How much do you allow geography to dictate your army composition?

What i mean is, do you stick to a tried and trusted army composition or do you allow the aor system to dictate your armies depending on what can easily be recruited in that area?

e.g I play as the Hayasdan

At a very early stage you end up at war with Seleukids. This is a war I have chosen to pursue to the end, taking me east into Persia, west to asia minor and south into the middle east.
unfortunately the Ptolomaio declared war on me, again that is something I am pursuing to the end taking my armies deep into nubia and stretching west as far as kyrenaia.
Next the Carthaginians declared war me! pursuing them has stretched my nascent empire right across north africa and into sardinia and corsica.

With such stretched supply lines it is impossible for me to have any consistency in army composition.

Bearing in mind that the Hai "homeland" region is quite small, and that many of their unique troops require high level barracks which i really have (e.g armenian medium infantry require level 4 - which i dont think i have anywhere yet). It is hard to follow any "national" patter with my armies. Hayasdan can be considered a good cavalry faction. The family bodyguard units are excellent heavy cavalry, and they theoretically have access to horse archers (though the distance from where I can recruit them in the caucus mountains to anywhere else, means that they are hardly readily available.) Therefore the only consistent factor in my armies is the presence of the generals heavy cavalry.

I actually really enjoy the style of play that is forced on me by the aor system, it requires you to be a versatile general and make use of what is available, it provides a lot of variability in the battles you face. E.g in Egypt I am now heavily reliant on the native Egyptian infantry, in north Africa vs the Carthaginians I am having to make do with a rag tag collection of skirmishers, a few heavily diminished horse archer units and one or two Hai generals, in the middle east, asia minor and Persia I have at times been able to make use of more heavy troops such as the medium phalanx and jewish infantry.

So I am wondering do many people play like me or do they strive to have a consistent roster for their faction?

I'm am experiencing much the same in my Romani file, the further I move into Gaul the more reliant I become on Celtic Spearmen. Basically as soon as I take a city I build the conscripts for foreign natives before any sort of Government is established. That way I can garrison troops to defend, and send my Roman comprised armies back to Rome to retrain (very dangerous and time consuming I know). But a good general will adapt and control any forces to hold a position, plus the usage of forts before/after bridges works wonders in slowing down an opponent.

[QUOTE=KARTLOS;2406765]What i mean is, do you stick to a tried and trusted army composition or do you allow the aor system to dictate your armies depending on what can easily be recruited in that area?/QUOTE]

I think that the aor system does dictate my armies on the fact that they are the most readily recruited and quick to throw into the front lines. Continually sending Roman units is both time consuming and expensive, training foreign conscripts is quick and I dont really care if they perish in battle :P.

Although I wouldn't take a infantry based army into Sarmatia, (rather mostly horses), I guess the demographs do indeed dictate what army composition you would have.

To reiterate I am reliant on Celtic Spearmen, Slingers and Axemen to garrison cities until I can either train Roman units or recieve ones that have marched from the mainland. I will be starting a war soon in Greece so I would assume my army will be filled with Levy Hopilites?

~SV~

In early part of campaign, if expanding into a territory that didn't gain good factional troops, I'll rely on local ones.

But in late part of the campaign, raising a massive invasion force to subdue far away territory could be fun in some ways, right now I was playing KH, allready took whole Eastern Africa (the west side goes to karthadast), Mikhra Asia, and All Proper Hellas and Bosophorans. Right now, with about 40000 minai generated each turn, I raise a gigantic army of Hoplitai, Sphendonetai, and Hippeis to invade...... SWEBOZ!!!!

Depends whether I Blitz or play slow.

Blitzing you have to make use of local units.

Slow expansion and RP I build my armies in my homelands, investing a lot in them after saving up for a long time, supplement with a few locals and send them out. After a while I build new armies to relieve them as their units deplete, or send reinforcements, keeping the depleted fellows in reserve and merge when the new guys get depleted as well.

as the hai it is almost impossible to avoid blitzing to a certain extent. Once the seluekids declare war on you, i find it best to pursue them at every opportunity, taking advantage of poorly garrisoned cities etc If you dont do this you are surely doomed as the odds are stacked against you.

Once the wars i have been dragged into are finished i do intend to sit back for a while and develop my homeland.

For defensive armies I almost always use troops I can retrain locally. For large invasion forces, they tend to come from the homeland.

But pwning AS, Ptol and Carthies you have already won and it has become boring to play on- at least that is how I feel. I find that after the initial Blitz securing my economy, taking and sacking cities is often enough to curb my aggressive neighbours' potential to harm me while giving me money to build my own infrastructure and army.

I have played till dominance and boredness as SPQR 5+ times, 3 times as Sweboz, once as Baktria, once as AS and once as Getai- though a persistent CTD stopped that one just before the bifurcation point where I was unbeatable by anyone. So no Hai experience, it goes for all the factions I have played though.


That is OT in any case.

Very much! For example as Romani basically it was either marching my polybians across europe to fight AS or building regional mics. I went with regional mics cus I figured by the time I have 90 cities I won't need legions. Bad investment. How many other ways you know to show the might of your empire other than summoning everyone of your friends to fight for you? What army does not tremble at the sight of nimble numidians, hoplitae haploi, akontistas and gaeroas?

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What army does not tremble at the sight of nimble numidians, hoplitae haploi, akontistas and gaeroas?

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Eeeehhh... The Roman one...

When I play Rome local units are supplements, with 4-8 in a stack, or stopgap measure till I can get some proper Roman troops there who I know will never waver.

Meant to be sarcasm. Ideally that's what I like to do but that luxury clearly only lasts til the end of Punic/Gallic/Iberian/Illyrian war. I can slow down but AI doesn't always play historically. Without Marian being triggered through a general your other option is to invest in higher tier locals while waiting for your Polybians to arrive lol.

Did you also get the Roman AI suddenly got Marian troops in 220 BC?

For me it can depend on what faction I'm playing. In a Carthage game where my empire became pretty large I did use regional armies from time to time, but mostly I just shipped units around to where I needed them. The time delay waiting for them (or perfect timing needed to have them arrive just as I needed them) added to the challenge. I should note I considered the Iberian troops Carthage can recruit as not counting as regionals, though. I also think shipping troops around so much would be much tougher if I played a faction away from the Mediterranean.

One thing that may make it easier if you prefer to have at least some factional troops in each army is to raise a big stack of whatever unit you like best as the core of your armies and ship it to the front, then split it in two and add regional skirmishers, support troops, etc.