ooooh, nice. bring on the heavy cav! I used completely-mercenary armies. Once I just took one family member on a tour of every faction (mind, this was still early-mid game) and I just randomly collected as many mercs as I could to field a 20-unit army, detached that army from my factioner and sent them conquering in random directions, all the while raising new armies. So it was that while my Brutii controlled Greece and the west coast of Asia minor, I had full-stack armies careening around in Seleucia, Phraaspa, Campus Sarmatae, Memphis, and Dimmidi. Not to mention one in spain and one in Gaul. It was a -very- scattered empire I had, because of my strategy, but, well, I guess I was forced to link it all up :-) Amazing what you can do with whatever you scrape together.