Carthage

[limitedwhole]

Take Egypts money and they can do nothing but have revolts or disband troops. Take Sidon, Jerusaleum, and Salamis and their population centers become unbearable burdens. They might even have to start disbanding troops and stop recruiting which will lead to the inevitable. When I hit Salamis, Sidon, and Jerusaleum over the course of turns, they had just begun an economic downturn. When it was over they had zero, yes zero, production. They might have gotten bigger though in your game.

[pianonator]

Thanks folks! I feel welcomed.

I've started building heavy inf again in Egypt - they do work better than I thought they would. I guess I was scared away from using them after an unfortunate battle in which they got owned, but Chariots do have trouble with Poenis.

The main purpose of this post is to make note of a cheap shot (which you probably already know about) which is very possible, at least in H mode or lower.
I pulled the cheap shot on Memphis.

I sieged it with 4 separate armies, so it only sallied against 1 army per turn (Which I retreated with), so it remained under seige until I felt it weak enough to fall. (I didn't want to just let it fall of starvation - that felt a little wrong - a little too much like taking advantage of a game bug) I exterminated that populace after an annoyingly long battle - at this point, I still hadn't started building Peoni infantry again, so my confrontations with Axemen consisted of surrounding them with several units of long shields and charging. But yeah - Memphis is nice, with its Pyramids. I didn't know about that affect.

I pulled an Onager-blitz on Alexandria, so I now have control of the big 3 Egyptian cities. I still avoid land superiority battles by continuing to bribe Egyptians, expecially family members.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I'd add only a couple of things for you Piano-man:

Build Milquart temples in a goodly proportion of cities. Yes, you'll want the child-eating Baal for the key troop centers, but pumping up the economy is important.

Once you are far enough East to be thinking about a strike on Siwa, you should consider a recruiting expedition to Rhodes/Kydonia/Halicarnassus. These are lucrative provinces and can either be snapped up if the situation warrants or raided and razed if defending them is untenable, and either way you'll use the opportunity to recruit Cretans -- the only real weak component of a Cartha force is its lack of longer ranged missiles. Picking up 5-6 units of Cretans can give your two primary strike armies a little more punch.

[pianonator]

Yeah, my Quest for More Money has already had me building lots of Milquart temples, but thanks!
I'll also be sure to stop in at Crete, too.

Problem:
I know this is a little off topic, but I didn't know where to stick it. I just downloaded and installed patch 1.3 (I don't have BI), and I can't load up any of my old Carthage games. Is that normal, or is there anything I can do? Should I just reinstall RTW and finish Carthage with my old save files?

[Avicenna]

Bettkicker: if you didn't read it how did you know that it was the same strategy as yours?

Anyone done a more historical expansion? Take Italy, Spain and Gaul, then go take Asia Minor, where the original Phoenican founders of Carthage were from.

Welcome, pianonator! You should uninstall 1.3. If this isn't possible, don't just reinstall, as you'll lose the .sav files. Copy your save files and put them somewhere safe if you choose to reinstall.

limitedwhole: Shouldn't Alexandria be a major target to take out Egypt's economy? Their overall money earnt per city is deceptive, as the large cities seem to lose masses of cash. If you take the large cities, you'll find that the remaining cities will lose masses of cash instead. It's just that the money the city has to dish out for the military is proporitonal to its size, which grows faster than its economy, hence the reason for the large cities appearing to lose lots of money. A quick check of the actual money earnings and spendings will show you this.

[pianonator]

1.3 issue update:

Like a resourceful fellow, I went to Activision for help in my 1.3 problem. They told me to talk to Sega, so I went to their support site. They pointed me to their 1.5 patch, which I didn't even know about. Apparently, after RTW Gold Edition, any new updates are Sega's department, and they don't feel like telling TotalWar.com about them...

Nice fixes in 1.5 that I noticed immediately:

-1.2 and below save files work
-Egypt's Axemen finally have realistic armour!*

Bugs/gripes

-I don't know if it's like this if you start a 1.5 game, but now my Carthaginian Faction Updates look like Roman ones - with Roman pictures of guys in togas giving each other scrolls. I miss my turbans already.
-Ugh - now people are like 4x harder to bribe - so now that I can finally beat an Axeman army, I can't bribe them. I guess it balances out.
-I am now getting advice on breathing from Victoria and Marcus. Make them stop!

*I wondered how the heck shirtless guys with hatchets were surviving concerted charges of medium to heavy cav - they were doing better than some Hoplites I've seen! Now they are like normal shirtless infantry. *yay*

[pianonator]

Sorry - this isn't just postspamming.


Anyone done a more historical expansion? Take Italy, Spain and Gaul, then go take Asia Minor, where the original Phoenican founders of Carthage were from. - Tiberius

Historical expansion?
From what I understand, RTW starts you off at the territorial height of the Carthaginian Empire, ignoring Punic War II. They never really held any more than what they have. But yeah, I'll be sure to take Tyre as soon as I get there.

But yeah, if you're talking Hannibal-style, I skipped that by winning in Sicily. It's a lot easy to boat the elephants into Capua and take out the Scipians than fighting all the way through Iberia and Gaul to get to Northern Italy by crossing the Alps with them.

But maybe I'll try the Hannibal approach on my next Carthage Run on VH/VH.
As aformentioned, my approach was Sicily, Central Italy, Numidia, Southern Italy, North Africa, Iberia, Egypt, Gaul.