A lot of the time the boss is a little farther eastward and bounces around more near Germany/Italy, but it doesnt really matter. If he's in France, he's not bonus breaking your Germany, etc. You take as much as you can and box the boss in (1-2 stacks around him attacking him at the end of the turn) while you wash through the boss's bonuses. His only threat is just that one territory, since you and Partha are double penetrating him. Eventually he is a scary 100 stack with +5 income, which basically amounts to a impotent since he can only attack one territory per turn and you can pick up his old one as he leaves.

The real threat of the map is the Parthian enemy, who will have some pretty mighty stacks and distinctly higher income than you by the time your forces meet. You can still kill him, of course, by lobbing one large stack into parthian empire/asia/partha and exploding to neuter his income(generally sea-hopping through Africa, since he has less invested there than Illy area). After that it's just cleaning up his stacks (should be a few 150-200 size stacks and a bunch of ~50s) and slaughtering the boss. Doing one, then the other is much slower than multitasking, since the boss will run away from a number of your attacks and stretch your turn count high. You'll be hard-pressed to get below 35 turns. If you want the star, you're probably going to have to break the boss at least once before you punch the AI completely into pieces and it's gonna be a lot tougher.

I played through this 5 times before I finally beat it, it's definitely tough.

As other people have said, don't even try to get rid of the boss until you've beaten the Parthian AI, it takes way too many armies and even if you do manage to take him out the Parthian AI will be upon you by that point with way more reinforcements. Instead place at least 1 army in all the adjacent territories and send them into the territory the boss just left. Sometimes he'll surprise you and spawn armies there and take one or two of your territories, but all you need to do is contain him. In the game I won he headed straight for Britannia, but I still managed to win despite losing that bonus.

First of all, I sent my commander north to take the AI in Cimbrica, and left their commander trapped but alive until he'd lost all his other territories, so that the boss AI would have another army to fight against and not focus solely on me. That helped me take Hispania and Italy without too much trouble. Assuming you've done well against the boss AI and have around 75-90 reinforcements, when the Parthian AI reaches you he'll usually already have over 100 reinforcements per turn and come at you with several armies of over 50 and at least one over 100, from the north, through Macedonia and through Africa. The key is NOT to engage these armies directly (you can't beat them, you'll waste your reinforcements trying while he breaks through in your undefended areas) but to build up several smaller stacks of your own and go around them into his sparsely defended territories, so you can cut into his bonuses. In the meantime defend your borders, especially in eastern Europe/Illyria, with at least 4-5 in each territory, and you'll slow his advance long enough for you to get into Parthia with your larger armies and wreck his superbonuses. By then you'll have enough reinforcements to take out his large armies, and then chase the annoying boss clones around.

Hope this helps someone!

I have tried all of this, I can first meet the far ai with about 90 income.
I am able to destroy his asia bonus and parthian bonus; but by then I will have already been crushed by his 100 armies on every front line. I meet him in Italy, 100 armies against me. In Africa, more than 100 armies meet me. Same with Europe.
Do I just retry over and over until I don't meet such large forces?

(BTW, it's around turn 14-15)

I have tried multiple times on this level, and have one tip though.
If you can't meet the far ai in 13-15 turns, you're in trouble

Edited 7/30/2016 13:35:15

Hi! It 's my first message on your forum.
Forgive any possible error in English, I'm Italian.

I'm also completely blocked at this level. I can't even bring up the clones, I'm immediately massacred by the first boss and no way to escape him. I tried everything, I tried the most different strategies, but there was nothing to do until now. I don't even have any idea how to do.

Have any of you please help me? You did you manage to overcome this level or not? And if you like how you did? PLEASE HELP ME!! THANK YOU!

Wow, I finally beat this thing. It took about 6 attempts and and the first five I was just decimated by the AI.

For those who haven't beaten it yet, don't give up. There is a very large luck factor involved. The cloning boss makes or breaks your game, depending on where he decides to attack.

I used pretty much an identical strategy in each of my games. In all of the games I expanded into France and moved towards Spain aggressively while being more cautious moving towards Italy and Partha.

In the first four games I was decimated by an aggressive boss and then the Partha AI. It seemed they were not much interested in each other at all.

In the fifth game I made better headway and got dominance over the cloning boss and moved into Partha to try to assassinate their leader. In reviewing the history, it was comical and sad. My big stack of 150 guys was dancing all around trying to find the leader while a stack of over 1300 chased me. Again, Partha made practically no attempt to kill the cloning boss.

Finally, in my last try, the cloning boss didn't show up until I had captured France and was part way into Spain. It seems he decided to enjoy the Italian coast instead.

This time I quickly overtook the boss in bonuses and created three different stacks to dive into Partha. I met heavy resistance but once you get past one of their big stacks they just chase you. I never ran into the case where they reinforced anything between my big stacks and their leader.

With the three stacks going in, I would leave some troops behind to attack all of the neighboring undefended territories.

This time I killed Partha around turn 24. Sadly, the stupid cloning bosses took another 20 turn to painfully surround and wipeout.

So i finally beat this level on some thing like try #12. Here's what worked for me.

+ The northern AI is no big deal. See others comments.

+ As others have said, don't fight the boss. Just keep circling around him and cleaning up behind him. When your armies are dispersed, he just wanders with no direction. Just make sure you break up his bonus territories and he'll get weaker. Then fight him and his clones at the end.

