How to get the first citizen achievement on hard?

[Ian Smith]

Seems impossible, I launch a raid from the acropolis immediately when the scenario begins and order my starting army to take out the first camp, get the armor upgrade and start making more hoplites whenever resources are available.

Taking out the first camp you have to lure units and micro your army and even then you lose atleast half, and before I have the strength to take out the 2nd one favor is already below 50.

[b4ry]

i think you can keep the favor just by rebuilding acropolis, riding with ships and protecting water convoys.

[Quintem]

I mentioned this in another thread but I think it does border on nearly impossible. I suspect somebody better than me could figure it out but I think it will involve finding lots of small quirks of the mission. You'd have to completely break it down and execute things perfectly.

As I mentioned in said other thread prosecuting Cleon costs 2000 on standard but an absurd 4000 on hard. Once you research it, the favour lost is way less intense.

You also have to research a bunch of techs unlike standard too. It's just rather brutal to do it. I'm by no means a bad player. If somebody figures it out, I'll be most impressed.

[Ian Smith]

Originally posted by Quintem:

I mentioned this in another thread but I think it does border on nearly impossible. I suspect somebody better than me could figure it out but I think it will involve finding lots of small quirks of the mission. You'd have to completely break it down and execute things perfectly.

As I mentioned in said other thread prosecuting Cleon costs 2000 on standard but an absurd 4000 on hard. Once you research it, the favour lost is way less intense.

You also have to research a bunch of techs unlike standard too. It's just rather brutal to do it. I'm by no means a bad player. If somebody figures it out, I'll be most impressed.

Is it really way less intense?

I experimented one time by selling the estate and stripping athena of gold immediately at the start so I can prosecute Cleon basically at game start while keeping some favor and honestly the favor loss seemed the same to me 11

[Crossil]

Originally posted by Ian Smith:

Originally posted by Quintem:

I mentioned this in another thread but I think it does border on nearly impossible. I suspect somebody better than me could figure it out but I think it will involve finding lots of small quirks of the mission. You'd have to completely break it down and execute things perfectly.

As I mentioned in said other thread prosecuting Cleon costs 2000 on standard but an absurd 4000 on hard. Once you research it, the favour lost is way less intense.

You also have to research a bunch of techs unlike standard too. It's just rather brutal to do it. I'm by no means a bad player. If somebody figures it out, I'll be most impressed.

Is it really way less intense?

I experimented one time by selling the estate and stripping athena of gold immediately at the start so I can prosecute Cleon basically at game start while keeping some favor and honestly the favor loss seemed the same to me 11

You can test it relatively easily. Ninjaconnor cheat code gives high resources, so you can, say, start a game without any proper work keeping favor up and see how quickly it falls falt. Then play a game where you cheat code the gold and instantly prosecute. Check when the favor falls flat in this one, compare the two times to see how much of a difference it is.

[Jazzmas]

I managed to get the achievement on hard after a couple tries. My start was always to click raid Peloponnese (build 9 lembos+starter lembos for this) build fishing ships to collect oysters and food, then I sell estate at 55-54 favor and then sell all food to repair acropolis. I cant exactly remember everything I did in what order next but I do have a couple more tips:

-Market is your best friend
-Salamis can be defended by a couple of upgraded war galleys (target rams and trebs)
-Always raid Peloponnese as soon as its off cool down with 10 lembos ( sometimes they all survive too which is great)
-IMPORTANT try not to overflow favor past 100 especially during the time Spartans leave (usually this happens when two timed events like the raid coming back or tribute ships)
-Collect the resource piles after raids (i didn't realize you could do this for a while lol)
-The offering to the oracle carts can be left right outside the temple to use when you get close to 50 favor, don't forget that starting these quests spawns like 10 enemies
-The colonize option only needs like 8-10 laminated bowmen, make sure that you dont agro too many cav on the second fort (you might be able to treb it down without agroing them I cant remember, I think i had to kill one and it killed all but one of my bowmen) I'm pretty sure this objective gives a ton of favor so time it when you get low
-Do not lose tribute ships

