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 Since I pressed "Start Mission" before Egypt took those lands over, my claims were no longer valid against those lands, as they were now in Egypt's hands.

[rakovsky]

Originally posted by Rooter:

No disrespect to your version,
I was referring to this

Nice! The opening to the Boney M version of Babylon reminds me of the melody in the classic Russian chant. Maybe it's based on the Russian chant or on a Western Church hymn.

Boney M. is familiar with Russian themes.

ﾐ,,,☆;;;;;,ﾐ
(｀c_ ´ ）

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16y1AkoZkmQ&ab_channel=BoneyMVEVO

[Rooter]

Originally posted by rakovsky:

Originally posted by Rooter:

No disrespect to your version,
I was referring to this

Nice! The opening to the Boney M version of Babylon reminds me of the melody in the classic Russian chant. Maybe it's based on the Russian chant or on a Western Church hymn.

Boney M. is familiar with Russian themes.

ﾐ,,,☆;;;;;,ﾐ
(｀c_ ´ ）

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16y1AkoZkmQ&ab_channel=BoneyMVEVO

Probably their best song

[Jean-Maurice Nya]

galadon, it's better to import in my opinion. Internal trade routes are situational (mostly for very populated provinces in need of food or happiness related goods).
As for automatic trade routes, I always do it except for the capital province. I switch to manual when a province needs a specific management. Otherwise, AI does enough so I won't bother with micro-managing it. Way too often, the geopolitics force you to manage it all the time, it becomes quickly annoying.

[rakovsky]

I started my Playthrough with the "Historical Imperator Pack" timeline extention Mod turned on because I was looking forward to the events of the 1st century AD. Other than extending the timeline to 73 AD, it sounds like one of the main things that this Historical Imperator Mod does is give bonuses to Rome.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2223115444

It's 198 BC in my game, and the top powers are:
1. Maurya. 697 Territories, 9200 Pops
2. Judea (me) 605 Territories, 7241 Pops
3. Rome. 566 Territories, 6189 Pops

The rate at which Rome has grown is scary for me, because it started out small. But I read that Rome is normally like a boss enemy. Is this scale of Rome's power at this point normal for I:R playthroughs, or is Rome growing overly strong even for I:R?

[Jean-Maurice Nya]

That's pretty normal.
Rome should take over Italy pretty quickly (around 30-40 years). Then, it usually extend either in Greece or Carthage for the next 50 years. It should expand then towards Egypt, Gaul, Germany and Spain. Late game, it can be strong in Anatolia and Palestine/Syria. Often, it's like Rome is doing the Mare Nostrum achievement.

[rakovsky]

LOL - as if Rome needed more bonuses to make it stronger.

Thanks Jean for the information.

[Jiggy]

Originally posted by rakovsky:

2. Judea (me) 605 Territories, 7241 Pops

PRO Alert !

[galadon3]

Originally posted by Jean-Maurice Nya:

galadon, it's better to import in my opinion. Internal trade routes are situational (mostly for very populated provinces in need of food or happiness related goods).
As for automatic trade routes, I always do it except for the capital province. I switch to manual when a province needs a specific management. Otherwise, AI does enough so I won't bother with micro-managing it. Way too often, the geopolitics force you to manage it all the time, it becomes quickly annoying.

Ah no I was refering to the small amount you get when the route is completely unused in regards to why the AI sometimes leaves routes unused for quite some time when set to auto.

As I said I think it is better to import anything (even domestically if you ever should not find any outside tradepartners), but I can't 100% rule out that there might be moments where leaving them unused would be more beneficial since I haven't extensively tested that.

And yes I usually do it the same way, running the capital myself, mostly looking for the best empire-wide bonusses for my situation I can get (afaik mostly when you sometimes go for internal trade if you can't get a good bonus from trade-partners outside your realm).
The other provinces I leave to the AI, even if it has issues, really don't want all that micro.

