Carthage

[Quintus.JC]

Thrace is Ok....
The AI just sucks as them

I suppose they stand on similar terms with Numidia. However their starting position is quite terrible, at least for weaker players (such as AI) anyway.

[the man with no name]

YALL SHOUYLD TRY EB!!!!!!!!!!
go here

https://www.europabarbarorum.com

[Weebeast]

It's a long thread so probably many things are already said here. I'm just gonna say try not to get to war with Egypt. While you can beat her in open field, no one in the east can give Egypt real challenge and she will at least send galleys your way. The war hurts you more than it hurts the Pharaoh. It will cripple your economy so bad it affects your progress elsewhere. Try to have Numidia keep Siwa or whatever is that province called south of Cyrene. It minimizes chance of getting attacked. It was actually the port that sparked the war for me. I did captured Alexandria twice and managed to siege Memphis but it's so far from home I can't keep up with the reinforcements. I ran out of cavalry so I had to use the general unit so he got caught in the mess and died. After that I lost the two 'Libyan' provinces. Now it's been 50 years or so and I finally can absolutely secure the sea. I let Gaul control Gaul just so Britons have a rival. I don't want their lands anyway. I owned whole Spain and the provinces can churn out Long shield cavalry as well as spear-phalanx unit. Romans are no more, save that one Julii city near modern day Venice and lo behold Tarentum, Rome and Arretium are training Sacred Band, as well as Messana and Carthage. We march through Sahara one last time!

[risker]

Ok I just started my campaign but already I can give you a few tips :


-Sicily is a must at the beginning. I took Syracuse off Greeks and Messina off Scipii Immediatly.
-Numidians, Gauls and Greeks should be your allies. I managed to patch things up with the greeks and get the other two on my side. This helps against the romans. Africa is not that prosperous so the Numidians will just be conquered when I need to get those 50 regions. They generally don't have a great army. Just an annoying one.
-Remember don't leave the Romans until the Marian reforms - which means of course, do leave the Romans to get Marian reforms . Great battles.
-Don't go near Egypt. You're already hated enough as it is.


I'll post a full one when I'm finished.

[jack95]

I attacked Rome right at the beginning of the game. It used up all of my starting money and army but now i have destroyed the scipii and got the brutti cities in Rome. Now i am getting more money and am destroying the Numidians.

[Croatians]

Hello.

I have a Joomla site to develop which has a login area to access the main content. Is there a way to force the site to go to the last page viewed or the next page in the sequence once the user has logged in?

Cheers

[gollum]

Nice going jack95, and welcome to the org, enjoy your stay.

There is another way to play with carthage other than going immediately after the Scipii and the Brutii in Italy.

One can take Messina firsta and then concentrate on defending landing in Corsica and Sicily while taking out Tingi and the Numidian capital. These two boost trade considerably and allow one to take over the Romans comfortably afterwards, while also crushing the Iberians and Celtiberians. Carthage is fun, unless one uses elephants, then its the most boring faction in the world.

[placenik]

I tried, just for fun to do with historical Carthaginian mercenary heavy army and take Romans on surprise, and it works.
Units:
-Balearic slingers
-Mercenary hoplites
-Mercenary peltests
-Numidian mercenaries
-Samnite mercenaries
-Elephants
-Any faction unit you manage to move/recruit, mostly round-shielders

First thing to do is to move your natural born general to Sicily and all Numidian cavalery you can find. Next is to buy all Balearic slingers and ship them to Sicily, early Romans don't have archers, and slingers have insane amount of ammo. Hire every merc you can, take Messina, help Greeks defend Syracuse, and ship yourself to south Italy. Take 2 Brutii cities in 2 turns (that one unit of elephants is necessity), their main army should be on Balkans doing Senate missions, and if you are fast enough that stack will become rebels. After this you can slow a bit. Take remaining Scipii settlement, and go for Julii. Senate is hardcoded not to live its lands, so you can ignore them for now. After Julii is done it is Hanibal ante portas, but really, it is better not to really fight Senate. Fill Rome with spies, lure their main stack so it can't join battle as reinforcement, and take poorly guarded Rome in single turn.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

Senate is hardcoded not to live its lands, so you can ignore them for now.