I think I remember failing only the hoplite quest and only killing 2 spartan camps

[Ian Smith]

Originally posted by Jazzmas:

I managed to get the achievement on hard after a couple tries. My start was always to click raid Peloponnese (build 9 lembos+starter lembos for this) build fishing ships to collect oysters and food, then I sell estate at 55-54 favor and then sell all food to repair acropolis. I cant exactly remember everything I did in what order next but I do have a couple more tips:

-Market is your best friend
-Salamis can be defended by a couple of upgraded war galleys (target rams and trebs)
-Always raid Peloponnese as soon as its off cool down with 10 lembos ( sometimes they all survive too which is great)
-IMPORTANT try not to overflow favor past 100 especially during the time Spartans leave (usually this happens when two timed events like the raid coming back or tribute ships)
-Collect the resource piles after raids (i didn't realize you could do this for a while lol)
-The offering to the oracle carts can be left right outside the temple to use when you get close to 50 favor, don't forget that starting these quests spawns like 10 enemies
-The colonize option only needs like 8-10 laminated bowmen, make sure that you dont agro too many cav on the second fort (you might be able to treb it down without agroing them I cant remember, I think i had to kill one and it killed all but one of my bowmen) I'm pretty sure this objective gives a ton of favor so time it when you get low
-Do not lose tribute ships

I think I remember failing only the hoplite quest and only killing 2 spartan camps

Interesting I will try that when I get to playing next time, did you at any point prosecute Cleon?

[Ian Smith]

Originally posted by Jazzmas:

I managed to get the achievement on hard after a couple tries. My start was always to click raid Peloponnese (build 9 lembos+starter lembos for this) build fishing ships to collect oysters and food, then I sell estate at 55-54 favor and then sell all food to repair acropolis. I cant exactly remember everything I did in what order next but I do have a couple more tips:

-Market is your best friend
-Salamis can be defended by a couple of upgraded war galleys (target rams and trebs)
-Always raid Peloponnese as soon as its off cool down with 10 lembos ( sometimes they all survive too which is great)
-IMPORTANT try not to overflow favor past 100 especially during the time Spartans leave (usually this happens when two timed events like the raid coming back or tribute ships)
-Collect the resource piles after raids (i didn't realize you could do this for a while lol)
-The offering to the oracle carts can be left right outside the temple to use when you get close to 50 favor, don't forget that starting these quests spawns like 10 enemies
-The colonize option only needs like 8-10 laminated bowmen, make sure that you dont agro too many cav on the second fort (you might be able to treb it down without agroing them I cant remember, I think i had to kill one and it killed all but one of my bowmen) I'm pretty sure this objective gives a ton of favor so time it when you get low
-Do not lose tribute ships

I think I remember failing only the hoplite quest and only killing 2 spartan camps

So I am in the middle of my run and so far it is going great, I've done it slightly differently than you but I was heavily inspired by your efforts.

at 00:00:01 I immediately paused (something I would do quite often for this mission specifically) and selected the raid in the acropolis.

I queued up 9 fishing ships (3 in each dock) and 9 lembos (also 3 in each dock) for the raid, henceforth I would spam fishing ships whenever I had the wood become available until the 1st election.

Also Immediately at game start I selected my starting army and attacked the coastal spartan camp losing little under half of my units but sniping the spartan commander.

Here is where I did things a little differently, instead of selling the estate I figured it would be better to repair the acropolis first to maintain the resource trickle at least for a little while.

I sold off all my resources, food, wood and gold (I saved up 100 wood to sell instead of building a fishing ship for this purpose), and at 55 favor I was just over the 2000 gold needed to click the button.

This would actually lead to some fortunate timings that would let me keep the estate.

First, after repairing the acropolis the first convoy came in at about 52 or 51 favor left letting me keep the estate around for longer.

Next, the raid came back precisely on 50 favor when it was about to turn to 49, once again letting me keep the estate around for even longer.

(for this timing to work you seriously need to select the raid immediately as it becomes available in the acropolis, if it doesn't work reload the save you should have done and sell the estate.)

