....and they're still puppies after all that? o_O
....and they're still puppies after all that? o_O
EB DEVOTEE SINCE 2004
Not particularly. More like battle field fiends.
I was once outnumbered 9:1 as the Gauls against the Britons with just basic warbands and thus in quantity as well. They had chariots and druids in addition to more experienced warbands.
I did have a 6 star general but they had a 4 star. My saving grace was a unit of 3 xp war puppies. Those things stood off and tore up 4 enemy warbands. A half suicidal charge by my general broke through, also letting some puppies to pour through the gap. The ensuing rear attack chain routed the enemy army and led to almost complete annihilation of the enemy. Gotta love those puppies of DOOM, muwahahaha.
The more I hear about them, the more I want to go to the petshop and start my own warpuppy band.
EB DEVOTEE SINCE 2004
i started a m/m gaul campaign
im onmly a short way into it but i imediately attacked ariminum but now i have the senate uberarmy on my doorstep
im trying to hold it and build up warbands in mediolanum and patavium to flood the romans out of italia
any suggestions for stratagies using war bands?
i need help!
Try to outmaneuver the Senate army on the strategic map. Using 1 unit armis to distract them, it's quite possible to take Rome without fighting that army first.
Luck with spy will certainly help with that.
As for warbands, they are not that great morale wise so try and flank the enemy fast with your cav. That said, they are tough compared with something like iberian inf.
You should always use warcry and charge your warbands into the enemy about 5 second after warcry. This gives you a brief attack bonus of +4.
As the starting Gallic blitaz, you should move the druid unit towards Italy. Their chanting will give you an important morale advantage and serve as good reserves.
When using warbands, make sure you have superior numbers as the Senate army is better quality. You should use druid and warcry to maximize your advantage and then use sheer mass to slow them while your cav flanks and smashes them.
Try having your general right behind the warbands and rally constantly. This can boost wavering units to steady. He also gives a bit of a bonus and can charge into the fray if your lines are shakey.
When I have played Gauls I used warbands just to hold first enemy strike, after enemy army got stuck in warbands I used cav. to otflank and charge the enemy. Actually I started campaign with attacking romans in a few first turns.
It sounds entirely possible to do that, yes. Katank, can u elaborate on your outmanoeuvring the Senate army point? I'm not very familiar with the one-unit strategy. The Senate army, if faced by warbands, has to be faced by a LOT of warbands. No two ways about it. Either that, or you empty Gaul and go whole hog on Italy. But that'd be more of my style, where I don't rush at first, but prepare everything beforehand.
EB DEVOTEE SINCE 2004
First of all, 1 unit strategy is purely strategy map. Note how armies have a 9 square zone of control? 1 square that it's occupying and 8 that are in red.
Any army has that zone of control. Any enemies cannot pass through the ZoC without fighting. What you do is sack the Julii towns. Then, the Senate army will often get frisky and start coming towards you.
You get about 3-5 armies all consisting of 1 peasant unit. You place them in a solid wall and this will establish a continuous zone of control.
Your actual army goes for Rome. By maneuvering the peasant armies around, you can make sure the Senate army can't get to Rome in 1 turn. Just siege and assault. Spies make it even easier as you don't even need siege equipment.
This is a bit of an exploit as the AI rarely attacks with a single army twice during a turn. The Senate army will often engage your peasant army. You retreat from the battle. They will not attack your main army which will kill Rome and turn them into rebels the next turn.
First of all, rebels aren't aggressive and don't have to be dealt with right away. Secondly, rebels don't get triarii and principes. The result: about 6-7 harcore melee units you don't have to fight. This is a big deal.
sounds good
definetaly a lot beter then charging with 4 warbands into the full senate army LOL
ill try it next time i play
wait, I thought -any- units in the army that became rebel would continue to exist only turning white? Which means if you ever decided to attack it, wouldn't you still have to face those triarii and principes?
EB DEVOTEE SINCE 2004
i think usually rebel armies from large destroyed faction armies lose some units and katank said that rebels can't have the triarii and principes
of course im not an expert
Velites and Hastati do turn white. That's because rebels do own those basic units. However, they don't get triarii or principes which means those troops disband.
This is a huge savings as you can send about 1/2 the force compared to before to deal with them.
...nice.
