Dacia

[ReluctantSamurai]

You can hire immense armies of warriors to smash enemies---you may need to buy mercs---Macedon may try to ally with you, but strengthening them is not a good idea--- After you deal with them, the Greek might get aggressive. Take them out before or after they wage war. Against these guys, disrupt their phalanxes with huge mobs, and take 'em out from behind with cavalry

One's rate of development, and the direction events happen on the campaign is very much game difficulty dependent. At easier settings, you can indeed hire 'immense armies of warriors' but at the higher difficulty settings, having the denarii available is a huge issue. Any worthwhile mercs aren't available at the start, and those that are (like warbands and barbarian cavalry), you can train yourself.

In my Dacian campaigns, Macedon, Thrace, and Scythia almost always gang up on me, often times as an alliance. Phalanx is a problem for Dacia in the beginning, even militia hoplites. Warbands have very poor morale, and when unit losses get high while engaging phalanx, they do what most barbarian warbands do....they rout. If Macedonia comes for you early, you have no good answer for their Light Lancer cavalry which they will create in hordes. Barbarian Cavalry can barely hold their own against them 1v1, but in the numbers of them you will see at higher difficulty, "brute force" is wholly inadequate. And until you develop far enough to build Archer Warband barracks, you have no alternative against Scythian horse archers other than to chase them around with barbarian cavalry which can get them cut off behind enemy lines if you're not careful.

Warbands are almost completely ineffective against the Greek City Armored Hoplite or the Macedonian Phalanx Pikemen, and it's suicide to try any kind of frontal assault even en-mass.

While I appreciate your enthusiasm with the game, one has to be careful with suggestions as to how to play this faction or that. As I said earlier, game difficulty settings can drastically change how a particular faction can be played, and what you will face both on the campaign map, and on the battlefield.