Macedon

Throw back a few phalanxes on the flanks in reserve out of phalanx mode. Slant them slightly so they are protecting your flanks. Once you see cavalry coming just turn on phalanx mode and leave them there. Don't form your phalanx into a single line of advance, that's not wise against Dacians. Alternatively, form your phalanxes into a single line but hire some barbarian mercenaries and put them behind your main phalanx line. Also, do not counter charge your cavalry, but let your phalanxes and mercenaries absorb the shock so the enemy loses his charge bonus. THEN you counter charge. That way you minimise casualties drastically and completely screw up the enemy's morale, especially if you're not doing a frontal countercharge. Your cavalry are least effective when used on cav-cav melee with both sides charging. As Macedon, it is essential that you have a healthy force of melee mercenary infantry when in barbarian areas.

I once fought two Dacian armies with one Macedonian. I had 3 levies, 6 light lancers, 2 generals and 4 barbarians/bastarnae. I offered my 3 levies alone to the first army (the second had not yet arrived), which promptly dashed itself to pieces on my levies while my mercenaries absorbed the shock from the second army's cavalry and my cavalry destroyed the first, putting them in the perfect position to destroy the second army from the rear after my levies turned, just in time to meet the second army's infantry which promptly dashed itself to pieces on it. The trick is, when fighting with phalanx and melee infantry, leave your melees out of the line and put them behind, because the barbarian AI unfailingly chooses to charge melee infantry over phalanx.

And one a final note, you should NEVER enter barbarian territory without cavalry, no matter how many phalanxes you have. That is sheer folly, because the barbs have the best light cav in the game. If don't have any cavalry, your phalanxes can only have the fate of being flanked and annihilated.

I knew I was being stupid :)

Cheers for the help.

Bastarnae mercenaries are pretty decent units, imo.

They're decent units?

Hell, they're more than decent units, they're damnedly good cavalry charge-stoppers. With 2 HP they can last really long and they can take charges incredibly well. Good to use them for general-hunters. SpawnofEbil and jacked, welcome to the Org :-D Forgot to say it the last time so I'll say it now. :) Macedon rocks!

Aye they do.

My favourite tactic is to deploy all my phalangites in a straight line (no surprises) . Normally my enemy charge in a column, so I normally have a few units spare. These guys on the end then wheel around and take down the enemy unit next to them. They rout pretty quickly, even with 2 militia hoplies pulling this off, and then the phalanx at right angles to the main line moves down the line.

Failing that, I get a ton of rhodian slingers and cretan archers and pepper them. I once routed an army using nothing by missile troops and lancers.

That works amazingly well. You can actually do a funnel effect. Have two phalanx walls but inverted. The middle is no phalanx but sheerly missiles with overlapping field of fire.

Behind, horde lancers.

They either engage phalanxes and dash themselves to bits while getting hit partially from the flanks by missiles or go for your missiles and get flanked then charged by mass cav.

Either way is a mass rout.

The flanks need extra guarding though for an inverted line.

The advantage is a clear field of fire for your missiles and sustained attrition.

oh, never used them before

what region can you get them in ~:confused:

The Balkans, and Asia Minor. Bastarnae are especially numerous (comparatively) in the Dacian and Thracian territories.

I guess I never tried to conquer that area

You should...that's the logical area of expansion for Macedon. *nod*

Wow you've been posting quite a bit these days. Only a few days and you're already up to 28 posts.

Alternatively pez, you don't HAVE to conquer Dacia, just make incursions into their territory with your General at Bylazora or Tylis and recruit Basternae every so often.

I prefer to let Dacia make the first move if they want a war with me.

I've started a new Macedonian game, and let me tell you, go for the Romans first. They are a right pain in the behind if you let them grow.

Btw-is there any way to increase unit sizes? Having a squad of 14 cavalry is a bit pointless.

You'll have to restart your campaign for the unit size change to have an effect.

Go to options/settings, havea look around there and you find something that gives the option to change the settings.

P.S. Sorry, I don't know the exact place to change settings.

It's in video settings, under advanced options. There's a unit size option. Alternatively you can edit the unit size in the preferences text file in the RTW root folder.

As for Rome, it's hardly a pain in the a**. Not at all. As long as you catch them before Marius, and you restrict yourself to defensive battles (unless you have a serious cav overkill) you're good to go. With a five-row pike line no legionnaire is going to be able to get through to force your pezhetairoi to use their pathetic daggers. But me, I entered Italy on turn 13, working on a strict timetable.

Dacia... yeah bastarnae recruitment drives are good, but I usually go whole hog and take out Dacia anyway. They're so weak, and they don't have the brains to antagonise Thrace for the sake of sea access, so they don't deserve to live. Darwin, my friend. Darwin.

