Some feedback and praise for the campaigns

[Pfeffersack]

Long text and some spoilers to events / sucessful strategies in the 3rd Carthage mission...

To explain this thread a bit, I have to say in advance say that I'm usually a typical sandbox game player, prefering freely configurated games over designed scenarios or campaigns. At best I give the latters a try and more often then not, I don't even finish them.

Old World is a very rare exception here... I have spend so far most of my game time within the campaigns, including playing the same campaign parts several times. A part of this is due the high difficulty (and me just losing...) and the recently done rebalancing of the Carthage campaign, but it goes beyond that. The "medal system" for winning is a direct motivation to try again (be it because you lost narrowly with only 5 goals met or for getting a higher medal) and losing games in OW makes me come back for more, as the defeats down feel unfair - you just realize your mistakes and how the AI made you pay for them. Also the narrated story is great and the events don't only add flavour, but present you with meaningful decisions.

After the tutorials, I started my OW experience with the Carthage campaign and won the first two scenarios of it with medium sucess. At equal difficulty a silver and a bronze victory. Okaish for learning the game, but nothing great - clearly paying tribute to errors here. At that point I had fun in those games; the fun you have when you learn and explore agreat new game...but I did not think yet that I would come back at some point - as I lost the 3rd Carthage map twice early. A greenhorn as I was at that point, I didn't realized that you were intended to start that scenario with losses (of Panormus and the sea battle), so I put that campaign aside, especially after having read that balance was a bit off for 3rd and 4th Carthage in terms of being a bit too tough.

I planned then to move over to my beloved freestyle games as usual, but watching youtuber Steinwallen sparked my interest in trying out the HoA campaign added with the DLC. Also not a natural choice for me, as I prefering buildering over tactical battles...so I literally did fight myself through to the first "builder scenario" in that campaign (notable was my performance at Thermophylen, where I somehow managed to kill 30 units of the enemy...)
Then I bite my teeth out at "Rise of Macedon" three times so far. You have a lot of enemies in that scenario, but the worst is the running clock and the fact that winning seems to be all or nothing. And with my current abilities its for the moment the latter for me...I'm very reluctant to critize anything here, as I still consider me as "learning the game" and I'm honest with that I always feel unformtable when a turn timer is running (though it always felt fairly measured in the Carthage campaign towards me - be it the overall turn limit or the time I got for doing subgoals), but here my feeling is just that time is really extra tight (plus that the timer is hidden, which I understand is necessary for the narrative/flavour aspect) and the missing medal system from the other campaign makes this a lot harder to win (I wonder how the real cracks win this scenario - having conquered the entire map and Philip still having years to live?) Not sure if any adjustments are planned, but anyway - I will likely come back at some point...

So far that that was still of my usual experience with scenario style games, if I like them (what happens rather rarely, as initially said). However, the recent carthage rebalancing, my deeper understanding of the game and another unique feature -that ability to load in parts of the won map of a previous scenario in the start of the next- motivated me not to only give 3rd Carthage a new try, but to start the entire campaign a new.

I changed my family setup a bit (replacing the Statesmen with the Riders), focussed more on the economy and ruthlessly exploited Carthages ability to recruits mercs. With this approach I won the 1st Epic and 2nd Gold (with missing Epic only by a few turns to get the last missing assigment). I'm not writing this to brag - difficulty lowered by rebalance, me being more experienced and replaying with broadly knowing what will happen in the scenarios, but I would like to point out that this replay doesn't feel repetitive at any point. Alone the cloice of a new family and the fact that you dynamically pick your next goal from the agendas the different families wants to push through (and also pleasing the selected family as sideeffect when suceeding) adds a lot of replay value to the scenarios.

