Good starter factions for an EB noob

[woad&fangs]

Go with the Romans. They have one of the best economies in the game and once you kick the Epeirotes out of Taras you can basically pick your fights. Also, iirc the team added some cool music/voices for the Romans in 1.1

[Fish-got-a-Sniper]

But if my understanding is correct, they can only recruit native troops in Italy until the Marian reforms, right? Then how do you wage war outside of Italy without worrying about a load of micromanagement.

[Long lost Caesar]

Regionals are actually pretty good, especially the Gauls (check the recruitment viewer) not to mention mercs aswell.

[Korlon]

Just bring your natives in using a few boats or just leg them over there. The game's pretty heavy on using regional troops, regardless of faction, and the Romani and Kart-Hadast does just that.

[/Bean\]

romes one of the easiest to start off with because, as long as your sensible, you have a great economy, and theres no need (unless you choose to at your own risk) to have more than one enemy at a time. This was you can like he said above, you can pick your enemies, and make a fortune out of trade. My advice is to stay allied with carthage for as long as possible (they make you maga rich, and your rear is basically safe) and to stop either of the gallic factions from getting too powerful. Then you can basically have free reign.

[konny]

But if my understanding is correct, they can only recruit native troops in Italy until the Marian reforms, right? Then how do you wage war outside of Italy without worrying about a load of micromanagement.

Yes. It is a faction with ascending difficulty. That is, the start is compareble easy but it becomes much more difficult the more you expand. That's the reason why Rome is a good faction to start with. Also the Romans have a lot of very good (and cheap) average units but hardly any elites. That also will become challanging when the game procedes.

Karthage would be another one, but it requires more micromanagement right from the start because all your lands are seperated by water.

Also a good to one start with are the Sweboz: disband your cavalry and run amok to conquer all rebell settlements around, other factions will leave you alone for the first decades. Once you get your economy under controll the game becomes much fun - but also much more difficult as soon as you go on serious conquest due to the recruitment situation (the same as the Romans).


The Hellenic factions for example all have a descending difficulty. That is, you usually start with an Empire short before ruin and at war with at least one stronger neighbour. When you manage to survive the first twenty or so years the game becomes much more easyer because you can recruite your factional units across most of the map.