Dacia

[Mountaindew]

my experiences with dacia is to immediately defeat thrace, macedonia and the brutii. its a lot of hard work, so always take control of battles yourself. like pezhetairoi said, its all about casualty minising.

my plan was to take greece, establish a nice base in greece, and launch my plans from there. starting where u started isnt good at all. a good plan (that i have found) is when you are about to be attacked by the germans or scythians from the north, porrolisium and campus gaetae are definitely theirs - concentrate on getting greece. destroy all buildings, and move troops out of towns...the money will do you good.

one thing i also found about playing greece - the plague can be annoying, when it started from Thessalonica. if you control Thessalonica, dont let nething out. if you dont, dont send ne spies to infiltrate it YET. all of greece was under the plague - one thing that dacians lack at the beginning is population, along with money. this deadly plague delayed me from taking all of greece, so i had to duel with the brutii a bit.

so once you have greece in your hands, its pretty easy from there. nobles, chosens, onagers kick ass!

[Mountaindew]

battle wise, ive found in the beginning that a mixture of cavalry + archers are effective, particularly against the greek factions. they have slow hoplites which u can shoot to bits from long range, and mass ur cavalry to drive away their missle troops.

against rome, however, its gonna be a lot harder. yr cavalry r gonna work a lot harder. all this is pre-chosen, pre-nobles. once u got chosens and nobles, then it becomes a lot easier. A LOT EASIER. especially with onagers and ballistae, u can afford to sit back and rain expendable projectiles rather than being all barbaric and charging in with nothing to fall back 2.

if only they had horse archers...damn...

thats my 2 cents...

[gmjapan]

My Dacian Campaign fell flat at the first hurdle.

I drove all available units south to the nearest Mac city. The first major engagement was going really well. Was. My units, despite having an advantage started routing. First 1, then 3, then, well the rest really. The Mac army was suddenly like a hot knife through butter.

I even heard myself say "butter" in realisation at the scene infront of me!

I couldnt recover after that (no wonga) so quit. I fully intend to start a Dacian campaign again soon though after review of some of the comments here. The challenging start position is too appealling...