ROME IS MINE!!!

I won't describe in much detail, you'll see why.
I began the siege, things progressed, I got to the main square, routed, got there again, all my cav routed to Roman generals (57 in one unit!!!), then I had a power cut. Lovely.

Siege of Rome Attempt 2

Went for a different approach this time. Sent some Mercenary hoplites (renamed them Corinthian Hoplites, because that's where I got that unit from) to the gateway. The general charged as planned and was killed. That general unit routed back to the main square with one man remaining. The Corinthians scaled the walls and were enveloped in a grulling fight against some full-strength Principes. Slowly but surely, the Corinthians died, until the final man realised he was completely outnumbered and took his chances against the ground. At which point, I sent my cavalry in (1 general, one Macedonian Cavalry, One Light Lancers, I attacked the one-man general's cav, then went back to the walls to attack the Principes, who had abandoned their vantage point of the walls. Annihalated the Principes, but with heavy casualties. Back to the centre square to take my chances against the Senate Faction leader (57-man cavalry!!), and lost. All the horsemen died. I sent in some more Corinthians, accompanied by Samnites and they set up outside the square. The Roman cavalry wasn't tempted. I charged the Samnites, and they charged back. Samnites routed, they pursued. Pursued right onto my spear points. Rome was mine.

Following the battle, I demanded the Julii become my protectorate, free of charge. They agreed. I now set my sights on Sicily whilst I rebuild my army in Rome, just waiting to attack the Julii.

I'll have to attack fast, because the Gaul are planning a major invasion from the north. I have no generals on Italy, so all my new cities could be bribed by Scipii in a number of turns, but generals are on the way. (I have 6 generals for 15 regions).

So, I think I'll try and cut a deal with the Gaul, I don't fancy their land, I'd much prefer to follow the route of Alexander, starting with the barbarians to the north of Macedon. Thrace and Dacia. Then I'll head east. As far east as possible... ~D

Just a quick feature to get phalanxes into a single line without any gaps:

Go to desc_formations, and edit the single line formation and changed the unit spacing from 2.0 to 0.0.

Now, group your phalanx units and sort them into a single line. With any luck, there should be no spaces between your phalangites, thereby preventing your guys from getting caght in the gaps.

Spawn, I love you. My levies were dying to falxmen because of that. Thank you sooooo much ^_^

Cheers. I knew that would come in useful to someone. It's not without shortcomings though.

For a start, it has this strange tendency to put royal pikemen at the left of your battle line. While this might be ok for some people, it means that due to the insane rightwards shuffle (Which shouldn't even happen with pikemen as they have no shields to hide behind historically) your royals will be easily flanked and it will cost you a lot of money.

well, historically it makes sense since they were the best troops (i.e. they stand the best chance against an enemy, in fact their melee attack is higher than their spear attack) except for the -tiny- fact that they were supposed to be on the RIGHT of the line. But no worries. You can always redeploy them in the right order, then move them forward in that order. That will lock in the battle order when marching, as long as you don't reset the line's width/depth, upon which there's a chance your pikemen will redeploy into funny orders IN FRONT of the enemy.

Last night I decided to start a Macedon campaign to see what they were like. Never tried them before. People are correct. The militia and levy pikemen units are very weak. Even when I double column (column within a column) they couldnt do much good against the enemy. It was the Brutii hastati that gave me the most grief. My men would just fall to them without much effort and/or turn and run away. They couldnt hold against a Brutii cavalry charge neither.

The Greeks have a much better army than the Macedons as well. I havent had a chance to test them against the Thracians. Thrace is allied with me in this campaign. I'm hoping that alliance will hold till I exterminate the Brutii. I beat the Greeks by sheer overpowering numbers and bribing. In fact thats how I been beating back the Brutii. A lot of bribing since my front linemen like to die so much. Luckily I have a very nice stream of cash coming into my treasury. Right now I control all of the Balkans and looking to invade Southern Italy. I finally got archery buildings in two of my cities so thats going to be a big help. I also have the ability to build some phalanx units (third tier phalanx) now so I'm gonna start swapping out my militia and levy pikemen for them. I'm hoping that'll help me out against the Brutii. If not then its going to be a extremely hard fight against the Brutii's two home cities.

I found the Macedon starting cavalry units to be okay but not great. 1 vs 1 against the Brutii cavalry they lose more often than win but against Greek and Rebel units they do the job pretty good as long as I can get directly behind them. Problem is they are good for maybe two charges and then they are too tired to be of much help. Heavy cavalry would be better but dont have any of them yet other than my generals units.

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ROME IS MINE!!!

