Traitorous Scum

[Cendre]

Keep 1 cavalry unit some archers and 1 strong infantry units in your cities bordering other Roman factions. Let them siege your cities and then sally out, the siege AI is so bad you will crush them every time...
E.g.:
- They will usually move their army to the top right of your city, take your cavalry out and hack at the back of their troop (consisting of their siege engine), once their siege infantry is decimated they can't take the city nor hurt you
- If they don't move their army, still take your cavalry out, circle at the back and hack siege engines. If by chance they start chasing your cavalry, just retreat to your walls and have your archers and wall defenses decimate them.

Repeat this procedure often enough and you will be killing 100s of romans while only loosing 1 or 2 cavalry guys.

Also AI doesn't keep any units in their cities that are not bordering other enemies, just take 2 of your existing armies (make sure you have at least 2 Onagers by army) by boat and land then in the enemy's back line, you'll find cities defended by 1 unit of infantry, take them to cripple your enemy's economy and improve yours.
As I said, you can't lose to the AI in this game as long as you have walls in your city and sally out when they siege. Which is actually why I've stopped playing the game...

[IliaDN]

Try to capture one of roman's cities in Italy they are rich and well developed
then exterminate population it'll give about 20.000-30.000 so you'll be able to bribe some roman armies in Italy which will join your faction.Then repeat this procedure.
As far as I remember Brutii have less armies there then goes Scipii then Julii and SPQR.

[Secundus the Mighty]

thanks for the advice guys, i will try and make peace with the Pontians? and the germans, i hate the egyptians too much to make peace with them.

As i need every pilum I can in the field, rather than on garrison duty, what (in your opinion) is an ideal size for a garrison?? some of my garrisons are full 20 unit strong armies! these are mainly in regions bordering the egyptians (Siwa, Cyrene, Aynkara - Siwa is almost constantly under siege and i cant afford to lose it as its very well developed) but none of my garrison are less than 10 units strong and most of the troops in my garrison are of the better quality (auxillia, early legionnairies, roman cavalry) everytime i try and reduce my garrison size to reduce costs or to form new armies it causes unrest!!!

[IliaDN]

1.Better if you have some governers(good governers) in those towns they may help reduce the unrest also lower taxes to min and then see how much soldiers you need to stay the city calm.
2.If it doesn't help you may try this:
make very high taxes in the town which is unrest then abandon it(I mean make your troops wait out of the city, better to have some onagers with them)
The city will revolt
You siege it with your army and if any onagers are present take it in the same turn it has revolted if not then you'll have to wait turn or two.
Then after you have retrieved your town you exterminate the population and you will get public order increase( because less population needs less garrson present) + money
3.If city is still revolting try again but I think one-time extermination will be enough.
4.Because of public order became better you can use some troops from garrison + hire some on money you have recieved from extermination

[Aesculapius]

As i need every pilum I can in the field, rather than on garrison duty, what (in your opinion) is an ideal size for a garrison??

This thread should help with planning garrisons. Basically, the ideal garrison size depends on how big your settlement population is; but (for the Roman factions at least) peasants are both the fastest and cheapest units for establishing order. Against this, of course, you must set the risk of being besieged - peasants aren't much good for defence, so only use them to garrison cities that are well away from the front line.

As for the advice about letting your cities revolt, recapturing them and exterminating the population: I'd say "Use with caution". It's a great short-term solution, it raises cash fast and solves unrest fast. The downside is that in the long term you're losing out on tax income and productivity. So unless you can be sure of converting the short-term gains into a win within 10 - 15 years, you may actually be digging a bigger financial pit for yourself in the long term.

Salve Secundus!