Advice about my 1st barbarian faction please

[Conan]

Hi all,

Going to try at being my 1st barbarian faction and will probably go for Lusotannan. So what can I expect from a barbarian faction since I've always played s a "Civilized" faction.

[Zradha Pahlavan]

It varies for every faction.

I have played as them before, and beat the crap out of Carthage with them. It was pretty fun, but there was a lot of sitting around to build up the economy and get rich enough to make a good army.

For Lusotannan your troops will be better in an ambush than they would in a pitched fight, especially against the Romans and Carthaginians, but your better troops can easily match the infantrymen of other nations.
Also, many of your troops might not all be strictly Lusotannan, many could be Iberians, and thus technically "civilized". The Iberian troops are especially useful because they provide desperatly needed cavalry support, but it's up to you to decide if you want to use them or not.
Also, they have no long range missile troops that I know of, so you'll need mercenaries there.

[gamegeek2]

the Trokalobutiamm are slingers, which are always good, though not as good as they used to be

[A Terribly Harmful Name]

First rule of the book is that no faction is equal to the rest, second is that if you take some minor faction you will be by rule underdeveloped and poor. So, you need to sit down, expand slowly and gradually and develop your economy instead of trying to rush for your goals; your finances will prevent you this.

[Megalos Danielos Psychopatos]

Most barbarian factions if not conquering and plundering are poor due to their low tech lvl; only Casse are able to be rich...and Lusotannan I think. If talking about troops...in most, Your units will be vulnerable to missiles, and U will have to make use of their biggest advantage: pure brute strength:viking: ; no finesse! U will probably get big casualties during battles, but U will also have power to break even through phalanx (gaesatae, swordmasters, thraikoi rhompharaphoroi...).


Sooorry for my english...again.:embarassed:

[Zradha Pahlavan]

the Trokalobutiamm are slingers, which are always good, though not as good as they used to be

Huh. I've never been able to recruit them.
Is there a reform I missed or are they in a later EB version?

[NeoSpartan]

If your starting with Lusotana (sp):
---BUM RUSH carthege!!!! :charge:
If you don't they won't attack you BUT, they will build like 2 full stacks. And I don't know about u but I don't like to have powerful armies next to my borders.
---next just chill, disband your super expensive cavarly, and wait till you get some $$.

If you start with Aedui
---BUM RUSH the Arverni!!! :charge:
If you don't 260+BC will arrive and you will be fighting both the Romani, and Arverni... not good :no:
---Next make some $$, expand, and keep an eye on the Romans. They will come for you :spider:

Same story with the Arverni.

If you start with the Sweboz.
---expand chill... make some $, once ur decently strong for for Gaul, Rome, Dacia, etc...
---beware of the open steppes...... :spider:

as for the eastern factions.... don't ask me

[A Terribly Harmful Name]

"beware of the open steppes"?

[Celtic_Punk]

Yes the eastern steppes are brutal.

[A Terribly Harmful Name]

Well last time I checked Sweboz are far far away from the steppes. Don't see how one could ever try to expand there, it's hell anyway.

[Celtic_Punk]

Well when you are expanding towards the Dacians, you can be met with Sarmatians and Skythians expanding west. You can easily get caught up in the Steppes when expanding along the baltic, and to the Black Sea.

Hmmm all this talk about the Steppes... I should really try a nomadic faction one of these days. It'd be quite a challenge since I'm used to celtic and hoplite fighting.

[A Terribly Harmful Name]

As long as you can lure them into your forests and keep outside the flat open ground they will be a nuisance anyway, though it seems like a real danger.

[NeoSpartan]

lol...

fellas the main point about the steppes is this:

Don't let your bare chested Sweboz army get caught up in the open against a HA, archer, and heavy cavarly army. If your going to the open steppes, take some heavy cavarly with you, hire some HA mercs, and train some local HAs.

....and to do that you want to have a good economy rolling.

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

As the Lusotanns, I always choose to put off the war with Carthage for as long as possible - at least 50 years, longer if I can. Gives me time to take all the Elutheroi cities in Spain and southern Gaul, and build up my economy. I'm happy to pay Carthage 100 mnai a turn to maintain my alliance with them.

Carthage usually doesn't become aggressive in Spain until she's conquered all of North Africa.

[hoom]

The 'Barbarian' factions are great fun in my experience.
They tend to start with very limited populations & borderline economies but have strong units that can generally be thrown around with abandon in a way you would never try with 'Civilised' units.
Need to make use of those starting armies to expand (battle casualties help balance the books :sweatdrop: ).
Some factions can only build the basic roads so travel can be slow.

Aedui & Arverni bash each other up & playing as one you need to wipe out or cripple the other ASAP so you can get on with unifying Gaul.
It gets pretty hairy early on with no perimeter to speak of, large budget deficit & big enemy armies roaming the borders.
Once Gaul is unified or nearly enough, you get a healthy economy & lots of units with big, high lethality swords & increasingly with good armour: Solduri & with reform Nietos but even Botroas are pretty strong plus there is the Gaesatae & Milnacht.
Leuce Epos are magnificent & Brihentin tough cavalry that can duke it out with infantry quite well when you are lacking in that department.
Enslaving Masallia helps tremendously with the early manpower shortage.
From there, the world is your oyster. (though you can find yourself fighting Sweboz, Rome & Carthage/Lusotannan all at once :help: )

Lusotannan are slow expanding & fairly weak in troops to start with but once they control the Iberian peninsula they have a strong economy, a secure base & good troops: Caetrati have AP & can take on much heavier infantry, the Scutarii are good spear units & there is good cavalry around.

Getai are much fun.
They start with no bordering enemy faction & fairly straightforward expansion against Eleutheroi.
Drapani are very strong as long as there are no missiles, the Komatai are good enough to hold a line (at least in a push) despite classification as skirmishers.
Once you have a vaguely decent economy going, you can expand south into Greece at the expense of Makedon/Epirus &/or KH (AP falxes FTW), giving a strong base & economy to head into Illyria then Italy or Asia minor.
The scripted Boii to the NW keep the Sweboz at bay & are best left alone.
You can also expand into the Steppe with decent native HAs & regionals too.

Haven't played Casse or Sweboz.

[zooeyglass]

As for Casse,

well, a difficult starting position, in that it requires patience to work around the british isles dealing with the eleutheroi, but in conquering the british isles you are offered a very strong and secure base, from which you can really spank out some beaut troops (milnaht, champions, etc - and sotaroas are great against other armour-lacking troops, as often fielded by the eleutheroi or barbarian factions in that neck of the woods).

in getting your economy together you also get the opportunity to diversify in your approach to conquest. i used bribery a fair bit, especially to stop the aedui from conquering provinces i wanted to conquer (thus avoiding war with them) and to take provinces from the lusotanan (again, avoiding war). so that's recommended. they are a great faction.

guess the biggest weakness is those chariot riding FMs can be quite pesky to control and don't pack the same punch as armoured cavalry FMs.