Advice about my 1st barbarian faction please

[NeoSpartan]

lol...

fellas the main point about the steppes is this:

Don't let your bare chested Sweboz army get caught up in the open against a HA, archer, and heavy cavarly army. If your going to the open steppes, take some heavy cavarly with you, hire some HA mercs, and train some local HAs.

....and to do that you want to have a good economy rolling.

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

As the Lusotanns, I always choose to put off the war with Carthage for as long as possible - at least 50 years, longer if I can. Gives me time to take all the Elutheroi cities in Spain and southern Gaul, and build up my economy. I'm happy to pay Carthage 100 mnai a turn to maintain my alliance with them.

Carthage usually doesn't become aggressive in Spain until she's conquered all of North Africa.

[hoom]

The 'Barbarian' factions are great fun in my experience.
They tend to start with very limited populations & borderline economies but have strong units that can generally be thrown around with abandon in a way you would never try with 'Civilised' units.
Need to make use of those starting armies to expand (battle casualties help balance the books ).
Some factions can only build the basic roads so travel can be slow.

Aedui & Arverni bash each other up & playing as one you need to wipe out or cripple the other ASAP so you can get on with unifying Gaul.
It gets pretty hairy early on with no perimeter to speak of, large budget deficit & big enemy armies roaming the borders.
Once Gaul is unified or nearly enough, you get a healthy economy & lots of units with big, high lethality swords & increasingly with good armour: Solduri & with reform Nietos but even Botroas are pretty strong plus there is the Gaesatae & Milnacht.
Leuce Epos are magnificent & Brihentin tough cavalry that can duke it out with infantry quite well when you are lacking in that department.
Enslaving Masallia helps tremendously with the early manpower shortage.
From there, the world is your oyster. (though you can find yourself fighting Sweboz, Rome & Carthage/Lusotannan all at once )

Lusotannan are slow expanding & fairly weak in troops to start with but once they control the Iberian peninsula they have a strong economy, a secure base & good troops: Caetrati have AP & can take on much heavier infantry, the Scutarii are good spear units & there is good cavalry around.

Getai are much fun.
They start with no bordering enemy faction & fairly straightforward expansion against Eleutheroi.
Drapani are very strong as long as there are no missiles, the Komatai are good enough to hold a line (at least in a push) despite classification as skirmishers.
Once you have a vaguely decent economy going, you can expand south into Greece at the expense of Makedon/Epirus &/or KH (AP falxes FTW), giving a strong base & economy to head into Illyria then Italy or Asia minor.
The scripted Boii to the NW keep the Sweboz at bay & are best left alone.
You can also expand into the Steppe with decent native HAs & regionals too.

Haven't played Casse or Sweboz.

[zooeyglass]

As for Casse,

well, a difficult starting position, in that it requires patience to work around the british isles dealing with the eleutheroi, but in conquering the british isles you are offered a very strong and secure base, from which you can really spank out some beaut troops (milnaht, champions, etc - and sotaroas are great against other armour-lacking troops, as often fielded by the eleutheroi or barbarian factions in that neck of the woods).

in getting your economy together you also get the opportunity to diversify in your approach to conquest. i used bribery a fair bit, especially to stop the aedui from conquering provinces i wanted to conquer (thus avoiding war with them) and to take provinces from the lusotanan (again, avoiding war). so that's recommended. they are a great faction.

guess the biggest weakness is those chariot riding FMs can be quite pesky to control and don't pack the same punch as armoured cavalry FMs.