Here's the follow up second part of my guide...

Earlier on I've covered:
-What you can expect as Carthage
-The (lack of) Freedom of Choice
-The Economy
-Diplomancy
-The Army, Cavalry
-The Army, Infantry
-The Army, Elephants
-The Army, Mercenaries

Here I'll be continuing with
-The Navy
-Urban Warfare
-Precision Strikes

So, here goes!

The Navy

"Sail the seas, they said... See the world, they said... Render your service unto your motherland, they said... Join the Navy, they said... Pah!"

First of all, the Navy sails the seas, right? Since the seas are such a vital source of income as Carthage, the Navy is as vital as your army, right? Well, depends on how you look at it.
The functions of the Navy are:
=Defend your ports from blockades
=Transport your armies
It also serves to hinder the functioning of the enemy's navy:
=Blockade enemy ports
=Interdict transported armies

That's it! Surprised? Yes, the functions are few, as are the functions of Armies, for example, when examined closely.
---Defend your settlements
---Capture other settlements
---Blockade ports (from land, yes, you can do this!)

Other capabilities of the Navy and Army, like destroying other ships and Armies, are just means to an end, actually. Duties like scouting out the map/sea, or defending your borders are similarly subfunctions of the Navy/Army. Why do you attack another Ship/Army? It is in part to weaken and reduce the assets of the enemy whereas maintaining and guarding your own, to prevent the enemy from fufilling his objectives, and to aid in completing your objectives. You can't Transport your armies to Sicily and prevent Roman expeditions from landing off Carthage if the sea is swarming with Roman ships, for example.

Therefore, with the knowledge of the functions of a Navy, you can better appreciate it's use and importance. You can understand, for example, why some nations like Parthia have little need for a navy when their empire is confined to the deserts. Only 2 of their provinces (Campus Sekae and the province north of Susa) have a port, and trading opportunities are scarce, with only 3 ports in that little sea. Therefore a navy is of little importance to them. However, picking a less extreme example, the Julii also place little importance in their navy if they expand north. Given that much of their revenue is derived from landlocked provinces to the north. The key to estimating the worth of a Navy is the wealth that is available via trade. If you derive much of your income from the sea, whichever nation you are, then a Navy will be of more importance to you.

Now that the importance of a Navy can be estimated, let us move on to the strengths and weaknesses of a navy.

A Navy is capable of performing a different variety of tasks from an army, and it's role is exclusive and unique. Though all Navies can perform the same tasks, their host of duties are that which no other unit can do.
One strength lies in the openness and unclaimability of the sea. One side of the mediterannean cannot be isolated from another. One portion of the sea cannot be claimed to belong to a nation. Thus ships are able to travel to wherever there is water, and this brings with it the ability to travel to exotic places, contact all the nations of the world, and transport your armies to wherever you please. This is especially important considering the shape of the Mediterannean. If one wishes to visit the opposite shore of it, once could spend 3-4 seasons sailing by ship, or half a lifetime travling by foot. By the same virtue of accesibility, the ships of your Allies also have less trouble attacking your enemies than their armies, though they may be far away.

The weakness of a Navy is that they do not travel very quickly, only as fast as a light army. The battles which they fight in also have little strategy and no tactics. Thus the intelligence of a player can only bring the Navy as far as to concentrate his many against the enemy's few. Battles can only be auto-resolved, and that can be skewed to the favour of the computer, depending on the level of difficulty on which you are playing (above normal). The accesibility of your ships to all the shores of the world also means your shores are accesible to your enemies too! Unlike on land, where only a few factions can fight you in places which your borders meet, your ships are fair game for all your enemies in the Seven Seas, as are your shores, for amphibious assaults...

Thus, your Navy can be a powerful striking force, cutting off your enemy's seaborne income, and landing your forces wherever you wish. It is also the only thing which prevents the same from being done to you. Is it important for Carthage? You bet.

