Oh, wow!

[Avicenna]

You don't lose the whole army, you just lose the battle. I had that before in RTR, and I got really angry. Was fighting in the square, and the Illyrians had a unit at half strength and the timer just ran out and my general gained a trait which took off a command star when attacking walls. Fortunately the taking of that city afterwards and a few more cured this.

The Illyrian cities did really get me worked up though, because the timer ran out if you didn't make your troops run all the way up.

[Dayve]

Oh you mean in battle? I thought he meant if your city is under siege, like, turns until the city will fall.

[aleh]

I meant when a town is under siege, not the actual battles.
Oh, and I use half-stacks because I was told anymore than that and the AI won't pose any challenge. But if I can use more, well alright. :D

[Dayve]

If you are laying siege to an enemy town and there is 1 turn left before its supplies run out and you end the turn, they will either sally forth and attack your besieging forces, or simply 'surrender' without a fight... If it is you they are besieging, then you have to sally forth before that last turn runs out, otherwise your forces will 'surrender' and you'll lose the whole army and family member, as well as the town.

Also, using a full stack still poses a challenge. Roman troops can only be retrained in Italy, so the challenge is getting them back to retrain them and getting new troops to the front. Also you can just limit the number of legions you have, like an ironman rule. But EB is challenging even when you use full stacks.

[abou]

I haven't played in a while because I am waiting for 0.8, but a good idea is to start with a full army of Roman troops. As you campaign and take losses you don't want to have to go back and retrain so combining units that have taken losses and recruiting local troops is what you want to do. By the end of the campaign you will have a core of very experienced Roman troops (silver and gold chevrons) and a number of alae recruited from conquered towns.

This allows you to keep moving. Plus, when the recruiting kinks have been worked out you will be in good shape to continue conquering. I personally think that is what kept my growth slow: an unwillingness to conscript local troops and my having to continually head back to central Italy for retraining.

[aleh]

Ok, I'll start using full-stack troops, but I'll limit to a maximum of eight units that are non-Italian whether they be allied or mercenaries. Even if I don't have the full twenty units filled up.

And I already limit the number of legions I have. Basically one for every major land border. If it makes sense. So now I have a northern army in a fort near the town north of Bononia and west of Patavium. An army that serves to guard against attacks from the south(naval invasions) and that also serves as my 'Peninsular' army in a fort just north of Rhegion. And another army just south of Epidamnos and north of Ambrakia that serves as my eastern army, it's also stationned in a fort.

[pezhetairoi]

I don't see why it should be difficult to beat the Epeirotes, in my Roman campaign I smashed their fullstack army around Taras, crossed to attack Ambrakia and beat up another halfstack that had 3 elephants in it, and that was pretty much the end of them, I just had to walk around a few more turns with a mop to clean up the mess he'd made of his cities.

Simply, just use your flanking infantry not to protect against a flanking attack, but use them to flank yourself. Take the offensive, so that his phalanxes and illyrians can't force you into a setpiece battle. Phalangitai should break pretty easily, and even pezhetairoi can't last long if the rest of the army is crumbling around them. If he has Illyrians on the flank, concentrate some hastati and slam the rear with equites (or hippeis) and they should pretty much disintegrate.

[pezhetairoi]

This allows you to keep moving. Plus, when the recruiting kinks have been worked out you will be in good shape to continue conquering. I personally think that is what kept my growth slow: an unwillingness to conscript local troops and my having to continually head back to central Italy for retraining.

My sentiments exactly. I kinda paralleled Rome's military development, I think. First I sent out purely Roman citizen armies. Then as I went along and my empire got bigger and bigger, retraining became even harder to do, but I refused to merge units. Eventually as new armies were formed on new fronts I divided my experienced units among them, recruited a few new ones, and began using barbarian and greek alae, usually ranged troops (sotaroas, peltastai) but also cavalry (brihentin, merc hippeis thessalikoi)