Newbie discussion on playing as Judea.

[rakovsky]

My first "Mission" is to conquer "Palestine" - the territory around me controlled by Egypt, the Seleucids of Antioch (ie. Syria/Antigones' empire), and the Seleucid's Vassal of Samaria. I spent a few years building my economy, started by revoking my tribute to the Seleucids and marched on Egypt with a Levy of 5,5000, but got crushed pretty quickly by Egypt. I reloaded my game and fought Antigones' Seleucids (Syria) instead, and still got crushed quickly. I can only think of either (A) waiting for Egypt to trounce on Antigones' Seleucids and then join in on the fight against Antigones, who has a pattern of losing to Egypt, or else (B) trying to build my realm first by conquering the little Arab countries and then coming back to fight the Seleucids' Syria and Egypt.

Option A worked well in that I got Samaria, but Egypt took the Seleucids so quickly that I didn't get a chance to capture coastal Philistia and Samaria before Egypt got it. Since I pressed "Start Mission" before Egypt took those lands over, my claims were no longer valid against those lands, as they were now in Egypt's hands.

[[__h.stickeye_]]

The ONLY way to win is get into the cracks when the big boys dec each other.

First tip, expand south and get your levy base up.

Second tip. ally a big nation like the seleucids and pounce on egypt when you can.

I've done the Judea run and it took me about 15 attempts to get past 500 and be happy with my progress.

HUGE TIP: once you take some valuable lands from Egpyt, its amazing how quickly they crumble.

Keep at it, you'll fugure it out eventually.

And final tip; use your alliances wisely. The AI is 'scared' if you have a big friend, but equally drop them when you don't need them anymore.

[rakovsky]

OK, thanks. When I saw Egypt taking Antigones/Syria's lands, I declared war on Antigones' Syria. But the problem is that even after repeatedly defeating them in battle with a War Score of 22, and taking lots of land from them in terms of occupation, my War Balance was still -50 because they are so big in terms of troops. I can't even hire more than 2 mercenaries. As a result of the negative War Balance, Antigones won't make peace with me on any terms beneficial to me.
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I reloaded my game and declared war just on Samaria, not on Antigones' Syria. I then quickly take Samaria and get a War Score of 4. But the game won't let me conclude a peace deal with Samaria because Samaria is a Subject of Antigones, and I am fighting both powers. But before I reloaded the game, I was actually able to get ownership of Samaria through a peace deal with them, and I don't understand why I can't now.
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I reloaded the game again and waited for Egypt to fight Syria harder before declaring war on Samaria. Then I also had to go north into Syria's lands and fight them too a bit and get my war score high, like to 45. Then the Mesopotamian Seleucids (Purple) fought Syria/Antigones and they fought each other down to where I could send my levy and 1 mercenery unit north and occupy their capitol, so I got a War Score of 60. Then I used that to negotiate a good deal that gave me Samaria and Decapolis.

[rakovsky]

Stickeye,
I changed my Judean government to "Elective Succession", and as soon as I did this, a warning announcement showed up saying that people were supporting "Pretenders." Is this no problem because under elective succession, it's normal to get a new ruler based on support instead of dynastic succession?

[[__h.stickeye_]]

The ideal starting scenario is this:

You want all the major powers to go to war with each other. If Egypt does NOT go to war, you'll have no chance taking Antigonid lands. They need to have low war enthusiasm/high war fatigue and you need to be able to take and hold your war goals for a long time. Sometimes the Antigonids peace out quickly with Egpyt and the Seleucids (or just Egypt), and you'll have to start your game again. Don't just reload save, restart.

Also, try not to join the war straight away. It takes about 6 months to a year for the war to really wind up. You really have to play it by ear, but a good indicator is when the big Egyptian blobs march past you, give it another few years even, because they should be fighting that long to wear them down.

And, don't change your government type.

[[__h.stickeye_]]

I'd really suggest playing as Egypt for your first game. You really need to understand them before you play Judea.

Plus, with Egypt, you can play a fairly localised game and ignore the Diadochi wars if you want.

[rakovsky]

What is the practical benefit of Elective Succession? Does it just mean that they get a voting republic like Rome has? Is this bad for Judea?
Thanks.

[[__h.stickeye_]]

Elective succession is just 'flavour' in my opinion. There is no benefit over agnatic/cognatic/familial. If anything, you are making more openings for characters to 'get the top job' thereby creating internal unrest (never good).

[rakovsky]

Stickeye,
Can you switch teams during gameplay? I think the answer is no, but I saw a note that if you play on Ironman mode, then you can't switch players/teams/kingdoms. This seemed to imply that there is normally a way to switch kingdoms.
I think that Edessa/Osroene (in northern Mesopotamia) would be a neat kingdom to play - it became Christian in the 2nd century AD, although there is an apocryphal story about King Abgar V of the mid 1st century getting a painting from Jesus.

[[__h.stickeye_]]

hey man, do what you want, Egypt is fun and you learn A LOT.

[rakovsky]

+1
With Judea, my war council decided to make a Claim against Nabatea. But when I use it, Egypt attacks me. I am guessing that it's because their opinion of me is -190, or because my diplomatic reputation is low from taking much land from Antigones' Syria.
I don't really like fabricating war claims, but I can do that and then attack the Arab tribes instead, and see if Egypt attacks me. Or I can wait 5 years for my truce with Antigones to run out and then attack him again. Meanwhile, I can try to improve relations with Egypt with gifts or the Improve Relations function.

