three or four little towns in a turn with very modest forces and so it requires more operational agility than usual in this series. Pretty cool.

Finished the Mide run on turn 135 with a short conquest victory. Played that one on Hard/Normal/Hard with the middle one being "Political" which has its own slider in TOB.

Started a new game as Gwined because longbows. These already have a range advantage and then you get a 15% boost and now your archers are at 196 and outrange anything the enemy might have, until they get catapults.

Gwined is in a precarious spot, I had taken their land in my Mide run, crossing the Irish Sea and snapping it all up after it went rebel. Allied to Powis at the start, it would be easy to play honorably and get screwed. Powis will call you in to their wars, and then take all the land to the south while you are holding off their enemies. So I said screw that and refused to honor their first call then attacked them, wiping them out and gaining another province. This is the way as Gwined. I'm all chummy with West Seax and have conquered clear across England to the North Sea. We'll leave them to fight off the viking incursions in the south and look to keep expanding north in to Scotland

I've mentioned it already, but I really like how recruitment works in this one. Battles have lasting consequence which is important, and there is a drag on recruitment, with a limit to how many of any type of unit is available in the pool. It's a soft cap, and replenishes after a cool-down. So for example once you get catapults you'll only be able to recruit two for 8 or 10 turns before more become available. I like it.

The new recruitment mechanic took me a while to get to used to and to learn how to effectively deal with it. Needless to say, food in Britannia is of utmost importance because it's not just a universal resource like in other TW titles but each unit you recruit directly consumes food. I believe each unit is 10 food right?

Yes, that is correct. As Mide I really had to work for it, focus on producing food to allow me to grow. As Gwined, because of the regions I have taken, food is outrageous, and I'm running a surplus of over 300 food per tick. A much more fertile region (or has more farms anyway)

My nation blew apart. Everything was going great, Gwined was conquering fast and I was especially alert to rebel spawns, who quickly take minor settlements, which means they become targets for us since we don't have to declare war now. Just a few settlements from victory all of my characters suddenly went disloyal. After looking around I saw it was because my influence had dropped and showed a -10 political actions. I don't know what it is from. The only thing I can think of is an event fired for a marriage, but I intervened since she was unsuitable. Whatever the reason, next turn half my nation went rebel and they quickly take those little towns that need no battle to occupy.

I maybe could get it all back, but suddenly many of my towns are now targets for other AI nations, and chasing the rebels around as they occupy the town I just departed isn't appealing so I'll reload an earlier save. Maybe then I can figure out why I had that influence modifier. Maybe it's been building all along and I just didn't notice.

I would need to reinstall the game to know for sure but I know the game has some really nasty random events that can have a significant hit on different things like loyalty, income, food production. etc. Do you remember at what level the different skills were for your faction leader right before the rebellion? I don't remember exactly what the skills were called but if you look under the character panel for your faction leader you will see a list of like 5 or 6 different character traits. One of them has a big impact on loyalty.

Yeah, I'm sure you're talking about influence, and when the faction leader's influence is lower than that of another character, governor or general, disloyalty is afoot. And that's what happened here.

So I reloaded a save from ten turns earlier and had a look about. Noticed my king still had a -10 political action modifier. What had happened before is I had a governor with low loyalty, so to boost it I gave him an estate. While I was at it I thought why not hand them out like candy and get everyone happy. But I didn't notice each one I handed away dropped my own influence by 1. So I essentially gave away all my influence, dropped lower than all my characters, and they then decided they were all better at being king than me.

Armed with this info, I did better with the mulligan, even paid for a feast or two, and won a short kingdom victory, which means fully occupying all the welsh lands. The main roadblock to this is some of that land is held by West Seaxe vassals, and they're too strong to take on for a few settlements I think. Gwined is actually number 1, but West Seaxe has like eight vassals which will all attack me if I declare war. But I also knew that some of their welsh vassals can declare independence. And when they do they are alone, there's no support independence thing to gain allies like in EU IV for example, so they are easy pickings. The key is to have armies stationed close enough to hit them fast, before West Seaxe comes and takes it for themselves. So that's what I did and was able to pick them off in turn as they went independent. That's a cool victory condition, and I am going to keep going and see if I can get the long kingdom one too. I can probably snag several victory conditions along the way.

I don't know if it is difficulty level tied, but the AI doesn't do a good job of maintaining order, so they get rebels often, which lets me snipe their settlements. I've taken a lot of towns like this so far. I guess I like it, because this is often the sort of thing the developers paper over and make the AI immune to their own incompetence. In Attila for example, you'd take over a city and look at the buildings and see that if that had been your town?, you'd have had a massive revolt. But the AI is unaffected. In TOB it's done differently.

