AI Romani Armies

In my Casse campaign I have control of all of Gaul, Iberia, Germania and the British Isles. I'm fighting with the Romani in Northern Italy. All of their armies seem to be very similar. There are four of them, and this is the composition of one of them:

-1 General (one was a 7 star!)
-2 Equites Extraordanarii
-6! Pedites Extraordanarii
-7! Triarii
-1 Principes
-1 Rorarii
-1 Leves

The other ones are all pretty much the same, although one has more pedites extraordanarii and no cavalry. The point is, how do you fight stacks full of super-heavy infantry as the Casse. My armies are primarily mediocre Celtic infantry supported by a few champions. I win battles by making enemies rout with my chariots and fanatics. These units will not rout, and decimate my infantry in melee. And in siege battles I suffer massive casualties. And every four turns or so, another stack of heavy infantry appears.

Is there a way to stop the AI from spamming heavy infantry and making something historical?

kill the general, then they will easier rout

The Romani get a better balance of units once they hit the Polybian Era... if they ever reach the Polybian Era.

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Originally Posted by MarcusAureliusAntoninus

The Romani get a better balance of units once they hit the Polybian Era... if they ever reach the Polybian Era.

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Given the armies they are fielding, they will.

Also, it might be fun to fight polybian romans. So maybe you could go on the defensive and leave Italy alone?

They did get the Polybian reforms, as I just saw a unit of Polybian Triarii. However, the vast majority of their units are Camillan.

As Epeiros (see faction progression post) I waded through a sea of Captains who had nothing but Triarii and Pedites Extraordinarii. It's an epidemic. Their fullstacks, however, I find to be more balanced. Of course, my Hellenistic phalanx and HC augmented with Thracian and Celtic auxiliares (Cordinau Orca, to name one) utterly mauled them. However, I can easily see Celtic factions having trouble with an armies like those.

By the time they got Polybian reforms, I had taken all their settlements in Italia except Arpi. Again, see AI faction progression post.

They have these armies only because Romani have this super-economy! They have the money for those units and as far as I know the AI always recruits those units that have better stats. In my AAR I fought against them too and they had a lot of triarii back then.

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Originally Posted by Ibn-Khaldun

They have the money for those units and as far as I know the AI always recruits those units that have better stats.

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Does this mean that AS will spam Thorakitai Agematos Basilikou (Hellenic Elite Spearmen) if they have enough money? Or perhaps Hypaspistai/Peltastai Makedonikoi/Argyraspides? In my longest campaign, the ongoing Romani one, I have begun attacking AS by 253 BC, therefore not giving them enough time to fully mobilize their forces.

I have a KH campaign that's lasted until 216 BC so far and about 5-8 years ago I was not seeing any less than 2 full units of TAB at any given moment.

And I'm sure that they had more, as they still had pretty much the whole AS starting empire(except for Western Anatolia :smash:) intact.

Does anyone have any advice for fighting these armies of Romani?

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Originally Posted by penguinking

Does anyone have any advice for fighting these armies of Romani?

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AP units and slingers. Play it smart and circle. You can hold them well with Phalanxes, but be careful not to get flanked yourself.

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Originally Posted by Cbvani

AP units and slingers. Play it smart and circle. You can hold them well with Phalanxes, but be careful not to get flanked yourself.

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I'm playing as the Casse, so no phalanxes. Slingers can't do much against the elites, I can shoot at them all day and only get a couple kills.

As the Casse you have some pretty impressive heavy infantry units of your own, or at least you should. Ship some over from your homeland.

Triarii are 1600 mnai for a unit of hoplites with 15 attack and 27 defense, half of which is armour. I'm considering bumping them up by 200 mnai so they're about on level with Thorakitai: the Triarii are WAAAY undercosted. Historicality is a priority, but balance is also an issue.

British sword masters will be good with their enormous AP Butterknifes (EAPBK):smg: but if you havn't reached time of soldiers yet then you should use... um:book:... actually you should get to time of soldiers before taking on the Romani:sweatdrop:

Milnaht and Teceitos should be effective.

why don't give uber-elites 2 turn recruitment time? if AI doesn' train them fine, they are supposed to be extremely rare anyway

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Originally Posted by penguinking

I'm playing as the Casse, so no phalanxes. Slingers can't do much against the elites, I can shoot at them all day and only get a couple kills.

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...which is why you shoot in their backs...

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Originally Posted by Aemilius Paulus

...which is why you shoot in their backs...

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Which is usually not possible.

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Originally Posted by Aemilius Paulus

Does this mean that AS will spam Thorakitai Agematos Basilikou (Hellenic Elite Spearmen) if they have enough money? Or perhaps Hypaspistai/Peltastai Makedonikoi/Argyraspides? In my longest campaign, the ongoing Romani one, I have begun attacking AS by 253 BC, therefore not giving them enough time to fully mobilize their forces.

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I think that if you give AI the time and the money they will start recruiting the elites. But it all depends of the AI behavior that is in descr_strat.txt file. That comfortable caesar and stuff like that.

In all my campaigns where the AS gets to keep it core cities for more than 50 years they´ve started running around Argyraspides, Thorakitai Agematos Basilikou and even some Kataphraktoi. So yeah, it happens. And yeah, I love it.