I have been playing the vanilla version until recently when I gave GB-10 a try. These are just some of my observations of the changes and oddities.

First thing I wanted to mention was the difference in difficulty levels between the two. I played both versions on normal difficulty and there is a large disparity between the two, vanilla being more difficult than gold. While playing the original certainly seemed like a slog at times, struggling to keep together that what I conquered, GB-10 seems like a walk in a park by comparison.

Some oddities I noticed with the new recruit system is that AI cities left in peace will end up with huge stacks of home units in them. Example in my campaign would be Amphaxis which ended up with 1 spearmen, 3 Calvary and 9 peltest units in it. In the end none of these units defended the city on the battlefield but instead just garrisoned the walls and went down with them.

There is the opposite side of this coin that others have brought up before. AI does try and repel the incoming siege, looses most of it's men and the defence of the city walls plumets down to nothing, after wich the city falls to my troops. Both of these strategies are valid it just seems that AI doesn't make the best decission every time.

I like the changes to the supply lines and the fact that you can increase the flow of goods. There are still some kinks in the system though. Once the food importing city reaches it's set capacity for stored food it only gets enough to top off the supply and leaves any cities or forts past that point to starve because it does not have a surplus to send past that point. The only workaround I found was to increase food stock and than reduce it after some time thereby creating the surplus which then flows on to the hungry cities/forts.

At the moment the way that GB-10 is, I have yet to encounter a situation in which I curse the Greek gods and hope to live through it. Repelling the overwhelmingly stronger invading forces by using tactics was what made vanilla version superior in my eyes. Hanging by the edge of the seat and hoping you will be victorious. Recently I increased the difficulty level (GB-10) to expert. I will see if that make much difference. Sofar I find the AI very weak opponent.

Among other odd little things I noticed was Athenian raids. Their ships got stuck on the shore when I had troops defending the beaches. They would stay there indefinitely if not attacked. The troops never leave the ships.

Really? Hegemony being harder than GOLD? I dont think that stands correctly..i believe gold is harder.

Vanilla(as you say) : When lose units, they regenerate fast at the cities, ready for battle again. So that means, if you inflict big damage on your enemy, they will be ready again very soon. And so will you...that means, you can keep conquering enemies, and outnumbering them all the time!! Thats what makes it easy!

Gold : Each city has a pop cap, where units regenerate from that cap. The cap is small in most cities, so if you make one mistake in battle,it could take hours to regenerate. That means, its the same for the enemy too!!! But if you conquer an entire nation, its takes more time to heal, but your NEXT enemy, is already full..thats what makes it harder, you can make many enemies at one time, without realizing it!!

Really? Hegemony being harder than GOLD? I dont think that stands correctly..i believe gold is harder.

Vanilla(as you say) : When lose units, they regenerate fast at the cities, ready for battle again. So that means, if you inflict big damage on your enemy, they will be ready again very soon. And so will you...that means, you can keep conquering enemies, and outnumbering them all the time!! Thats what makes it easy!

Vanilla has a hard global cap on how many units you can have at any given time which, at times, makes it more difficult to muster enough troops to carry on with your campaign and defend the conquered lands, especially non Macedonian. Also elite Macedonian units once routed have a long walk home and back before they are at the front lines again, especially later on in the campaign. With new "home city" mechanic you could change their home cities very close to the front lines. I have not tried this yet because there is no need. I have yet to see any of my Macedonian Hoplites or Phalangites rout which makes moving of home town unnecessary. Even on expert difficulty.


Gold : Each city has a pop cap, where units regenerate from that cap. The cap is small in most cities, so if you make one mistake in battle,it could take hours to regenerate. That means, its the same for the enemy too!!! But if you conquer an entire nation, its takes more time to heal, but your NEXT enemy, is already full..thats what makes it harder, you can make many enemies at one time, without realizing it!!



Gold has a max recruit pool per city which replenishes itself indefinitely and in theory grants you as many units per city as you can pay for. In this case gold is the cap, not population of any kind. This is what AI does as I mentioned in my original post. For me as a player it presents you with two options: fast after battle recovery if you keep your recruit pool full at all times or more units from same city, say Phalangites.

Due to the slow speed at which recruits are replenished in the cities once you bruise and route most of enemies fighting force, they have no chance of stopping your advance. The routed units are not enough to man the walls and cities fall without any fight. I have taken whole swaths of land this way while fighting my way to the east. Beat the main fighting force in to a retreat and the rest just folds like dominoes.

Lack of any enemy raids makes GB-10 even easier. I really don't consider the amount and frequency present in this beta to be anything more than nuisance, never mind a threat.

Firstly, i would like to know how far into a campaign you are. The problems of manpower (and gold) become much more limiting the further you go and the more you expand. You will see that in time. Also expert difficulty is considered equivalent to the old normal difficulty, I think I read that in a thread somewhere posted by the developers.

As for supply lines, I agree with you. What you may not have noticed though is that a city will import food 'through' itself in order to supply other cities. You won't see it inside the city but if you check the supply roads on each side of the city you can see the food moving. The problem (and where I agree with you) is that I would have to upgrade an entire road line to supply multiple cities because I can't make a city stockpile. The way around that is to make a HUB city with a single upgraded line and multiple normal lines coming out of it.

