Carthage

[Phier]

Carthaginian Blitzkrieg, VH/VH Ok we all know the best thing about not playing a Roman faction is we don’t have to hear that horrible horrible crackling voice say ‘vicccctorreee!’

On the other hand the Carthaginian saying ‘decisive’ is very nice, and even more amusing is when you lose very badly and he says something akin to ‘ughhhck!’.

Ok so who wants to win as Carthage on VH/VH? Sure we all do, and if you follow my easy steps, you too will be master of Mediterranean in no time.

Now if you tried Carthage on VH and failed, you know its due to money more then any other factor. You get attacked all sides, and you just can’t afford to field the armies and build up your cities. The Scipii want you, and the Numedians will go for you right off the bat, unlike in hard games when you can get an easy alliance. You have no nearby trade partners, no control of the sea, horrible starting infantry, and elephants can only do so much.

This can all be solved and solved decisively before your faction leader dies. (Ok my last game he made it to 81, but still he may well live to see victory over Rome, or at least the parts that matter).

Ok take a ship and take your faction heir out of Carthage, on the way out buy a numedian merc cav. Get to Liybeaum and pick up your faction leaders army that’s east of liybeaeum, being sure to pick up the mercs in the area as well. At the same time start building a cav stable in Carthage, you will need it asap.

Take the army, now ship borne to just outside the coast of the Scipii town Capua. Now this is the key bit. WAIT until the Romans are at war with the Greeks at Syracuse. This is your signal to go (you can have your spy look for the siege at Syracuse). Now take your army and hit Capua (if you have the cash pick up some more mercs). Do NOT siege it but attack using your elephants to take down the gate, and a few walls. This is going to be your crucial fight. You MUST not take excessive casualties. Use your elephants but protect them. If you lose them its over and you might as well start wondering what life as a Roman slave will be like. Now after you have taken Capua, sack it, and LEAVE. Its worth a good deal of cash you badly need and it will rebel with a large stack of rebels which will be more then the Scipii can take it back from. Now March in the Brutii cities of Tarentum and Croton, one after the other, use your elephants to get past the wooden walls, sack them both for the cash you still badly need, but you can safely occupy them both. Buy Mercs if any are available because Iberian infantry are like toy soldiers. Ok in about 4 turns, you have taken the Scipii and Brutii almost out of the game, and gained about 15k in cash as well as 2 good cities. You are not out of the woods yet.

After you have sacked Capua you need to reinforce Liybeaum from Carthage. Just ferry troops over, and as SOON as the cav stables at Carthage has been completed get at least one unit of elephants over to liybeaum, again you will need them. If they put you under siege before you get elephants, be sure to land them inside the ‘battle’ radius so they will be reinforcements as you sally forth to meet the Scipii. Odds are Scipii will be attacking you with about ½ to 1/3rd a stack, and a couple of stars. If you are lucky the Scipii will take Syracuse as well, which you and your elephant lead Liybeaum army will take first, and you will then take the last Scipii city of Messana

Ok so now the Scipii are gone, and the Brutii are semi-impotent stuck in Greece. The Senate will not attack you. The Julii WILL attack you and in fact they allied at about this point with the Gauls who also attacked Corduba in Spain. The Brutii will land troops about once every 5 turns at Croton, but those are easily crushed.

Now for Corduba, you want to save this city, it’s a nice foothold on Europe and it’s a good money maker. You are to far away for Elephants, odds are Numedia is at war with you by now, so this one you want to buy as many mercs as you can. My Corduba army is about 3/4ths Mercs, and the Spanish mercs are like a poor mans Hasti, pillia included. You will have some big Gaul armies to take care of, BUT while you will have a good general, they will be captain lead and will route easy. They will have no missle troops for a long while so be sure to use yours to your advantage.

Caralis will be a loss to the Julii, let them have it.