EB DEVOTEE SINCE 2004
the best way i would play gaul is let the enemy come to me. warbands are not that good attackers. just defend the passes and bridges, with some light stacks and raid the lands beyond it. the romans will attack you, but if you give up Mediolanium and the other city you can delay war and train better units. you defend the bridge between cis and trans alpine Gaul. the romans will attack you there constantly, but if you have a good strategie and some good units, you will slaughter every roman army that comes. i fought on that bridge and hold firm for 30 years with 70 fights, 50000 romans were killed on that bridge while i only lost 5000 men. massilia can be used as a retrain center. the romans will be the thoughest but the spains and later the carthaginians can be hard. but a good alliance can keep them in order for some time. in these 30 years the romans will dry out and fade, after a while their yearly attack on the bridge will stop (the stupids just don't want to go around it) and you can attack them and roll them up from north to south. italy (apart from the senate army) is in the later games quite undefended. attack from all sides, and the chaos will be complete. with those romans gone and with 9 chev foresters (atleast i had that) you can start and conquer the world. the spanish will be in a war with carthage and will be a easy target. also dacia can be an option or just invade the lands of carthage or greece
We do not sow.
Why the defeatist attitude? You can take segesta first turn with your general and cav in Mediolanium. With the starting armies of Mediolanium and Patavium combined, you can defeat their entire Julii force on turn 3. This will give you both Julii cities early on. Then use maneuvering on the strategic map to shut off the Senate army while you siege and sack Rome.
that's no fun
We do not sow.
also the senate army in RTR has 9 full upgraded PRAETORIAN COHORTS (9 chevs and 3 upgrades)
We do not sow.
Trying out a H/M Gallic campaign, and things went quite well for a while. I kicked the British off the mainland, unified Gaul, allied with Carthage, took the rebel provinces north of the Julii and also Salona and Segestica. The Julii fell pretty quickly, but the AI has taken to a frustrating strategy. The SPQR stack is camped on the ford between Arretium and Rome. The Rebel-army-that-was-Julii is camped out on the bridge between Mediolanum/Patavium and Arretium. They've been there for a couple years now. I've tried to push both of them back with disastrous results (though the meat grinder effect was amazing to watch). I did have the SPQR down to just its last units but my warbands finally all routed at once, alas, and the SPQR have magically reconstituted themselves at full strength, which I'm not able to manage. I'm concerned that my Italian troops are essentially cut off as a result, and I've built so many troops I can't build any more in Arminium and few in Segesta or Arretium, and the Brutii keep attacking me in Arminium, making it unlikely that I'll be able to hold it much longer. I guess the best thing to do is build some cavalry and war dogs in Massila and Narbo and ship them by boat over to Rome and take it out, and ignore the SPQR and ex-Julii until such time as they get bored and move off the bridges.
Has anyone occupied Rome as Gaul rather than exterminating/enslaving it? I'm toying with the idea of occupying it and then making it or Arretium the capital but I don't know whether that will suffice to overcome the cultural issues. But I suppose I should keep from being driven into the sea first.
Hmm well not too good a situation. Bridge battles vs. Romans are very nasty, but IMHO you have a nice antidote as Gauls: Use your super weapons and build some units of 3xp 3upg Forester warbands. That should send most enemies to hell, whether standing on a bridge or not...
Vexilla Regis prodeunt Inferni.
Yeah, the trick will be surviving until I can build Forester Warbands at all. In addition to the Romans and Britons, now I've also been attacked by Spain, Germania and Macedon, and none will agree to a ceasefire, even in exchange for a city. Ugh. I'll never get a city up to 6000 at this rate--the closest I am is about 5200--since I keep having to retrain and train troops to defend myself, and I've lost or abandoned four cities to boot. Those Germanic pikemen are a lot tougher to fight as Gauls than they ever were as Romans.
My one hope lies in being able to sack Rome and spread some slaves around the Gallic Empire to get me to Tier 3 in a couple cities; my siege is going well so far and I've killed stacks totalling about 4000 troops from SPQR, Brutii and Scipii---it would have been 800 more but I accidently clicked End Battle instead of Continue Battle when I had a half-stack of Scipii on the run. There's just one general in Rome proper left in the SPQR faction, and I'm myself now parked on the bridge outside as I besiege, so I may be able to do it. Alas, my reinforcements are cut off by the Brutii besieging Arretium (they've already seized Arriminium). In deep doodoo here.
Wait, did you say that right? The Brutii are beseigeing your cities?!?! I have never seen them send an army north of Rome when playing as any faction. They are usualy more preocupied with taking Greece.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups...
