Roman: Scipii

[Doug-Thompson]

The Scipii have the most clear-cut mission of any of the Roman factions. Their job is to kill the Carthaginians. The also need to solidify their control of Sicily, but that's part and parcel of the overall mission.

Carthiginians are easier to destroy sooner than later. Kick them right off of Sicily and don't be shy about enslaving the Greek city of Syracuse and committing massacre in Lilybaeum. People like to preserve those cities for good troops and income, but that is a mistake. Your true goal is to build up as big an army as you can and get it across the water into North Africa as soon as this can be done. You don't have troops to spare for a big garrison. I've even hired mercenaries after a failed siege, which is a no-no with other Roman factions in the cash-tight early game.

If the Sentate gives you a mission in Greece, take the town, massacre the inhabitants and take your army right back to the war in the central Mediterranean.

A note about Mount Etna, the volcano near Messina. It will erupt. You don't want to have troops or fleets near it when that happens. Bring new troops and leaders from Italy to the point of land behind Messina and disembark them there. Use your full movement allowance next turn to march armies past Mount Etna. If you're besieging, take care that you don't lose a battle and have to retreat to the vicinity of Mount Etna. You will lose troops and you could lose generals if it erupts.

After securing Sicily, it's time for the main event: The invasion of North Africa. Collect your forces in Lilybaeum and invade in one jump. I've even invaded North Africa before the final conquest in Sicily, when the Senate ordered me to take Thapsus.

One thing to notice about moving across the sea against the superior Carthaginian fleet: Don't move beyond horizon range. Move to the limit of your fleet's visibility range when making the all-important invasion crossing. Take another look around, then move some more, avoiding enemy fleets. You want to get across the strait into North Africa in one turn and disembark your troops, a diplomat and your best general without accidentially bumping into anybody.

You will probably have to commit massacre to at least one of either Carthage or Thapsus in order to have enough troops left over from garrison duty to take the other.

Once you take Carthage and Thapsus, you can forget about the Carthaginians in Spain. They're a remnant, at least for now.

By now, the Brutii, Greeks and Macedonians are having a big brawl. Build up your troops and fleets and backstab the Greeks in Sparta. Chances are you'll get at least two of Sparta, Corinth and Athens. You'll now have a new, very nice base in Greece.

Go over to the other Greek cities in Asia Minor. Be on the lookout for Greek armies led by generals that you can bribe to add talent to your faction. It can be very expensive, but notice that you can bribe a general, then often hire a lot of mercenaries, which I assume were his recently disbanded troops.

The Greek provinces in Asia Minor, including Rhodes, have three wonders of the world. Taking them grants enormous prestige. They're also rich provinces in their own right.

By now, you're probably at war with Egypt. Keep it naval. You will need to soften them up a lot, probably, before dealing any knockout blows.

The rest is up to you.

[camulos]

Doug's strategy works extremely well for Scipii but i'd like to add a couple of notes.

1) For me the volcano on Sicily erupted in 261. Don't keep any family members or important units in Messana until after this happens because they can get killed.

2) A good approach to conquering Carthage is this. Don't take Lilybaeum right away. Make 2 armies, with 2 good generals. Send the larger force with the best commander by boat to Carthage. Form your second army on the border between Syracuse and Lilybaeum. (be sure to bribe any remaining greek armies out of the way) Once both armies are in place, attack Carthage and Lilybaeum on the same turn. The reasoning for this is so you don't have to declare war on Carthage before shipping your troops. Early in the game they have a very strong navy which can give you trouble transporting forces. Once Carthage is taken their economy is crippled and you will see most of their ships disappear. After this Thaspus will fall easily and you can mop up any roaming armies.

[metatron]

I recommend a cavalry force of heavy cav if you're fighting the Numidians. Their provinces cover alot of ground, and they have particularly light forces. It has worked for me well.

However, when it comes to the Spanish, be careful.

[Phill Davies]

My Empire is now pretty big, I own all Africa and a good portion of Asia Minor, Greece and Londinium (Hey, I wanted a little piece of home)

I found keeping the citizens happy a problem in the former Egyptian cities of Alexandria and Thebes. I had to transfer my Capital to Athens which is a nice central point on the map.
Solved the problems of unhappy citizens in one go.:)

[Lanemerkel1]

I had to transfer my Capital to Athens

how the hell do you do that?

