| Campaign time! Aw, man, it's so much fun. Anyone who had R:TW and doesn't have Alexander, change that immediately.
As I said, I set the campaign difficulty to Very Hard, which basically means that other countries have big ol' armies and sort of run themselves better. I keep battle difficulty on Normal, but I'd probably go insane if it was any higher. In the original, Very Hard campaign difficulty wasn't too bad. Maybe they had one or two more large armies before you started running around destroying their tiny garrisons with your huge force. (Except Egypt, who was always tough... the full legion I sent in one game nearly got decimated before reinforcements could arrive. But even they garrisoned their cities poorly, especially the huge, important, rich ones in Egypt proper.)
But in Alexander... whoo. I've probably destroyed seven or eight full or nearly-full armies, sometimes two of them in the same battle, and I'm barely out of Turkey. What makes that even more interesting is that Alexander doesn't get a full army to deal with the constant Persian onslaught. Neither does Parmenio (who's technically in as Parmenion, for some reason), nor whatever random garrison leaders/benefactors I adopt. (You get a lot of those, fortunately.) I have to use terrain, Alexander and other general units, and perhaps most of all the incredible strength of my phalanxes (especially phalangists, to a lesser extent hoplites) in order to win battle after battle against overwhelming odds. For example, I won one battle with fewer than 800 men, and I killed over 2500-- and I wasn't even defending a bridge. Up in the north, where I'm currently almost done subduing the barbarians (I'm literally besieging the last barbarian city, Tanais in Scythia), it's a little more like the regular campaign... armies of about equal size going up against each other. The barbarians don't really give much of a fight, but the Persians do. It's all a lot of fun, and I feel genuinely challenged without being completely overwhelmed. Kudos to Creative Assembly.
Speaking of defending bridges, it's a little ridiculous... especially when they rout towards your side of the bridge. One time my phalangist unit guarding the bridge was like a freaking machine gun... just mowed everyone down as they charged in. I think that's the only unit I've ever had get over 1000 kills in a single battle... had 1100-something. It was insane. Plus, that army was, uh, Parmenio, two phalangists, maybe three hoplites, and I think a unit of javelinmen (or maybe hypaspists). And that was it. Against what I believe was two huge armies, although that could have been a different fight. I suppose the kill count would have been higher if it was two nearly-full armies. Still, it was pretty crazy. |