The war versions of old missions are so much harder

[Meneldil]

I'm up to the 7th mission, the first one where you can chose the pacific or war version of the mission.

The pacific one requires you to have 32 spacious villas, 8K pop and 500 prestige. The war version requires you to conquer the two biggest cities on the map and to integrate five other cities.

I'm two hours in the mission, and I have all the requirements for the pacific version, and none for the war version (which I chose), because they're just so much harder.

The issue, IMO, is that, in order to have a good military, you need to have a good city, one that would let you win the pacific version anyway (mostly because you need tier 3 villas to produce officers, weapons, etc.). Specifically, you pretty much need tier 3 villas, as you'll need so many middle class artisans. And, on top of that, you gotta deal with the strategy aspect of the game, which add another layer of complexity/tediousness (soldiers don't just require weapons, but also various food and officers).

But the real killer is that only one city can trade copper (required for the middle class' jewelry and for your soldiers' weapons), but a limited amount (20 per year, which is barely enough to fulfill the need of my middle class). One city directly exports weapons, but at an insane cost, which cripple my economy no matter how many trade ports I build to sell raw materials and tablets. And you're gonna need weapons, because you're gonna need a dozen barracks of assorted sorts just to take on the weakest city. And much more for the two biggest ones.

TDLR. If I had chosen the pacific version of the mission, I would have won after one hour, more or less. I'm now at more than two hours and I'm nowhere close to finishing the mission. I see no issue, as the cost of maintening a military when you produce neither copper nor iron is absolutely bonker.

[NeposGames]

Hi, there are two cities which export copper. Tuttul and Magan. But Magan is not visible in the zoomed map. That is probably reason you did not see it.

About importing weapons. It's true, they are expensive. But you can also conquer the city and then request tribute of 40 weapons for free each year.

You can also conqure weaker cities and integrate them and they will provide some units for free.

[Imhotep]

I'm playing the ninth mission, which is my first with warfare.

In the previous missions, I hadn't found it too hard to generate a profit.

In my current city, I have just become bankrupt and I think it's game over. I hadn't done any fighting yet. The main difference from previous levels was therefore the building and maintenance of various barracks, which ultimately, it appears, I couldn't afford.

[Imhotep]

I've just failed the 9th mission again on my second try, about three-quarters of the way through the city's development.

I experienced my first death spiral of cascading city population loss. I loaded an earlier save from before the death spiral started and spent an evening trying to avert the upcoming disaster, but was unable to prevent it from happening.

It had been going well. I'd managed to satisfy every demand from the stronger hostile cities, so I never felt under threat from being attacked. I'd conquered some cities and my army was about 80% of the required strength to conquer the remaining required ones.

I'm going to try the mission again with a much-changed city design, so it'll almost be like playing a new map. A fatal flaw in my previous city design was only using the two Ports in the centre of the map, which gave me only four Port warehouses. This led to issues with it getting clogged up, thus blocking the import and export of other goods. I think there are five Port spaces on the map, which allow for more than a dozen Port warehouses. Having lots of free Port warehouse space also means one can generate some easy middleman profit by buying goods at a low price and selling them on at a high price.

I'm also going to utilize the landscape better. There's a ring of fertile land in the centre of the map. Previously, I'd built my city over this. This time, I'm going to have a walled inner city, then a ring of fields around it, then a walled outer city.

I'm inspired by pictures of Babylon in this design, with fields inside the outer city walls:

https://assetsnffrgf-a.akamaihd.net/assets/m/102011005/univ/art/102011005_univ_cnt_1_xl.jpg

[Meneldil]

Originally posted by NeposGames:

Hi, there are two cities which export copper. Tuttul and Magan. But Magan is not visible in the zoomed map. That is probably reason you did not see it.

About importing weapons. It's true, they are expensive. But you can also conquer the city and then request tribute of 40 weapons for free each year.

You can also conqure weaker cities and integrate them and they will provide some units for free.

I've finished the main campaign, doing only military maps when available. While I agree I missed a copper-trading city in the 7th mission, I still stand by my first message: completing a map's military version is way harder than completing its pacific version.

You always need a functionning city, with a lot of surplus and exports, in order to sustain the military required to annex other big cities (especially on mission 13 with several city with 1700+ power). To get there, you're gonna need a lot of fully maxed houses, a lot of production, a lot of money... ie. more than enough to finish the pacific mission, without the hassle of setting up the whole military stuff.

It is not a really big deal in an on itself. And it was my choice to chose the military missions whenever available. It's just that they seem just much harder than the normal version.

[Turmeric]

I had thought I had a stronger military than Uruk but my expedition was destroyed and Uruk invaded me right back. Mission over, go back and try again.

I'm struggling to understand the military and my meagre army of 2x barracks of each type, needed a fully complete city to support. Far more than the achievement needed for the pacifist version of the mission.

Not that its a problem to have a more challenging mission, but I agree its is much harder and confusing.