Unfortunately I have not been able to work out how to get screenshots to work for me. Print Screen during RTW just gives me a nice copy of my desktop to paste from the clipboard. If anyone can suggest another method I'd be grateful as I can't find any posts on the subject at the moment ...

I have returned to my campaign after reading of Good Ship Chuckle's great victory, following a break of about 5 months playing other campaigns. Currently in 222bc. After finishing the Gauls in Alesia which netted me my third temple to Epona (+2 experience), I have focussed on my mission to wipe out the Julii in North Italy. The Britons are busy fighting the Brutii in central Germania, and the Egyptian stacks are wandering about in the deserts of Tripolitania but haven't attacked me yet.

After many epic battles with the Julii and Brutii in Cisalpine Gaul and Venetia I have finally secured the area and have the remnants of the Julii starving in Arretium and Ariminum. Capua fell after the Senate attacked my army besieging the Scipii and lost due to lots of rapid cavalry action on the flanks. Thus the threat of the invincible Senate is no more, so consolidation of Italy is well underway. When I have all Italy I can plan to invade Greece where the Scipii remain in Sparta and Corinth, with the Brutii in the remaining Greek and former Macedo territories.

My armies are now based on 2 chevron legionaries or triple chev desert inf with some archers behind and strong cavalry on both flanks made of bodyguards and longshields. The archers do some damage but in most battles against the Romans I find that they are quite keen to attack my lines pretty quickly, so it's the cavalry who do most of the killing from the flanks and take most of the casualties too. So far I have been impressed with the performance of the legionaries against Roman Infantry, although they suffer badly when charged by big Roman General bodyguard units. I have some Numidian cavalry but they are definitely playing a minor role in this campaign. In my first Numidian campaign I used full stacks of them which were good against infantry heavy armies but were splattered by Roman armies with many generals and equites.

The Camels are still waiting in Carthage for the Egyptians to start. I realised that even though they may still scare Roman horses in Italy and be fairly effective cavalry, they can't be retrained in Italy after those messy Pyrrhic battles unlike my horse units. I hope they can scare Egyptian chariots and desert cav too, although Pharoahs Guards may be a tough nut to crack.

Numidia continues to challenge you when other campaigns run out of steam cause they get too easy. Perhaps a brilliant early blitzkrieg strategy neutralizing the Romans is fun for a while but ultimately it removes the main point of the game: taking on the Hydra like Roman families with their endless regenerating heavy cav, heavy infantry and ability to spread like vermin on their other fronts whilst you seem to be killing more of them than even Hannibal did. Authentic I believe though (apart from the cavalry) because the success of the Roman Republic militarily was largely due to its immense pool of available manpower which allowed rapid recovery from catastrophic defeats. Some brilliant generals were very influential also (Scipio, Marius, Lucullus, Caesar) but most were incompetent politicians polishing their own egos and getting their men killed.