In Philip scenario, when you encounter Chalcidan league, and take all the cities up to Arethusa in north and Olynthos in south, they will be pretty much incapacitated, due to fact that they have far too few farms left and even though they have some sheeps it does not seem to compensate - recently I have evaporated whole army waiting in field for supplies = they were routed on entering the combat. What I'm not sure about though is combination of this area, and rework done with the rebelling, that only chance to rebel is reduced by dismantling city walls but still exists - area has little food, and without food garrisons just don't work, so seems like permanent rebellion but with ai not able to do anything without food supplies.
I have thought about this and considered whether solution would be limiting the food consumption of units in cities to only be counted during sieges. But problem with this is that if you place any unit into city it will take trendemous amount of time for AI to siege it, most likely they will be dust before this happens and they don't have any siege equipment.
Another note is AI vs. sieging port, that fort thear Therma is not conquerable at all, it just kills units more faster then they siege - maybe long sequence of hoplites could do it but AI does not do that. AI vs. sieges is problem in general I think as it's permanent reducition of their manpower. Perhaps giving them some third-rate siege equipment would fix this...

About the catapult proliferation, I think giving the AI siege equipment in Sandbox might make things more interesting, while keeping the siege engines the way they are in the campaigns. In the Archidamian War because they're unhistoric(I enjoyed the hell out of sitting two hoplites down on Aegina and cutting off its sea lanes until its defense strength had dropped basically down to nothing, by the way) and in Philip's campaign they're just one of those things that make Philip special. Maybe if the AI appreciated blockading and starving out the garrison more, rather than continuous direct assault, their sieges would be a more serious threat to a prepared city. Blockading is what its all about.

About the catapult proliferation, I think giving the AI siege equipment in Sandbox might make things more interesting, while keeping the siege engines the way they are in the campaigns. In the Archidamian War because they're unhistoric(I enjoyed the hell out of sitting two hoplites down on Aegina and cutting off its sea lanes until its defense strength had dropped basically down to nothing, by the way) and in Philip's campaign they're just one of those things that make Philip special. Maybe if the AI appreciated blockading and starving out the garrison more, rather than continuous direct assault, their sieges would be a more serious threat to a prepared city. Blockading is what its all about.
Well, as for unhistoric, I don't believe siege engines were, as a weapon class, unique to Philip, as they were not invented by him just very proliferated by extensive use and extensive conquest of his and those of Alexander.
As for starving city out of food fair enough - however problem with that is AI cannot manage such siege either - once I had them sitting there for so long that my city was near out of food, but even then they were not sitting far just cutting supplies but sieging directly losing unit after unit to arrows. So yes if AI can do the sieges efficiently (bringing in food supplies for siege force, staying out of walls range) that would do for me probably too and maybe nicer, however adding some much less efficient equipment would be maybe easier to implement.

Good work, the game feels far more realistic with the recruitment fix.

in vanilla i used to batter down armies again and again only to see them again in e few minutes, forcing me to abandon many a siege (which felt like an unfair advantage to the besieged imo) but now when you beat/are beaten you really need time to recover from the blows, which also means that the annoying, nay frustrating peltast/cav scouts coming down on youre towers can be beaten for more lengthy amounts of time. I hated those bastards coming up every time i engage somewhere else, admittedly thats what I would do, but they just kept coming, now they do aswell but in ones and twosies.

the diplomacy feature is worth its weight in gold btw, one secure border, no matter what the cost can save you so much time to nibble away at youre foes (not to forget philip was only hegemon because of the diplomacy he did, not by taking them all on at the same time)

what could be implemented tough (has been suggested already) is an autoattack/stand ground/patrol option, especially the patrol would be gold in my eyes, isnt that why the 'scout' cavalry is born?

all in all a good change, i would have tossed this game otherwise tbh, diplomacy saved youre game

Well, as for unhistoric, I don't believe siege engines were, as a weapon class, unique to Philip, as they were not invented by him just very proliferated by extensive use and extensive conquest of his and those of Alexander.