In practice though this HUB idea doesn't work. There are simply not enough nodes to make this a reality in most places. Epirus cities have 3 links a piece which is far too low considering the stuff in the region. Big mine areas are also bad and its leading to some very odd supply lines in my games. To supply the macedone cities north-east of pella I send food and people south east to those cities, east across the ocean to chalidice, north and east past amphipolis then back west to to the end target. Its a bad end result of the directions that I conquered and the truces I made.

I would love the ability to create more nodes, I don't really see the gameplay reasons for limiting them. Processing power (maybe?) or historical economic strength are the only reasons I can think of. The second reason while nice is not a design choice I can sympathise with; if you (the developers) are willing to bend the rules to have 60 men big enough to fill an entire valley floor in defense then surely being able to have enough supply nodes to make my own strategic choices in regards to supply arrangements makes sense both historically and gameplay fun-wise.

well one thing about supply lines is this, press pause when you have a bigass empire (say Illyria, Paeonia, balkans, chalcidice, odrysia, pherae and thessaly with some epirus) and delete ALL the routes, then rearrange them accordingly. what I come out to is usually fairly accurate, tough you need to puzzle a little bit to get it all, also not all farms are needed. so dump a farm here and there for the much more lucrative mines. Dont forget to pass trough a fort whenever possible!

Firstly, i would like to know how far into a campaign you are. The problems of manpower (and gold) become much more limiting the further you go and the more you expand. You will see that in time. Also expert difficulty is considered equivalent to the old normal difficulty, I think I read that in a thread somewhere posted by the developers.

This is my current map



At the moment I have 800 gold surplus and no shortage of troops. My borders are protected and I have 2 main campaign armies.


As for supply lines, I agree with you. What you may not have noticed though is that a city will import food 'through' itself in order to supply other cities. You won't see it inside the city but if you check the supply roads on each side of the city you can see the food moving. The problem (and where I agree with you) is that I would have to upgrade an entire road line to supply multiple cities because I can't make a city stockpile. The way around that is to make a HUB city with a single upgraded line and multiple normal lines coming out of it.


I have noticed the same with supplies moving through cities that have reached the cap. I think supply issues only arise when you take over new cities. Given time they all get enough food, either through farms or supply lines. One other thing I noticed as far as mines and supply lines go is that not everything has to be connected to one continuous network. For example, fort at Rhodope mountains (north of Neapolis) can be connected to 2 adjacent mines and you will get your 160 gold even though it is not connecting to any other road or city. The fort does not even have to be manned.

I want to try this out especially in and around Dalmacia. I will disconnect any city that can sustain it's garrison from the main road network and maximize the number of connected mines. Maybe I can finally put together a large enough fleet of Triemes to go after Athenians.

Lack of enemy raids...really? I thought the ammount of raids was fine except for western greece, it seems to be pretty quiet in south/western greece because those factions aren't traditional enemies.

I usually play as Crete because I love their archers and even I get raided and I'm on an island. I believe I had one year when athens sent two fleets one in the spring and one in the summer to land on crete itself and invade, Sparta tried to during that same summer but my fleet sank it before it arrived, and Persia sent two fleets at me the first one I sunk the second one I was out of position for and they managed to land. If you want an impossible situation play as Sparta. One of 2 things will happen, either you steamroll everyone, or get steamrolled by everyone. My first game as Sparta Argos, Achea, AND Messenia all attacked me at once and I didn't know how to handle that.

Since Sparta cannot build any long range units and it relies totally on expensive hoplites so it is frequently outnumbered and it was my first time having no long range support so I found it difficult (comming from playing crete with their archers at least) until I realized that fully upgraded endurance on spartan hoplites makes them sprint everywhere to charge down peltasts. But its luck based the second time I tried Sparta only Messenia attacked me and I totally destroyed them, then proceded to kill Argos while holding off Achea with back and forth skirmishes over watchtowers.

Silverhaze, your map is scarily similar to mine. In fact, the only differences I think I can see are the one Danube Valley tribes town in the middle of your stuff at the top of the map I own in mine and I haven't gone further south than Olooson. Otherwise its picture perfect.

Having said that, I have 2.5K gold spare and a load of triremes as well as about 6 truces. Not sure where the major difference in income is. I only use a single campaign army though and its only made up of Companions, 1 Thessialian cav, 2 Phalangites, hypaspists and 2 catapaults.

As for mines into forts, its very useful. You only need supply lines to towns for food and reinforcements. Abandonning a fort and using it for an extra 2 mine nodes is the best use for most of them. But there are still not enough at time. One of the cities at the top edge of the map has 2 nodes and 4 farms. Thats a node to connect to the main network and then a single farm. Makes no sense.

In regards to all cities getting enough food you need to be careful. I have had a few towns that have been poorly supplied and maybe only losing 10 food net a year so I didn't see the problem until just recently when about 5 or 6 of them started to get hungry yellow at once. A quick reshuffle fixed it all but came damn close to some rebellions.