+ The southern AI is the real challenge. He kept coming at me with more armies than I could handle, or if I tried to shoot straight south to kill the commander, he destroyed my bonus territories.

So I did a little of both and played him like the boss. I didn't attack hi strong stacks. I let him attack mine to get the defender advantage. then cleaned up behind him.

As I fought through Europe, I left armies though out instead of concentrating them. Then when the southern AI came at me. instead of building up to face him, I would reinforce all the territories around him to a level of 50-70% of his strength. This makes him fight like the boss - attacking only one country - instead of taking 4 at a time. he will get that country, but he'll weaken his stack forcing him the use his replenishment every turn, and I still have strength in the territories surrounding him with. After a few turns you'll see this is almost like fighting the boss, but you have to keep more armies around him.

Interesting note. Even after the AI had stacks of 150, he kept attacking only one country at a time while I only had stacks of 12 around him. Seems like I "trained" him to act like a boss ha ha

At the same time I drove 3 stacks south towards his commander. I kept the stacks strong, but spread out with minimal armies to capture bonuses. He doesn't defend the southern area very much. He'll have 2 or 3 strong stacks in Italy and Europe just do as mentioned above and then break his bonuses in the south. Pay special attention to the super bonuses and break them as soon as you can. This is a war of attrition.

if you come at him from the north and the west the commander will retreat to the far south and you will know where he is. If you only come from one direction, he'll move in the other direction. Watch a history and you'll see.

By the time you are half way through the south it's just a matter of turns. You'll be getting 150+ armies and I'm guessing he's getting 35. Just keep going and don't let him capture Europe and start getting more bonus. By the time you reach his commander, he'll be getting 5 armies and won't be able to reinforce him.

Then you have to take on the boss. The cloning is a pain and you have to corner them to kill them, so i did a little trick. After killing the southern AI I spent several turns just putting large stacks in various places on the map. (and cleaning up behind the boss). Don't put any near him or he might kill himself on them and clone.

You need 165 armies to kill a 90 army boss
You need 145 armies to kill an 80 army boss

So I made stacks of 150 in the narrow passage areas (like Spain to Europe and Spain to North Africa so I could trap him in an area. He usually won't attack a stack stronger than himself (though he did a couple of times). This made it easier to trap him,and gave my a large number of armies on the board before he starting cloning. I also made sure I had a lot of defenders around my commander so they couldn't get him.

Small stacks are worthless against the bosses. They'll just take your armies. Keep your territories either strong enough to beat them (145+) or just 3 or 4 to clean up behind them and keep cleaning up behind them as you go.

I eventually wound up with a line of 150+ strong territories across Europe, another coming up from the south, and another in Spain and just closed in on them. You should be getting 250-300 armies per turn at this point.

It took 40 something turns, but I spent a lot of turns just on the bosses because I didn't get them cornered at first. The territories I built up before the 1st clone were not strong enough to hold them and they kept breaking through and going around me. So make them all 150+ or just enough for clean up and keep the strong ones together in a row of 3 or more so you can direct the bosses into a corner.


Good luck

Edited 9/5/2016 14:25:38

I've beaten him a several times, you have to put 3-5 armies arround the boss and attack from two regions so he can not expand and you can focus on the other AI. Try to go to the south-east where the commander hides, and eliminate him a.s.a.p. At the time you have 200 income, you can attack the boss over and over till he's beaten. Although I really don't know how to win in 32 turns to get a star. I guess you have to be lucky and hope the boss attacks the other AI, so you can grow faster.

Update: I think I played this level over 50 times, The cloning AI just NEVER went south so it is just not possible to win in 32 turns.

Edited 9/23/2016 20:47:59

Alright, I finally beat it.
Strike as fast as you can and break the Superbonuses Asia and Partha
Make a foothold there but don't try to expand until you have dealt with the 150 or so armies headed to you.
I got lucky in the fact that the huge army the ai saves went to Italy, and I could just form a blockade where they could enter france

Caesar's Challenge separates the men from the boys (or Xena the warrior princess from Barbie).

Up to this point, I was playing defensively, expanding as fast as possible, and protecting my gains (basic tactics). This will not work in Caesars Challenge.

This level forces you learn about the importance of order of battle (which I was ignoring in the past), and think about strategic moves, over blind territorial gain. This level has made me a much better player.

It may take a couple dozen times to beat this game, but once you do it the first time, it should be much easier to beat.

This video helped me a lot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRqZ5L32elo

The key was getting a stack far right by turn 13, which means ensuring you kill the 10 army "wasteland" (neutral territory) as soon as you meet it. I even screwed up around 8-9 by forgetting to retake the big boss old territory, which cost me 28 armies (4 bonus + 10 super bonus x 2 turns).

Fun fact - the when the boss clones, it kills any stacks it lands on even if the stack was big enough to kill that clone.

Hello

I agree with Indibob...
Even with 15 turns I am not able to conquer France as AI of the boss is way too strong to contain it.
I dont know how you did to beat it. I know I am not a good player but so far I have manages to win every stage but I feel this one might be the last one as I am not going to spend my life on it
Anyway hats off to you who won this stage

Finally did it !
Many thanks for all your advices, was kinda hard.