They will leave from Latium when your army is close to their borders. I've had Senate army attacking me when I've besieged Capua and Julii starting cities.

Fill Rome with spies, lure their main stack so it can't join battle as reinforcement, and take poorly guarded Rome in single turn.

Best way to fight that huge Senate army is to move your army on one of those river crossings near Rome. Just make sure you have 2-3 merc hoplites(to stop them) and enough cavalry(to flank them) with you.

Also, if possible then buy Syracuse at the start of the game. Greeks most likely will stab you in the back sooner than later.

[placenik]

@Ibn-Khaldun
You are probably right, senate will attack if AI decides that you are threatening Rome, but I never had that, AIs are dumb. Advice to take Syracuse early is good, you can use endless supply of roman gold, or simply conquer it, it's not too heavily guarded. I actually had to do that, Greeks really backstabed me while my main army was killing Brutii, but they were so weak that I never thought them worth mentioning (their fleet is more annoying, though).

[Ibn-Khaldun]

Usually I buy Syracuse from the Greeks as soon as possible. This way Greeks don't backstab and will remain your trade partners and allies for a long time since you don't share border with them. Buying Syracuse is also good because this way you can get entire Sicily to yourself and with the possibility to upgrade Syracuse you can create a recruitment center there.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Messina, or rather Sicily, is the key early on.....and a strong naval presence. Messina should go first as you can siege and assault the same turn because of the elephants. My most recent camp, while I was doing that, the Scipii were laying siege to Syracuse and captured it so when I took it from them I never had to go to war with the GC. You must then spend some time sinking naval invasion fleets from both the Julii (at Caralis) and the Scipii (who naturally want Messina back).

The AI solved my problem of having to land on Italy to take out Capua and the Scipii by loading all remaining (some 20 turns into the game) Scipii family members onto a fleet which I promptly sank. I prefer gollums' approach by taking Cirta and Tingi from the Numidians both to connect my holdings and to have two more areas from which to train elephants. I never bother with Nepte and Dimmidi as they are too remote and resource poor to bother with. Numidia is never a threat anyways after the loss of their two largest cities.

Besides, the port cities of Iberia beckon and along with all the mine income, you'll soon have more denari than you know what to do with, and access to one of my favorite mercs in the game....Spanish scutari. I love these guys as screens for my LS cavalry and my elephants. They break up the idiotic, suicide charges from Roman triarii better than any other unit you have early on. I buy as many of them as there are available, and by the time the game has progressed to the 'huge city' stage, they have accumulated experience into silver & gold chevron levels. Along with foundry upgrades, they form the back-bone of my army rampaging through Roman-held Greece and Macedonia. Backed up by elephants and Sacred Band cavalry, they are unstoppable.

[placenik]

You actually allowed Romans to live long enough to get triarii, and even conquire Greece? Why?

[Flavius Merobaudes]

You actually allowed Romans to live long enough to get triarii, and even conquire Greece? Why?

If I understood ReluctantSamurai correctly, the Scipii captured only Syracuse not Greece.

The senate has some units of Triarii in the beginning, and the Julii have one too.

It's good to see there's still someone playing RTW.

[IceWolf]

There's plenty of people who still play RTW. Some like me, played M2TW for 3 weeks and didn't like the murky colors and camera angles and went back to good old RTW. There's so many mods out there you can play for years and years and not run out of new civs or different versions of old civs. Long live RTW and it's many mods. I'm currently playing Amazon TW.

Icewolf

[ReluctantSamurai]

You actually allowed Romans to live long enough to get triarii, and even conquire Greece? Why?

I've played every faction in the game at least several times, some, many multiple times. I don't even play to win anymore.....when a campaign starts to get boring, I move on to another one. My intent with this campaign was to watch the results of some tinkering I had done with the game, and have a little fun with Carthage, whom I hadn't played in a long time.

