Aegean and Mesopotamia Campaign Differences

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Aegean: constant waaaaaggghh!!!. It's like they set the Aegean factions to 'Ork' level of aggression. It's a weird start situation because everyone seems to hate everyone else despite faction affinity.

Mesopotamia: relatively peaceful. There are these small, not-too-tough invasion stacks that spawn in, but they're handle-able given that the factions in the area usually calm down a lot more after the first civil war.


Aegean: time to play logistical Tetris. Sometimes it looks like I should be able to just about land two armies at once from the sea, but no, the first one blocks the second somehow. Can I even go from sea-to-land, here? Have to test by holding the move button and mousing over. Sea lanes only take you *away* from the Aegean for the most part... there's a single sea-lane but it's on the Troy side of the sea and is of dubious value given how many factions live along it.

Mesopotamia: two rivers to paradise. There's two main corridors leading me to where I want to go, meaning that if one has hostiles on it, the other may not. It's not perfect, but it's close, and I can get to many places without having to go that far off the river and without having quite so many places where I can't get in or out.


Aegean: Native units are balanced as though by random number generator. The basic Aegean units include rather powerful Aegean Runners (for scouts, they have surprisingly good melee stats) and solid slingers. Most the rest of the native/region units are too low on armor and a bit light. But then Thorns of Thrace show up spammed from a one-region wonder and take out a ton of men before I beat them. Thracian units in general feel like they come from a whole different game, and it's even reflected in the auto-resolve calculations telling you your high-tier army is now going to be defeated if you AR it.

Mesopotamia: native units are solidly balanced, for the most part. Melee cavalry are a slight bit OP, but everything else, even the ranged cav, are alright. And yes, they have cavalry (not just chariots) in or immediately around their starting areas.


Aegean: do you like sea people invasions? They'll be landing everywhere if you try to leave your starting area all that early, getting in the way of your more normal conquests by taking places that you'd now have to DoW them for. They don't raze everything in sight anymore, and taking lower Egypt sometimes results in fighting a sea people Pharaoh even.

Mesopotamia: Huh, much of Canaan is intact and relatively easy to take. Getting out of your start area as them usually means either Hatti or Canaan is still intact and can be fought in a traditional manner without having to dodge sea peoples. In both cases, you are coming in from the side away from the sea peoples invasions, somewhat, so the sea peoples don't get in the way.



TL;DR -

All ranting aside, Mesopotamia seems *a lot* better for starting in than the Aegean does. Going back and playing on Normal/Normal even, as a test run, for the Aegean felt like a harder diff. setting or higher AI aggressiveness setting.

The Aegean feels like adding half a difficulty level, IMO, just for the start alone. It's hyper-aggressive, and it's annoying that provinces can be split up on little land-masses requiring figuring out if you can actually get all the way there or not on that same turn.

The main annoyance with Mesopotamia, in contrast, is just that it's constricted in terms of the playable area. I'd thought they'd make it more like upper Egypt and the western deserts, with a bit more room on either side to go out into wastelands and have an oasis settlement or two (especially on the western side of the area headed towards Canaan).

But wow, the Aegean is like a totally different game compared to Mesopotamia.

[furious]

Historically, mainland Greece was among the first places of the interconnected Late Bronze Age Mediterranean network to "go dark". Hostile tribes from the north like the Thracians and the Dorians, the potential for internecine warfare among the the Mycenaean palatial centres, and of course the Sea People, being then a mix of legitimately foreign invaders likely from the Tyrrhenian Sea (Sardinia (Sherden), Sicily (Shekelesh), etc), as well as home grown dissidents (Ekwesh = Achaean? Denyen = Danaan?) in the general population or the warrior elite deciding to go it alone and raid and plunder their former lords.

I can't say whether any of what you described is deliberate. The Mesopotamians obviously don't have to deal with the Sea Peoples because they don't lie on the Mediterranean coast and historically the Sea Peoples never reached them (that we know of). The Aegean region is more sea than land so it makes some sense that the Sea Peoples plague this area. The Mycenaeans generally are known to have been warlike, and while Hittite records claim a united state called Ahhiyawa, this may have been more a loose confederacy, capable of launching collective expeditions like the Trojan War but not united enough to prevent internal conflict.

Some of this I think will be deliberate. Some I think is just consequence of the game design. All in all though, it makes some sense. These are the twilight years of Mycenaean Greece and much of the Aegean itself actually. Mesopotamia wasn't anywhere near as bad.

[okuzmin2003]

It varies . Played minor Mesopotamian faction , with Sarmatian units. Got attacked constantly after i captured Akkad. By the time i captured Babylon i waged wars with 2 factions at best . And then everyone was afraid of me .
Played as Odysseys twice first time was a deathmatch. Second was a breeze.
Now playing as Amenmesse , i am a living god incarnate. I choose when to attack.

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Amenmesse is the most protected start, IMO. If you secure the first few regions off to the west quickly, it usually goes pretty well.

The minor factions I'm not including in what I wrote, though... I meant more the major ones, because with the minor factions it looks like anything can happen. They are not in a position to be as powerful or protected from what I've seen.

Aegean definitely felt more aggressive to me. And the design of terrain there does cause a lot more confusion: the game doesn't calculate movement well when going land to sea or back, so it's sometimes not clear that if you just hop into the water first that you can actually move further than what was shown while being on land. And this affects the Aegean the most (it does happen on the Nile in a few spots too, though).