Carthage 3rd topped that even -

Spoiler :

as said, I lost that one twice in my early OW days. The new attempt was much more fruitful - a first playthrough ended in a silver victory. I learned from it how important is a strong navy (both to dominate the sea and to do Amphibious attacks - promote wisely!) and using the mercs in this scenario. It was tought and my win was one without keeping Parnomus (just delaying its fall enough and then never getting the steam together to take it back from Rime again) - and that sparked my interest in an immediate replay. My personal goal: Extend it to a Gold victory and try to secure Panormus permanently this time. The playthrough which enfolded from this decision was so far the most intense I had in OW. Sicily was a constant battlefield and meat grinder - my feeling was for a couple of turns that I just had my ecnomy up to produce new cannonfodder for the Roman legions-, but this time I hold. With help of Greece though - I took their deal to give up Sardinia and got an alliance, then convinced them to DoW on Rome. That 2nd front easened the pressure enough to sucessfully defend. Further in the game I learned how you can use tribes to your advantage - woo their leader, gift luxuries...and then you get them to rise their sword vs. Rome. I also scouted the map up to its edges and recruited Illyrian ships...and then realized how powerful it is in OW to keep an AI busy by opening a second front - here it was me using the merc ships (they are perfect, as the can't gain combat exp anyway) to pillage the Roman harbours and fishing tiles in the Adria or attacking units at the shore. Here it shows that there is no cheating in regard to movement - the AI can have problems with the order budget as well. Finally, those measures damaged the Roman infrastructure enough to even take them Messana away and suddenly, with the time limit nearing, I suddenly had the Epic victory in range. I even pulled that of by heavily investing in carawans and selling ressources.

Given that this achievement was only done equal difficulty with the AI and you even can try to play the scenario by trying to defeat Greece as well by picking a corresponding subgoal (which will not make things easier), I think the rebalancing hit a sweet spot with making the scenario more manageable for the average player and still leaving absolute cracks a challenge.

I'm currently in the 4th scenario, which feels a bit like the 3rd from the Macedon Campaign (you don't know where to start all the work you have ), but at least here you have said gradual medal victory. I achieved bronze victory so far after a bit more then half of the time limit, but I guess I will start a 2nd game - similar like in the preceding scenario, you can chase very different subgoals and Rome seems to be an even tougher nut here. Storytelling is great as always - and the events are nice melange of historic happenings, allowing you to react (a)historical...if you have the abilites and ressource to do so.

So to conclude - thank you for two great campaigns and looking forward to more DLCs with more of them!

 

[Solver]

Thanks - the praise means a lot coming from you! With our tendency to agree on design issues, I'm very glad to hear my design of the scenarios is something you enjoyed! And Steinwallen has been a big help, too, I watched his run of Heroes of the Aegean and made some changes in response to that.

A quick note on Rise of Macedon, it does have a victory level system unlike the other scenarios in the Greek campaign, it's done as achievements. You get Philip's Bronze/Silver/Golden Crown achievements depending on how well you do. Also the current difficulty curve of that scenario is probably still a bit too rough, though not nearly as bad as Carthage 3 and 4 were until recently!

 

[Pfeffersack]

A quick note on Rise of Macedon, it does have a victory level system unlike the other scenarios in the Greek campaign, it's done as achievements. You get Philip's Bronze/Silver/Golden Crown achievements depending on how well you do. Also the current difficulty curve of that scenario is probably still a bit too rough, though not nearly as bad as Carthage 3 and 4 were until recently!

Ah, ok so there is a kind of leveled victory as well - perhaps depending on how many of the optional subquests you can fulfil beside the mandatory ones (which to my understanding you have to complete all within Philip's lifetime)? My problem is clearly the Athen AI in that one - you may call it legally "the Rome" of the scenario They have comparably devastating units which cut through yours like nothing and they bring them in numbers...I always faced them last and failed. I wonder if going against them earlier might be an option, hoping that they aren't that strong then - but on the other hand, it means likely that you as player are weaker, too.

 

[Solver]

Yeah, that's the part that is getting patched - the Athenians are currently producing more units than intended, so while their army is supposed to be high-quality, it's certainly meant to be smaller than that.