[rakovsky]

Some of the neatest things that you can do with Imperator Rome is accomplishing or triggering certain events, as well as discovering neat or hidden parts of the game (like building a shrine for David).

Below are some events or goals for Judea that I came across. Are there others that come to mind?

- Beat the "Matter of Palestine" mission, the first mission for Judea. Afterwards, you get assigned other missions depending on which regions you own or neighbor. One of the "Shrine" missions would be neat for Judea, but you can't easily control which missions you get assigned- you get a semi-random choice out of a pool of regional missions.

- Have the Maccabean Revolt event in the 2nd century BC- You would need to own the territory and have removed Judea from the map. You could switch to Judea as your nation after the event using the console commands.

- Conquer all territories with Jewish Holy Sites like Sousa in Iran.

- Beat the game as Judea - I think that to "win" Imperator, you need to survive until 27 BC. I haven't gotten there, but from what I heard, the "victory" screen is rather anti-climactic..

- Get three special Judean-themed "Iron Man" mode Achievements, which are practically: "What have the Romans done for us?" award), Own the Jewish Holy Site regions as a Jewish country ("Holy Pilgrim"), or after starting as one (Kingdom of David award). But Ironman mode looks tough for me as a newbie, since I've been relying reloading older savegames.

[Rooter]

Player count went up by 1 yesterday.
Played first game in year and half. I enjoyed it.
First time as Selucieds, ironman, its just too easy.
Took all Anatolian Antigonid land in first war and all the vassals by event.
About 5 years into the game.
Stopped at that point as couldnt be bothered working through all the crap you need to after taking so much land.
Thats the issue with this game for me, BUT, I will continue this play on the weekend.

Edit: If paradox made the wars harder they would only give the AI unlimited map vision as they did in EU4. Which just sucks big donkey phallus

[rakovsky]

Rooter,
Did you ever play Age of Empires Rise of Rome? There's a new DE version.

[Rooter]

Im pretty sure I did, why is that?
I loved it back in the day but pure RTS builders are too much for me these days.
I have been playing Anno 1800 and loved it, then got all the DLC and now its a bit too much

[rakovsky]

I especially like the AOE series, and AOE1 deals with the ancient period. AOE games have tons of replay value because people make their own scenarios. I also like the Men of War series and the old fashioned Red Alert series. AOE games are not watch and wait type games.

The downside to I:R is that its "bad" side reminds me of the wasteful/watching paint dry/ watch and wait aspect of Tribal Wars. A friend got me into Tribal Wars, and I kept wasting hours on it. You alluded to this in your complaint about working through cr@p. But there are not alot of ancient Rome games, and IR gives a political/diplomacy depth that AOE1 does not.

[Rooter]

Originally posted by rakovsky:

What triggers the Maccabean Revolt in the game? Does it happen at a specific year if Judea is gone? In history, it was in the early 2nd century BC.

https://imperator.paradoxwikis.com/Judea

[rakovsky]

The conditions for the Maccabean revolt are:
- Judea does not exist as a country.
- The Judean areas (the Province of Judea with 12 territories, or the land Judea owns at the game start?) are controlled by a non-Jewish country.
- The year is 550 AUC
When those conditions are met, every couple years a chance occurs that the player could be given message choices that could trigger the revolt.

Playing as Judea tonight at about 560 AUC, I gave away all my land to other countries, intending to trigger the Maccabbean Revolt. It gave me a "Game Over" Screen. My next step in my plan was to switch to the owning nation using the special Console commands, and deal with the rebellion-triggering pop-up questions.

But then I realized that the fun of the Maccabean Revolt event is being a pagan country, playing your normal game, owning Judea, and getting potentially sidetracked with dillemic decisions about how to handle Judaism. A normal player might read the popups and unthinkingly choose to repress Judaism, unwittingly triggering the rebellion. It's the kind of fun side challenge that would come up if you are trying to get the "What have the Romans ever done for us?" achievement where your goal is to civilize Judea.