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craterus did you finish that campaign yet ~:confused:

Some minor problems there--generally, you've not been using the strengths of the Macedonian troops, but you're expecting them to hold their own against everything the enemy throws at them without doing some playing-field levelling of your own.

The Macedonian strength lies in the early game not in its pikemen, but in its cavalry. Alexander the Great never intended his pikemen to be the warwinning arm, nor did he mean for them to take the brunt of any attack. It was always his cavalry that struckl the decisive blow, and indeed, it was the cavalry that often opened every battle he fought. It would serve you well to remember that when Macedonian kings began using phalanxes as the strike arm, they got run over by Rome.

Macedonian starting cavalry units, on the contrary to your assertions, are actually possibly among the best in the entire game. You may not have seen this, but Light Lancers have a charge bonus of 15, the highest you will see anywhere. Use this to good effect. Don't expect your LL to hold in a battle--they were not made for that. They are charge machines, so keep charging, withdrawing and charging again. Don't let them get bogged down. My strategy has been to either fight in all-cavalry armies with 12 LL, 4 Greeks and 2 generals in high-manoeuvre battles, or to field a heavy cavalry arm of 6-7 LL and 2 generals and only 4-5 pike units.

If you managed to get your LL into a one-on-one with Equites, then you are a bad general, pardon me for saying so. LLs are best used in bulk--no cavalry force, even if it be cataphracts or generals, can withstand 4 LL units charging at one. Sure the first unit will take losses, but once the other three units pile on they just get literally run over. And the advantage of LL is that no amount of armour-piercing attacks from the enemy will give them any advantage since the LL don't have armour as it is. Which means the LL can never fight at a disadvantage unless you're in forests.

Don't use your cavalry to charge so often. Save them up, only use them when it is urgent, necessary, and when it is strategic. This means you manoeuvre LL in big blocks of 3-4, not as individual units. That way, one huge charge will simply sweep away all opposition. If you do it right, you won't even need to charge a second time, just pursue. Macedonian cavalry is useful to take the brunt of a charge, but you don't get them till late, and they're not that necessary anyway. Ignore Greek cavalry. They are marginally higher-armoured LL without the charge bonus. In other words, they are a step back. With LL you can defeat even Parthia.

In my current campaign I have over 30 provinces, and the bulk of Egypt's armies have been crushed, even though they had liberal bowmen complements. No archers are needed except mobile ones. In other words, get Scythians, Bedouins. Cretans are also useful, but only for their higher attack. Otherwise their immobility is only a burden.

Pikemen are not to be used as battle openers, or aggressive forces. March them towards the enemy by all means, but leave them there in front of the enemy, or order them to march to a point behind the enemy line and make them stop once they join battle.

In military terms Pikemen are to be used only to 'fix' the enemy in place, immobilise him so he cannot redeploy to meet your real threat--the cavalry. While he's busy fighting off your sharp pointy sticks you crash into him from behind and flanks, or frontally if you must. That will break him. Your pikemen are not supposed to fight the whole battle by themselves. They will not hold, even the standard phalanx pikemen. But if you keep this doctrine in mind, you will be able to conquer the world with Levies and Militia, like I have. I am not joking when I say that I am in Turn 40, with the Balkans and half of Italy under my control, as well as parts of Egypt, the steppes and Asia Minor, but I have at the current moment a grand total of ONE phalanx pikemen units. The rest are levies and militias.

Talking about flanks, it is not commonly known that your militia hoplites make good flank guards in a sense. Levies are hopeless in melee attack (2/1 charge) but militia hoplites have 4/1 at least. And they are more manoeuvrable than pikes when it comes to the crunch. That's what Royal pikes are there for in the end--they are meant as flank guards, not as main battle liners.

Greeks vs Thrace? Pure slaughter. For the Thracians, that is. As Greeks you have no choice but to use your infantry because your cavalry is crap, but as Macedonians you have that option.

I'll employ some more L.Lancers in my armies and see how they work out. So far the Brutii have had more cavalry than me so they tend to counter my hit-from-behind tactics pretty good so far.

The front linemen need to hold the line while I work my cavalry though. So far they dont do that very well. Hence my hopes the new phalanx units will do a better job. Now that I have archers this should help the front line hold back the enemy better. Soften them up first at least.

The Brutii are down to their original two cities in Southern Italy so they cant outproduce me anymore at least. Just got to get a small navy put together to ferry my men over. My original 3 unit navy was sunk while I was expanding on land so I need to rebuild it. I didnt think the Brutii would attack them in harbor but they did. Usually the AI ignores ships in the harbor but this time they didnt.

