Rome are just... scary...

[Dayve]

I've been playing a relatively slow campaign as Carthage, waging war by proxy, directly waging war but not steamrolling my opponents, funding the enemies of my enemies, all that kind of stuff.

I notice Rome is steamrolling the Aedui in Gaul, i mean really steamrolling them, the Aedui have just been beaten back little by little ever since the war started. I'm allied to Rome, and i chose Rome over the Aedui when the war started, but the reason for that is because so many of my cities generate an immense amount of wealth through trade with Roman ports, it would hit my economy hard if i were to all of a sudden lose it.

So, i stayed allied with Rome but have been giving huge amounts of financial aid to the Aedui, and although they only have 5 cities left they are fielding fairly large armies, so my financial aid is doing what i intended it to do. However, the Romans are just cutting through these armies like they were nothing.

Curious, i decided to take a spy and have a look at what the Romans were doing, and what i saw shocked me, especially since i'm going to have to fight with them at some point.

Stack after stack composed of nothing but Extraordinarii and Triarii, out in the field, and sat in their every city in Italy. No wonder my allies are getting destroyed.

[juba1]

good luck

[Marcus Ulpius]

That's what I see in any campaign when I'm not playing as Romans myself. Their strong economy, plus the bonus from the script and relatively cheap heavy infantry make them field full stacks consisting nearly totally of extraordinarii, triarii and an odd princepses here and there.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

That's odd, it didn't seem to happen in 1.0. Fighting them as the Maks I faced a fairly varried stack profile.

[LordCurlyton]

It also depends on what they've been fighting. Against the Celtic factions, the units that will perform the best are the PE, EE, and Triarii. About the only thing that the Celts can do is hope for a stack with multiple uber-FMs otherwise they get withered away. Especially if they continue to fight the Sweboz.
I've seen Rome field plenty of variety as long as they fight variety.

[Dayve]

Well, the early Celtic units have a hard enough time standing up to even Hastati, provided that the Hastati are in a shield to shield formation...

How the hell they hope to defeat these armies is totally beyond me. Let me get some screenshots to show you what i mean.

[SwissBarbar]

But thats the point. Defeating rome easily - espeacially with carthage - would be a joke

[a completely inoffensive name]

Luckily the M2TW recruitment system is different.

[Tyrfingr]

Rome never fares good in any of my non-romani campaign, they always ends up in the Alps, chased there by the "Epirote Empire of Taras" or by the carthaginians. If they do manage to grab hold of the whole italian peninsula + Sicily, they usually expand westwards into Iberia and gets eaten alive by the Brown Beast.

[Dayve]

Here is what Roma is producing.



Here's an army just outside of Patavium. This has a little variety to it, but it's still their most top end units with a few light infantry.



I'm not saying defeating Rome should be easy, it shouldn't, it should be really really difficult, but not in this way. It should be difficult as it was historically, as in, Rome having a seemingly never ending supply of men.

The way it is now, Rome has a never ending supply of men, but apparently they're all Extraordinarii and Triarii.

[antisocialmunky]

I've seen this all the way back in x.7x where they produced nothing but Triarii.

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

In my 1.1 campaign, the Romans fielded good mixtures of Hastati - Principes - Triarii - Pedites Extraordinarii with a ratio of about 1 : 2 : 2 : 2. Not perfect, but way better than the awful Celtic hordes they fielded in 0.81 and also 1.0.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Well as you reasoned "I don't give up an alliance because it would hurt my economy" ... the same applies to the Romani: for them it is usually over 50% of their oversea trade. You are gaining a lot of money from that, but the Romani have their Greek back-up partners as well. I actually think that the Romani are one of those factions which the AI is capable of managing the Exchequer of.

[Novellus]

The Romans gave me a difficult time when I was playing as KH (especially when VH/VH actually gives them crazy morale and attack). But they hate cavalry. And when I played as Epeiros, they hated phalanxes. The AI doesn't know how to handle fights against pike units, so hammer and anvil tactics work excellently. I would go shopping for the Mercenary Phalangite units or crank out some Elite African Pikemen (those might not be until a later time) to battle the Romans. But whatever you do, split them up as best as you can. It'll be a real mess if you face a giant stack rather than smaller armies.

[LordCurlyton]

Yeah beating the Romans as the player is not terribly difficult even given that as EB has evolved the Romans have at least tended to field more Equites Extraordinarii. Cav and phalanxes = instant win. Since the Carthies can make the Elite African Pikemen pre-reform you're good to go. Heck, I consider those babies the best auto-calc unit around since they will rack up tons of kills and are the last units to start losing troops in auto-calcing.

[Dayve]

Yeah i suppose you're right. I've just started shipping those elite ones to the armies on my border, it's still gonna be a pain in the ass to fight them though.

[gamegeek2]

Seen it before...old news. Rome spams PE/Triarii and Illyrioi Paraktioi

[The_Brittunculi]

I found Rome easy enough in my Carthage campaign, just use hammer and anvil tactics like it was mentioned before. I used heavy infantry to hold their infantry in place while I repeatedly charged their rear with elephants and heavy cavalry. It works really well.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

It all comes down to AI personalities mentioned in the descr_strat.txt file.

At the moment Romani AI personality is: balanced caesar

This means they are "biases towards growth, taxable income, trade level bonuses (roads), walls and xp bonus buildings" and "biased towards heavy infantry, light cavalry, siege artillery"

So no wonder they recruit PE and triarii.

If you want to see them doing something else then check this thread and change descr_strat file accordingly. The fact that it's about 3,5 years old shouldn't matter.

[iamphet]

In my Sweboz campaign Romans used to train principes, triarii and pedites extraordinary. When they got Marian reforms and their old troops depleted, I had to kill off armies of town watches
So it seems it depends on their finances as well.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

Of course it does. Rome with money is a scary enemy!

[A Terribly Harmful Name]

If you want to see them doing something else then check this thread and change descr_strat file accordingly. The fact that it's about 3,5 years old shouldn't matter.

Giving a quick glance at it, I think that an adequate pre and even post-Marian personality would be "napoleon" instead of "Caesar", since the AI would presumably add some Hastati and Rorarii into the mix. However I think that was already thoroughly tested, and the AI will suck anyway no matter the circumstances.

[a completely inoffensive name]

The best way to have the Romani be balanced is to be the Romani!

[gamegeek2]

do spearmen count as heavy infantry, or are they not applied in AI personalities?

[a completely inoffensive name]

They must be considered as heavy infantry considering Roman AI keeps spamming Triarii.

[Novellus]

They must be considered as heavy infantry considering Roman AI keeps spamming Triarii.

Let's see:

Big shields
Lorica Musculata
Greaves
Pseudo-Corinthian Helm

I'd say Triarii qualify as heavy infantry. Swords aren't a requirement to be a heavy infantry unit.

[LordCurlyton]

More importantly, the AI sees them as "Heavy Infantry" rather than "Spearmen". Polybian Triarii, however, are considered spearmen, and thus usually once the Polybians arrive I see my AI Romans give up mostly on Triarii and switch to PE, EE, and Principes, at least until (if!) they encounter a faction that begins to spam cavalry at them.