I decided to follow the latter strategy, using the "Influence Opinion" button on Egypt to get them to like me more. However, Egypt has the "Planning your Demise" label in their Diplomacy menu when I try to do different activities with them, like Military Access. Online, people write that "planning your demise" means that a bigger power is intent on destroying you. Also, when I spend 25 gold to Improve Relations with Egypt, and then reload my game to after I paid that 35 gold, the "Improving Relations" activity has disappeared and I have to spend 25 gold all over again to order it. I don't know if it's a glitch or if there is some other issue.

Both of these issues seem to be a result of reloading savegames, perhaps. The Egyptian AI might have taken a fresh look at the gameboard and decided that I was his best next target, and the reloading might have cleared away my diplomats' work on "Improving Opinion" for Egypt.

[Myll]

I'm going to give the OP a divergent view. This game, like many games with overpowered regional hegemons, forces the gamer to simply change the game's underlying difficulty settings.

Only play Judea if you play in "Very Easy" mode. Not kidding. Paradox games are not built to be forgiving, so the only forgiveness you will get is with the buffs that Very Easy mode brings to you, and at least you then have a better chance to survive and then thrive.

Sure, others have advised you of the Lottery odds that you could try and sneak in some quick victories while the Hegemons are too busy fighting among themselves, but the "margins of error" are frankly - too thin.

So widen those margins, by changing settings to Very Easy, and then game on, and enjoy yourself a bit more. You don't self-flagellate before bed, right? And put gashes into your back? I mean, some people are into that, but you don't need to take that approach into your games.

[rakovsky]

+1

[[__h.stickeye_]]

Putting the game on very easy does not reduce the margins of error when it comes to AI behaviour for the big powers, EXCEPT on how aggressive they are. But as Judea, you will have to attack them at some point and they aren't going to let you walk all over them.

[rakovsky]

I get a Mission task for Samaria: Making two Iron Import Routes. At first, it looks easy: the Province action "Entice Investment" costs 79 Political Influence points and adds 1 Import route. But I recall choosing that action and getting an import route, and now years later the route is gone. Maybe "Entice Investment" is just temporary, and I need to use a slower, more conventional strategy.

- Trade routes are a result of commerce. Markets add a percent to commerce points, and so does the "Encourage Trade" policy in the governor menu. But unfortunately, these factors aren't strong enough to give me new import routes in Samaria.

- Commerce levels depend on the number of citizens and nobles in a province. You can add citizens and nobles with buildings that raise the civilization level and target the happiness of citizens and nobles, particularly academies. I would think that courts would raise this number because they add civilization and make citizens happy, but online, gamers recommend academies and libraries for this kind of mission task (raising import routes by raising nobles and citizens).

- You can also get citizens and nobles via social mobility, raising them up from slaves and freemen. The "Social Mobility" governor option (instead of Encourage Trade) makes the number of each class of citizens match the "ideal" level using promotion and demotion. I think that this could mean that Phoenician cultural citizens are demoted to freemen, and Hebrew freemen are promoted to citizens/nobles. Samaria is mostly Hebrew, so the Social Mobility option is OK, but not great. I am not sure how this demotion would work, as in Phoenician citizens' children are born as freemen.

- To deal with the significant number of non-Hebrews in Samaria (eg. in the city of Appolonia, Samaria, most people are culturally Macedonian religious Hellenists), it would seem that one would try to use Assimilation actions. Religious Conversion is a separate activity than cultural assimilation, and it's cultural assimilation that defines citizen level (eg. citizen vs freeman). But they are related, and someone is less likely to culturually assimilate if they have a minority religion. There is a different provincial governor policy for things like Religious Conversion, but that would mean giving up the Social Mobility Policy or the Encourage Trade Policy.

So this is all rather complicated. To put it in order step by step to build import routes:
- I need a sizable population. How do I grow populations? I guess it's by immigration with citizen happiness and by a deity's fertility level that grow births. Samaria has 74 people, Maybe trade routes require a much bigger population.
- The population should assimilate to the integrated culture (Hebrew). 50 are Hebrew (67% of the total population). This number looks OK, but could go higher. Conversion is a big factor in assimilating them culturally. 60% are Jewish, the dominant religion. That number looks ok, but could go higher.
- The "importers" are residents of the citizen or noble level. Samaria has only 12 citizens and 4 nobles (22% of the total province population). It looks like a key factor here is Social Mobility, ie. bringing the Hebrew freemen and slaves into the citizen/nobility sector. Then only later it seems worth focusing on commerce. Appollonia for instance is marked as getting a big hit on its trade level because the dominant culture in the province is not an integrated one.

[galadon3]

the investment isnt temporary, afaik it gets destroyed when the province changes hands between realms but besides that its a permanent modifier, you can actually see on the province screen.
Maybe you lost a route from another source? (nobles or citizens demoted for example)

To quickly get that economy mission done doing the investment twice is the quickest way (the more often you use it in a province the more costly it gets though)

For the buildings check the tooltips, provinces have a desired ratio between the different kinds of pops, some buildings change those (academies increase the noble ratio, courts the citizens ratio, since nobles produce more commerce-points thats most likely why people recommend academies)

For converting pops (culture and religion) there are some techs to make it faster but especially there is "proscribe canon" invention in the religion tree that allows to put a law in place that helps greatly either religious or culture conversion, the governor-policy is the other really big factor.
In general its better to convert religion first and switch to culture conversion when the province is mostly your main religion.

If you need a quick boost in armies look for one or two culture within your realm with numerous pops and assimilate the culture, that stops the pops of that culture from converting but as soon as the culture is assimilated they count for your levy / legion-max.
You can later de-assimilate the culture to convert those pops.