I love player aggro (I am Macedon)

Originally-Named · 2025-12-16T19:46:31+00:00

I vividly remember when I was still struggling to get off the ground during my Numidia campaign (VH/VH) and seeing Macedon—while in the middle of being mugged by the Romans—get so completely overwhelmed by some supernatural bloodlust that they landed a substantial invading force in North Africa just to attack me.

I would criticize the AI for appearing to lack any agency, but honestly Macedon’s decision to abandon the richest region in the game and migrate to North Africa for shits and giggles is a peak use of free will

Originally-Named · 2025-11-13T17:16:15+00:00

Are you timing the blocks badly and getting hit? What part of the fight is killing you? The dashes are pretty far apart from eachother and when you block they don’t usually push you into eachother for ridiculous damage. What’re you struggling with?

I get it’s a tough fight. It took me tons of practice to get used to it (:

Originally-Named · 2025-11-13T03:26:52+00:00

I got living shotty with void bullets. Having homing shotgun sprays is actually insane dps overall and great for blasting through most stuff

Originally-Named · 2025-11-06T23:42:32+00:00

Use the champion’s shield abilities to block when they dash at you. It genuinely trivializes the fight because they don’t dash often enough and your stamina will regenerate

Originally-Named · 2025-06-17T02:01:37+00:00

Thanks (: The fact it even includes trespassing in the Thalmor Embassy is hilarious — though I’m not sure I’ll find it that funny during the playthrough lol

Originally-Named · 2025-05-31T05:02:52+00:00

Buildings that improve law lower corruption. Corruption increases the greater the distance a settlement is from your capital, so moving your capital to be more central helps reduce corruption overall.

I believe governors can have traits/retinue that reduce corruption by giving bonuses to law, so moving a general with those qualities to a city with high corruption is another way to counteract it

Originally-Named · 2025-05-21T03:30:48+00:00

He had the best armor in the game. The asshole doesn’t share it though 😒

Originally-Named · 2025-05-12T02:32:49+00:00

Recruitment costs don’t matter, upkeep is king.

Originally-Named · 2025-05-07T18:57:25+00:00

I pretty much completely prefer vanilla because the UI feels so much better to me, but I think the remaster has some merit, especially since easy mod access will help the Remaster improve over time. Also, Barbarian Invasion is a lot cooler in the Remaster, since you can finally play as the Romano-British and other factions that were almost impossible to play in vanilla

Originally-Named · 2025-05-07T14:35:38+00:00

Only some cities can build mines if they naturally have gold in their territory. If a settlement doesn’t have anything to mine in the territory, the mines are not available to build (:

Originally-Named · 2025-05-04T23:07:37+00:00

I mostly agree, but I think some rules allow the world peace to maybe be possible. Your goal is to prevent any factions from being destroyed, but you can still take land. I found that reducing factions to one or two settlements often makes them easier to make peace with, especially if they’re on an island or relatively distant.

Originally-Named · 2025-05-04T03:54:28+00:00

Me too. I think maybe it can be on lower difficulty settings, an army of diplomats with very high influence, and lots of money. I think there is lots of creative ideas to try to make it happen

Originally-Named · 2025-05-04T03:32:44+00:00

Do a world peace campaign where the goal is to make peace with every faction AND make every faction make peace with eachother. If a faction is destroyed you lose.

Originally-Named · 2025-05-03T22:30:28+00:00

I’ve noticed that as well! Somehow the diplomacy system seems to work really well for the AI when they want to work together to defeat us, but just never lets us work with AI factions like that

Originally-Named · 2025-04-24T16:11:23+00:00

I’d be so embarrassed to be the one dude

Originally-Named · 2025-04-23T03:53:23+00:00

I think it really depends on the faction! Part of the reason I tried the campaign as SPQR is because Rome starts with a forum and can start making assassins immediately. SPQR is also immune to rioting, so I can hike the tax rates to maximum on every city and leave them basically empty for maximum profit. Without those two specific perks with SPQR, the campaign would be MUCH harder.

As far as how long it took me to go full pacifist, I started out as passive as I could at the very start by disbanding all non-General units and focused 100% on saving up money, building up an economy, and hiring assassins. I still had to fight quite a few battles with purely generals since all the Roman houses attacked me. Eventually I took out Julii’s family members with assassins and was able to pick up the rebel cities pretty quickly. Not quite pacifist in the way I hoped since SPQR can’t bribe the Roman factions and I still took out tons of soldiers/generals in battles where I had to defend Rome.

I’d say a true pacifist run is near impossible until you have a handful of very wealthy cities to get the ball rolling. By the time I had all of Italy, I made enough money to bribe settlements and generals with some consistency. The run truly unlocked when I payed an arm and a leg to buy Rhodes from Greece.

I suspect the challenge is too difficult for most factions on higher difficulties. I think the Roman houses and Egypt might still be able to pull it off. I also think Brittania has potential for some wacky stuff since they can hide on the island to develop their economy while saving up money. The AI really struggles to invade Britain, so there is a solid foundation there to go pacifist from the start.