Which brings me to one more point.... it's cool in the Total war series how divergently each one is designed. Recruitment, city building, trait system, unit cards, trade, agents and on and on. But with each one I find I rather like it. Sure, there are quibbles here and there. But isn't it cool how with each title they don't just stick to the formula, but make a clear effort to design a different game, taking chances and thinking outside the box.

Stopped that run and started a new one as West Seaxe. It's the only faction listed as easy, and I guess it is. Won a short conquest victory on turn 53, which is far and away my fastest ever Total War win. You need 80 settlements, and start with half of it. I crushed East Engle when the truce ran out, then my Welsh vassals when they went rogue. And I had made friends and a marriage with Mierce, so that when their King died I could vassalize them. One more settlement to go and when that was done the victory fired. I'll keep on with this one a while yet.

The West Seaxe campaign is indeed easy if you do the short campaign objectives. If you go for the long campaign objectives you need to be well prepared for a very nasty Norman invasion that comes sometime after 800 AD. You'll start seeing warning event messages before the invasion comes.

I will maintain a vigil on my shores. Thanks for the warning.

The problem with maintaining a vigil on your shores is you don't know exactly which shore to vigilize. In the end the invasion came from the south, down Eastbourne way. My armies were mostly on Tyneside, a long way from where they needed to be. So when the invasion fleets appeared I had to gather them up from all over the map and send them to the landing zone. The viking troops were top notch, but I had more than enough to counter them and they were quickly destroyed, they only managed to sack and occupy one coastal hamlet. And with that we won an Ultimate Victory! Wow that sounds prestigious haha.

We also won both long and short conquest, and long and short kingdom victories. One cool thing about it was the tag switching. Started as West Seaxe and formed Anglo-Saxons when completing short kingdom, and then tag switched to England with the long kingdom victory. Don't recall seeing this before in Total War. I'm only missing the fame victories in this run since I don't own all the required provinces, so cannot upgrade the buildings.

Congrats on your ultimate victory and for stopping the Norman invasion cold in its tracks!

Be wary if you decide to play any of the factions in northern England because you will get some marauding Viking fleets earlier in those campaigns.

Thanks, but it was all rather easy if I'm honest. You start so strong that I think you'd have to work at it to lose as Wessex. As an aside, this is like the thread you had going in CH, how West Seaxe has morphed to Wessex.

Made friends with Mierce and then subjugated them and together we ran the table, using war coordination to get them fighting where I wanted them to. TOB is offspring of Attila? Or Rome 2? I see both of those games in this one.

I'd say its more like Attila because the Age of Charlemagne DLC for Attila is basically a precursor to TOB in both historical setting and with some of the game mechanics.

Yeah, you're right, and anyway it came out on the heels of Attila as it turns out. I feel like I can see bits of both games, that and Rome 2, in TOB.

TOB is a good entry in the series. I enjoy the campaign. But of all the Total War games I think this one has the least replayability. I've finished three campaigns, and started a fourth as Dyflin and then just lost motivation. Not enough to differentiate the runs for me. Factions and campaign objectives too much the same for me to keep playing them all. Tech trees are the same for everyone. Rome 2 and Three Kingdoms have alternate campaigns to keep it fresh. But to be fair, TOB was never intended to be like that, as a saga title. Glad I gave it a go, but it burned out faster than the rest.

Yes the "Saga" series of TW titles were designed to be more limited in scope and more focused on a smaller geographic region and shorter time in history. Having said that I still managed to put in almost 900 hours into the game. I guess I'm just a TW fanatic.

Yeah that's pretty amazing. I wish I could find that in this one. I need more of that factionality to find the motivation to keep starting new runs with a different nation.

You know what I've been looking at, and added to my wishlist? Imperator Rome. I think you played that one. I'm a Paradox guy, but have mostly ignored this one since the release was substandard. But it looks like it has been improved a great deal and I think I'll pick it up. People are complaining, calling it Paradox abandonware since the updates are over. But as a long time Paradox fan I rather see this as a positive lol. The game is in its final state and there isn't a boatload of money needed to throw at it every couple of months. EU IV just got it's final expansion to take this thread and post even farther off topic.

Not to mince words but the initial release of Imperator Rome was a disaster. It was simply missing a lot of content. Eventually though it got many updates and the game was vastly improved by the time I started my last campaign. I may actually reinstall it one day and revisit it. I highly recommend the title to any hardcore fan of the Roman Republic/Empire. I say hardcore because the game is really super-in depth and complex. If someone is not a hardcore fan of the historical period and setting I'm afraid they might start falling asleep at the PC.

Yes it was. I went from very interested to not in record time. But they've given it some love and the comments on the current state of the game are very good indeed. Don't mean to derail this thread, but not like this thread and forum are on fire lol. Thanks for the comments PM. If I pick it up I'll find your thread on it. It's on the wishlist so I'll probably get it in the next sale.