Factions: the good, bad, and ugly

So far I've tried the campaigns for the Brutii, Julii, Greeks, Scythians, Armenians, Pontus, Thracians, Numidians, and the Spanish.

Brutii are very easy. Your two main cities are in Italy, protecting you from attack. You simply have to ship over armies, and they can't do squat. Of course, you have to fight the military juggernaut of Macedon, with its overpowered cavalry, but you have the more advantageous starting position.

Julii are easy. Julii start off next to gaul, who are ridiculously powerful. But, of course, their troops blow compared to yours, and you can just rush them early on and cripple them. The territories you loot aren't nearly as good as the mediterranean ones, but you have a much more focused front and don't need to worry about 3 or 4 front wars, like the Brutii.

Greeks are moderately easy, you have the phalanx, which the computer has trouble beating. On the other hand, its ALL you got, so it can get frustrating. My personal Phalanx tactic cannot be used by the greeks because they don't have horse archers. :embarassed: However, in defensive seige battles, you cannot be beat. Greeks are a very solid defensive faction, but have trouble attack. My advice is to never attack. Just lay seiges and let them attack you, so you can use your phalanx to the best advantage. Greeks need to worry about Macedon and eventually brutii, but neither are especially deadly to you because they don't have chariots or horse archers, which are death to the Greeks.

Scythians are extremely easy. Computer players simply cannot beat horse archers, which is what the scythians excel in. You have a great starting position with only 1 front and an opportunity to attack the very weak thracians. Of course, your first objective is to destroy the macedonians, and then the greeks and brutii. The dacians and parthians will leave you alone from what i've seen. Its really hard to lose with these guys. Axes and horsemen are the way to go with these guys.

Armenians are my current game, and they are my favourite so far. I use my Phalanx tactic and the computer loses. the AI doesn't know how to beat this Cataphract archers are simply ridiculous, great shots and powerful in melee. However, the egyptians are always bastards and you will most likely be in constant conflict with them. All the other factions are push overs, especially parthia, who you should cripple on turn 2 or 3 by taking their 2 provinces due east of yours. The armenians get very good infantry and very good cavalry, the only thing they don't get are elephants and chariots.

Anyway, RTW calls me, I'll write some more later. Just thought that some of you might want to know which factions are easy and which are hard as hell. Here's a quick summary of the others:

Pontus: easy, fun units
Thracians: extremely difficult, cool units - horrible starting position
Numidians: very difficult, cool units - that suck, powerful neighbors.
Spanish: impossible. I've done the campaign 3 times, and I'm dead long before turn 20 each time. the gauls send in 2 or 3 maximum size army and rape you. Have a nice day.

Good Sir DisruptorX,

Would you mind describing your Armenian phalanx tactic? What does the computer try to do to counter it?

Im playing Seleucids atm. The AI has the right idea against my Phalanxes. Its actually funny. Usually im heavily outnumbered by eastern infantry, and they will just attack my flanks totally avoiding the center. I of course have totally adjusted to this tactic and I now have 2 to 4 units of Cataphracts on the wings waiting for this mad rush to my flanks. I imagine the AI attempts to get around that semi hedgehog by using archers if it has it and sending its infantry to the "flanks" it may have trouble finding the flanks in that setup however ;p

Greeks have archers..

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mr. Juice

Good Sir DisruptorX,

Would you mind describing your Armenian phalanx tactic? What does the computer try to do to counter it?

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You computer will not launch a full out attack and therefore you can kill it piecemail. I have done a full circle before, and the computer didn't know what to do, not having a valid target confuses the computer and it sends maybe a couple of units at you at a time. The cat archers are what cause the damage with this formation, although the computer willl lose a unit or two to the phalanx wall itself.

As osbot mentioned, the AI tactic is "mad rush for the flanks". With no flanks, the AI appears to suddenly have no idea what to do, and most of its makes dumb moves, sits backs, or luanches a sucide attack.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ktonos

Greeks have archers..

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I never said they didn't......

They do not have horse archers. Archers aren't very usefull on the offensive, they are best for fighting seiges.

Ahhhh... I see now. Thanks.

Scipiones are fun. It takes a strong Navy, but if you can grab Carthage and Sicily, it's not that important. The open area makes for great Cav armies/battles.

Sorry man, I did not see the "horse" part in your post.

Playing as the Greeks but the lack of different units is frastrating indeed even if you can recruite Spartans.

The most fun factions must be the Egyptians and the Macedonians. Both have very special units wich are exciting to use.

If you want a challenge, try the British. While having a nearly invulnerable island production machine might sound nice, the British have two big problems: 1) They have no cavalry (all their cav units are chariots), 2) they have no archers (just slingers).

Usually I can deal with no cav or no archers, but not both. The problem is when facing an enemy who fields archers. Counter archer fire can solve that problem, as can cavalry, but with neither, you're pretty much resigned to being a pincushion. Fortunatly that doesn't matter during the early part of the campaign (the other barbarian factions don't have much in the way of missile troops either). But if the Roman troops start fielding archers, or you head east and run into the Parthians, you are going to be in big trouble.

The chariots suffer from a big problem in that they can't "mop up" very easily. While they can cause units to rout effectively, they cannot take advantage of that rout like cavalry can. They simply do not kill spread-out units quickly enough. I've seen some British chariot units spend 10 time-accelerated minutes trying to kill the last dozen or so men in a routing unit before. A simple unit of light cavalry can kill hundreds of fleeing enemy men in the same time.

Oh, and if you like playing on hard or worse battlefield AI, you will have to deal with the attack/defensive bonuses the AI gets in hand-to-hand combat. I did a bunch of tests, and on Hard, the AI gets a huge combat bonus (in controlled Hastati vs Hastati tests I saw the AI beat me 100% of the time with consistently 2/3 of their men left and about 5 of my men left). What this means is that you have to use flanking tactics to win, and w/o cavalry, this becomes a lot harder. Head-on fights simply won't work on Hard.

Thus, if anyone is able to win the big campaign (50 territories + rome) as the British, I'm going to be very impressed, even more impressed if they do it on Hard.