[placenik]

Somehow, I always get back to RTW, good game it is.

@ReluctantSamurai Respect man! ;) Probably only good reason to let romans live is to be able to kill them in bulks.

[Centurion1]

i like turtling alot, blitzing is no fun. so i always end up with epic late unit battles. love it.

[Rome shall Burn]

Centurion is right. Rushing early makes for a fairly interesting early game but a far too easy late game. For any established faction hunkering down and advancing your cities and armies makes for a much better overall game. Turtling allows the Romans to get stronger which makes for an incredible challenge towards the end game. Also, because in just about any game you play, with the exception of campaigns by Spain or Numida, you will be able to elminate any serious competition early on and never really experience the thrill of fights between huge armies of advanced units. Spartans and Immortals clashing in huge fights in the end-game is ridiculous.

[Centurion1]

actually ifind the spanish only need to take two units and then turtling is ridiculously easy. as well their bull warriors match any infantry in game i modded in archers though.....

[spear]

Well after much thought"mhmhhm" I started it with Carthage, but used an aggrescive approach. I conqured sislly in first 5 turns, defeated completly brutii and captured there two cities, allied with greeks when conquering sislly and defeated scipii, then attacked julii and captured their three cities to the north leaving two cities to them.
I also allied with spain, after conquering their one city. I am controlling whole on africa and now numidians left with only one city near eqypt.
My game settings are VH/VH with no cheats, i used minimum diplomicy and more assinnation and spying.
I am not using elephants or sacred bands, only iberian infnt, long shield cav and slingers, i use elephents only when need to open gates or break walls.
Carthage is hell lot difficult and on Very Hard settings it is real pain. but its fun too haah.
Moving fine now, earning dn 7000+ per turn coz i mainly focused on roads, traders, ports, and trading agreements.
Also I rule the sea with 6 fleets of 4 each ships.
Writing this post on my 15th turn. i was myself amazed on such a quick get-up. Any one want saved file plz mail me.
(Sorry for the spelling mess)

[Ravencroft]

I've been playing Carthage in vanilla this week (though admittedly, Medium/Medium), and I must say that it's a very fun faction. Multi-front wars, yet not as annoying as those "Mummy Returns" Ptolemaioi.

I'd say that holding on to Caralis is a good move in the long run, as it wears down the Romans (especially the Julii) so you could sneak an army onto the "boot". Consolidating Sicily is your first order of battle. It's far easier to wipe out Scipii and SPQR, as the former only really expands at Carthage's expense, and the latter doesn't really go beyond Rome.

Cavalry really is the key to your victories; your infantry can't really match up to the Romans' heavy armor and javs. That said, Iberian Infantry are a cheap and semi-effective way of holding the infantry down for a charge (even the non-existent charge of Round Shield cav doesn't really matter if there's enough of them).

Elephants are another (and much more fun) way to whack around the heavy infantry of Rome around, yet beware of them Velites.

A powerful navy isn't really that important, but you'll need a decent one to land your troops on the "boot" before some guy named Marius overhauls the Roman forces to make them uber.

[Guyus Germanicus]

Hail Paladin Ravencroft! :)

Some of the most fun I've had in RTW is defending Caralis in the early game for Carthage against odds when the Julii slip armies over.

While Carthage is, indeed, weak in the infantry department early on, once you get that awesome temple of Baal built in Carthage you can start cranking out Sacred Band infantry. You will need them against the Roman Senate for sure. Carthage's missile troops are not real impressive either, but I've found I can make do if I recruit Balearics from Palma or Cretan archers from Epirus (around Appolonia) and Crete. I usually send a general on a recruiting mission around 252 BC, 242 BC and 232 BC to those two spots on the gameboard picking up three Cretan archer units each trip.

You're absolutely right about the Velites and elephants. Best keep the elephants handy for hitting Roman cavalry or general's. They do come in handy for quick assaulting wooden walls. You don't have to wait a turn for building battering rams. Just turn loose the ellies.

