It’s the third mission in the nineth campaign.
So you start in bronze age with low resources, and the cpu starts attacking all out in 10 minutes, with a fully upgraded iron age army…
Chariots versus Cataphracts and Centurions is pretty ugly :’)
I’m playing on hard, but it should be possible right?
I have tried a few times to beat this mission on hardest and have not been able to beat it yet.
@“teutonic tanks” said:
- boom out to 50 vills
- go Iron
- Research Legion
- ???
- Profit
This does not work. First of all, you don’t have time to boom to 50 vills before going to iron. Secondly, upgrading to legion and all the relevant pit upgrades takes way too much time and resources. And thirdly, even if you get legions, they die to the enemy centurions and helepoli.
I think this mission is possible on hardest, but it will require some luck with the enemy not attacking you early and not defeating yellow. Here’s the strategy with which I got closest to winning:
There were a couple problems with this, however, that ultimately prevented me from winning.
Despite being weak to the catapults, I’m convinced that ballistas are the best unit choice. It just takes a bit more luck and good micro to keep those ballistas alive.
Did You play on hard teutonic tanks? On moderate its pretty easy.
First try i tried to mass chariots asap. Big fail since one cataphract eats like 4 /5 chariots. And they Will Just go all out with high end iron units.
Second try i did some sort of fast iron using the food on the west side. You need legions to at least stand a chance. Walling, towering etc. Then i was doing ok, but the cpu attacks my weak allie after 5 minutes, and after 10 minutes IT was defeated.
Edit.
Lol third try; after 5 minutes 5 cataphracts and 10 legions in my base.
There’s like 20 units in my base at 9 minutes.
Impossible lol.
Now im gonna try to put everybody on gold and try to have 10 priests.
@Tom4 said:
Did You play on hard?First try i tried to mass chariots asap. Big fail since one cataphract eats like 4 /5 chariots. And they Will Just go all out with high end iron units.
Second try i did some sort of fast iron using the food on the east side. You need legions to at least stand a chance. Walling, towering etc. Then i was doing ok, but the cpu attacks my weak allie after 5 minutes, and after 10 minutes IT was defeated.
I was playing on hardest. But as I said, you need some luck as the enemy can attack you or defeat yellow before you get a sufficient number of ballistas out. And I’m not at all convinced that going for legions is a good idea. I did try making phalanxes at one point, but the enemy has so much more upgrades that even phalanxes die to them like flies. I’d imagine it’s even worse with swordsmen.
I almost had it, but if you lose a building that is doing a very expensive upgrade, you lose the gold. So I lost because of this bug. Not gonna try again, afraid of more game breaking bugs.
go on, eat some “pepperoni pizza”
Don’t be shy 
hahaha
qweytr24:
At first i thought i just spam chariots/ scythes since they wood/ food based. Just let them die and pump from 8 stables. But with a 25 peon economy, and max pop 50 your facing a much bigger and stronger army.
Ballista’s are strong with Rome, but they are in my base at 5-9 minutes, so i figure you need to do something right away with bronze units…but they are just weak…
I figured you need legions because of the pop with logistics. When you have 30-40 legions you can just clean the map with them. This way i did it in moderate anyway, but on hard(est) there is no time.
Ok, so now im trying to make 8 priests, and stall /harrass with walls and chariots…Try to convert the catapracts LoL
Hopeless, but fun at least.
The best strategy in original game was to use priests. Back then the enemy did not attack all at once even on hardest, so you were able to convert the enemy units faster than they came to you. But when I tried priests here, I got overwhelmed. The enemy simply comes in too large numbers to convert them all. It could perhaps work if combined with walls, but my priest micro is not good enough to pull that off.
Yeah, true. I count 30 red units at 10.30. In and around my base. The priests also don’t convert very consistent. If you could convert one unit with one priest it would have a chance, However sometimes get a Fail using 3 priests on one unit -_-.
They didn’t attack me till 17 minutes or 20 ish one time and I beat it with mass catapults on hardest.
Before that I tried priests. What I did was 2 TC stay in bronze and mass catapults but when I got to 50 pop just saved for iron age. Then I catapult microed using attack ground and 2 layers of upgraded walls to deal with them, building more if I needed them. I even got out 3 ballista.
Things I tried : mass towers. Their infantry have 3 pierce armor so you do 1 damage.
Priests. You run out of faith real fast and the ballista micro from the AI is insane. Even catapults are hard to convert when there’s too many projectiles.
I was able to load a save. Seems red only attacks you early after finishing yellow. I also took the second gold mine to the south of your base and walled that.
I think when you delete a wall piece any units near your base will try to run through the hole too.
I think what I maybe could have done is made more siege workshops and tried to stay 50 pop of catapults/stone throwers if I were better at macro and micro. Having stone throwers and Iron age is a big deal in catapult battles too.
Oh and I loaded a save like a few minutes into the game and they happened to attack late that time. They seem to attack at a random time between 12 and 20 minutes.
Took me maybe 4 tries? I tried the priest thing twice.
hardest, without using the lake at 6 o’clock. Wih the lake it should be even easier imo.
FU roman legions are costeffective even vs centurios.
