Why recruit an Army?? just bribe one

[ZIM!!]

its faster and cheaper or at least comparable in cost

if your a roman faction and you bribe an Army consisting of chariots and war elephants do theses units get disbanded?

are there any elepant mercanary units?

[OctavianAugustus]

hey when i bribed a full stack of gauls as the julii , the stack disbanded and went home

I DID not have any control over those units....
they just went home ....

so from what ive seen you cannot just go out buying units like you did in medieval total war

Rome total war is a whole new beast to tame...rules are different from what i see...
sorry bro

[ZIM!!]

yeah I was just going buy my civil war experiences I bribed every major Brutii field army they had and some cities and got to keep the entire army in most cases.. that was so handy now I dont have to wait to crush pontius and the Germans

[Zed]

As far as I have been able to figure out you will only get the units, meaning they dont disband, if you can produce the same type of units yourself.

This means that you cant bribe and get elephants if you play a roman faction etc...

[Krusader]

Zed is correct, in that the units you can yourself recruit will join you, and the other units will be disbanded.

As to mercenary Elephants they should be in the Carthage-area.
Check the description_mercenaries.txt to see where all mercs appear
In folder X:\Rome - Total War\Data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign

[joeygbh]

If you want to keep your bribed armies, change the export_units_descr file. For each unit, change the ownership to contain the faction that you want.

i.e.

type carthaginian elephant african
dictionary carthaginian_elephant_african ; War Elephants
category cavalry
class heavy
voice_type Medium_1
...
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 1, 2410, 490, 250, 370, 2410
ownership carthage, romans julii

[Morat]

Zed is correct, in that the units you can yourself recruit will join you, and the other units will be disbanded.

You also get to keep the general (but not captains), but he gets reequipped with the bodyguard of your faction. I've read that there is a slight bug in that you don't get any other (non-General) family members that may be in the bribed stack, but I've never had that situation.

As to mercenary Elephants they should be in the Carthage-area.

You also can get them in Assyria, Syria, Babylonia, Coele Syria, Phoenicia, and Judaea. But that's a separate pool to the North African one, and so has its own appearance/replenishment rates.