"Incompetence - When you earnestly believe you can compensate for a lack of skill by doubling your efforts, there's no end to what you can't do. "
Interesting campaign. I have never seen the Brutii go north either, always east. But it is usual for Gaul to be attacked by a lot of factions aty once, similar to the Greeks.
Gaul was going to be my next campaign, but I won't finish my Armenian campaign before BI comes out. To make up for no Gaul, I will play Franks first in BI. I think I'll play Gaul when I go back to original RTW.
Originally Posted by Craterus
Yes, for some reason the AI is aggressive as hell in this campaign and has completely flipped out. The Brutii besieged and took Arriminium from me and now they're besieging Arretium. They also sent a half-stack at my force attacking Rome. The Scipii have sent two stack there as well, and they've all been ground up into hamburger.
At least I have the AI's attention.
Well, the Romans will put everyone else on hold. Because they can. Rarely does a faction make war with the Romans (at the start). The Brutii go after the Greeks/Macedon, Scipii kill everyone on Sicily. Julii do nothing, and sometimes are attacked by Gaul. And since you are kicking the Julii off the face of the planet, the other Romans can put their invasions on hold and defend the Republic!
Well, an extended evening of playing this wild Gaul campaign and I'm hanging on by the fingernails. The Brutii accomodatingly attacked me on the bridge outside Rome and the last SPQR general aided, and they were mowed down utterly. Enslaving the city got 2 places up to tier 3, and I started building Forester Warbands in Rome proper. Sent one of them to Arretium to help fend off an approaching half-stack of Brutii and they pretty much annihilated the entire archer-less army without taking a single loss. These are nice, nice units.
OTOH, Spain and Germania and Britain are as aggressive as ever, sieging most of my cities every single turn, as fast as I can sally and break the sieges, and now Carthage has allied with Spain and started attacking me too. Macedon keeps coming and they snatched away Patavium so the gains are being lost as fast as they come. But a couple more turns of producing Forester Warbands (now Mediolanum and Massilia can make them too) and those hordes of Macedonian hoplites will be toast. I am seriously looking forward to that moment. They are really ticking me off. They were so easy to destroy as the Romans, it's really a different perspective trying to kill them with the hapless Gauls.
So although things are still desperate, the Foresters should be able to pull me out of this hole. If only they didn't take 2 turns to build!
If things get too bad in mainland Gaul, you could just emigrate to Italy. I doubt the Brits/Spaniards would chase you there, and they would probably start fighting each other. That means you can concentrate your forces in one place. But, it doesn't sound like you are struggling too badly yet.
I'm not sure I'm using warcry right, and it doesn't seem to be documented anywhere that I can find. How close do you have to be to an enemy for it to have an effect? Can a unit not in combat warcry and help one that is in combat? Do you have to wait for them to stop chanting to charge the enemy, or has it already worn off if you do that?
You have to do the warcry just prior to entering combat. It works best when you do the warcry, then when the soldiers stop making noise, order the charge.
Proud Strategos of the
yes , I would advise the same thing, even if you're not having problems with your main lands.Originally Posted by Craterus
The thing is , that the Julii and other Romans have surperior units, so you want to take them out asap, definitely before the Marius event occurs.
And if you're able to churn out CS before they get principes in most of your armies then your doing great.
So my advice would be to go strait for the Julii , with your starting armies in Patavium and Mendiolanum - well you might want to train a couple of additional warbands.
the merge the armies and go straight for the Julii capital, fight the battle yourself, you're going to be hard put due to the lack of morale / discipline of the warbands but you should be able to win the battle.
once the Julii are out of the picture , try going for the brutii - who will occaisionly try and help the Julii when you fight the Julii.
Leave the Scipii alone for the moment - they are to close to the senate army , plus they aren't a threat , since all their armies are in Sicily.
Push all the way up to croton and the other Brutii city on mainland Italy and once you've secured the once Brutii lands you should churn out your foresters and CS - either from the Brutii capital or any other city who can produce these battle winning troops.
so when you thinkn the time is right , when your lands in Gaul are secured , and armies in Italy retrained go for the Scipii capital, attack from the east, so the Senate army can't help.
Once the city is taken , move the same army to rome and besiege it from the south-east, you really want to do this since you'll then be defending a ford against the senate army m which if you do right is a clear win , with almost no losses on your side , due to the mass route.
After Italy the world is yours !
I've already wiped out the Julii and the Senate. Things seem to have stabilized in the mainland and I think I may concentrate on wiping out the pesky Spanish so I have at least the rear secure and don't have to keep worrying about them.
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