I’m currently stuck at this mission and the Pyrrhus of Epirus. Did all else. I only play on Hardest so advice on how to do this on Easy is pointless (and I don’t do save scumming either).
The revolt of Spartacus is problematic because a lot seems to depend on luck. There is a variance in how fast the enemy attacks you, and it is my belief that if you’re unlucky there’s absolutely nothing you can do. Now, if some superb player wants to prove me wrong, sure, I’ll gladly check your video on how it’s done.
The closest I’ve got was massing ballistae behind 2 wall layers. Unfortunately, I lost just before I wanted to finally engage the enemy because… well, yellow was finished and so gg.
Priests are totally useless and so are towers. In the last game I watched a slow centurion walk towards my priest and three minutes later he reaches the priest who still didn’t convert the unit. No wonder no one ever uses this unit in multiplayer.
@JosephC64 said:
I’m currently stuck at this mission and the Pyrrhus of Epirus. Did all else. I only play on Hardest so advice on how to do this on Easy is pointless (and I don’t do save scumming either).The revolt of Spartacus is problematic because a lot seems to depend on luck. There is a variance in how fast the enemy attacks you, and it is my belief that if you’re unlucky there’s absolutely nothing you can do. Now, if some superb player wants to prove me wrong, sure, I’ll gladly check your video on how it’s done.
The closest I’ve got was massing ballistae behind 2 wall layers. Unfortunately, I lost just before I wanted to finally engage the enemy because… well, yellow was finished and so gg.
Priests are totally useless and so are towers. In the last game I watched a slow centurion walk towards my priest and three minutes later he reaches the priest who still didn’t convert the unit. No wonder no one ever uses this unit in multiplayer.
Pyrrhus of Epirus was trivial for me. The enemy never attacked me and I was easily able to mass up an army and defeat the enemy. I have heard others complain that they get crushed even on easy and I got never attacked on hardest. This tells to me that the AI behaviour is too random.
Same holds for Spartacus. It does indeed seem that if you get unlucky with the AI, the mission is simply impossible.
@qweytr24 said:
Pyrrhus of Epirus was trivial for me. The enemy never attacked me
Are you serious? It always comes with overwhelming post-iron age units (including ships) and both of your town centers must survive. I tried several times, always the same.
I’m all for challenge, but not the kind of “challenge” that depends on a dice roll. If I wanted that, I’d play card games.
try to wall (several layers not just one!) all crossings and the coast (so the enemy cant land), make a massiv amount of towers for extra safety. Don’t waste your intial ships, Keep them in the back until you’Re bronze and then just protect the Island.
played spartacus again and it was pretty boring, enemy let me be untouched forever (had Legion min 15 and it still didnt attack me)
@“teutonic tanks” said:
played spartacus again and it was pretty boring, enemy let me be untouched forever (had Legion min 15 and it still didnt attack me)
Thanks, I did it. I don’t know what exactly triggers AI behavior, but I didn’t wall this time at all, and I stayed as much as possible out of the way of AI patrol units. Over 15min I was not attacked at all. Once I had Legions I attacked him first.
But I have to also say that when I researched Writing, AI wasn’t really attacking yellow either. Maybe it destroyed some buildings until then but at that point AI was just… AFKing somewhere.
Will try Pyrrhus another time.
So I haven’t played Spartacus yet, but I know the map. I do know that the AI works with the same info that a human player does. By this I mean that if they cannot see you, they should not attack. If you place forward towers or walls, they will target you. Perhaps it could be a strat to keep away from the yellow base until the last possible second
@“teutonic tanks” said:
@JosephC64try to wall (several layers not just one!) all crossings and the coast (so the enemy cant land), make a massiv amount of towers for extra safety. Don’t waste your intial ships, Keep them in the back until you’Re bronze and then just protect the Island.
Ok, I tried it now. Doesn’t work. Minute 4, already a massive iron age army is on my doorstep and I’m still in a Tool Age building walls. Elephants don’t take long to get through them, and destroyed two layers in no time (I even tried repairing one; didn’t have time to build third but it wouldn’t matter anyway). The priest I get in the beginning can’t convert anyone in one minute… I understand the enemy is Macedonian but that shouldn’t mean total immunity. And the troops I get (bowmen and swordsmen) are totally useless and just take the population space. I’m sure one elephant would kill them all. At minute 4 I get attacked by 9+ elephants (Armored+Archers), 7+ centurions, 2+ Cataphracts, 2+ Catapults… All fully upgraded.
This has to be another case of “start the mission 20x until enemy gives you a bit more time for whatever reason”. I really don’t have time for that, I don’t want to experiment a hundred times to find out what triggers certain AI movements in every mission. Maybe I built the first wall too forward so they came immediately (because their villager spotted me faster), maybe it was something else.
As far as I’m concerned this needs fixing. It’s not “challenging”, it’s just stupid. This is a strategy game, I should use strategy to defeat the enemy. I shouldn’t have to spend days to find a way to exploit AI as the only chance to win. That’s not what strategy games are, and certainly not what strategy games used to be 20 years ago. If anything, it’s an MMO concept.
I did everything on Hardest so far and the difference in real difficulty (between different missions) is astounding. There has been zero play-testing as far as I can tell.