Roman: Scipii

[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.

[m4rt14n]

Have u ever seen all the money Brutii can get with Awesome Temples (or Pantheion) of mercury?? Scipii Carthage holdings are good, but too spread apart on islands. Unless u have an awesome navy, it's really hard to compete with Brutii. (Assuming u dont use the bribe thingy).

[Slon]

Well, as Scipii, it's hard to NOT have a strong navy. From the start, you have to move troops to Sicily and thenl almost immediately, to Greece and Carthage. Meanwhile, you have to blockade ports and fight off enemy ships. Plus, you have the Deceres. You get so much cash you might as well just have a large army guarding each area. No, I haven't played Brutii much. I might try it, since I played Brutii back when I didn't know the game too well (I didn't even know how to change capitol). Also, what bribe thingy?

[randomn00b]

Also, what bribe thingy?

When you get enough cash, you can bribe enemy Roman captains/family members to join your army. Not only do you gain a helluva lot of strength, they lose it too. Made the Roman Civil War much easier than it would have been. I pretty much finished the game using entirely bribed armies.

[BlackStrider]

My Tips for Playing as Scipii (Medium Difficulty)

-The Senate are not so bright and ask you to attack weak but devastating cities. If you go straight ahead and attack Thaspus with your army, The captured city of Syracuse is vunerable to Carthaginian attack with elephants and mass infantry. It helps to control all of Sicily before even thinking of attacking Carthage and Thaspus.

-In order to tackle Carthage straight on, you will need a strong navy. You should build up a strong navy first and control Carthage's Port before building up your forces. If you can capture Thaspus First, that helps even more, as you can build troops from that settlement rather than shipping them across from sicily.

-If you suffer in anyway against Carthage in your attack, I suggest allying with Numidia(This may only seem necessary on a harder difficulty). They have large army in Cirta and if convinced, should help you battle the fearsome Elephant-Riders. You can always backstab them once you have control over carthage

[aw89]

*WARNING!* Be carefull with the Numidians if you dont have lots of cav, 2 units of equites is NOT enough!

[randomn00b]

*WARNING!* Be carefull with the Numidians if you dont have lots of cav, 2 units of equites is NOT enough!

You need to be able to deal with cav Archers. Your Hastati may be one of the best infantry in the world at the time, but they still lose to any and every cav archer.