[Ludens]

how the hell do you do that?

Open the city window of the city you want to be the new capital, go to city details and press the middle left button (with the black castle). It takes one turn to reach effect.

[Lanemerkel1]

Open the city window of the city you want to be the new capital, go to city details and press the middle left button (with the black castle). It takes one turn to reach effect.

thank you

[Avicenna]

I recommend a cavalry force of heavy cav if you're fighting the Numidians. Their provinces cover alot of ground, and they have particularly light forces. It has worked for me well.

However, when it comes to the Spanish, be careful.

There's no need to commit a huge force to destroy the Numidians. After wiping out the Carthaginian presence in Africa, take and exterminate Cirta and Tingi, while wiping out the huge Numidian armies usually present in the area. The southern part of Africa in the game is usually deserted and easily taken by a few units of equites recruited from Carthage, which gives you a few general promotions as well.

[Goalie]

Numidians can be taken care of pretty easily with a small army of about 3 archers, 4 roman calvary, and 4-5 Legionary Cohorts or such.

[Divine Wind]

Once youve taken Carthage, you have an excellent base in which you can build strong troops. The numidians arnt worth worrying about. There vanilla spearmen get beaten by most roman units, and the skirmishers cant do (pardon my french) sod all! Once i take carthage one army to take the numidians is enough, concentrate your forces to the east and the eventual rise of the pharoahs.

[fallon144]

I think its essential that you take greece and the northern italian provinces as soon as possible since the brutii and the julii then have to travel further to expend their territory.

once you expand your empire around italy (greece, southern france, austria and swiss) then you can easily take the senate once you're ready without having to ship your troops from all over the map

[Doug-Thompson]

A good approach to conquering Carthage is this. Don't take Lilybaeum right away. Make 2 armies, with 2 good generals. Send the larger force with the best commander by boat to Carthage. Form your second army on the border between Syracuse and Lilybaeum. (be sure to bribe any remaining greek armies out of the way) Once both armies are in place, attack Carthage and Lilybaeum on the same turn. The reasoning for this is so you don't have to declare war on Carthage before shipping your troops. Early in the game they have a very strong navy which can give you trouble transporting forces. Once Carthage is taken their economy is crippled and you will see most of their ships disappear. After this Thaspus will fall easily and you can mop up any roaming armies.

Nice!

[afrit]

Err, this is probably obvious to most, but I missed it: at the beginning of the campaign (at least on VH/VH) you have a nice army sitting in your fleet.

I didn't know about it till about turn 10 or so when I needed my fleet to transport an army to Carthage. I was (pleasantly) surprised to see it contained a bunch of Hastati. Of course, had I known about it, I would have gotten to a much better start!

[Torqemada]

A quick note.

The Samanite Spearmen have the same base stats as Triarii. I've found them incerdibly useful as an early roman spearwall. Alot better than worthless townwatch. Although town watch isn't as worthless as Iberian Infantry.

[Odysseus]

Don't leave Carthage alone in Spain. I have had them expand and nip me in the ass one too many times.

[Herakleitos]

A quick note.

The Samanite Spearmen have the same base stats as Triarii. I've found them incerdibly useful as an early roman spearwall. Alot better than worthless townwatch. Although town watch isn't as worthless as Iberian Infantry.

I always thought they were really crap... Do you know how their morale is?

@Phil, about Egypt; if you have Memphis all the Egyptians love you because you control the pyramids!

[Slon]

Some steps to help you begin:

Move all your troops to your province in Sicily. Leave only a young and able governor on Capua along with some peasants or town watch (if you don't have any, recruit some). Start beseiging Syrcacuse as soon as you can so that you don't run out of turns and become forced to Assault it. Syrcacuse will be your main troop production area, so I recommend setting to be your Capitol and quickly upgrading your unit production buildings. Once you have archers, build a few of them (3-5), some Principes (I recommend 7 units), and maybe 3-4 Equites. As always, make sure you always build your own temple after destroying their temple to decrease cultural penalty(?). Don't bother building the Balista, it sucks since it can't shoot from behind your lines, and will constantly cause you trouble since enemies will tend to cavalry charge it and you usually won't be able to move troops in front of it to intercept quickly enough. Just wait until you get heavy onagers. Now, take the western Carthaginian province in Sicily once you have the troops. Build it up and retrain. At this point, make sure you have a large and well-trained fleet because you will get TONS of blockade missions. Start building a second similar army in Syracuse.