Other things you should be doing are building ports/markets for trade, getting a diplomat to the Spanish BEFORE they attack you to get trade rights if not an alliance. If a Spanish army comes near Corduba, bribe it before it can attack you as you NEED them for trade. The same goes for the Greeks at Syracuse, you will want a diplomat in the area early on and once the Romans have attacked them they will take trade rights and an alliance. Sometimes their diplomat will approach you first and you can save the funds.

Its still not ‘easy’ at this point but you really bought yourself some breathing room. The Julii will focus on you with large stacks from the north, but you should have time to reinforce your starting army via Carthage-Messana-Croton. You will not control the seas so think of ships as one use taxies, if they live longer so be it.

I tested this several times and it always worked to a good degree. Money will still not be plentiful, but you will have enough to build up cities and maintain a few different armies. Surprisingly in my current one my allies the Spanish have taking out two Numedian towns. This is mildly annoying as I wanted those towns, but a nice touch. Once you take the remaining Numidean towns, it gets pretty easy.

[hotingzilla]

Continuing my previous post...

Once you seized Siwa from the Numidians, the Egyptians will fire armies at you once every 2 turns. They bring generals (Chariots) and huge stacks of Desert Axemen and Bowmen. Militarily, you are no match for them, but you should have a 4 star or above general (gained while campaigning North Africa) who will turn odds in your favor.

Chariots will cause you a lot of problems - they run through your cavalry like a hot knife through butter - do NOT charge any type of cavalry especially your General's unit at them. Instead, you should Numidian cavalry and hopefully harass the chariots. Use junk units such as peasants to divert fire from your precious units. You should also use Sacred Band to form phalanx and lure the chariots into charging them.

Once, missile chariots' ammo is soaked up, use Iberian mercs to lure them closer to your main line. They will charge against them however they end up crestfallen when they plunge into your spearman.

Slingers will be preferred to bring along against the Egyptians though they aren't of much use besides as being bait and diversion when facing bowmen.

Keep sending reinforcements from Carthage, and when you are ready, plunge into the Egyptian heart - Memphis. If you do things right, you should take their most advanced settlement and will put them far behind.

[afrit]

Read all the above posts. Agree with most points.

I am playing hard/hard on short campaign and it is a lot of fun. Main lessons:

-you WILL be fighting a lot of factions simultaneously. At one point I fought battles with Scipii, Brutii , Julii , Numidia ,Spain and Gaul (yes, Gaul!) in a single turn! Except for the Romans, all the other factions initiated hostilites first.

-Tactical skill on the battlefield is paramount. This is not a faction where you can sit back, build up and then attack. Needless to say, you have to play out all battles personally and pull out all the tricks to keep your losses to a minimum: use missiles to take out roman infantry or enemy units in the city square, attack only when you have overwhelming force (you don't want to win a tough fight, you want to crush them in an easy fight), take your time to maneuver into position on the battlefield. You cannot afford to rush an attack and then count on production to replace your losses.

-Best carthaginian weapons you have are Round Shield Cavalry and the initial army in Sicily, which has elephants in it. Slingers are good at taking out units in city squares with minimal losses on your side. Numidian mercenaries are easy to get and useful against, who else, the Numidians!. As others mentioned, Carthaginian infantry is no match for the Romans or Greeks.

-You need a strong navy. Your holdings are on 3 islands (baleares, Sardinia, Sicily) and 2 continents (Spain and Africa), all separated by lots of water. The link is your navy. Build lots of ships and keep them together, while picking off enemy ships one by one. You can effectively defend sicily and africa from Roman attacks by sinking their ships before they land (of course, sometimes they will slip by. Then you cut off their retreat!).

-Carthage has 3 power bases: sicily, Africa, Spain. You should strive to expand 2 of them at least. In my campaign, I chose Sicily and Spain and kept Africa/Numidia till later.