Carthage is extremely vulnerable from the enemy navies. Firstly, your major towns are all located near the sea, meaning any seaborne invasion will only allow you one turn (or less) to respond. Secondly, the bulk of your income is derived from seaborne trade. A single blockade can throw your delicate economy into the red. Thirdly, your mortal enemies, the Romans, are in a much better position than you to field a Navy. Their hearlands are secure in Italy from land based assault (except for the Julii), and they are firmly allied. Meaning that tripping one faction off will see you facing the combined Naval might of all 4 factions, and any allies they may have. The Naval war seems stacked against you. What do you do?

Your initial objectives should be thus:
1) Ensure the survival of your Navy
2) Defend your ports
3) Stop amphibious assaults

1) Ensure the survival of your Navy. Does this mean I don't fight any battles? Nah, this is meant in the more strategic sense. The first step is to form alliances with other seaborne powers. This would throw more weight against your enemies. Some good targets are The Greek Cities, Spain, and Egypt if possible. Nations in 3 corners of the Mediterannean. Sailing would be more of a breeze with them around... The second step is to increase the toughness of your ships. Build bigger ships! Triremes! Quinqueremines! Deceres! Titanics! Obviously, this gives you more fighting power, and involves some infrastructuring on the dry side of a beach. Also, give them weapons and armour upgrades (retrain ships in a port to replace losses, and give upgrades) whenever possible. A blacksmith does not only provide services for the landlubbers! Good cities to retrain your men are Carthage, the city south of it, and captured cities in Italy. They often have a high level of development. While this is a long term development plan, and indeed, it goes on till the end of the game, do what you can in the early game. Regularly retrain your ships whenever there is a new level of blacksmith to be found.

2) Defend your ports. Although I have yet to see a lengthy AI blockade, indeed, seeing one would amaze me already! This involves keeping ships near your valuable ports (Carthage), and making sure that no port is too far away from your ships. Corduba has the tendency to be left out and forgotten in the Naval war, given the action seen around the Sicily. This is just in case... anyway, they can be put to good use ferrying your troops around.

3) Stop amphibious assaults. This involves preemptive action, and quite a bit of scouting. To stop an amphibious assault, first of all, you'd have to find one. Any number of ships can transport a 20-unit army, and you would'nt want that one to slip by! View the profile of a stack to see if they carry passengers. A diplomat or a general are valuable targets to take out. To get enough advance warning, you'd have to scout along expected routes of invasion. The primary route for Roman assaults is between Sicily and Sardinia. You can take care of the scouting bit by building a watchtower on the western end of Sicily, and placing a spy/watchtower on the eastern end of Sardinia. Any gap in between will have to be covered by a ship. You can also roughly time assults, by gauging the number of turns an enemy would have to build up a fair sized army (depends on his territorial size), and by observing the number of enemies he has, other than you. Also, after the main stack arrives, a smaller, reinforcement stack can be expected a few turns later. For example, the Julii, having only 3 cities and no enemies (no, they didn't touch the Gauls). Took about 10 turns from the declaration of war to plop down a big army (About 10-15 units, with Principes!) outside Carthage rather early in the game. A reinforcing stack (about 5 units) was plopping along about 3-5 turns later.

In the tactical sense, the Battles of a Navy is a game of maneuvre, where you would try to position more of your better equipped against the enemy. Nothing very complicated here, what skills you need here can just be gained by experience... At the start of the game, however, be careful about the battles you choose. Having few ships, you'd not want to risk them. You need them for transporting your army! Therefore, try to hop from port to port every turn. Most enemy ships do not attack units stationed in port. Also, a single ship (in VH/H) has a very big chance of being sunk on the spot when being attacked by 2 enemy ships. Even on the same experience level, this can happen! Do not transport Armies/Characters with ONE ship!!! As far as is possible. Throughout my campaign, I have sent out 3 diplomats to the east, to try to contact the egyptians. 2 were sunk in such one-battle jokes... the other sunk in a series of battles. Once, a 12 unit army needed in Italy was also sunk in a single battle... What rotten sailors... heed this warning, or experience it for yourself...!

Well, only later in the game will your Navy be able to develop to the extent where you can overwhelm Rome and keep it on the defensive, if not carrying the battle to them. But this will only be possible if your land based campaign is going along pretty well, and you can devote more resources to producing ships.