You should've crushed the navies early ingame, and pursued land campaigns only when you have some sort of naval superiority to stop the Romans from bringing over reinforcements.

As to the Romans having cav superiority.... Well, you just have to outproduce them. From my experience Levies can take any cavalry charge unless it's delivered by a faction leader or heir, so I'm sorry but I really don't see why you're having problems that require you to urgently produce phalanx pikemen. As for cavalry charges, try to hold off to the last moment before charging, let your infantry take as much of that as possible. Make them the sacrificial lambs if need be. While the cavalry pursues the routers they will buy time for your cavalry to come up from behind. The AI has a habit of making its cavalry units charge one by one as it is, so it is actually possible to swarm and overwhelm one and most of a second before the AI can bring all its cavalry to bear against you by which time you would have the numerical superiority. Dunno, your BRutii AI seems different from mine which was low-cavalry, high-infantry. But it's worth a try. As is LL are more valuable because you need the speed.

Try to lure the enemy cavalry away from the main formation by swinging wide and rear while keeping your units concentrated and moving together, the AI has a habit of spreading out its cavalry to catch you, and once they divide, you strike and defeat in detail. If you can move the cavalry away there should be a significant advantage to your LL since they can run faster so they can quickly get into the position you need for a charge in flank or rear. And if the AI charges it will only be aiming for one of the units you have in that swarm of LL, so the other 3 have an unimpeded attack. That's a gameplay flaw built into the whole thing, so take advantage of it by overwhelming the AI target selection algorithm or whatever you call it.

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Originally Posted by jacked

craterus did you finish that campaign yet ~:confused:

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No, I haven't played much since that post. I'm just about to kill off Julii. I am sieging Arretium and Ariminium (I bribed Segesta) and I will wait out those sieges. I've found Macedon is a lot better defending. Assaulting a city is hell with Macedon; you have to send cavalry after cavalry if it's a large force to kill.

Also, I have an assassin navigating around Sicily. I've assassinated 3 Scipii family members, leaving two left. Lol, faction heir and leader will be tough but my assassin has 8 points (eyes) and I think he is up to the job. Hopefully, he will not be distracted by his catamite...

I have achieved good results with Royals in towns. They almost block one street alone and thanks to their pikes, most enemies will have considerable trouble to get into melee. As long as your units are upgraded and your general has some command stars, nothing should go wrong. Against the Romans though, you feel the disadvantage of mostly having to wait for the enemy to charge you -- which they do only after having thrown their #%$&§-pila in my experience.

And your assassin....don't try to kill the leader and heir while they are in towns or accompanied by larger armies: you'll likely lose him without a reload. Even with my 9-eyed assassin, an attempt on the lonely 3-influence faction leader had a meagre 16% chance of success (ok I didn't know which traits he had...maybe you're better off ~:) ), so I killed him personally next turn.

The Brutii are heavy in hastati and cavalry in this campaign. Never seen them with so much cavalry before. The AI seems to have reduced their archers and put in cavalry. I increased my LLs and it has helped some but their cavalry keep waiting for me to attack with my LLs before they go in. And they arent attacking by single units neither. The AI is actually being decently smart for a change. I'm playing VH/M so maybe thats the reason? this campaign has been a real challenge unlike most of the other campaigns as far as AI play goes.

I also think this game is bugged more than I remember playing it originally. I'm seeing alot of odd things I dont remember from the first play through with it. I just now destroyed the last of the Brutii. I assaulted their home capital city of Tarentum. I got all the way to the main square and killed all their men including the generals. I beat the countdown clock by 10 seconds. I sat back savoring my victory watching the clock tick down and then the victory window pops up. It tells me I had a close defeat. I was so angry I wanted to put my fist through my monitor. :furious3:

I knew I had them beat. No other troops in the city and the game gave them the victory. The city turned rebel since my troops were pulled back. So I figure if the game is gonna cheat then so will I. I saved before the fight like I usually do in case I want to refight a battle for fun or personal experience. So I went back to my saved point. Found the cheat to give me an auto victory to give me the city. I figure I won the city by a fair fight so I deserved it. ~D

I think over time files got corrupted as the game sat unused for quite a while after initially playing it. Lot of bugs I see now I didnt see the first time playing through and the more I save my games the more they seem to get messed up. This is using the v 1.0 game. No patches. I heard something about a save game bug that alters things in some posts so maybe thats it?

What I intend to do is come Friday I'm going to uninstall the game. Defrag the hard drive. Then reinstall the game and patch 1.2. Then I'm going to download RTR 6.0 and try that. Never played the RTR mods and I'm getting bored with the original game anyway. RTR probably keep me preoccupied for a few more weeks before I get bored with it altogether.