Who would win?

[Ludens]

But I will say I'm tired of the CA bashing. Yeah, it ain't perfectly realistic, but EB, as fine as it is, won't be either. It's a damn computer game. How can you simulate provincial governors charging exorbitant grain prices, then taking a nice cut and passing on the official amount to his higher ups, local elites having their own hosts of warriors that can be called on/paid to fight rebels or enemy nations, etc.? Maybe with literally millions of miles of code, but that ain't happening with the rising costs of game development. And besides, despite some inaccuracies, RTW vanilla was still a rollicking good ride, definitely far better than the usual RTS fare, and the campaign, despite those inaccuracies, provided lots of good "I AM JULIUS CAESAR!" or "I AM SULLA!!" moments. And if you still are steaming like a pressure cooker, look at it this way- RTW vanilla was like Ancient Rome: The Themepark, perhaps light hearted and thin skinned at times, but full of grand times and some small tidbits of historical information(and despite the silliness of Incendiary Pigs, I would be lying if I said I didn't love them. Why, you ask, do you love them? Let me put it this way- WEEEEE!!! WHEEE!!!! WHEEEEEEEENN!!!!!!).

OT, but I agree. R:TW may not have lived up to its potential, but it is a fine game in its own right, or I wouldn't have spent hours playing it.

And to answer Gaesatae guy, how about you just build a couple more rams/siege towers/ladders to surround the mofos, or just wait out the siege? Overhyped, I say. No big problems in sieges either. Maybe it's just VH/M settings, but I had way worse problems with Trarii.

As for the Gaesatae: I think the problem was that players initially tried to fight them head-on, and that is exactly what they excell at. If you use the correct units against them, they are not such a problem. However, in a siege, where you don't have the same ability to make advantageous unit match-ups they still can cause a massacre (or so it would be, were it not for the A.I. tendency to have them run back and forth in front of your archers ).

[GodEmperorLeto]

If you fight Gaesatae head-on, use sarissa units, like Triarii or phlangists. They keep those flying butt-monkeys at arm's length pretty effectively, but it is slow going. If you don't have pikemen, then put your units on guard and they'll close up ranks and hold out a little better than they would in loose, I think. That's always seemed to work for me.

Don't surround them either. Leave them a way out. God forbid they go into the "fighting to the death" mode instead of just breaking. They'll go down faster, but they'll kill twice as many of your guys.

Pin them down with pikemen and flank them with cav. Arrows and javelins don't soften them enough.

Then again, I'm used to playing against them on VH/VH, where they fight like angry gods.