With a mature Navy, you can apply pressure to ports all over the world, grinding an advasary's trade to a halt, and confining him to land. What a symbol of true, global power! Thus, you can invest early in your Navy. The end result is well worth it.


Urban Warfare (UW)


Well, here we come to the hard part. Early Carthage always has difficulties with Urban Warfare, due to it's weak infantry (before Poeni). It's good cavalry can't help very much in the cities. So that leaves us with a few options. Your (weak) army, mercenaries, ranged units, and your elephants. To allow cavalry to slug it out in street battles is a mistake. As you find, they get chewed apart all too easily, and their charge is bugged in the cities. If you deploy them in a wide formation on the strips of dirt beside roads, all too often they pathfind their way (badly) to where you don't want them to go, or they pause just before impact during a charge. If you deploy them on the roads, they lack the punch to push through infantry. Urban Warfare is the realm of the footsoldier. Horsemen will do well to tread lightly in cities...

However, there is one type of very heavy cavalry that can do well in UW. Elephants! Although their charge is also bugged, although they can only deploy in very long formations, only 2 elephants wide, although they die easily when they rout, they are (as usual) a great aid!

Firstly, they can handle all sorts of wooden walls. Just send a unit, and only unlucky gentle giant will have to hammer his head against the wall, and sooner or later, it falls. The animation is... provocative... I itch to edit one of those screenshots to show some unlucky fellow doing some head banging... aaaannyway, you don't have to build seige equipment for wooden walls, and you can assault them the turn you start the seige. For the fighting part, they are mainly useful at pushing away enemy troops. Especially good for dealing with enemy phalanxes, or heavy infantry in general. Back them up with infantry, and you'll do pretty well.

One important thing! Do NOT charge your elephants through stone gates with boiling oil upgrades when they are held by the enemy! DO NOT! Why? Oh, lets just say an elephant catches fire as easily as a well oiled pig... They will rout and make it a bad day for you... Even sending a unit of Iberian Infantry won't cause them to rout, even though more than a quarter (often half) of their unit will be incinerated. Capture the gates via seige towers/ladders before you send troops through.

Other than elephants, the units you need are ranged units like cretan archers, Rhodian slingers, or skirmishers. Each is good at it's own area. Cretan archers are great at softening up defences (mainly for wooden walls) before the charge by shooting up units behind the walls. The high trajectory of their shots allow them to do the same for stone walls (I think they can for the smaller ones... not that sure). Rhodian slingers can also do the above, but their margin of error is smaller, and you'd have to micromanage to place the unit at the exact spot where their shots clear the wall, and hit the enemy. Get some practice... it's easy to get used to. The slingers are good at shooting up the enemy when the breach has been made. See an enemy unit waiting for you? just position a unit of slingers outside the breach, and let them sling away. The enemy unit will move away... or die. Skirmishers come onto their own fighting in the closed streets and alleys. The best way to defeat a big block of heavy infantry crowding the streets is to weather them down with missiles, then fight them with units backed up with lots of skirmishers. Lots and lots... after that, it's just a trip to the town centre, where finally, your cavalry can partake in the battle with a final charge to finish the lucky few who can survive all the remaining ammunition thrown at them.

Well, your pre-poeni infantry just sucks... face it. Libyan spearmen can hardly stop a cavalry charge! pah... so, to satiate the meatgrinder of city battles, I'd recommend you get mercenaries... lots of them. Spanish mercs and Barbarian mercs are great at in close fighting, Libyan skirmishers can supplement your skirmishing force, and Samnite warriors can go against their own people of Italy fairly well. Just back them up, don't stop to weep over their bodies, and press on. I am ruthless at throwing unit after unit of mercenaries at the enemy. They can die before my own soldiers! Here, the mighty denarii will show it's worth! Mwahahaha....

When you get Poeni infantry or Scared Band, it's smooth sailing in Urban Battles from then on. Just conduct battles the Greek way from then on...

I've exceeded the post limit AGAIN! Woot! Well, there's not much left, just the conclusion... keep reading!