With the convoy and raid money I queued up around 30 lancers in preparation for the upcoming quest and for killing spartan commanders.

I then queued up the next raid as soon as I had the resources which took me about 2 minutes to get to because of the army I was creating.

Once the quest fired I took the remains of my starting army together with my lancers to attack the spartan camps.

I took the lancers and destroyed the gate and lured out the troops from the eastern spartan camp beneath oenoe and my hoplites were able to kill the commander almost unopposed.

I then took the lancers to the northern most camp and lured out the troops outside the gates, circled for a bit to get them far enough, came back, destroyed the gate and sniped the commander.

I lost some lancers until this point and I separated 20 from the group and sent them to oenoe to complete the quest.

The remaining lancers and my starting army would then suicide charge into the last spartan camp killing all the commanders.

While I was doing this I would buy some food which would get me to the 2000 I needed for the festival.

At this point the election was upon me and the 2nd convoy was nearing arrival.

With the 2nd convoy coming in and the 2nd raid returning I had a lot of gold (about 3.2k or so) and was able to sell of some wood and food to prosecute Cleon.

I am now at minute 23 with 99 (I went over to 101 when the raid returned) with Cleon prosecuted and I'm now supplementing my navy with more war galleys, so far it's looking good and I believe I can get the achievement rather easily from this position.

[Ian Smith]

I managed to get the achievement by doing the above between the 1st and 3rd election you really have a lot of options that I don't need to list out anything that I did, except during the 1st attack on Salamis your favor can get close to 50.

I recommend doing the funeral for 1000 wood and training up around 20 war galleys with bodkin and target practice to deal with the invasion swiftly, after that the rest of the mission is really easy.

I only had to sell off the estate at the very end when I nearly went below 50 I presume because the corinthians killed like 20 of my fishing ships really quick 11.

[Plokmijnuh]

I tried it on moderate first and I misread the Prosecute Cleon tech and I didn't realize it slowed down the rate at which favor is lost. I thought it was for a one time favor boost so I got it too late. So basically I did everything perfectly but because the favor doesn't pause between the final election and the victory trigger, favor decreased to 49/48 from 54 and I lost the achievement.

That said my second attempt was to repair acropolis and raid the starting spartan commander to keep favor high. Protecting the tribute ships is a must because you get resources and losing them decreases your favor. Investing in fishing ships is great for oysters/fish. And a handful of galleys, with a catapult ship can protect Salamis.

As for the Peloponnese Raid, its important to research the tech early when favor is between 80-90 because you have 5 minutes to provide ships for the raid and then another 5 minutes for it to return. So you don't actually see the favor impact for a while.

I'm curious though, are the other acropolis techs all more expensive on hard? Or is it just the Prosecute Cleon that is double the cost. Do you also get less estate resource income on hard compared to moderate?

[James3157]

Originally posted by Plokmijnuh:

I tried it on moderate first and I misread the Prosecute Cleon tech and I didn't realize it slowed down the rate at which favor is lost. I thought it was for a one time favor boost so I got it too late. So basically I did everything perfectly but because the favor doesn't pause between the final election and the victory trigger, favor decreased to 49/48 from 54 and I lost the achievement.

That said my second attempt was to repair acropolis and raid the starting spartan commander to keep favor high. Protecting the tribute ships is a must because you get resources and losing them decreases your favor. Investing in fishing ships is great for oysters/fish. And a handful of galleys, with a catapult ship can protect Salamis.

As for the Peloponnese Raid, its important to research the tech early when favor is between 80-90 because you have 5 minutes to provide ships for the raid and then another 5 minutes for it to return. So you don't actually see the favor impact for a while.

I'm curious though, are the other acropolis techs all more expensive on hard? Or is it just the Prosecute Cleon that is double the cost. Do you also get less estate resource income on hard compared to moderate?

I used a strategy similar to yours on standard difficulty and got the achievement. Also, prosecuting Cleon helps a lot. Maybe not for first choice but a little later after repairing the acropolis. Overall, I think that this is a fun mission with replay ability.