Sicily. Since the Scipii are your sworn enemies, it pays to attack them quickly before they build up. I managed to blitz the Scipii out in the second turn by using the elephants to smash down the city gate. Without Sicily, theScipii are down to a single province, and they will be slowed down a good bit. If you have naval supremacy, blockade them in their capital Capua and sink all their ships, so they cannot attack you in Sicily.
If you are good tactically in fighting phalanxes, take out the Greeks too. They are too weak to reinforce/retake Syracuse and it is a well developed city. I did this in about turn 4 or 5.

North Africa. The Numidians will attack you sooner or later. Players on very hard reported they got attacked immediately. In my hard campaign, they attacked in about turn 20 (260BC ) after they ran out of places to conquer in the Sahara and Gaetulia. In any case, the good news is their units are weak. Buy Numidian mercs to counter their own cav.

Spain. You should make an early decision whether to hold on to Corduba or to abandon it. Cordoba is a rich province, and if you beat off Spain, it is pretty safe from other enemies. On the other hand, war with Spain will cost money that you need to fight other, closer, enemies.

Spain starts with 4 provinces against your single one on the peninsula. Therefore, you need to even it out by capturing one of their settlements early, before they start making their better units. Cartago Nova is the logical choice because it is closest and is on the Mediterranean, so it can link up with your other provinces. Once you take it, it becomes 3 (poor) spanish provinces versus 2 of your own on the peninsula. Much better odds!.


Other settlements:
-Lepcis magna in Lybia. It is rebel held, without a wall and defended by a couple of town militias. Easy to capture, so grab it before the Numidians get there.
-Caralis on Sardinia. The Julii will attack (usually about turn 4 or 5). I think it is best to abandon it. You just won't have enough forces to defend it and still fight in Sicily, Spain and Numidia.
-Palma on Baleares. Try to develop its population quickly: lower taxes, build Tanit shrine, etc. The aim is to tech up to port and produce ships. It is also a good source for mercenary slingers.
- Finally, a couple of warnings:
Etna will erupt sometime around 260BC. Any army you have in the close vicinity will suffer huge losses (about 40%) . So keep your main force on the Island somewhere else around that time.

The Spanish units are identical to yours, so they can bribed back and forth. I lost a 500 veteran army to bribery . It took me many turns to first, defeat it, and then replace it. Needless to say, I returned the favor later on by buying an attacking Spanish stack.

Hope the above helps.

[Bhruic]

I'm going to disagree with some of the proceeding.

1) "The Numidians will attack you". Not necessarily. The Numidians are likely to get attacked by Egypt and/or Spain. Go to war with whichever it is, and ally with the Numidians. The Numidians were my good allies for my entire campaign. 50 provinces (including Rome) later, I won. Bet they were happy I never attacked them. :)

2) "You need a strong navy". Not really. Your navy will almost never (I can't remember a single instance) get attacked when it is in one of your "harbours". Most of your harbours are a single turn away from the destination(s) you'll have. Especially early on, you really don't need a powerful navy. The computer players tend to overfocus on navies, so there's no point in trying to compete with them. If you lose a ship or two, no problem, build another one. But huge fleets aren't going to be a big advantage.

3) "Abandon Caralis". Caralis can be defended with a fairly weak force. Just constantly sally against attackers and you won't have much problems. I won't say that abandoning is a horrible idea. The Julii won't attack you much after they take it, so it would be one less enemy to fight. On the other hand, holding on to it means the Julii will waste most of their resources trying to capture it. This makes them quite weak, and easy to conquer once you hit Italy. I chose to defend it, and had no problems doing so (I had to reinforce it from Carthage, as the base force was too poor to hold out).

4) "You should strive to expand 2 of them". That can work, but I find it more effective to focus on the Romans. They are going to be the toughest of the opponents you fight (unless you run into the Egyptians). By focusing on Sicily, you can weaken 2 of the factions (Scipii and Brutii will attack you). By holding Caralis, the Julii will attack you. Because you are defending, and sallying from a city, you should be able to inflict extreme casualties with few losses in return. Jump across the straight, and you should be able to take the Brutii and Scipii cities easily. Take Rome, and move north and you should have the Julii cities as well. With the powerful Roman lands all under your control, you will have the resources to focus where you will at that point, north into Gaul, Africa, or Spain.