At this point, the Senate may have given you the mission of taking Thermon. If they haven't, they probably will. I recommend sending your second invasion army to take it. Make sure you send a diplomat and spy with them to bribe away armies! Once you take thermon, expand eastward into athens and southward towards Sparta. Once you control the lower lands, head towards Macedonia and take Macedon out of the game. If you don't they will keep pissing you off with small invading forces. Set up garrisons and build the cities up. Make sure you have 1-2 large armies in that Greek area to be sure you don't get invaded. You won't have time to quickly get an army from Syracuse to Greece. It's basically fairly easy from here on out. Just expand into Crete, Rhodes and the mainland provinces north of Rhodes to finish off the Greeks. If you don't, their strong fleets might slow you down and maybe cause you to get angry, but they will be too weakened to do anything at this point. You are done here, for now.

Meanwhile, send your army in Sicily to invade Carthage. Take their capitol (carthage) with the army that you kept in Sicily and expand south-eastward, taking those two settlements. Then, build up Carthage (this will be a MAJOR money make for you) and make two more armies. Leave the current army to guard carthage! Send one army South-east to take Sahara and the other Numidian provinces, all the way to Lybia. Send the other army to attack the south-western Numidian and Spanish provinces. Once done, keep that army there to guard that area to prevent Carthage and Spain from retalitating against you and retaking their southern provinces. Don't worry too much, though. They will be reluctant when attacking across the sea. Next, expand towards Egypt. Memphis, Thebes and Alexandria are all very close and will be easy to guard. Take them and don't expand farther for now. You will have to capture lots of land before you get to any settlements worth taking. Plus, they will be difficult to defend because the settlements east of Memphis and Alexandria are huge and will be very hard to defend. At about this time (or maybe before?) there will be the Marian reforms. This is why stopping the expansion when you have such easy-to-defend borders is important! Build up armies in your good settlements (I recommend using Legionary Cohorts as they are easy to retrain). Stay away from Praetorian and Urban Cohorts. They are a little bit better than Legionary Cohorts, but will be a pain to retrain.

From here, there really isn't anywhere left to go other than expanding north towards Spain and Gaul (assuming Julii didn'y take the settlements already). Once you have your post-Marian armies upgraded, expand that way. Then, you have those huge settlements to the east. Just send armies from Sparta and Rhodes eastward and armies from Memphis/Alexandria north-eastward to box those settlements in. Your main goal will be to expand ALL the way up into that "choke point" in the mid-eastern region. Once you isolate that area, you will be fairly safe from attack in the east and almost completely protected from attack in the west (let Julii handle the other Barbarians).

Some important tips:

- You will mostly be taking coastal provinces, so build up your dockyards/ports to make sure you are getting the maximum trade revenue.

- Temple of Neptune (I think) will pay off by giving you Deceres and another very good ship.

- Don't wait to build your VERY BEST troops (Urban Cohort). They will be difficult to retrain and aren't THAT much better.

- Don't bother destroying the Greek and Egyptian fleets. They are VERY rich and will just create ships faster than you can destroy them. Just take their cities instead and the ships will slowly disappear.

- Build heavy onagers as soon as you can. Unlike infantry, this unit is actually worth waiting for since it won't see much action and won't need regular retraining.

The reason why I think Scipii are the easiest of the Roman factions is because their expansion is almost always (in the beginning to middle, anyway) towards very big and profitable settlements. Plus, they have better ships. Meanwhile, the Brutii have to fight through the small settlements before they get to Macedon and Greece (assuming Scipii haven't taken them yet). The Julii will also seem perpetually poor because their expansion is generally north toward's the Gallic and German small and poor towns/cities. I found the Carthaginians to be extremely weak. They even lost Carthage to the Numidians in my game (I had to attack Numidia despite Senate's orders because of this, ah well, I'm playing short campaign anyway). Basically, once you get to Egypt, you will control the lands of two of the three richest factions (Greece and Egypt). I haven't gotten to the Civil War, but I just don't see how the other two Roman factions will be able to outspend you without having their economies tank.