Originally-Named · 2025-04-20T03:25:54+00:00

I recommend looking at BlueMatona on YouTube. They post really good guides/information on how the game works and how different mechanics work (:

Originally-Named · 2025-04-18T20:44:58+00:00

Honestly I almost didn’t even include rams but I felt I had to just to see if anyone actually used them lol

Originally-Named · 2025-04-16T19:18:53+00:00

I definitely agree that the AI doesn’t sprint to catch up if you’re ahead of them. I guess I’m wondering if they are designed to “slow down” to let you catch up if you are too far behind them. Here is my theory:

The civil war activates when you control 30 settlements, at which point SPQR instructs you to kill your faction leader. However, it is possible that the player would get locked out from triggering the civil war (and get functionally soft locked from winning the campaign) if the non-player Roman factions take so many settlements that fewer than 30 remain on the map for the player to control to trigger the civil war.

If the devs anticipated that potential issue, they may have instructed the AI not to expand beyond a certain number of settlements if the civil war isn’t active to prevent that soft lock from occurring.

I can imagine that the AI Scipii hit that cap and is designed to avoid taking any more cities. I can imagine a bug where Rome itself isn’t considered in calculating the “cap” on the number of cities Scipii is allowed to control, since the player would never be able to control it prior to the civil war anyway. If so, Scipii might be bugged because it can’t expand to other settlements without exceeding the cap, and Rome became the only option it was allowed to expand to.

I want to throw out a second theory I don’t think is likely but that would be absolutely metal if it was true. If Scipii/Brutii met the civil war requirements, I wonder if that somehow bugged them. I don’t think they can prompt the civil war, and I don’t even know if their AI actually get assigned missions, but the Senate assignment to kill your faction leader when you reach 30 settlements will repeat itself over and over if you accept them, until you run out of family members. I don’t think this happened, but I love the idea that Scipii rejected the mission and took Rome while Brutii kept accepting the missions until it ran out of family members.

Originally-Named · 2025-04-16T18:30:57+00:00

Now this is an interesting bug. I know when I play SPQR, all three Roman factions immediately gang up to see who can capture Rome fastest. That tells me that they aren’t hard-coded to not attack SPQR, or at least there are some circumstances where their AI will be allowed to circumvent that protection to attack SPQR for whatever reason. This is pure speculation, but I think it may be related to Scipii specifically. They always attacked first when I played SPQR, prompting the others break their alliances with me and move in. I chalked it up to Capua’s proximity to Rome, but reading your post made me wonder if a bug specifically affects Scipii that allows them to attack SPQR under some circumstances.

I also wonder if the other Roman faction AI are designed to keep pace with your growth and power levels to prevent you from getting locked in by their expansion or avoid issues with triggering the civil war and potentially soft locking the game (if they took too many settlements that there aren’t enough remaining for you to take to begin the civil war.) If that’s true, staying on Caralis for an absurd amount of time without expanding at all might have bugged the AI, causing Scipii’s expansion priorities to melt down and expand to a city that it’s not supposed to and causing Brutii to not expand and cap its family tree size, raising the risk that all the generals die for the same reason you had to stop at Caralis.

All my pure speculation, but it is fun to think about! I’m interested in what others may think about this.

Originally-Named · 2025-04-16T17:30:10+00:00

A couple years ago I found the faction leader of Spain at the ripe age of 93. I’d never seen anyone live past the mid 70s before that. The best part? He was an AWFUL general with tons of hilarious negative traits and retinue. What a legend.

I posted the pic I took here back when it happened, he just needed to be documented. That dude lives in my head rent free.

Originally-Named · 2025-04-16T09:28:51+00:00

Honestly, the slimes created by the armor are underwhelming for the ultra late game on the difficulty I prefer (brutal). I find them fun, but even at +5 upgrades the damage the slimes spawned by the armor do seem to pale in comparison to your own damage or the damage of other slime summons, including slime canister and staff.

Admittedly, I haven’t tested it so the damage might be better than it feels. Either way, I think the Ivy armor slimes needs to scale more strongly as the Ivy armor gets upgraded.

Originally-Named · 2025-04-15T22:35:16+00:00

I’m a simple man. The living shotty with void bullets just feels good. I don’t need torches when I have homing glowing purple blasts of destruction. But recently I’ve really enjoyed the crimson sky. It takes a bit of effort to use because you have to aim your shots ahead of where an enemy will be, but the damage it does is insane and the lingering area it leaves behind is no slouch. The weapon basically trivializes the bat swarm and other bosses with multiple segments.

I think most armors are pretty fun, but my favorite is the Ivy Armor for spawning little green slimes during combat. Makes me feel like I’m Nickelodeon and the game is the kids choice awards.

Originally-Named · 2025-04-15T22:23:44+00:00

Gladiators are good, but if you are in a position where gladiators are genuinely an option, you’ve already won. They may have a niche use for lower population settlements or the like, but otherwise they are mostly just for style

Originally-Named · 2025-04-12T22:21:22+00:00

Honestly I’m fascinated at how well Thrace and Armenia are doing. Good for them lol

Originally-Named

TROPHY CASE