Your navy becomes important to interdict Roman attempts to land more troops on Sardinia. Many a time I've sunk large Roman armies being ferried over to Caralis.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Agree with recruiting Cretans for the archer corps. Kydonia is also profitable if taken and built up a notch.

SB infantry can hold it's own with Romans even after Marius, provided you don't expect it to win by itself.

Ellies always fun if you can bring them into the Roman line at a nice angle, but the casualties are usually horrendus against all those javelins. Only really cracks them apart if you can hammer them while they are moving up and aren't set to throw. On the other hand, a unit of elephants well out on the flank will often draw other units towards it. Once separated, these become plum targets for a cavarly fist to bowl over.

RS/LS cavalry is only useful en masse, where a goodly gaggle can swamp isolated units nicely. SB cav will fight well against anybody -- but remember to switch off to the swords in the scrum.

A naval intercept squadron is a real plus while Carthage is under-built. Once it has the extra cool troops, you almost want to let them land and try to siege instead of taking losses at sea. It is, however, simply too cost effective NOT to sink a single weakened bireme card carrying a half-stack land force. Like passing up a hanging curve ball...it just isn't done.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Ellies always fun if you can bring them into the Roman line at a nice angle, but the casualties are usually horrendus against all those javelins.

Which is precisely why I, when playing Carthage, target the spear-chuckers first with my Creeshan's instead of the Archer Auxillia. I hold the Ellie's back, remove their FaW to minimize self casualties, and send them in after the legionnaire blocks are tied up in melee.

SB infantry can hold it's own with Romans even after Marius, provided you don't expect it to win by itself.

True that...Sacred Band are tough hombres but not supermen.

Like passing up a hanging curve ball...it just isn't done.

[dallasallenz]

Take Sicily. I took Syracuse first as once that is lost the Greeks do not try to recapture it. The Romans try to recapture Messana so I try to take Syracuse first.
2) Hold Corduba and ally with Gaul.

[Kez]

Very interesting faction and fun to play, don't know if anyway even plays Vanilla RTW anymore. Started out and immediately sent reinforcements to Carilias because I know when I played as Juli that was the first Carthage city I went for. Sure enough Juli showed up ( forgot to mention my reinforcements was a peasent unit

[Kez]

Very interesting faction and fun to play, don't know if anyway even plays Vanilla RTW anymore. Sent out diplomats everywhere, made alliances with Gaul, Briton, Numidia, Greece, (Forgot Spain ) immediately sent reinforcements to Carilias because I know when I played as Juli that was the first Carthage city I went for. Sure enough Juli showed up ( forgot to mention my reinforcements was a peasant unit) and for some reason they would touch the peasant unit. I guess they were waiting for me to attack or something?

Anyway ignored them, attacked the Scippians in Sicily while they were busy with the Greeks. They didn't like that to much I bet. But my elephants fixed that argument routed the lot of them. (Greek diplomats watching mind you) Bribed the Greek Diplomat didn't want him to bribe my town watch garrison. Money was looking good, sent spy screen into Italy, seems like the Scipi are building an invasion force. Decide to send my Faction leader and a under General to southern Italy and begin taking Bruty and scipy cities. (Full Stack scipi force just watches )


I march pass the full stack of scipi leaving the southern Italy cities garrisioned with town watch, sack capua, Scipi faction destroyed, large stack changes to rebel faction. ( Still find that odd they didn't attack, bug? I was really shitting bricks fearing an butt attack)

Meanwhile, back on Carlias, build up enough forces to destroy the large Juli stack with some Elles of course. Around this time start getting spy reports about numidia and Spain, so I become a bit weary...could they be preparing for an attack?

Sure enough large Stack appears at Corduba, luckily I had brought some Spanish Mercs! Tough battle however, heroic victory, Spain runs. I start building up a force back at Carthage to deal with Spain because I know they'll be back. While that is happen I launch a counter invasion on Cathago Nova. ( Take that bastards!)

Numidia figures I have my hands tied and attack Carthage! I rout there pathetic excuse for an army with just one General. ( They came with a Captain led army of Javelins pah!) General recieves a heroic victory and some perks.