That's true, what I meant was that having siege engines the way they are in Philip's campaign (exclusively available to Philip) was supposed to represent Philip's high success rate in sieges. And his scientific approach to warfare. Or maybe that was something I told myself before Gold came out so I wouldn't worry about the other countries not having catapults.

As we've made sieges a little harder in Gold (by putting more emphasis on catapults and blockades) the AI could definitely use some upgrades to handle this better. It is on my list but it may be a few updates before those changes can get into a release build.
OK... about the other thing, cities now having unrest even without walls vs. food supply availability (to maintain garrisons) - is there any plan to look on that, too? Since I wrote initial post Chalcidians gave me some tough attacks so they were not completely powerless yet, but not yet sure if it is possible to do with roads and sheeps to maintain those cities yet... Actually planning on leaving last few untouched to pay me a tribute - which I'm not so sure is working - which item in treasury should it appear with, please?

I actually started a game by hitting the Athenian cities and then heading straight towards Olynthus for triremes and the rest of the Chalcidian League (followed by Amphipolis). I actually quite liked the variety this lower level of food supplies offered. Gave a bit of strategic satisfaction to deliberately cutting the peninsula by seizing Galepsos via a bluff, cutting the remaining food supplies and doing some farm-burning for good measure before finally driving their starving fairly spiky field army out and nabbing Arethusa and the city with Aristotle. The need to shore up my own food supplies with slaves transporting things, some sheep from various distances and sea lanes was also a bit of local variation I appreciated, as well as a neat bit of pacing for the push to Amphipolis.

Anyway, did the same thing, had the opposite experience.

You could always drive them back to those two peninsulas and then go for a peace treaty - I managed to get 150 income out of leaving them three or four of the harder-to-supply cities in the peninsulas and a couple of watchtowers.

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Oh, and I quite liked the decisions forced in that area by the walls thing - fun gambling whether to try to seize a chokepoint city so you could get rid of the walls or to tie down your vital phalanxes to keep public order for a bit.

I actually started a game by hitting the Athenian cities and then heading straight towards Olynthus for triremes and the rest of the Chalcidian League (followed by Amphipolis). I actually quite liked the variety this lower level of food supplies offered. Gave a bit of strategic satisfaction to deliberately cutting the peninsula by seizing Galepsos via a bluff, cutting the remaining food supplies and doing some farm-burning for good measure before finally driving their starving fairly spiky field army out and nabbing Arethusa and the city with Aristotle. The need to shore up my own food supplies with slaves transporting things, some sheep from various distances and sea lanes was also a bit of local variation I appreciated, as well as a neat bit of pacing for the push to Amphipolis.
Initial conquest, not so bad. In case of Chalcis, solvable without annoyance, since the cities they will have left will not be able to raise any troops to speak of (they have no food) and they are bit aside so you don't really need them.
However.
Ilyria with distant cities, this becomes bit of one hell of campaign in some areas without farms. Still, maybe not so bad.
What I imagine as terrible problem is the whole islands area, where you have many small islands with nothing but city on them. This seems like potential nightmare. However, recently I kind of switched to other games but suppose will go back to Hegemony at some point - anyway I cannot say if it is becoming bad or if it is fine. But seems like it may have potential for annoyance.
Later, beyond Amphipolis, there are some (athenian) cities that may cause troubles if unattended - yet there is in general not that much food in the area (coast near to the mining heaven site).
Another problem, not much food seen on roads when checked from the food-rich areas. It seems to largely stockpile there and not distribute elsewhere.
Addressing this with slaves - problem is, they will rebel unless escorted. And escort will eat food. If it would be possible to somehow assign slaves to roads (like with mines) so that they would transfer the food automatically without rebelling, maybe with assigning some guard units as well, this would ease the micromanagement greatly. Or at least automatic convoy system (pick up food at A, transport to B, unload, go to A, pick up food, ...).


Another point, I hate finding out my cities are under attack when they are actually captured, with my units inside viped out. The startup screen suggest it should be possible to configure notifications for different events, but I could not find this. Can anyone point me in right direction, please?