Bh

[TinCow]

I am currently playing a VH/VH campaign and I want to emphasis a minor point someone mentioned above. Wait to attack the Scipii in Sicily until AFTER the Romans are at war with the Greeks. I attacked on my second turn before this happened and I have since played the entire remainder of the campaign as the only enemy the Roman factions has ever had. I managed to hold onto everything but Sardinia, but it was touch and go sometimes. With all 3 Roman factions' armies only concerned with you and the Senate's fleet harassing you as well, this puts a major drain on your resources for other areas. I have still triumphed and am now preparing to invade Italy proper with Sacred Band and Armored War Elephants, but I think I made the situation much more difficult for myself than I needed to.

One final thing, it took me two restarts to survive the initial challenges of the Carthage campaign. On my first two tries, Cordoba was bribed by the Spanish and there was nothing I could do about it. The third time I was preparing to evacuate my army, but the diplomat got there first. Over several turns he failed to bribe my general, each time increasing his anti-bribe traits until his price eventually ended up at 500% of normal and they gave up. That was all luck, but as long as that army doesn't get bribed it should be able to hold on without problems. Without any outside support Cordoba (and a little good generalship) is able to hold off both the Gauls and the Spanish. Turn the city into a military base, pumping out those round shield cavalry. Also be sure to regularly check the province for Baeleric Slingers which sometimes pop up as mercenaries. Once Cordoba is upgraded to Stone Walls, those slingers will keep it from ever falling. Once the city is secure, behing making sorties against enemy armies. I was able to adopt two captains this way which gave me three generals in the region without ever needing to import any troops. Eventually my Spanish forces took the entire Iberian peninsula and are now pushing into southern Gaul. They are totally self-reliant and have never received any help from Africa or Sicily with the exception of a few young generals imported after the peninsula was secured to manage some cities.

Don't give up on Spain!

[Red Harvest]

I'm going to disagree with some of the proceeding.

1) "The Numidians will attack you". Not necessarily. The Numidians are likely to get attacked by Egypt and/or Spain. Go to war with whichever it is, and ally with the Numidians. The Numidians were my good allies for my entire campaign. 50 provinces (including Rome) later, I won. Bet they were happy I never attacked them. :)
Bh

On VH/VH the Numidians always attack me eventually. Of course, I don't surrender Cordoba, so Spain doesn't attack Numidia. If I have to maintain garrisons large enough to keep them from attacking, then I might as well march in and take the provinces instead of wasting money on oversized garrison.

[TinCow]

I had a good 20 turns or so before Numidia attacked me (VH/VH). Even then, they had one large stack that started the war by beseiging one of my cities. After this army, I only saw one further large stack in my conquest of the Numidian provinces. All in all, their biggest impact on my was the loss of trade income which I experienced when I went to war with them. Militarily they were never much of a threat.

[Bhruic]

On VH/VH the Numidians always attack me eventually. Of course, I don't surrender Cordoba, so Spain doesn't attack Numidia. If I have to maintain garrisons large enough to keep them from attacking, then I might as well march in and take the provinces instead of wasting money on oversized garrison.

I play on VH/VH. I keep Cordoba. I don't really maintain much of a garrison, because I don't care if they attack, I can just sally and cut them all down with almost no losses.

Spain did go to war with Numidian, despite me being in Cordoba.

I'm not saying that Numidian will never attack Carthage. I'm just saying that if you can work the factions, you can set it up so that they are unlikely to. If you prefer, go ahead and attack them, it'll get you all of west Africa, leaving you with a lot fewer borders. But I find it better to take out the Roman factions first.

Bh

[DanMasey]

Very constructive posts.

Thanks very much, they are all much appreciated!