My forces in Italy sack Rome after an epic battle (Bruti watch from Apollonia haha...though they are building an invasion force it seems )

As I'm mopping up the Iberian penisula Gaul figures its there turn to backstab, so a General a few horseman and my faithful elles make short work of them and I'm in the process of invading all of Gaul, Briton and Germania with One large stack and half stack both 6 and 8 star general led.

I took over all the Italian penisula and the Juli remain with some former gallic town, to the west. They've been mostly quiet.


Sent a large stack over with my Faction heir to Greece to deal with the Bruti, and they fell rather quickly cowering in their cities. Greece back stabbed me at Lecpis manga, So they are next on my list and it should be easy because my spies tell me Pontus is causing them great peril in the Asia minor.

Thrace attack Apollonia, so actually they'll go first.....got 33 regions captured. Should I go towards Egypt.....or stick with Gaul, Germania and Greece, brition to reach my 50 region goal?

[wooly_mammoth]

Ok, just go into my first ever vanilla M/M Carthage campaign.

WOOOOOW is the situation dire. Lots of angry angry romans at the gates and nothing but dirt farmers and sleazy merchants to stand against them. Time for heroic generalship . I moved Hanno against the Scipii from the first turn, camped him in some woods right next to Sicilia Romani. A turn later the bloody road engineers showed up and cut the forest down for the empire's infrastructure.

Anyway, I got lucky that most of the roman force decided to gank the greeks, so I went up against Cornelius Scipio, his son, a unit of hastati, bowmen and velites. Actually a hard fight, I took more casualties than I would have desired since I only had really light troops at my disposal (nothing to stand against a general's charge or deal with hastati) but I did manage to win with minimal cavalry loses and took Messana. A HUMONGOUS Brutii army appeared out of taffing nowhere on a fleet, and I had to engage it in a hair-rising battle with my own biremes. The battle carried out over about four turns, but ultimately I managed to sink the bastards. If those guys had set foot on Sicily it would have been gg no re, no question about that.

In the meantime I saved greek bottoms once when Syracuse was besieged, worked on building my basic infrastructure (roads, farms, traders, temples, the like) and mandatory stables wherever they were absent. Luckily, Spain and Numidia have been peaceful. I lost Caralis to a small Julii force, but there was really no way for me to back it up and peasants alone couldn't win, even with a full surround on the enemy. After that, since those greek bastards didn't want to hear of an alliance with me, the Scipii took Syracuse, I took Syracuse from the Scipii and decided to strike first and occupied Cirta from the Numidians. Then the greeks decided they want an alliance. I think Macedonia is giving them a lot of hot love. I'm building herds of round shields for the moment, the purpose being to conquer the whole of Africa, Spain and get a foothold in Italy (I may reclaim Caralis as well) by using swarms of cavalry and minimal infantry to man rams. Hanno is a really accomplished old guy by this point.

But that's all in a future installment, since I'm about to depart on a real-life journey.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Then the greeks decided they want an alliance.

A repeat word of warning...never, EVER, form an alliance with the Greek Cities. They might back-stab you later than sooner...but they WILL turn out to be a bunch of treacherous bastiges

I've never had an alliance with the GC not end with with them turning on me. During the course of a Pontus campaign, I once saw them back-stab Egypt not once...but three times. The Pharaoh was probably some little adolescent with acne problems (I'd been killing their generals on a regular basis), and didn't know any better. I've set them up with territories far from me without a common border, and STILL they decide they'd rather bite the nipple that's feeding them

There are many ways to go about winning with Carthage...the guide is plentiful with suggestions. The only one I'm going to offer is....navy, navy and more navy. The Romans will continually try to land armies both in Sicily, on Caralis, and in Africa. Round Shield Cavalry suck as do Iberian Infantry. You need to buy yourself time to get to phalanx and Long Shields. Sacred Band is a long ways off....

Watch for an attack on Corduba by Spain and/or Gaul. In my Carthage campaigns, it's almost automatic